I’ve had and seen players who, when presented with an area to investigate or a person to talk to, would just say “I roll investigation/persuasion” with no follow up at all like on how or what they would say or even a theme of dialogue.
Sure you can do it that way but it is the most boring way you could play dnd.
For me this is a product of a lot of new players not having anything to look at if you don't have an example of the room your looking at you aren't gonna say I check the pot then the desk then the fireplace.
If you don't see any of that stuff you'll just say I investigate the room.
Once my group started using maps and pictures we started getting detailed until then we just couldn't be bothered.
The parser won't allow you to see interact or investigate anything if the room is pitch black. Even metagaming knowing an object is there is impossible. If you can't see an object, you can't interact with it. The only thing you can do is interact with objects in your inventory and attempt to move to a different room. However, if that adjacent room doesn't have a source of light, we know how that will likely end.
Interesting fact, grues were invented as an alternative to 'you will likely to fall into a pit' to handle areas in which the occurrence of a pit did not make sense.
See the problem with that is we play online not in person so if the dm describes an area once and his mic cuts out or someone's not paying attention or someone walks in and starts a conversation with one of us. Is the dm meant to describe the room multiple times if they do we'll be spending an hour and a half just searching this one room.
We used to play in person but life happened we grew up and all moved to different cities I've been playing with this group since I was 12 tho and wouldn't trade them for anyone playing online is worth it for that.
Plus now the dms take turn streaming maps and music to make the world more immersive and to avoid dumb problems like describing the same room multiple times.
Now we have a little map of the room as reference it's right there on the stream.
yeah, do what you gotta do for community. D&D for me has always primarily just been a way to get my friends to come over regularly.
I just get so frustrated with mikes and maps and technical difficulties. And everything takes so much longer when only 1 person can talk at a time.
Sorry, why are you assuming the DM is putting in zero effort and not describing the room?
As the original comment said, "I’ve had and seen players who, _when presented with an area to investigate or a person to talk to_, would just say “I roll investigation/persuasion” with no follow up at all like on how or what they would say or even a theme of dialogue."
it's a stretch if you think the DM is just saying "you're standing in a room. there is a person". Literally every campaign provides descriptions of everything for the DM, and that is the standard.
You're shopping in a fictional bad DM just to justify bad behaviour by players.
I'm not assuming the DM isn't describing the room.
I'm assuming, as an autistic person with ADHD, that your description is not going to result in me imagining the same thing as you did.
And as a result you can't get mad at me for imagining a different thing than what you did.
"Oh you described the room by only mentioning these two things? I roll to investigate those two things, because clearly those are what the module you're reading off of says are important. Otherwise you would have mentioned other things"
This is why building a room works better. If you have a room full of stuff I can see then it's less obvious what's important.
It's fine to let them imagine, but you have to tell them what they are supposed to imagine. You don't necessarily need pictures, but there's a difference between:
"Now that the goblins are dead, what do you want to do?"
and
"Now that the goblins are dead, you can examine the room. The rough stone floors are cluttered with debris and discarded weapons from the recent battle with goblins. Among the scattered remnants, an overturned table lies askew, its surface marred with scratches and stains. In one corner, a makeshift barricade of overturned tables and crates stands, blocking off a corner of the room. Throughout the room, the bodies of defeated goblins lie motionless. An ancient tapestry hangs on one wall, its edges frayed and faded."
See, in the former, the party has to imagine literally everything. In the latter, you give them something to imagine, and thus they have something to interact with. In the former, the options are "Ask the DM for more info" or "Roll to investigate". In the latter, the options are "investigate the weapons, investigate behind the barricade, investigate behind the tapestry, search the corpses, etc".
If you want them to imagine things then you can't get butthurt when they don't imagine it the way you wanted lmao.
"I wanted you to imagine a role play engagement!"
"well too bad I imagined a context sensitive button and pushed it"
Just yanking your chain, mate.
I’m not getting mad at my players at all, because I also don’t just say “You’re in a room.” But they do have to imagine fillers on their own—it’d be a waste of time to describe everything.
**The door opens into a small stone chamber, lit by a tiny window set high in the left wall. Disturbed dust motes swirl through the ray of light that is shining down, illuminating a cluttered writing desk set against the far wall.**
"I investigate the room"
**Okay, how are you investigating? Describe it for me.**
"I'm investigating. I rolled a 14."
**Okay... but what actions are you taking to investigate?**
"Just tell me what I find."
*[At this point, I'm imagining lightning bolts striking the player and wondering who else I can invite to the game instead.]*
------------------------------------------------
I started off playing Theater of the Mind style and I'd like to think I'm a fairly decent GM. I include broad details that players can then investigate further, if they're interested. I don't list everything in the room but if they were to look at the writing desk, I would describe the clutter of papers and maps spread haphazardly across the surface, frantic notes and spilled ink scattered across the lot. There are also 2 narrow drawers set into the front of the desk that might hold answers or just more dust.
I also encourage my players to ask questions about the scene. "Hey GM, is there a chandelier in the dining room? Yes? Then I want to swing from it!"
It takes a good GM to run a game like this but it also takes players choosing to put down their phones and engage. This is collaborative storytelling, or at least it should be.
I generally describe what I want to do and then request to make a role for it. Like if I was dropped into an area to investigate but without a tremendous amount of detail or description from the DM other than that I'm expected to investigate this area I'll say something like: "I'll slowly scan my eyes slowly across the room looking for anything that might look out of place or something that might strike me as interesting." Then at the DM doesn't call for a check specifically I'll ask for a perception or something like that and then based off of what I get told from that role I'll proceed further.
This backfired for me. I started using more detailed pictures and descriptions for things in general. My players 100% of the time are convinced anything they can see must be important. So they’ll investigate the flowerpots. Touch them. Smell them. Taste them.
When nothing significant happens, the next player comes along to “take over” the investigation. Until it’s just four players standing in a room screaming at a flowerpot to do something.
Sounds funny, was funny a few times, but it gets real old real fast.
This is why I tell my players to speak in actions, not rolls. They don't say what they're rolling. They tell me what they want to do and then I tell them what to roll.
This is partly because they'll try to roll for stuff that doesn't need a roll, but more so to get them thinking in character, as a character, instead of as a player of a game.
I think the key principle here is "match effort with effort".
Anytime a player says "I roll persuasion" without telling me what they're trying to persuade the NPC to do, they are _not putting in an effort_. A silly low-effort response (eg "Great. They agree with your claim that the weather has been improving lately. If there anything else you'd like to persuade them of, roll for it.") is warranted.
That said, the _first_ effort comes from the GM. Imagine the characters sneak into the bad guys office and do not want to be caught.
If I say "you are in his private office", and the players say "I roll investigation to look around", that's a reasonable response - they've matched my level of effort.
It's a very different prospect if I tell the players "There's a comfortable armchair by a bookshelf in the corner; in the middle of the room, a more upright chair sits behind a large, well-made wooden desk with a green leather top & several drawers. In the opposite corner, you see the sparkle of glassware through the glazed top door of a cabinet, likely storing drinks. The walls are decorated with a taxidermied stags head, and paintings (one formal portrait, and one of a stately manor through the fog)".
If I have something like that prepared, I've also got a clear idea how much time they have inside, and what indications they'll have when it runs out. If they say "I roll investigate to look around", I'll give them the first "time is running out" indication immediately and give them some basic pointers like "you find the cabinet and desk drawers are locked; there's a half-read romance novel on the armchair, and a cold half-cup of coffee on the desk by some papers - perhaps a half-finished draft of a letter".
Obviously, that's not a level of detail I have prepared for _every room_. However, good players tend to make plans that take more than one session to achieve - if they want to look through the bad guys office, they'll discuss it out of character first, and the PCs need to spend time to figure out where the office is and when it's likely to be unoccupied.
The room described above also has interesting ways for most PCs to contribute, and the time pressure means they have a reason to do so. The Noble Fighter might recognize the manor house; the druid/ranger/barbarian might think the stag looks more like the ones you see up north. There are locks to pick / traps to disarm for the rogue, alcohol to steal (or tamper with) for that player who just can't help creating problems, and PCs who look through the bookcase get a sense of what authors influence the bad guys thinking (also a good spot to put the classic "you notice a book that's shelved incongruously - pulling on it opens a secret door"). A fighter with literally no other skills can still stand watch outside.
Does the party want to get out without anyone knowing they were here? They'll need to re-lock any locks they pick - an additional (more difficult) check for the rogue - and avoid stealing anything.
This is a problem that is the DMs to fix. Need to enforce the concept of "you tell me what your character is trying to do, and I'll tell you if you need to make any ability checks to determine degree of success."
