D&D General Should you clarify information to the detriment of the players?

[payn]

The doorknob was a spinning wheel (think submarine or vault door) where the wheel was ripped off but the door was still intact (the hole didn't go the whole way through). I did mention that they could try and go inside the door and navigate through the interior mechanism if they desired.

As for the first level entry they had the footprints to follow and had heard rumors about giants in the area before hand (they giants did have the wheel).

If anyone is wondering I'm running a conversion of the Iron Gods adventure path from pathfinder to A5e. The tower itself is home to a smoke mage who runs a variety of tests on various smoke/air creatures which is why the doors in the tower are specifically called out as being airtight.

Sounded familiar I ran it in PF1

 

[Charlaquin]

I generally try to keep out of player planning discussions, but if it seems like they’re forgetting something that should be pretty obvious to their characters I’ll remind them of it.

 

[The Soloist]

The only thing I say is: 'This is possibly a Wisdom 3 moment. Do you proceed?'

 

[payn]

The only I say is: 'This is possibly a Wisdom 3 moment. Do you proceed?'

 

[Clint_L]

So a situation came up last session (and similar ones have come up before) where I as the DM clarified information to a player in order to help them execute a plan that had a very high chance of getting them killed.

The situation last session, for example, was players trying to break into a wizards tower via gaseous form. The front door was airtight but there was a window (which i had mentioned in the description) halfway up the tower that wasn't. The problem being going in the window would leave the player halfway through the dungeon alone. While they were debating i reminded them about the window (and clarified i wasnt suggesting they use it just supplying info their character would have). They ended up using the window nd it went very badly (end result was very close to a TPK).

so my question os in situations where doing so will likely lead to character/party death do you reiterate/remind players about information that will make it easier for them to proceed with a bad plan or keep quiet?

I think you have to be careful because reminding them about something could easily give them the impression that you are giving a helpful hint. The problem is you don't know what is in my head. So maybe I'm thinking, "Well there's the window but I'd be up there on my own...seems risky...wait, the DM keeps mentioning the window; they must really want us to check it out!"

Then when I go do what I think you were hinting at and it's a disaster, I might be a bit salty. I mean, not me personally because I would think it was hilarious, but a lot of players.

 

[Clint_L]

You know, this reminds me that I had a very similar situation while running some brand new players through the old Lost Mine of Phandelver starter adventure. Right at the start of the adventure, entering the Cragmaw hideout, there's a little chimney players can climb up to shortcut right into Klarg's den, where there's Klarg (a bugbear), his pet wolf, and two goblins. This is level 1.

So the players find it, but decide that most don't want to risk the climb because of armour, etc., but one decides he wants to go for it because he had high athletics (I think a barbarian) and would meet up with the party later. This would be a disaster; he would get murderized for sure. So I am dropping every hint that this is terrible idea, that he can hear multiple voices and what sounds like a large animal snarling, etc., but he is being really insistent. And this is a kid with autism that I had cajoled into trying D&D so he could make friends, but he is not big on social cues. I basically had to tell him straight up that if he went for it, his character would almost for sure die and did he want that, and he finally decided not to risk it, but was super annoyed with me for days.

The happy news is that this happened in his first game, in Grade 10, and he graduated last year. He's now at the local university, and still hangs out with and plays D&D with the group of friends he made back then.

 

[Oofta]

You know, this reminds me that I had a very similar situation while running some brand new players through the old Lost Mine of Phandelver starter adventure. Right at the start of the adventure, entering the Cragmaw hideout, there's a little chimney players can climb up to shortcut right into Klarg's den, where there's Klarg (a bugbear), his pet wolf, and two goblins. This is level 1.

So the players find it, but decide that most don't want to risk the climb because of armour, etc., but one decides he wants to go for it because he had high athletics (I think a barbarian) and would meet up with the party later. This would be a disaster; he would get murderized for sure. So I am dropping every hint that this is terrible idea, that he can hear multiple voices and what sounds like a large animal snarling, etc., but he is being really insistent. And this is a kid with autism that I had cajoled into trying D&D so he could make friends, but he is not big on social cues. I basically had to tell him straight up that if he went for it, his character would almost for sure die and did he want that, and he finally decided not to risk it, but was super annoyed with me for days.

The happy news is that this happened in his first game, in Grade 10, and he graduated last year. He's now at the local university, and still hangs out with and plays D&D with the group of friends he made back then.

With brand new people (especially with special needs ones) I'll be a lot more lenient on what I tell them and actually give advice. Even with an experienced group I'll give them the obvious choices, and of course they can always go off into left field if they want.

For most people I ask if they want advice first, especially if it's something to do with how to run their character. I'm not ever going to tell them what to do but if they seem unsure or unclear (e.g. one of my players was unclear on how smites worked), I'll tell them what options they have that would make sense. I'm careful about that though, I don't want them to think I'm telling them what to do.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Protip: the surest way to get PCs to do a specific action is to single that you didn't prepare for that action.

 

[MockingBird]

I've run into this as well. I feel like they forget a detail and I remind them but then it sounds like I'm giving a hint.

 

[Lanefan]

I think the line I won't cross is telling them not to do something. I won't tell them "You really don't want to go through the window",

Same here, but once in a while I'll bust out the legendary line "Are you sure?" as a hint they might have overlooked or ignored something.

but I would ensure they understood the potential issue like the OP. It's too easy as a DM to accidentally be too vague in my descriptions not to clarify things like this.

I'll clarify my descriptions all day long if they want/need me to, but I'm not going to tell them things they wouldn't or couldn't know.