D&D 5E What actions by a PC Don't need to be stated?

[iserith]

Yes, you definitely can remove challenge to the player like this. A better approach is to use skill checks to gain hints & tips, just as successful combat rolls rarely solve the fight in 1 roll.

I like the idea of hints and tips for certain action declarations and (possibly) ability checks. I prefer if those hints and tips be "in-world." For example, if knowing what the face of Lord Morrikan of House Kundarak looks like is the best way to get past a puzzle lock/trap, then the player could make an action declaration along the lines of "I am a scion of House Kundarak, so I try to recall what the head of my dragonmarked house looks like..." provided that was true or "As a noble, I might know have made this guy's acquaintance before, so I try to recall..." I could then ask them to roll if I wasn't certain of automatic success or failure.

And now I'm struggling to tie this back to the original topic. Something about players needing to state actions?

 

[thethain]

then it's not "challenging the character," - it's removing the challenge in its entirety. Which is fine if that's how you like to roll. But that's a game without challenge (at least in that instance).

Allowing a roll to influence a situation is in no way "removing the challenge entirely". And like many things, a involved important event should NEVER be resolved with a single dice roll. If a player says "I want to scale the side of the mountain the prisoners are being held on the top of " Do you just do one athletics check and say "Well you rolled a 1 so you fell to your death half way up". Likewise in negotiating for the release of a prisoner a successful check may open up a few options. "We will release all but one to show good faith, we will accept a ransom payment, we will release them if you perform a task..." Again, personally I believe its 100% reasonable for a player to say "I want my paladin to negotiate for the release of the prisoners" without actually going into structured nuance of what all that might entail. Did you ask the ranger's Player what techniques he was using to hunt down food on the way here? Did you make the wizard player diagram out a list of magical formulas to determine what his arcana check revealed about the glowing symbols they found?

Again, probably not. So when there is a charisma 20 bard, with expertise in persuasion, he will probably come up with arguments and argue them incomprehensibly better than the Player or DM can (who are likely sitting at somewhere between 8-14 charisma). It is reasonable to put directions on their checks, and obviously some things have no chance of success. You probably aren't going to talk an NPC into killing itself, without there being some very extreme circumstances.

Similarly, a successful insight or investigation check may provide hints to its solution. "You notice the riddle is referring to the colors of a rainbow" "You can tell the object has a control wheel that clicks when you change direction"

Keep in mind the RAW spending an hour fidgeting with a magical items allows you to determine all of its properties (unless cursed). So the characters absolutely have some measure of problem solving that they are capable of without player intervention (or even requiring a skill check).

 

[iserith]

Allowing a roll to influence a situation is in no way "removing the challenge entirely". And like many things, a involved important event should NEVER be resolved with a single dice roll. If a player says "I want to scale the side of the mountain the prisoners are being held on the top of " Do you just do one athletics check and say "Well you rolled a 1 so you fell to your death half way up". Likewise in negotiating for the release of a prisoner a successful check may open up a few options. "We will release all but one to show good faith, we will accept a ransom payment, we will release them if you perform a task..." Again, personally I believe its 100% reasonable for a player to say "I want my paladin to negotiate for the release of the prisoners" without actually going into structured nuance of what all that might entail. Did you ask the ranger's Player what techniques he was using to hunt down food on the way here? Did you make the wizard player diagram out a list of magical formulas to determine what his arcana check revealed about the glowing symbols they found?

Again, probably not. So when there is a charisma 20 bard, with expertise in persuasion, he will probably come up with arguments and argue them incomprehensibly better than the Player or DM can (who are likely sitting at somewhere between 8-14 charisma). It is reasonable to put directions on their checks, and obviously some things have no chance of success. You probably aren't going to talk an NPC into killing itself, without there being some very extreme circumstances.

Similarly, a successful insight or investigation check may provide hints to its solution. "You notice the riddle is referring to the colors of a rainbow" "You can tell the object has a control wheel that clicks when you change direction"

Keep in mind the RAW spending an hour fidgeting with a magical items allows you to determine all of its properties (unless cursed). So the characters absolutely have some measure of problem solving that they are capable of without player intervention (or even requiring a skill check).