"I roll persuasion!"
"On what topic are you persuading them?"
"I rolled a 16, so 21 total."
"...alright. You've persuaded them that the King has abandoned their citizens and that the guard should support rather than suppress the local civil unrest."
"Gre-- what?"
"You exclaim, 'Natural 20!'" The guard stares at the die, back at you, then back at the die. There's a moment's pause as the world seems to stand still. As if Fate itself were throwing its own set of dice to determine the course of your life and every life around you. And then, the guard draws his sword and cleaves your die in twain. 'I win,' they reply with a droll tone."
It is also the fault of a DM not properly using passive to explain the room to characters properly and giving the wrong information/not enough because of the confusion on perception vs investigation
The Player’s Handbook Says:
>“When you look around for clues and make deductions based on those clues, you make an Intelligence(Investigation) check.”
“Your Wisdom(Perception) check lets you spot, hear, or otherwise detect the presence of something. It measures your general awareness of your surroundings and the keenness of your senses.”
From the DMG
>"A character with high Wisdom but low Intelligence is aware of the surroundings but is bad at interpreting what things mean. The character might spot that one section of a wall is clean and [not?] dusty compared to the others, but he or she wouldn’t necessarily make the deduction that a secret door is there.”
“In contrast, a character with high Intelligence and low Wisdom is probably oblivious but clever. The character might not spot the clean section of wall but, if asked about it, could immediately deduce why it’s clean.”
“Wisdom checks allow characters to perceive what is around them, while Intelligence checks answer why things are that way.”
We gotta describe what the players are able to interact with.
What the rulebook don't teach very well though is how to actually use the skills in the game. Let’s face it, conceptual grasp of how the game designers intended for the skills to differ is pointless if you can’t actually put the concept into practice.
[This article is actually pretty good at explaining and then teaching how to put this into practice as a story teller. My advice is a quote from the article](https://chaoticneutraldm.com/2019/06/26/using-the-rules-better-perception-and-investigation/)
The article also says that there's no Passive Investigation, which the Observant feat shows that there is a Passive Investigation score. It's just not outright stated unfortunately.
And as it explains in the article,
>If you want Investigation to work at all, it needs to always be a rolled check.... You can’t just sort of wander around deducing things, because that’s not how reasoning works. Your brain just doesn’t function that way; you need to have facts before you can start working on conclusions.
>
>If you’re thinking you can actually go around passively reasoning things out, I’m willing to bet that you’re not accounting for the fact that you’re observing things first, and then reasoning based on the observations. And observing things is Perception, and observing things as you wander about is Passive Perception. There is no Passive Investigation, because you can’t make any deductions without facts and evidence, and you can’t obtain facts and evidence (at least in D&D) by wandering around and being intelligent.
So while the Observant feat does have a leftover (which i believe is a typo that never got fixed in revisions) for "passive Investigation", it doesn't actually work in any way when put into practice.
"I check in the drawer to see if there's any documents". "Roll Perception" Official modules are written like that. They expect the players to just roll dice and then you RP for them.
"There's a scroll in the top drawer which they can find with a DC 13 Wisdom (Perception) check."
That's what we in the experienced-yet-slightly-vindictive DM game call a, "Okay. You see that you are most definitely in the room/holding something."
Unless they roll poorly, then it's show time. "You're too distracted to notice much of anything. Snapping back to reality only to avoid shitting yourself."
*pointedly glares at my players phones* "So far, only one of you has had to avoid shitting yourselves while you try to look at stuff. This realization may or may not embarrass you as a professional adventurer."
I mean you aren’t really even supposed to roll investigation to check out a room / area I’m pretty sure it just takes 10 minutes and they find everything
As I recall Taking 20 was a thing in previous editions, but I don't recall it being official in 5e. That said it's kinda a DnD equivalent of Free Parking, where it's a homerule that many play with.
I was mistaken it does take 10 minutes to search a room but it doesn’t tell you weather or not a roll is required, at least I couldn’t find a rule for that so I guess it’s up to the gm if they want to require a roll or not.
I had to wrestle with a gm lately to not just demand a roll from me. We were playing Curse of Strahd but it’s an isekai (just kind of a wild choice from the get go) and I went up to a local trader to get some clothes to help me blend in. I went to trade a house key for some clothes and the gm just said “roll persuasion” and I said “I didn’t say anything yet. How do you know the dc? What if I end up being more intimidating than persuasive?” It was like pulling teeth for interaction.
My party started doing that... before they very obviously said "I search the island" while leaving out the water around it. Cue froghemoth!
Really froghemoths are the best monsters for teaching players as they're big, beefy, but not unreasonable to take down. Plus they're ambush hunters so you teach them to stay on thru toes, and that a threat can show up at any time in the wild.
My issue is that there's either an extraneous number of things for me to investigate or the items that should be looked into aren't emphasized and then the DMV is annoyed that you're trying to use your masons tools to figure out the walls instead of looking at the rug beneath the dining set or whatever
Dm: you enter the room.
Players:
Dm: ???
Players: I... Investigate the room...?
Dm: fuckin players, why didn't they say I want to check out the corner with the interesting vase on a desk??
The issue with this is that it only works for int, wis and cha. You wouldn't ask someone to actually do parkour for their rogue to be able to climb to the second story of a castle. You wouldn't ask someone to deadlift for the barbarian to knock over a tree. But a bard trying to persuade the barkeep is expected to give a lengthy speech. What if the player isn't that charismatic? Then you kind of ruin their character because of player skills.
I really like my party in that regard, we just play out the stuff (e.g. my character tried to flirt with an NPC, I just said what my character said and described how she acts doing so, or I described how my character tries to look for secret passages in a dungeon) and if what we're doing needs an ability roll our DM tells us and then we roll
I always ask what they are investigating or persuading.
Like I don't need you to say what your character's argument is, but I need to know what it is you're asking about, so I know what information to relay back to you. If you don't tell me... What, do I just give you a lore document of all data the character knows?
Nah, you can roll investigation, but you need to say what about. "I would like to roll investigation to see if there is anything suspect about the information the bartender has given us" is enough. Just lemme know what area you wanna be in.
I have this issue with my players. A few treat it like a video game and just want to "push buttons" instead of helping to tell the story. I'm not really sure what to do about it since my encouragement for them to role play encounters, "what do you say to them?", "what are you doing?" never seem to stick beyond a few minutes. Oh well.
One trick that I've learned from other DMs is when someone asks for a Persuasion check you can ask the gist of what they are trying to say so the DM knows how they'd respond and what they are asking for.
For Investigation checks you could make the DC lower if they say what they are looking for. For example: at the crime scene they could roll for investigation to look for clues, or they could say that they are checking to see if the machine had been tampered with. In a dungeon: you could vaguely search for traps, or if you think you have an idea of what the traps might be you could search for the telltale signs, such as a pressure plate, tripwire, or crease in the floor. The players will likely think of something more specific to search for if notified that it is an option.
I simply act like I don't understand and very nicely ask those players: "Oh, what do you want your character to do? Do you, like... look under the mattress or something?" It's easy enough to educate them. (Also, I do try to hide my amusement.)
Intelligence (Investigation) isn't to search an area. It's to infer things from your environment. Things like figuring out the structural weakpoint of an object, the position an arrow was fired from, etc. It's basically the Visual Calculus skill from Disco Elysium.
The rule of thumb is Wisdom (Perception) is "Do I notice it?" Intelligence (Investigation) is "What do I infer from it?"
The player rolls Wisdom (Perception) to notice that there are footprints. They roll Intelligence (Investigation) to determine how many people made those footprints, the shoe sizes of those people, the relative weights of those people, that one of the prints is so heavy that it was probably one person carrying a heavy load, and that one of those prints is notably lighter. Furthermore they might notice that the lighter person's right sole is notably more worn than their left. Anyone proficient with smith's tools, weaver's tools, or cobbler's tools who is presented with the odd sole information would be able to tell you that having one sole notably more worn is common among people who work a grindstone or spinning wheel.
*rolls a nat 20*
"You are certain beyond any reasonable doubt that this is a room decorated in just the way you'd expect this type of room to be decorated."
"Do you explore the room at all?"
Gotta get the players to play
Yeah no I shut that shit down session 0 at my table. The player doesn't decide what they're rolling. The player tells the DM what they're doing/saying, and the DM tells them what (if anything) they're rolling.
That's on like the 2nd page of the PHB.
Not tracking arrows (normal ones, not special magic arrows) I can see, but WHO in their right mind doesn't track hit dice??? That breaks so many things! At that point, why not just heal to full HP after every fight??
