Willful Disadvantage

[Baldurs_Underdark]

Player skills:
Legendary poor deception. If the player succeeds a saving throw, it can choose to fail instead.

 

[Treantmonklvl20]

Do you control for players not great at roleplaying?

Yes, it's about player effort, not ability.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

"Poor liar" sounds like a perfectly acceptable character flaw to me. I'd allow it. I would offer the player a compensating advantage, but if they really didn't want to take one I wouldn't force one on them.

Inspiration for such roleplaying IS the appropriate advantage.

 

[MechaPilot]

Inspiration for such roleplaying IS the appropriate advantage.

Please don't try to tell me what's appropriate at my table.

 

[Oofta]

Personally, I'd allow it and give inspiration now and then depending on the situation. I used to have a (CN) barbarian that was completely, totally honest. Never tried to deceive anyone. He didn't care if the rest of the party was too weak to rely on the truth since it was his code, not theirs. But if someone asked him a direct question he'd tell them the truth. I had fun with the character, and so did the rest of the group (I was silenced by my own group once or twice) so I'd be okay with the poor deception (and disadvantage).

However, and this is kind of a tangent, I'd also caution the player to not be disruptive about it. It's one thing to have a fault, but it's another to go out of your way to blow up party plans.

 

[Blue]

This is my initial reaction, but I think it's missing something.

I think that a player choosing to penalize his roll is actually a player choosing to give himself a bonus, but changing his goal.

So you have the kobold who tells lies poorly. If a player penalizes his own roll (or takes the lower of two rolls), he's not trying to fail at deceiving someone, he's trying to succeed at being unpersuasive (and giving himself an effective bonus on the roll). Or worse, he's saying that he grants his opponent an automatic success, which goes against "only I decide if bonuses apply."

The solution is that, when a player wants disadvantage or to lose a contest, the player has to change the goal and try to succeed at the new goal.

The kobold's player, instead of trying to fail at lying well, tries to succeed at lying poorly. Then the GM 1) decides if a roll is needed, and 2) sets an appropriate difficulty, and the player doesn't even worry about trying to self-impose disadvantage.

So every player who every has a dump stat is redefining as wanting to fail and therefore needs to succeed to fail? I don't buy it.

The DM's (and the players) #1 goal - before all others - is to help each other have a good time. It's a group game. That doesn't mean the characters always win, or whatever. Part of the game is challenge and risk - that is part of what people are signalling when they join a D&D game. But "wanting to fail" is not usually considered a game breaking issue, determining that they are "gaming the system" and redefining it so that they need to success to fail just feels very antagonistic.

It's like if I had a character make an in-character but bad tactical assessment (something I do regularly), and getting overruled because "obviously your goal is to play your character like you envision them, and we need to put a roll in to determine if you succeed or if you must play them another way".

Sorry if this post feels so negative, but it feels so antagonistic to define anything the player wants to do as "something that must be opposed, because it's now a goal and a goal can't be accomplished without a roll".

If I'm misreading this, please let me know.

 

[Henry]

This very issue arose on a session of Critical Role a couple of months ago - one guest player whose PC had a figurative "boogeyman" in her backstory confronted this nemesis face-to-face, and asked the DM if it would be appropriate to take advantage for her attacks directly against this nemesis, and he agreed. In numerous over circumstances, another (regular) player has a PC who frequently drinks when nervous, willingly to the point that the DM imposes disadvantage. This happens even in very dangerous situations, because the PC is very timid and unsure of herself when others are counting on her, and it is a role-playing struggle for her to not resort to drinking her anxiety away.

in all of these, (1) the player asked the DM to impose the penalty for role-playing reasons, and (2) the DM agreed. I would prefer the player ask first, but I would also prefer the DM to agree, unless in case of extenuating circumstances. Just taking the penalty would be assuming the outcome just as surely as assuming you succeed at a difficult action without verifying it with the DM.

 

[seebs]

So I'm curious. Would any DM's here allow a player to choose or request to have disadvantage on a roll they normally wouldn't have disadvantage on?

Reason I'm asking is because I'm about to play a Kobold character that is a horrible liar. He gets visibly nervous and starts licking his eye (as reptiles do). I feel like anytime he would attempt deception rolls, he would be at disadvantage. But he doesn't have any mechanical reason for constant disadvantage. And this isn't a matter where I'm asking for any kind of compensating mechanical benefit (like advantage on insight checks). I'm not looking for anything like that.

And this got me thinking, in general how would you handle this at your table? Would you allow a player to request disadvantage?

In general: If you describe how you do a thing, I might give advantage or disadvantage.

If you had a character be obviously nervous when lying, then yeah, I'd probably give disadvantage. Until you learned to do it on purpose to make people think you were lying when you weren't, and then I'd give advantage.

 

[iserith]

My general thought as to this sort of issue comes down to the prescribed roles in D&D 5e. Who gets to say what, who determines what, and when.

I believe that when the DM and the players understand their roles in the basic conversation of the game, adhere to them, and strive to be the absolute best they can be at their particular role while pursuing the goals of play (everyone having fun and contributing to an exciting, memorable tale), the game runs a heck of a lot better than when that is not the case e.g. doing an average or poor job at the given role or overstepping one's role and taking over someone else's role.

So, if the DM is focused on doing a really good job of describing the environment and narrating the result of the adventurers actions and the players are focused on doing a great job of describing what they want to do, the game runs better and easier for everyone involved in my view. The players don't have to ask a lot of questions about the environment because the basic scope of options are laid out - they can just go forth and interact with the environment. The DM doesn't have to assume or establish what the characters are doing because the players already made that clear when describing their actions instead of asking to make checks or the like. The DM can then easily narrate the result of the adventurers' actions because uncertainty as to the outcome is easy to see when the goal and approach is clear in context and what failure might look like becomes quite obvious. With everyone giving it their best effort in their particular role, other participants have an easier time performing their role. If anyone isn't performing his or her well or is trying to perform someone else's role for them, it actually becomes harder for the rest of the group, comparatively speaking.

Therefore, the player asking for disadvantage on a roll is simply a nonstarter for me given this view. That is not his or her role. However, he or she can make clear via his or her description what is intended by the interaction (the kobold does a poor job of lying) and the DM can take it from there to narrate the result (the NPC spots the tell and doesn't believe a word the kobold is saying). If everyone is doing their utmost to perform their particular role, it just works out fine in my experience.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Please don't try to tell me what's appropriate at my table.

I am sorry. Didn't want to hurt feelings. Just wanted to point out that inspiration is granted by the book when you play according to your background traits including flaws. Your table does not concern me at all.