Again, I advocate reasonable specificity i.e. a clear goal and approach to that goal. "I want my paladin to negotiate for the release of the prisoners..." is insufficient in my view. How do you go about that? What leverage do you have? What do you have to offer in exchange for the prisoners? etc. More reasonable detail may be required of the ranger's or wizard's players depending on the situation. Context will tell.

And anyway, should a player want to roll the dice even if their character is presumably more charismatic than the player? The fickle d20 is nobody's friend and in a game where the DM decides on success, failure, and uncertainty, the smart play is to go for success, right? That requires in my view paying attention and coming up with a reasonably specific goal and approach to overcoming the challenge.

As for the bit about magical item identification, the challenge there is related to spending time as a resource. There are ways to trade other resources to save time. The difficulty of the challenge depends on how valuable time is in the given game. In a game like mine, it's often precious which is why I purposefully include items that require attunement or identification as it creates a meaningful and more difficult decision for the player.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I mean, I get it. The issue with that term is that it confuses what "challenge" is in the context of this game.

Meh. 5e brought back CR. The C in CR is for 'Challenge.' A higher CR means a lot more hps, more damage, and slightly higher bonuses, all to make it challenging to higher level characters.
Sounds like a fair use, to me.

And that's a very fundamental concept in my opinion, something all DMs need to learn (among other things) but
very few in my experience seem to understand.

Sounds like a topic for another thread, entirely. But, if explaining that concept is important to you, maybe try explaining it rather than attacking a tangentially related idea for the label used to express it?

It's not hard to remove the challenge at all, in terms of challenge that happens during game play.

So, you're asserting that system mastery, for instance, only exists at chargen? Certainly it's most notorious abuses do, but it also matters in play. Player skills & player choices vs DM challenges, in play, still, it seems.

All you need to do is remove the need for a player to apply skill to overcoming the challenge. Rolling a die isn't skillful. Coming up with the action that will net you automatic success or at least allow you to roll for a chance at success is skillful.

Coming up with the action that will let you roll a skill your character is good at is also applying player skill to a player choice to overcome a challenge. It's just an instance that takes the character's capabilities into account, and contributes to RPing the character concept.

If you could find posts of mine from the WotC forums, you will most certainly find me saying stuff like "challenge the characters," which was a common thing to say when D&D 4e was the current edition. I have since learned that it's not a thing.
...
As for reading, manipulating, or gaming the DM, you would also find me arguing that point in old forum posts as I railed against "DM Empowerment." I have since learned that these are acts of bad faith on the part of the player and the response to that is not to play with people who act in bad faith rather than go to the mechanics to help deal with it.

So the editions changed and your standards changed with them. :shrug:

'Gaming the DM' is not bad faith, it's inevitable, that's just part of how humans interact with eachother. Not always to the degree of being cynical/cruel/unfair about it, of course.
It'd probably be a bigger issue if the stereotypical D&Der were better at it... ;P

The balance issue isn't that it's wrong to game the DM (on the players' parts), it's that it favors some players over others, and doesn't model the characters being played. Much like system mastery rewards being too great. It's OK for some players to be system-masters and some 'master'-manipulators, it's not so OK if either or both reap too disproportionate a benefit, to the point of imbalancing the game and ruining it for others.

 

[iserith]

Meh. 5e brought back CR. The C in CR is for 'Challenge.' A higher CR means a lot more hps, more damage, and slightly higher bonuses, all to make it challenging to higher level characters.
Sounds like a fair use, to me.

CR is really about difficulty. Which is different from challenge.

Sounds like a topic for another thread, entirely. But, if explaining that concept is important to you, maybe try explaining it rather than attacking a tangentially related idea for the label used to express it?

Not attacking anything.

So, you're asserting that system mastery, for instance, only exists at chargen? Certainly it's most notorious abuses do, but it also matters in play. Player skills & player choices vs DM challenges, in play, still, it seems.

Honestly not sure how you got there from my comment. Obviously skill exists both in character building and in making choices during play. Though I would say the latter is more important.

Coming up with the action that will let you roll a skill your character is good at is also applying player skill to a player choice to overcome a challenge. It's just an instance that takes the character's capabilities into account, and contributes to RPing the character concept.

I think we agree here. It's safer to take actions where you have some mechanics to back you up if you fall short of outright success.

