D&D 5E The Gloves Are Off?

[Ruin Explorer]

Touch is one of the senses used to find things that you can't see and which would be vital to finding and/or disarming a trap. Go ahead, put on gloves, but those will in fact negatively impact your abilities. For some traps it might not make a difference. For many it will. It really depends on the trap.

I'm sorry dude, I'm laughing pretty hard at this, but if your idea of finding traps is poking around with your naked figures, I dunno, I think you're going to be missing a bunch of fingers real soon lol.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Please cite a place where this has been written in every edition of D&D.

Golly. You're right. I've just been playing for decades in some ridiculous way that was never intended. If a player simply says their character wears gloves then to hell with actually having some indication... no... ANY indication that that's actually been already established. My mistake.

 

[jmartkdr2]

It's not cold weather clothing, foraging clothing, riding clothing, etc. Those things would specifically come with gloves. Clothing that you put on to walk to the next town or city wouldn't need it.

It’s common clothing for an undefined environment. If the pcs are from Norway, of course they have gloves. If they’re from Cypress than gloves would be unusual and therefore not included unless specified.

The amount of context needed is huge.

 

[Vaalingrade]

The important thing is that no one at the table trust each other.

Only in a tense Cold War situation where everyone hates one another and both thinks the other is out to get them and is in fact out to get all the others can fun truly bloom in a collaborative storytelling game.

It also works in romance!

 

[Ruin Explorer]

One where if it's cold, I put on cold weather clothing and not clothing to just travel in. It seems like you want Traveler's Clothing to also be Cold Weather Clothing AND Riding Clothing AND... These are different kinds of outfits.

No.

Cold weather clothing and riding clothing don't exist. They're not on the equipment list.

We've got:

Clothes, common
Clothes, costume
Clothes, fine
Clothes, travellers

Gloves are also not on the equipment list. So in your game do you have:

A) An upgraded and more detailed equipment list, like @Micah Sweet does.

or

B) Do you force players to come with equipment not on the list, and get you to work out a price, so they can have it, and not have to play gotcha games with you about whether they have gloves?

 

[Vaalingrade]

Golly. You're right. I've just been playing for decades in some ridiculous way that was never intended. If a player simply says their character wears gloves then to hell with actually having some indication... no... ANY indication that that's actually been already established. My mistake.

Still not seeing those citations.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The important thing is that no one at the table trust each other.

Only in a tense Cold War situation where everyone hates one another and both thinks the other is out to get them and is in fact out to get all the others can fun truly bloom in a collaborative storytelling game.

It also works in romance!

Exactly. The amount of DMs here who seem to be portraying themselves to be living in absolute terrified and hatred-filled angry paranoia re: their players is giving me flashbacks to the '90s lol.

(I very much doubt 90% of the people saying this stuff actually run this way or they'd have no players!)

 

[DND_Reborn]

I don't agree at all lol, and I think you've singularly failed to refute them. All you've done is come up with scenarios not described. We're dealing with a slimy contact poison specifically.

Really LOL, these two points both account for it, or perhaps you just don't understand that?

Perhaps touching the chest disturbed the poison and some parts were inhaled?

Or after touching the chest the PC accidentally touched part of their exposed skin?

They are both about touching the poison, after all.

But, if you want even more possibilities": perhaps there are small tears in the gloves and some poison got through? These are adventuring gloves, after all, likely to have seen enormous wear and tear. Even newer gloves might have some bad stitching, etc.

Which is why the gloves, at best, provide advantage on the save. You touched poison slime or whatever, after all.

Is that specific enough for you? So... completely and irrefutably refuted.

So, since you ignored all the luck factor issues, I'm glad you agree on those points.

 

[Celebrim]

None of that supports "I find traps with my naked fingers!!!" which just sounds like some suicidal lunatic nonsense lol it really does. Good god. I can imagine a much more reckless approach.

Except among other things the history of the game supports it. Unless a character has gloves that are explicitly exceptionally or magic gloves like gloves of dexterity that explicitly don't interfere with fine motor skills, there is a good argument to be made that a character wearing gloves is subject to the penalty that comes with wearing armor when they check for traps or make a search check. Certainly as a long time play of thieves in 1e AD&D I never imagined my character with gloved hands, and indeed from the time that the UA gave significant bonuses to thieves for thief skills taken while not wearing armor generally preferred to play thieves unarmored, and would have expected penalties for most checks regarding manual dexterity if I only had ordinary non-magical gloves. (The same would be true in 3e if you couldn't afford masterwork leather.) As such, I would tend to think that nothing would be more suicidal than searching for traps with a gloved and thus much more insensitive hand.

In fact, in my narration of searching for traps I would frequently test for traps with a bit of straw held lightly in the hand or even on my tongue (being more sensitive than fingers), which has the double advantage of more lightly touching things than the most light touch of a hand and maintaining a better barrier between you and the thing touched than even the best of gloves. Actually going to grasp something was about the fourth or fifth step of a trap search for me in 1e AD&D, at which point I might put on gloves though most of the time soft gloves would do absolutely nothing to stop the more common traps like spring loaded needles. Much more important than the gloves would be the position of the body relative to the object as well as trying to use an object to lever the object open so as to get some distance from it if possible. Actually, things like goggles and nose plugs are probably more important than gloves, but don't start an argument how those are ubiquitous and implied by the traveller's clothing (though I've had some players I'm sure would).

So again, you aren't actually arguing on the basis of any concrete evidence. You aren't actually even arguing on the basis of real solid understanding of how searching for booby traps is actually done. You are just doing the normal dysfunctional cry baby arguments that always come after the fact.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

But, if you want even more possibilities": perhaps there are small tears in the gloves and some poison got through? These are adventuring gloves, after all, likely to have seen enormous wear and tear. Even newer gloves might have some bad stitching, etc.

I feel like this is just really doubling down on the key problem here, which is that D&D has saves that are at once, way too specific, and not specific enough to be used in the way you want to use them.

Like, let's look at @Reynard's more specific example with your logic here:

For example, maybe the description of the chest looks like this: The chest has been smeared with an almost imperceptible, deadly contact poison. Any creature touching it with exposed flesh is killed instantly.

So with your stitching logic, which is not entirely worthless, I agree, you'd what, just instantly kill the PC?

Or would you make a save? But if it was a save, why on earth would it be a CON save? Basically the only thing that can save you is dumb luck.