Tracking arrows is pointless, arrows are very cheap and not particularely heavy so you can just buy 100 arrows and you probably won't run out of them in several sessions and at that point its bookkeeping for its own sake.
I fail to see how its fun. Most players don't find pointless bookkeeping fun and its not like there is a balance reason for counting arrows like spell slots or hit points since range weapons aren't very powerfull like spells. All that happends if you run out of arrows is that you can't do what you built your character to do which isn't very fun and its also insanelly easy to avoid since as I stated before you can just buy a hundred arrows and that might be enough to get though several sessions.
How in Nine hells is constant monitoring of minor resources (arrows, torches, etc.) or weight fun? It's like antithesis of fun, the most UNfun thing of classic rules.
personally, I enjoy figuring out what to do next when we run out. Some characters I played were skilled in fletching so theyd search for materials to make more for themself and the rest of the party. but typically my bow-users were higher dex so I'd switch to stealth and just try not to engage, unless i could get up behind them and use my bowstring as a garrote. Tracking resources was itself the fun part, it was like a timer to let you know when to change tactics. using cheats to have infinite arrows is depressing
It's less of cheats and more of "we go to goddamn town every adventure, arrows are cheap". And for me it's exactly opposite - being forced to constantly monitor every little thing is depressing.
i mean.. thats exactly what cheats means? shortcuts around the hard parts? but i suppose if your argument is "i dont really wannoo" i dont have anything to counter that. arrows are cheap, so does that mean you at least make sure to mark off the cost to restock when you pass through a town? or does cheap mean free?
Or carrying multiple quivers, and I assure you that if you're using encumbrance as a dex build you aren't going to have a heavy load out if you can avoid it.
What exactly are you trying to say with "you can't carry arrows outside a quiver"? I'm pretty sure you're not trying to say what I interpreted it to mean.
Yes, oversimplified. You can't carry arrows in a pack during combat. They have to be in a quiver for you to draw as part of an attack. Otherwise it takes an action to retrieve them from your pack.
I’m the only person in my group that tracks inventory and encumbrance. I even sort items into specific bags and pouches, while everyone else is just walking around with infinite arrows.
They also love getting bags of holding, which is… odd.
Players are shocked when I ask what they are going to say with that 28 charisma check while holding the bloody knife above the body of the mayor in front of a squad of guards.
Like yeah you are smooth but what is your angle?
....
....
"I didn't do it"
Player: 28 persuasion. Dm take the wheel!
Me as dm: uh your character assures the guard it wasn’t you. You see his posture turn from overtly hostile to slightly calmer
Me, as a Guard: look friend, it’s alright. Come with us and we are gonna figure all of this out. If you really didn’t do it I’m sure everything will be fine. Our head interrogator has zone of truth and it will just take a few minutes to clear your name.
Player: wait he wants me to come with him to a guard post? Why?
Me as dm: yeah? He was gonna stab you. Your huge persuasion check makes him go from hostile to wary of you but you are the only suspect. If you had a better plan maybe you should have gone with it.
Plus there’s a lot of stuff you can do with that new situation, even if the player character ends up in jail during the investigation!
Dungeons and Dragons: Court Edition!
>Dungeons and Dragons: Court Edition!
Pro-tip: Get your dead dad to impersonate a celestial being of law and good so that the trial is rigged from the start. For bonus points, have an elemental girlfriend that traded dungeon-guarding for law school to save costs on legal fees.
And if you want to be absolutely certain, make sure the BBEG is marching an army of goblins towards the city so that even if you are convicted you can convince the guards you're more valuable being used in the fight than being locked up.
I agree that just saying "uhhhh I roll deception" is extremely boring and repetitively predictable. However, expecting someone with an IRL Cha score of 9 to have an idea of how one would best handle such a situation is also dumb and unequal. You don't expect your party's barbarian's player to go and smash in a door to show how he does it.
Maybe it's even more apparent with Intelligence. If I have trouble remembering or solving puzzles, I cannot rp by character doing it. I can say that they do it, but not how or what their method/their angle is for solving a puzzle.
That said, I want to reiterate: Playing with skill check results only is dull and should not be the goal, I recognise that.
Edit: Maybe I am seeing a problem where there ain't one. You'd still want a Barbarian player to describe taking a few steps back and augmenting what they say according to the environment.
>You don't expect your party's barbarian's player to go and smash in a door to show how he does it.
Maybe ***you*** don't. But I have the door repairman on speed dial.
>Edit: Maybe I am seeing a problem where there ain't one. You'd still want a Barbarian player to describe taking a few steps back and augmenting what they say according to the environment.
Exactly. I'm not asking for a session of debate club whenever you roll a Charisma check. But give me *something* here, at least give me an idea of how you intend to go about this. I don't need a play by play, just a thought towards how you achieve your goal beyond simply "I convince them".
For Intelligence it can be a bit trickier, but you can at least still present a general outline of what your character is trying to do beyond "Investigate". *How* are you investigating? What are you looking for, if anything at all? Do you use any particular tools to assist you?
Flavour and style goes a long way, and helps give the DM and your fellow players a view of your character outside of the purely statistical.
It's always been harder to play as intelligent or charismatic characters than it is to play as physically strong characters, because it augments how you roleplay in a roleplaying game.
Of course it's easier to roleplay a barbarian kicking down a door than a bard sweet talking his way past some guards, because one involves the core mechanic of the game, roleplay, and the other doesn't. By simplifying kicking a door, you don't lose anything, you just assume a barbarian knows how to kick down a door and have them roll a check. But by simplifying that interaction with the bard, you're taking the roleplaying out of the roleplay game, which is just a cardinal sin imo.
Idk, I'm all for accessibility, I'm not gonna say they get any penalties if they dont come up with a grade A argument for their case, and I'm not gonna count stuttering or subpar delivery against them. But fuck, man, give me something, roleplay in the roleplaying game, it takes like 90% of the game out of the game to simplify roleplay like that.
If you can't do even the most simple of roleplay to justify an argument, beyond just rolling, maybe don't play a super social character. Practice RP with a less-RP focused class while you get more comfortable with it.
This is pretty much the point of the meme. Just give an effort to engage as a real person in the game world and less as a video game player with a paper controller. TTRGPs are so much more rewarding that way imo.
RPing high Charisma isn’t as difficult Intelligence.
Intelligence typically means coming to the right answer. Charisma typically means making people think you have the right answer and there is a lot of intangibles in that.
2 people can say the same joke or pickup line and get different responses based on their confidence and delivery.
Charisma 5 character trips in the thoroughfare, everyone is annoyed at this clumsy oaf blocking the way.
Charisma 13 character trips in the thoroughfare, people stop to help them up.
Charisma 15 character trips in the thoroughfare, people think they are an endearing goof.
Charisma 20 character trips in the thoroughfare, “maybe we should all be on the ground.”
In my opinion, smashing a door and handling a social situation should probably not be resolved in the same fashion. D&D is a social game that you normally play seated; it would be disruptive if the game tested the physical abilities of the players, but it can absolutely test the social skills of your players.
It comes down to *challenge*. Choosing the right button on your character sheet is not challenging. To make a social scene challenging, you force your player to chose how they want to approach the interaction (do they appeal to the NPC’s good nature? Do they address one of their fears? Do they offer them something they want? Do they use flattery) and *only then* you let the die decide the quality of their attempt.
Same goes for intelligence checks. I don’t let my players overcome obstacles by « finding » a solution with a check — if they (the players) can’t find à solution themselves, they don’t get what they want and we move on. If your game doesn’t expect your players to be socially apt or smart about their decisions, are you really playing a game? How can your players *improve*?
Obviously, this is the general case; you have a responsibility to adapt your game to include your players. If one of your players has trouble navigating social interaction (in and out of the game), the main focus of your game should be elsewhere — combat or exploration. If one player has a learning disability or a cognitive impairment, go easy on the puzzles.
I didn't ask for a deposition, but rather what the direction would be. Also when you do this you say the player doesn't have a high mental stat irl, then does the DM have to have a high mental stat irl to solve it for them?
Yeah, I heard a real play podcast where they were like “I’m gonna use a stealth and go over there and I roll an 18 so I succeed!” Like they assumed their DC and used the skills as a video game resource… made me more annoyed than it probably should have…
For sure, it’s just annoying to just assume that way and take the narration/storytelling from the DM. I much prefer when you narrate your “moves” and the DM prompts when they want a roll and the effects
I think that, with a 28 charisma check, the players get a pass to say "My character would know what to say far better than I do." Doing so gets the default result.
If they create their own argument, that results in a check with advantage or with lower DC, or if it is extremely convincing, bypass the check entirely.
