D&D 5E The Gloves Are Off?

[Ruin Explorer]

If we assume everyone at the table is engaging the game in good faith (and we should) then this is a communication issue that should come up exactly once. There will be some negotiation and some attempts to get processes and expectations aligned, and then move on.. forever after this table will have a "gloves rule." Since the books can't be comprehensive, this is working as intended.

If we assume bad faith (the gotcha GM or the cheating player) then nothing can satisfactorily resolve the situation.

You'll notice that like, a significant fraction of the posts in this thread are assuming bad faith on the part of the player. Even you seem to be at times.

And I would suggest, and I suspect you might agree, that a DM who outright insists the PC cannot be wearing gloves may well be a "gotcha" DM, because otherwise, as you say, this is a one-off, so why insist they weren't?

EDIT - Also the "assume the PC is being dumb" approach results in the most wasted time at the table, and the most cautious players/PCs, just as a matter of cold fact, because instead of players being able to assume the DM will be flexible/cooperative, they have to assume the DM will "get them" unless they're ultra-careful.

That can turn 60-second interaction into 15+ minutes.

I do not understand why you constantly get so upset that other people enjoy the game in a way you don't.

???

I'm talking from a practical POV. Not a "moral" one or something. 5E, design-wise, just isn't very good for that.

 

[Greg Benage]

Investigation is involved in disarming them.

I understand that -- I just don't understand why they abandoned the spot/search distinction. I much preferred it to what they have now.

 

[LordEntrails]

This possibility is something I have assumed from the start. But, again, if the DM then inspects the players character sheet and there is no concrete evidence of gloves to be found anywhere, then the DM's assumption is not wrong. There no evidence to overturn the DMs assumption in that case, and therefore the ruling - whether artfully or in artfully made - stands.



It's not hard to list on your equipment the sort of things you wear and employ, nor an unreasonable expectation that if you employ a tool that you'll mention it. If a player had said, "I open the door", it's not unreasonable to imagine that they do that with their hand (gloved or not) and that they do that in the normal way. Would we still be having this argument if, the player responded, "Wait a minute, when I said "I open the door", I meant I tied a 50' rope to the door handle, walked a good 40' away, and hid behind the archway before giving the rope a strong tug."? Because I have had similar sorts of retroactive claims made by players (not often, but still) when no such pattern of play had ever been established.

There is no reason to think a DM who wants such detail on a character sheet is going to stop at equipment. It seems reasonable they going to assume all types of things about my character and then "punish" me when I don't have evidence to counter those assumptions.
EDIT: Sorry, I should not have placed this on you. I've edited to make these staements generic.

"You got a bladder infection because you never said you went pee. You died from the infection because you didn't say ..."

Look, I get it. I've had the same type of players. But punishing them is not the way I handle it. I've found that turning the normal day interactions into a detailed explanation of every little thing boring. Treating your players as you do turns into a 30-minute discussion of how they open the chest. Opening a door takes 15 minutes. Searching a room takes an hour. It's IMO, a stupid waste of time. It's not fun for me after I've done that for a session or ten.

Simple: It's adversarial. I don't have fun playing in an adversarial setting. I did when I was young, I don't now. There are too many stories to play, to many adventures to be had to spend time on the mundane.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I understand that -- I just don't understand why they abandoned the spot/search distinction. I much preferred it to what they have now.

Yeah there are a number of issues there which confuse me a bit. I guess the idea is that 5E isn't very interested in traps you have to actively search for in most cases. You'll notice they can usually be passively spotted, RAW.

 

[MGibster]

Also a very big concern of mine. I've had to basically untrain a lot of players in my college days from being afraid to touch or interact with anything.

I see this on occasion even still. Players who were likely punished by DMs in previous games in the most stupid and mean ways. In one con game I ran this year, one of the players would go out of their way to tell me they were reloading their pistol after combat. After the second time I made it clear to them that they didn't have to explicitly tell me. We'll just assume your character reloads their weapons, and I promise I'm not the type of GM who is going to yell "Got'cha! You didn't say you reloaded your pistol." when the next fight starts. It's like watching a dog flinch every time you pet it because it's so used to be abused. Sad.

I've actually been wracking my brain for an interesting way to make use of contact poison that doesn't train the players to be paranotic and that doesn't invite a lot of complicated questions about what the owner does when they need to use their murder room covered in contact poison.

I tend to use traps sparingly. In part to avoid encouraging players to overthink every simple interaction in the game, but also because too many of them make the game tedious. You could use the contact poison as a trap. Uh, what I mean is, a decoy. Set it up so it appears to be a room full of treasure, but once they get past the poison and open the boxes, they find nothing. That explains why there's a bunch of contact poison they ostensibly need access to but in reality they don't.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Also a very big concern of mine. I've had to basically untrain a lot of players in my college days from being afraid to touch or interact with anything.