So the editions changed and your standards changed with them. :shrug:

'Gaming the DM' is not bad faith, it's inevitable, that's just part of how humans interact with eachother. Not always to the degree of being cynical/cruel/unfair about it, of course.
It'd probably be a bigger issue if the stereotypical D&Der were better at it... ;P

The balance issue isn't that it's wrong to game the DM (on the players' parts), it's that it favors some players over others, and doesn't model the characters being played. Much like system mastery rewards being too great. It's OK for some players to be system-masters and some 'master'-manipulators, it's not so OK if either or both reap too disproportionate a benefit, to the point of imbalancing the game and ruining it for others.

My understanding of those concepts evolved regardless of the edition change. You can play coy with the connotation of "gaming the DM" and throw subtle shade on D&D 5e's "DM Empowerment" all you want across many threads and posts, but I will not do that anymore. It's disingenuous and more than a little tiresome in my opinion.

 

[jasper]

Outsider...My character woulda locked that door."
DM... "Would they have? You didn't say they did."
Outsider."It just seems like common sense. I assume she always locks doors. He is cautious."
DM "You always lock doors?"
Outsider."yes".
Next week. DM everyone give me 3 dex saves....
Later.
DM." Outsider has been missing for 10 minutes since he left for the out house."
Outsider, " WHAT!"
DM. " well you did lock the door to the out house. But since you failed the dex save the key felled in. By the way there is now a line outside the out house. HAHAHHAHHAHAHA"

 

[Shasarak]

1) This is a no brainer, of course you would be holding your breath when running through a cloud kill spell. Unless the spell is particularly big you probably dont even have time to breath when running through it in any case.

2) Honestly if a Wizard has to climb a rope to get up a statue then he probably is not anything to worry about any way.

 

[Shasarak]

Again, I advocate reasonable specificity i.e. a clear goal and approach to that goal. "I want my paladin to negotiate for the release of the prisoners..." is insufficient in my view. How do you go about that? What leverage do you have? What do you have to offer in exchange for the prisoners? etc. More reasonable detail may be required of the ranger's or wizard's players depending on the situation. Context will tell.

This is an interesting question, how can you negotiate the release of the prisoners without knowing what the other side wants? I would have imagined that was a clear goal and approach leading to a scene where you negotiate for the release of prisoners.

 

[iserith]

This is an interesting question, how can you negotiate the release of the prisoners without knowing what the other side wants? I would have imagined that was a clear goal and approach leading to a scene where you negotiate for the release of prisoners.

Because the character is smarter than you and just knows it, don't ya know? No need to state actions.

 

[Tony Vargas]

CR is really about difficulty. Which is different from challenge.

Which is why it's called Difficulty Rating instead of Challenge Rating? 5e doesn't have quite so precise a jargon as all that.

Not attacking anything.

The concept of 'challenging characters' probably feels (metaphorically) that you are. Even if you do only have an issue with the phrasing rather than the actual concept of the character's abilities mattering to the resolution, rather than the player's abilities (as opposed to the player's skill at playing the game, which'll inevitably matter).

Obviously skill exists both in character building and in making choices during play. Though I would say the latter is more important.

Which is more important would depend on the system and the style of the GM, of course.

Eliminating either isn't somewhere that D&D has ever gone as a system, nor is it something DMs or players do merely by using resolution methods that take the character into account.

I think we agree here. It's safer to take actions where you have some mechanics to back you up if you fall short of outright success.

I hope so. Success should also be more plausible when the character is established as being good at the action undertaken.

My understanding of those concepts evolved regardless of the edition change.

So it's a coincidence? OK, coincidences happen.

You can play coy with the connotation of "gaming the DM" and throw subtle shade on D&D 5e's "DM Empowerment" all you want across many threads and posts, but I will not do that anymore. It's disingenuous and more than a little tiresome in my opinion.

Characterizing 'gaming the DM' is black-and-white 'wrong' is like claiming that 'optimizing' is black-and-white wrong. It's a facile way to excuse a system's vulnerability to the tactic, but in no way helpful in remedying that vulnerability. And it defames styles of play and promotes divisiveness. If you're running 3.x, you should be aware it heavily rewards system mastery, if you're running 5e, you should be aware of your responsibility in using all that Empowerment.