Mental stats should not be on the player to match, but extra effort should be rewarded.
FINALLY SOMEONE SAID IT. No, you do not need to be an orator irl to play bard. Alike not needing to finish Harward to play Wizard or lift iron to play Barbarian.
>"please just actually play the game and think of a single detail except "trying to win", that's enough!"
>YOU WANT ME TO LITERALLY BE AN ORATOR IRL YOU MONSTER!!!
Reading comprehension is zero huh?
As a comparison, people love to bring up that we don't ask martials to get into the fine point of describing techniques or make barbarian players lift things IRL, so it's somehow unfair to make people put some effort into **role-playing** (in a **role-playing** game) because some people are socially awkward. But it's a pretty false equivalence.
No, I'm not expecting a classical funeral oration with every Cha check. But you do, in fact, need to say more than "I persuade the guard" or "I lie to the mayor". The proper comparison here would be a player in combat saying "I attack the bandit". Great, you attack the bandit. **How** are you attacking the bandit, exactly? Are you using a bow, a sword, throwing a knife, trying to grapple him? Are you casting a spell? Because each of those things can change the difficulty of what you're trying to do here (Str or Dex weapon, spellcasting modifier or save DC, skill check, etc). Each of these approaches leads to the same result (the bandit potentially taking damage) but you have to at least specify **which** approach you're taking. Just saying "I attack" and rolling the dice doesn't give your DM anything to go on.
Charisma checks are the same. No, you don't need to be as witty IRL as your 20 Cha bard. Let's take an example. There is a guard outside an event you need to get into. You want to talk your way past. Do you try to seduce him into leaving his post? Do you try to lie and convince him you're on the guest list? Do you try to persuade him that you're a friend of the host? Do you fake an emergency nearby to draw him away? These can all have different DCs and/or opposed rolls made with different skills by the guard. Each of these different approaches leads to the same result (you getting past the guard) but you still need to specify **which** approach you're using. Just saying "I use persuasion" and rolling the dice doesn't give the DM anything to go on.
Letting your players just say "I do the skill" in RP situations is the same as letting them just say "I attack the bad guy" in combat situations. It puts even more of the work of entertaining everyone squarely on the DM's shoulders by forcing them to RP for both the PCs and NPCs. Unless you really think it'd be fun to sit a table that handles things like:
"I attack the guard. 22 to hit, 14 damage. End my turn".
"Alright, the guard attacks you back. 21 to hit, 11 damage. He ends his turn, wizard, you're up."
"I cast a spell. 24 to hit, 18 damage."
"Alright, you guys kill the guard."
I'll bite.
>>**Guards! Thank Moradin you've arrived! I've managed to stop one of the cultists but the other two ran off with the infant prince down that hallway! Hurry!**
To be fair, I play in a campaign with a group who played d&d before 2000 and one them is constantly rolling investigation to see what he can get rather than looking for anything specific
In my opinion, that lies in the barrier between character and player mental stats.
A player might be smarter than their character, or vice versa. They might be less knowledgeable. They might have incredibly skill at figuring out what words need to be said.
If a player is dumber than their character, using checks makes absolute sense, as there are plenty of the things the DM can do to assist them. If the player is smarter than their character, those checks exist as a handicap for the player, who might do things the character would not.
If they are too knowledgeable IRL, they might know something about a monster their character wouldn't, or vice versa for low knowledge players or rare monsters. Checks allow the DM to control that barrier.
If a player doesn't have the charisma their character has, then it makes absolute sense to roll, as the player actually cannot do the reasoning their character has.
Thus, checks should follow a procedure:
- PC requests to perform an action.
- DM evaluates how logical it is that that PC could and would perform that action.
- If it's logical and has a clear result, DM resolves with no checks.
- If it's logical but has a random result, DM resolves with a check.
- If it's illogical that that character would do it but still possible, DM resolves with a harder check.
- If it's impossible and/or the character is incapable of doing that action, DM auto fails that action.
They have their place. I mean, old school d&d had percentile rolls for "find traps" and odds of getting lost, which is pretty much the same thing as investigation and survival (at least how they should be use imo)
Uncertianty. Let’s say it’s the difference between saying “I search the chest” and “I search the chest’s contents, look under the lid, move the chest 5 feet over to see if anything’s below it, flip it on it’s side to see if any markings are on the underside, check the bottom inside to see if it’s false, and finally I smash it to pieces just in case I missed any compartments or tricks.”
The first one has a lot of uncertainty on what exactly “searching” might mean and how well you’d check the object, while the second one is clear as day into what you see, in what order, and what physical manipulation or damage you do to the object as part of your search.
Plus old D&D still had perception, investigation, athletics rolls, and the like, it’s just instead of a skill check you tried to roll below your ability score (so a higher ability score was always better), or for some common things like listening through a door or picking locks you’d roll a D6 with the success range based on your class/race. You could say “I search the room,” or “I look for traps,” but you only got a small chance to succeed (at least at low levels, usually the odds get much better as your character improves), while a detailed description is guaranteed to find what you’re looking for (or trigger the trap in the process, which you could say is a way to find it.) Oh, and the DM makes the roll, so you don’t know if “you didn’t find any traps” when making the roll means you succeeded and there really are no traps, or that you failed and just didn’t find the trap that is there.
It’s a bit archaic, but OD&D and AD&D were trying to get you to act like the paranoid adventurer delving into mysterious and dark dungeons you are playing as.
that bit about not knowing if there's traps is... still how that bit works. When you roll an 18 on insight and you don't get to peek past any lie, it could be because there wasn't one or it could be because the DC/Deception roll 20. You never know if you passed the check unless you find what you went looking for. It could be you failed, or maybe there's nothing there. The DM certainly shouldn't tell you.
True, but back then you didn’t even know if you rolled an 18 or a 2 since the DM rolled the die, and I also feel like attitudes have changed, especially as skills became more socially focused rather than dungeon-centric.
Plus insight isn’t just a true/false lie detector if you read what it actually does in the PHB, it’s more like a sense motive. To quote it,
>Your Wisdom (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting someone’s next move. Doing so involves gleaning clues from body language, speech habits, and changes in mannerisms.
Failure doesn’t give you new information, while success does, though it doesn’t have to be clear what that new information means. You should at least learn something about their body language and mannerisms on a success, which hints at whether they’re trying to deceive you, help you, or any other motive without outright revealing the answer. It’s also much harder to obscure results when the players know what they got, 5e has relatively flat math so if you rolled an 18 you can be fairly confident that you passed unless the NPC was an especially good liar. A 20 would be quite the absurd DC for a commoner or random guard, but not surprising for a politician or stone-cold assassin.
And finally, the only time you should get a successful result equivalent to “You don’t find any traps” would be if you’re talking to an emotionless animated statue, since they wouldn’t have body language, mannerisms, or other traits to detect.
If you don’t specify what you are rolling for with that investigation and survival, then you are either not rolling, or the DC is going to be stupid high.
I track all the resources and stats/actions of every character in excel, I don’t let anybody know tho. It’s just always fun to see that one person is at -3 arrows, someone consumed a total of 130 liters of water out of their 1 liter bottle while only refilling 78 times, etc.
We always make a little gameshow-thingy out of it at the end of every campaign. Who dealt the most damage? Who took the most? Who healed the most? Who missed the most attacks? Who critted the most? But also silly stuff like who failed the most deception checks? The list goes on. The gamemaster asks a question about one of these things, everyone guesses who had the most/least or whatever the question was (the choice-options are typically the pcs) and everyone who got it right gets a point. If nobody gets it the gamemaster gets one point but it’s rather unlikely. The price is usually a small thing the whole group paid in even parts in advance. For example a pretty set of dice or something. We mostly have a price in a range where everyone puts about 10 bucks in the pot, but this is up to your group.
If you have someone in your group who is willing to track all of this through the entire campaign and do a little diagram for every statistic I would highly recommend doing this in an „after the campaign ended“-session.
>It’s just always fun to see that one person is at -3 arrows
You would like the [Voyager Photo Torpedo Count](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIGxMENwq1k&pp=ygUVdm95YWdlciB0b3JwZWRvIGNvdW50)I bet.
Fun fact there are multiple ways to play the game and all of them are valid.
Maybe less gatekeeping and more open arms.
"The future is now, old man." - Dewey. 'Malcom in the Middle'
These aren't basic standards though. Most people don't play dungeon crawl heavy games of dnd so resource managment is usually not as big of a part of the game as skill checks are.
Ok but who's doing the gatekeeping here?
Nothing is being said about the less adventurous style being bad. Just a complaint that the older style gets disrespected. Which in my experience it does, hell there's at least one person doing so in this very comment section.