Yup.

Even players who have never actually had a DM like that can be overcautious if they start reading too much junky D&D "bad DM porn" or the like (including comic strips).

I've actually been wracking my brain for an interesting way to make use of contact poison that doesn't train the players to be paranotic and that doesn't invite a lot of complicated questions about what the owner does when they need to use their murder room covered in contact poison.

This combined with the fact that contact poison is fundamentally implausible (due to the issue that it'd dry up, evaporate, or slide off, on a regular basis - as well as they "how do they touch it" you point out) is why I nowadays just basically avoid contact poison.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I tend to use traps sparingly. In part to avoid encouraging players to overthink every simple interaction in the game, but also because too many of them make the game tedious.

Personally I find traps are best when the PCs can fairly easily work out that they're present, but have to use creativity to get around them.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah there are a number of issues there which confuse me a bit. I guess the idea is that 5E isn't very interested in traps you have to actively search for in most cases. You'll notice they can usually be passively spotted, RAW.

This is not entirely accurate. This is the RAW on it.

"DETECTING AND DISABLING A TRAP

Usually, some element of a trap is visible to careful inspection."

And...

"A trap's description specifies the checks and DCs needed to detect it, disable it, or both. A character actively looking for a trap can attempt a Wisdom (Perception) check against the trap's DC."

Careful inspection is active, not passive.

Since it does also say the following...

"You can also compare the DC to detect the trap with each character's passive Wisdom (Perception) score to determine whether anyone in the party notices the trap in passing."

...I'll give passive chances to obvious traps like the spears in Indiana Jones where the walls have huge sizable holes in them. For the more advanced traps that are designed to be hidden, it will take intentional searching on the part of the PCs in order to get the perception check.

It's pretty clear, though, that the passive check isn't supposed to be the norm. It's something you CAN do if you feel that the trap isn't that hard to notice.

 

[Greg Benage]

Yeah there are a number of issues there which confuse me a bit. I guess the idea is that 5E isn't very interested in traps you have to actively search for in most cases. You'll notice they can usually be passively spotted, RAW.

I don't know if traps are an exception, or if I'm supposed to use Perception also for, say, searching for secret doors. I think Wizards uses Perception, though I suspect I've only seen it in their adventures -- I can't remember reading the rule. But then, Investigation says this:

When you look around for clues and make deductions based on those clues, you make an Intelligence (Investigation) check. You might deduce the location of a hidden object...

A "hidden object" like...a poison needle in a lock, perhaps? Something whose presence you have reason to suspect, hence why you're searching in the first place? I don't know...it just seems like the distinction used to be quite clear, and now it's not, and I'm not sure what was gained, other than making Perception more of a "god skill."

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This is not entirely accurate. This is the RAW on it.

"DETECTING AND DISABLING A TRAP

Usually, some element of a trap is visible to careful inspection."

And...

"A trap's description specifies the checks and DCs needed to detect it, disable it, or both. A character actively looking for a trap can attempt a Wisdom (Perception) check against the trap's DC."

Careful inspection is active, not passive.

Since it does also say the following...

"You can also compare the DC to detect the trap with each character's passive Wisdom (Perception) score to determine whether anyone in the party notices the trap in passing."

...I'll give passive chances to obvious traps like the spears in Indiana Jones where the walls have huge sizable holes in them. For the more advanced traps that are designed to be hidden, it will take intentional searching on the part of the PCs in order to get the perception check.

It's pretty clear, though, that the passive check isn't supposed to be the norm. It's something you CAN do if you feel that the trap isn't that hard to notice.

You seem to be just ignoring the RAW and substituting your own approach.

That's allowed. Rule 0 is a thing, but it's not RAW or nor does it appear to be RAI. There's nothing to suggest the passive check isn't the norm.

Let's see the real RAW, not your cut-down version:

A trap’s description specifies the checks and DCs needed to detect it, disable it, or both. A character actively looking for a trap can attempt a Wisdom (Perception) check against the trap’s DC. You can also compare the DC to detect the trap with each character’s passive Wisdom (Perception) score to determine whether anyone in the party notices the trap in passing. If the Adventurers detect a trap before triggering it, they might be able to Disarm it, either permanently or long enough to move past it. You might call for an Intelligence (Investigation) check for a character to deduce what needs to be done, followed by a Dexterity check using thieves’ tools to perform the necessary sabotage.

How are you reading that to suggest you need giant boulder holes?