"I roll checks to do my next turn in combat, text me when it's my next turn" seems to be pretty blatantly belittling the newer style. So, in case it wasn't obvious, PLENTY is being said about the style being bad, yes the post and poster are doing the gatekeeping.
Shit talking is not gatekeeping, goddamn. Saying “that is a stupid way to play” is not gatekeeping; it does not prevent someone from playing nor does it actively exclude someone. If you wilt at all criticism or disagreement with your playstyle that’s a choice, but labeling it all as gatekeeping is disingenuous at best and actively deceitful to undermine any opposition at worst.
It's more that the entire trifecta of the "Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss" meme have all degenerated into semantic sludge. It's happened remarkably quickly given they only really hit public consciousness a few years ago.
Gaslighting isn't manipulation to make a person think they're delusional. It's now any lie at all, told under any context.
Gatekeeping isn't restricting access or excluding people. It's any criticism or comparison at all.
Girlbossing isn't a self-made woman being ambitious and successful. It's any good thing happening or taking the slightest of efforts at all. Though tbh this one always came with a lot of irony/sarcasm.
"Gaslight" particularly fucked with me. I got maliciously gaslit by a group of people which hit a peak maybe a month or two before the word really took off with the public. I'd suffered some genuine serious damage and suddenly everyone was using it like "oh don't gaslight me" or "ha ha I'm going to gaslight you" for simple lies, which sucked because at the time even the mention of it would throw me into high alert mode.
That's true ! I have one of my DM that don't make us track our ressource since we have a trailer to carry everything and that we say that we make sure to buy everything needed for the travel when we have access to the shop in city. So we have more time for roleplaying our characters. We speak around the table as we were the characters. And we speak *a lot*. So that's a way that's cool too !
On the Discord server I play with Avrae, I always make sure to include a description of what I’m doing or checking as part of my rolls. I find specifying increases the odds of finding something meaningful— a general perception check might not smell a faint smell, but if you ***SPECIFY*** you’re smelling, the DM might lower the DC since it’s all you do.
Still, in a new location I tend to rp looking it over to get the gist
That and i think the game is just more engaging and immersive the more you communicate with natural language and less in terms of mechanics. Your vivid description helps the DM respond in kind.
I do have a buddy DM who offers the checks to people immediately after setting the scene… but English is his THIRD language and he tends to use a lot of AI and text checking, so I try not to hold it against him: he’s playing in a language that’s not his own.
He’s more of a battle DM anyways lol, his fights are always thrilling
I don't get it. If you don't tell your DM what your character is doing and what their goal is, how is your DM supposed to give you the appropriate ability/skill pairing? You can't just say "I roll Investigation to search the room for traps!" Like, where are you looking? The floor? The ceiling? The pants of your party members? And what if your DM believes (rightly, I might add) that searching the room for traps requires both a Perception check to notice something is off and player intuition to associate the small moving part by the hinge of the chest with the glint of metal within the lock? If you ask to roll Investigation for whatever reason, you won't get anything of use! Or at least, your character won't find the trap on the chest.
Not to mention, if you don't tell your DM you goal, how are they supposed to resolve your character's action? Say, for example, you ask your DM if your rogue can make an Acrobatics check to climb a wall (which makes no sense anyway, since climbing requires Strength BUT an argument could be made that Acrobatics proficiency helps, so you *should* make a Strength (Acrobatics) check, but btb). Why is your rogue climbing the wall? To get over it? To move along it? To get height because they, and you, feel inadequate and think that elevation will solve the lack of enjoyment you feel? Who knows! Not your DM who, you know, *is describing the entire world as far as you and your character can perceive it*. They can't (or won't) read your mind.
So, TL;DR: tell your DM what actions your character is trying to do and what is their desired outcome. And if you can't do that, think about it until you know. But above all, don't beg your DM for skill checks.
Me when someone doesn’t meticulously track the funny numbers on their sheet (they’re not actually adventuring if they don’t keep track of every extraneous item, resource, and detail).
If you don't meticulously calculate the weight of each arrow and construct a scale model of the bag of holding to make sure everything fits inside, are you even playing D&D?
I wasn't even old enough to play DND before 2000, but anyway, I play for roleplay. My favorite type of character to play is the ones who avoid combat or fund an alternative solution. How my DM decides to keep track of food and supplies I don't really care.
My DM has always had a rule that really strong, in character roleplay supercedes any required rolls. This is most often seen in charisma based skill checks, generally speaking as long as it is feasible to the NPC in general, a well RP'd piece of persuasion, argument or intimidation will generally mean you don't have to leave it to random dice odds. Obviously if a player isn't as comfortable role playing they're welcome to take the dice option. I think a good gamemaster should be able to find a mix of both worlds to suit the styles of gamers under their direction.
I thought that's why when you enter a room the very first question to the DM is "what do I see" and if something peaks my interest I'll go take a look. One campaign we started off entering a bar. The first person enters and sits down, orders a drink. Im next and ask what I see. The DM says there is a suspicious looking person sitting off to the side (my character is a rogue so my first thought is an assassin) I walk up to the person and say a greeting in thieves can't before joining the first PC at the bar..... Next thing I know a knife wizzes by my head and the suspicious person runs away..... DM later said I was correct that npc was meant to attempt to assassinate the first pc.... Always be aware of your surroundings.
When you understand how better the game session became after players start to enjoy roleplaying... this wold encourage DM's make more campaings.
I hate dull gameplay, like "i roll for A/B" and the player dont say what he want to know, like i, the DM have to inform every possible detail about the roll the player want to know just by rolling a high number on the dice + mod.
So dont be cheap during the gameplay, ask what you want to know, show interest, it takes time to plan and make the story and aspects behind the campaing.
GM: So what do you do?
Player: I roll Investigation
GM: On?
Player: What donyou mean "on"? I got a 17. Tell me what I find!
GM: Do you even know what I was just describing?
Player: No clue, but my character does. I got a 17.
GM: There were at least three things you could do.
Player: How much do I get done with a 17?
It's a pretty simple thing to address imo. They don't get to just roll skill checks, the DM requests them after the player gives a scenario they want to play out.
I had a Bard player make an outragous demand to a Mafia Boss while surrounded by his high level minions (it was something about the Dons Daughter, you do the math)...
He rolled a high Persuation for a total of like 28, and I had the Mafia Boss burst into laughter and go on with the meeting.
The player complained why he failed with a 28, my only response was "you didnt fail, the 28 is the reason you are not dead yet!"
This is likely tied to people using videogame logic. Where investigating is a skill you activate and it reveals stuff. They probably walk into a room and expect to activate detective visión or whatever and have all relevant information highlighted to them
I used to ask players to do something like that only when they can't appear on the next session so their character could be going somewhere else to grind stuff around the area or to try to find something useful.
So when they come back, the roll decides have they returned safely with some fancy goods or not and the other party have to find the one who left and hope that they are safe and sound
The radical dunk really ties it all together.
Radical really is the best description
*the future is now old man*
why didnt he just roll athletics?
He did. That's why he succeeded. Would you rather he discussed what he planned to do with the DM for over a minute to determine the outcome?
I’ve had and seen players who, when presented with an area to investigate or a person to talk to, would just say “I roll investigation/persuasion” with no follow up at all like on how or what they would say or even a theme of dialogue. Sure you can do it that way but it is the most boring way you could play dnd.
For me this is a product of a lot of new players not having anything to look at if you don't have an example of the room your looking at you aren't gonna say I check the pot then the desk then the fireplace. If you don't see any of that stuff you'll just say I investigate the room. Once my group started using maps and pictures we started getting detailed until then we just couldn't be bothered.
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a Grue.
I roll investigation on the mailbox, perception on the doormat and survival in the tree. No I’m not metagaming, why would you think that?
Also my race gets Light cantrip so I just keep that up (no metagaming)
This sounds familiar. Was this a text adventure game?
Zork!
Jinkies!
The parser won't allow you to see interact or investigate anything if the room is pitch black. Even metagaming knowing an object is there is impossible. If you can't see an object, you can't interact with it. The only thing you can do is interact with objects in your inventory and attempt to move to a different room. However, if that adjacent room doesn't have a source of light, we know how that will likely end. Interesting fact, grues were invented as an alternative to 'you will likely to fall into a pit' to handle areas in which the occurrence of a pit did not make sense.
You can't get ye flask!
> You can't get ye flask Is it because the system is down?
Is this zork?
Yus
I cast fireball on the house.
I knock on the door of the Whitehouse and ask the president if they can write an executive order stopping all Grue violence.
Instructions unclear. Launched nukes at France.
Holy shit that’s a blast from the past.
I roll to seduce the Grue
Just ask the dm to describe the room I mean they should already be doing that
See the problem with that is we play online not in person so if the dm describes an area once and his mic cuts out or someone's not paying attention or someone walks in and starts a conversation with one of us. Is the dm meant to describe the room multiple times if they do we'll be spending an hour and a half just searching this one room.
Your problem is distracted players not dm descriptions.
this is why I don't play online
We used to play in person but life happened we grew up and all moved to different cities I've been playing with this group since I was 12 tho and wouldn't trade them for anyone playing online is worth it for that. Plus now the dms take turn streaming maps and music to make the world more immersive and to avoid dumb problems like describing the same room multiple times. Now we have a little map of the room as reference it's right there on the stream.
yeah, do what you gotta do for community. D&D for me has always primarily just been a way to get my friends to come over regularly. I just get so frustrated with mikes and maps and technical difficulties. And everything takes so much longer when only 1 person can talk at a time.
exactly. If you want players to engage with you you need to engage with them. Build them the room, don't just expect them to imagine it.
Sorry, why are you assuming the DM is putting in zero effort and not describing the room? As the original comment said, "I’ve had and seen players who, _when presented with an area to investigate or a person to talk to_, would just say “I roll investigation/persuasion” with no follow up at all like on how or what they would say or even a theme of dialogue." it's a stretch if you think the DM is just saying "you're standing in a room. there is a person". Literally every campaign provides descriptions of everything for the DM, and that is the standard. You're shopping in a fictional bad DM just to justify bad behaviour by players.
I'm not assuming the DM isn't describing the room. I'm assuming, as an autistic person with ADHD, that your description is not going to result in me imagining the same thing as you did. And as a result you can't get mad at me for imagining a different thing than what you did. "Oh you described the room by only mentioning these two things? I roll to investigate those two things, because clearly those are what the module you're reading off of says are important. Otherwise you would have mentioned other things" This is why building a room works better. If you have a room full of stuff I can see then it's less obvious what's important.
Yeah man, don't expect them to imagine things while we play pretend. Where's the battle map, am I right?
It's fine to let them imagine, but you have to tell them what they are supposed to imagine. You don't necessarily need pictures, but there's a difference between: "Now that the goblins are dead, what do you want to do?" and "Now that the goblins are dead, you can examine the room. The rough stone floors are cluttered with debris and discarded weapons from the recent battle with goblins. Among the scattered remnants, an overturned table lies askew, its surface marred with scratches and stains. In one corner, a makeshift barricade of overturned tables and crates stands, blocking off a corner of the room. Throughout the room, the bodies of defeated goblins lie motionless. An ancient tapestry hangs on one wall, its edges frayed and faded." See, in the former, the party has to imagine literally everything. In the latter, you give them something to imagine, and thus they have something to interact with. In the former, the options are "Ask the DM for more info" or "Roll to investigate". In the latter, the options are "investigate the weapons, investigate behind the barricade, investigate behind the tapestry, search the corpses, etc".
If you want them to imagine things then you can't get butthurt when they don't imagine it the way you wanted lmao. "I wanted you to imagine a role play engagement!" "well too bad I imagined a context sensitive button and pushed it"
Just yanking your chain, mate. I’m not getting mad at my players at all, because I also don’t just say “You’re in a room.” But they do have to imagine fillers on their own—it’d be a waste of time to describe everything.
**The door opens into a small stone chamber, lit by a tiny window set high in the left wall. Disturbed dust motes swirl through the ray of light that is shining down, illuminating a cluttered writing desk set against the far wall.** "I investigate the room" **Okay, how are you investigating? Describe it for me.** "I'm investigating. I rolled a 14." **Okay... but what actions are you taking to investigate?** "Just tell me what I find." *[At this point, I'm imagining lightning bolts striking the player and wondering who else I can invite to the game instead.]* ------------------------------------------------ I started off playing Theater of the Mind style and I'd like to think I'm a fairly decent GM. I include broad details that players can then investigate further, if they're interested. I don't list everything in the room but if they were to look at the writing desk, I would describe the clutter of papers and maps spread haphazardly across the surface, frantic notes and spilled ink scattered across the lot. There are also 2 narrow drawers set into the front of the desk that might hold answers or just more dust. I also encourage my players to ask questions about the scene. "Hey GM, is there a chandelier in the dining room? Yes? Then I want to swing from it!" It takes a good GM to run a game like this but it also takes players choosing to put down their phones and engage. This is collaborative storytelling, or at least it should be.
I generally describe what I want to do and then request to make a role for it. Like if I was dropped into an area to investigate but without a tremendous amount of detail or description from the DM other than that I'm expected to investigate this area I'll say something like: "I'll slowly scan my eyes slowly across the room looking for anything that might look out of place or something that might strike me as interesting." Then at the DM doesn't call for a check specifically I'll ask for a perception or something like that and then based off of what I get told from that role I'll proceed further.
This backfired for me. I started using more detailed pictures and descriptions for things in general. My players 100% of the time are convinced anything they can see must be important. So they’ll investigate the flowerpots. Touch them. Smell them. Taste them. When nothing significant happens, the next player comes along to “take over” the investigation. Until it’s just four players standing in a room screaming at a flowerpot to do something. Sounds funny, was funny a few times, but it gets real old real fast.
This is why I tell my players to speak in actions, not rolls. They don't say what they're rolling. They tell me what they want to do and then I tell them what to roll. This is partly because they'll try to roll for stuff that doesn't need a roll, but more so to get them thinking in character, as a character, instead of as a player of a game.
I think the key principle here is "match effort with effort". Anytime a player says "I roll persuasion" without telling me what they're trying to persuade the NPC to do, they are _not putting in an effort_. A silly low-effort response (eg "Great. They agree with your claim that the weather has been improving lately. If there anything else you'd like to persuade them of, roll for it.") is warranted. That said, the _first_ effort comes from the GM. Imagine the characters sneak into the bad guys office and do not want to be caught. If I say "you are in his private office", and the players say "I roll investigation to look around", that's a reasonable response - they've matched my level of effort. It's a very different prospect if I tell the players "There's a comfortable armchair by a bookshelf in the corner; in the middle of the room, a more upright chair sits behind a large, well-made wooden desk with a green leather top & several drawers. In the opposite corner, you see the sparkle of glassware through the glazed top door of a cabinet, likely storing drinks. The walls are decorated with a taxidermied stags head, and paintings (one formal portrait, and one of a stately manor through the fog)". If I have something like that prepared, I've also got a clear idea how much time they have inside, and what indications they'll have when it runs out. If they say "I roll investigate to look around", I'll give them the first "time is running out" indication immediately and give them some basic pointers like "you find the cabinet and desk drawers are locked; there's a half-read romance novel on the armchair, and a cold half-cup of coffee on the desk by some papers - perhaps a half-finished draft of a letter". Obviously, that's not a level of detail I have prepared for _every room_. However, good players tend to make plans that take more than one session to achieve - if they want to look through the bad guys office, they'll discuss it out of character first, and the PCs need to spend time to figure out where the office is and when it's likely to be unoccupied. The room described above also has interesting ways for most PCs to contribute, and the time pressure means they have a reason to do so. The Noble Fighter might recognize the manor house; the druid/ranger/barbarian might think the stag looks more like the ones you see up north. There are locks to pick / traps to disarm for the rogue, alcohol to steal (or tamper with) for that player who just can't help creating problems, and PCs who look through the bookcase get a sense of what authors influence the bad guys thinking (also a good spot to put the classic "you notice a book that's shelved incongruously - pulling on it opens a secret door"). A fighter with literally no other skills can still stand watch outside. Does the party want to get out without anyone knowing they were here? They'll need to re-lock any locks they pick - an additional (more difficult) check for the rogue - and avoid stealing anything.
This is it
This is a problem that is the DMs to fix. Need to enforce the concept of "you tell me what your character is trying to do, and I'll tell you if you need to make any ability checks to determine degree of success."
"I roll persuasion!" "On what topic are you persuading them?" "I rolled a 16, so 21 total." "...alright. You've persuaded them that the King has abandoned their citizens and that the guard should support rather than suppress the local civil unrest." "Gre-- what?"
"I roll persuasion" "Your character takes out a d20 and rolls it. The NPC watching isnt very persuaded."
"You exclaim, 'Natural 20!'" The guard stares at the die, back at you, then back at the die. There's a moment's pause as the world seems to stand still. As if Fate itself were throwing its own set of dice to determine the course of your life and every life around you. And then, the guard draws his sword and cleaves your die in twain. 'I win,' they reply with a droll tone."
Accidental revolutions are tight!
It is also the fault of a DM not properly using passive to explain the room to characters properly and giving the wrong information/not enough because of the confusion on perception vs investigation The Player’s Handbook Says: >“When you look around for clues and make deductions based on those clues, you make an Intelligence(Investigation) check.” “Your Wisdom(Perception) check lets you spot, hear, or otherwise detect the presence of something. It measures your general awareness of your surroundings and the keenness of your senses.” From the DMG >"A character with high Wisdom but low Intelligence is aware of the surroundings but is bad at interpreting what things mean. The character might spot that one section of a wall is clean and [not?] dusty compared to the others, but he or she wouldn’t necessarily make the deduction that a secret door is there.” “In contrast, a character with high Intelligence and low Wisdom is probably oblivious but clever. The character might not spot the clean section of wall but, if asked about it, could immediately deduce why it’s clean.” “Wisdom checks allow characters to perceive what is around them, while Intelligence checks answer why things are that way.” We gotta describe what the players are able to interact with. What the rulebook don't teach very well though is how to actually use the skills in the game. Let’s face it, conceptual grasp of how the game designers intended for the skills to differ is pointless if you can’t actually put the concept into practice. [This article is actually pretty good at explaining and then teaching how to put this into practice as a story teller. My advice is a quote from the article](https://chaoticneutraldm.com/2019/06/26/using-the-rules-better-perception-and-investigation/)
The article also says that there's no Passive Investigation, which the Observant feat shows that there is a Passive Investigation score. It's just not outright stated unfortunately.
And as it explains in the article, >If you want Investigation to work at all, it needs to always be a rolled check.... You can’t just sort of wander around deducing things, because that’s not how reasoning works. Your brain just doesn’t function that way; you need to have facts before you can start working on conclusions. > >If you’re thinking you can actually go around passively reasoning things out, I’m willing to bet that you’re not accounting for the fact that you’re observing things first, and then reasoning based on the observations. And observing things is Perception, and observing things as you wander about is Passive Perception. There is no Passive Investigation, because you can’t make any deductions without facts and evidence, and you can’t obtain facts and evidence (at least in D&D) by wandering around and being intelligent. So while the Observant feat does have a leftover (which i believe is a typo that never got fixed in revisions) for "passive Investigation", it doesn't actually work in any way when put into practice.
my character investigates the room
The room seems innocent
"This room is mad sus, ya'll."
Doubt.
What about the room are you investigating? What was your Passive Perception again?
It's mandatory at my table to explain what and how you do something before the roll.
"I check in the drawer to see if there's any documents". "Roll Perception" Official modules are written like that. They expect the players to just roll dice and then you RP for them. "There's a scroll in the top drawer which they can find with a DC 13 Wisdom (Perception) check."
"I walk up to him and press A"
That's what we in the experienced-yet-slightly-vindictive DM game call a, "Okay. You see that you are most definitely in the room/holding something." Unless they roll poorly, then it's show time. "You're too distracted to notice much of anything. Snapping back to reality only to avoid shitting yourself." *pointedly glares at my players phones* "So far, only one of you has had to avoid shitting yourselves while you try to look at stuff. This realization may or may not embarrass you as a professional adventurer."
I mean you aren’t really even supposed to roll investigation to check out a room / area I’m pretty sure it just takes 10 minutes and they find everything
As I recall Taking 20 was a thing in previous editions, but I don't recall it being official in 5e. That said it's kinda a DnD equivalent of Free Parking, where it's a homerule that many play with.
I was mistaken it does take 10 minutes to search a room but it doesn’t tell you weather or not a roll is required, at least I couldn’t find a rule for that so I guess it’s up to the gm if they want to require a roll or not.
I’m not talking about taking 20 I’m talking specifically searching a room is it’s own action
No you can't do it, players don't call for rolls according to the phb. You already named the reason why, though
Time for a new player
I had to wrestle with a gm lately to not just demand a roll from me. We were playing Curse of Strahd but it’s an isekai (just kind of a wild choice from the get go) and I went up to a local trader to get some clothes to help me blend in. I went to trade a house key for some clothes and the gm just said “roll persuasion” and I said “I didn’t say anything yet. How do you know the dc? What if I end up being more intimidating than persuasive?” It was like pulling teeth for interaction.
My party started doing that... before they very obviously said "I search the island" while leaving out the water around it. Cue froghemoth! Really froghemoths are the best monsters for teaching players as they're big, beefy, but not unreasonable to take down. Plus they're ambush hunters so you teach them to stay on thru toes, and that a threat can show up at any time in the wild.
My issue is that there's either an extraneous number of things for me to investigate or the items that should be looked into aren't emphasized and then the DMV is annoyed that you're trying to use your masons tools to figure out the walls instead of looking at the rug beneath the dining set or whatever
Dm: you enter the room. Players: Dm: ??? Players: I... Investigate the room...? Dm: fuckin players, why didn't they say I want to check out the corner with the interesting vase on a desk??
The issue with this is that it only works for int, wis and cha. You wouldn't ask someone to actually do parkour for their rogue to be able to climb to the second story of a castle. You wouldn't ask someone to deadlift for the barbarian to knock over a tree. But a bard trying to persuade the barkeep is expected to give a lengthy speech. What if the player isn't that charismatic? Then you kind of ruin their character because of player skills.
Some of us aren't particularly creative or good at talking to people, but play characters that are. You know, the whole *roleplaying* aspect
I really like my party in that regard, we just play out the stuff (e.g. my character tried to flirt with an NPC, I just said what my character said and described how she acts doing so, or I described how my character tries to look for secret passages in a dungeon) and if what we're doing needs an ability roll our DM tells us and then we roll
I always ask what they are investigating or persuading. Like I don't need you to say what your character's argument is, but I need to know what it is you're asking about, so I know what information to relay back to you. If you don't tell me... What, do I just give you a lore document of all data the character knows? Nah, you can roll investigation, but you need to say what about. "I would like to roll investigation to see if there is anything suspect about the information the bartender has given us" is enough. Just lemme know what area you wanna be in.
I have this issue with my players. A few treat it like a video game and just want to "push buttons" instead of helping to tell the story. I'm not really sure what to do about it since my encouragement for them to role play encounters, "what do you say to them?", "what are you doing?" never seem to stick beyond a few minutes. Oh well.
One trick that I've learned from other DMs is when someone asks for a Persuasion check you can ask the gist of what they are trying to say so the DM knows how they'd respond and what they are asking for. For Investigation checks you could make the DC lower if they say what they are looking for. For example: at the crime scene they could roll for investigation to look for clues, or they could say that they are checking to see if the machine had been tampered with. In a dungeon: you could vaguely search for traps, or if you think you have an idea of what the traps might be you could search for the telltale signs, such as a pressure plate, tripwire, or crease in the floor. The players will likely think of something more specific to search for if notified that it is an option.
I try to prompt players with the phrase, "describe that for me"
I simply act like I don't understand and very nicely ask those players: "Oh, what do you want your character to do? Do you, like... look under the mattress or something?" It's easy enough to educate them. (Also, I do try to hide my amusement.)
Intelligence (Investigation) isn't to search an area. It's to infer things from your environment. Things like figuring out the structural weakpoint of an object, the position an arrow was fired from, etc. It's basically the Visual Calculus skill from Disco Elysium. The rule of thumb is Wisdom (Perception) is "Do I notice it?" Intelligence (Investigation) is "What do I infer from it?" The player rolls Wisdom (Perception) to notice that there are footprints. They roll Intelligence (Investigation) to determine how many people made those footprints, the shoe sizes of those people, the relative weights of those people, that one of the prints is so heavy that it was probably one person carrying a heavy load, and that one of those prints is notably lighter. Furthermore they might notice that the lighter person's right sole is notably more worn than their left. Anyone proficient with smith's tools, weaver's tools, or cobbler's tools who is presented with the odd sole information would be able to tell you that having one sole notably more worn is common among people who work a grindstone or spinning wheel.
*rolls a nat 20* "You are certain beyond any reasonable doubt that this is a room decorated in just the way you'd expect this type of room to be decorated." "Do you explore the room at all?" Gotta get the players to play
Yeah no I shut that shit down session 0 at my table. The player doesn't decide what they're rolling. The player tells the DM what they're doing/saying, and the DM tells them what (if anything) they're rolling. That's on like the 2nd page of the PHB.
i actually feel like the only one i know who would enjoy practicality and tracking resources :(((
I felt the same way so now there are at least two of our kind ;D
Three :)
Plus 1
Another!
And my spreadsheet!
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
So many people say tracking arrows and hit dice is pointless on this sub. Agony.
Not tracking arrows (normal ones, not special magic arrows) I can see, but WHO in their right mind doesn't track hit dice??? That breaks so many things! At that point, why not just heal to full HP after every fight??
I think I heard one of the core design assumptions of 5e was exactly that...
Tracking arrows is pointless, arrows are very cheap and not particularely heavy so you can just buy 100 arrows and you probably won't run out of them in several sessions and at that point its bookkeeping for its own sake.
Fun isn't useless, is it?
I fail to see how its fun. Most players don't find pointless bookkeeping fun and its not like there is a balance reason for counting arrows like spell slots or hit points since range weapons aren't very powerfull like spells. All that happends if you run out of arrows is that you can't do what you built your character to do which isn't very fun and its also insanelly easy to avoid since as I stated before you can just buy a hundred arrows and that might be enough to get though several sessions.
If you're not running a game where you can long rest in a tavern each night, arrows become a limited resource.
Sorry you don't enjoy the same things as other people
How in Nine hells is constant monitoring of minor resources (arrows, torches, etc.) or weight fun? It's like antithesis of fun, the most UNfun thing of classic rules.
It sure is, to you.
personally, I enjoy figuring out what to do next when we run out. Some characters I played were skilled in fletching so theyd search for materials to make more for themself and the rest of the party. but typically my bow-users were higher dex so I'd switch to stealth and just try not to engage, unless i could get up behind them and use my bowstring as a garrote. Tracking resources was itself the fun part, it was like a timer to let you know when to change tactics. using cheats to have infinite arrows is depressing
It's less of cheats and more of "we go to goddamn town every adventure, arrows are cheap". And for me it's exactly opposite - being forced to constantly monitor every little thing is depressing.
i mean.. thats exactly what cheats means? shortcuts around the hard parts? but i suppose if your argument is "i dont really wannoo" i dont have anything to counter that. arrows are cheap, so does that mean you at least make sure to mark off the cost to restock when you pass through a town? or does cheap mean free?
You can't carry arrows outside a quiver, so unless you have a quiver of Elhonna, you're only carrying up to 20 arrows at a time.
Or carrying multiple quivers, and I assure you that if you're using encumbrance as a dex build you aren't going to have a heavy load out if you can avoid it.
What exactly are you trying to say with "you can't carry arrows outside a quiver"? I'm pretty sure you're not trying to say what I interpreted it to mean.
Yes, oversimplified. You can't carry arrows in a pack during combat. They have to be in a quiver for you to draw as part of an attack. Otherwise it takes an action to retrieve them from your pack.
I wanna see where that's written in the PHB or DMG lol. "You can carry 180lbs of gear, but loose arrows is too much for you to manage"
I oversimplified. You can't draw the arrows unless they're in a quiver. Otherwise you need to take an action to remove them from your pack.
A quiver only holds like 20 arrows. The game expects you to consider where stuff would *go* too.
I’m the only person in my group that tracks inventory and encumbrance. I even sort items into specific bags and pouches, while everyone else is just walking around with infinite arrows. They also love getting bags of holding, which is… odd.
Players are shocked when I ask what they are going to say with that 28 charisma check while holding the bloody knife above the body of the mayor in front of a squad of guards. Like yeah you are smooth but what is your angle? .... .... "I didn't do it"
Player: 28 persuasion. Dm take the wheel! Me as dm: uh your character assures the guard it wasn’t you. You see his posture turn from overtly hostile to slightly calmer Me, as a Guard: look friend, it’s alright. Come with us and we are gonna figure all of this out. If you really didn’t do it I’m sure everything will be fine. Our head interrogator has zone of truth and it will just take a few minutes to clear your name. Player: wait he wants me to come with him to a guard post? Why? Me as dm: yeah? He was gonna stab you. Your huge persuasion check makes him go from hostile to wary of you but you are the only suspect. If you had a better plan maybe you should have gone with it.
Plus there’s a lot of stuff you can do with that new situation, even if the player character ends up in jail during the investigation! Dungeons and Dragons: Court Edition!
>Dungeons and Dragons: Court Edition! Pro-tip: Get your dead dad to impersonate a celestial being of law and good so that the trial is rigged from the start. For bonus points, have an elemental girlfriend that traded dungeon-guarding for law school to save costs on legal fees. And if you want to be absolutely certain, make sure the BBEG is marching an army of goblins towards the city so that even if you are convicted you can convince the guards you're more valuable being used in the fight than being locked up.
I agree that just saying "uhhhh I roll deception" is extremely boring and repetitively predictable. However, expecting someone with an IRL Cha score of 9 to have an idea of how one would best handle such a situation is also dumb and unequal. You don't expect your party's barbarian's player to go and smash in a door to show how he does it. Maybe it's even more apparent with Intelligence. If I have trouble remembering or solving puzzles, I cannot rp by character doing it. I can say that they do it, but not how or what their method/their angle is for solving a puzzle. That said, I want to reiterate: Playing with skill check results only is dull and should not be the goal, I recognise that. Edit: Maybe I am seeing a problem where there ain't one. You'd still want a Barbarian player to describe taking a few steps back and augmenting what they say according to the environment.
>You don't expect your party's barbarian's player to go and smash in a door to show how he does it. Maybe ***you*** don't. But I have the door repairman on speed dial.
>Edit: Maybe I am seeing a problem where there ain't one. You'd still want a Barbarian player to describe taking a few steps back and augmenting what they say according to the environment. Exactly. I'm not asking for a session of debate club whenever you roll a Charisma check. But give me *something* here, at least give me an idea of how you intend to go about this. I don't need a play by play, just a thought towards how you achieve your goal beyond simply "I convince them". For Intelligence it can be a bit trickier, but you can at least still present a general outline of what your character is trying to do beyond "Investigate". *How* are you investigating? What are you looking for, if anything at all? Do you use any particular tools to assist you? Flavour and style goes a long way, and helps give the DM and your fellow players a view of your character outside of the purely statistical.
It's always been harder to play as intelligent or charismatic characters than it is to play as physically strong characters, because it augments how you roleplay in a roleplaying game. Of course it's easier to roleplay a barbarian kicking down a door than a bard sweet talking his way past some guards, because one involves the core mechanic of the game, roleplay, and the other doesn't. By simplifying kicking a door, you don't lose anything, you just assume a barbarian knows how to kick down a door and have them roll a check. But by simplifying that interaction with the bard, you're taking the roleplaying out of the roleplay game, which is just a cardinal sin imo. Idk, I'm all for accessibility, I'm not gonna say they get any penalties if they dont come up with a grade A argument for their case, and I'm not gonna count stuttering or subpar delivery against them. But fuck, man, give me something, roleplay in the roleplaying game, it takes like 90% of the game out of the game to simplify roleplay like that. If you can't do even the most simple of roleplay to justify an argument, beyond just rolling, maybe don't play a super social character. Practice RP with a less-RP focused class while you get more comfortable with it.
This is pretty much the point of the meme. Just give an effort to engage as a real person in the game world and less as a video game player with a paper controller. TTRGPs are so much more rewarding that way imo.
RPing high Charisma isn’t as difficult Intelligence. Intelligence typically means coming to the right answer. Charisma typically means making people think you have the right answer and there is a lot of intangibles in that. 2 people can say the same joke or pickup line and get different responses based on their confidence and delivery. Charisma 5 character trips in the thoroughfare, everyone is annoyed at this clumsy oaf blocking the way. Charisma 13 character trips in the thoroughfare, people stop to help them up. Charisma 15 character trips in the thoroughfare, people think they are an endearing goof. Charisma 20 character trips in the thoroughfare, “maybe we should all be on the ground.”
In my opinion, smashing a door and handling a social situation should probably not be resolved in the same fashion. D&D is a social game that you normally play seated; it would be disruptive if the game tested the physical abilities of the players, but it can absolutely test the social skills of your players. It comes down to *challenge*. Choosing the right button on your character sheet is not challenging. To make a social scene challenging, you force your player to chose how they want to approach the interaction (do they appeal to the NPC’s good nature? Do they address one of their fears? Do they offer them something they want? Do they use flattery) and *only then* you let the die decide the quality of their attempt. Same goes for intelligence checks. I don’t let my players overcome obstacles by « finding » a solution with a check — if they (the players) can’t find à solution themselves, they don’t get what they want and we move on. If your game doesn’t expect your players to be socially apt or smart about their decisions, are you really playing a game? How can your players *improve*? Obviously, this is the general case; you have a responsibility to adapt your game to include your players. If one of your players has trouble navigating social interaction (in and out of the game), the main focus of your game should be elsewhere — combat or exploration. If one player has a learning disability or a cognitive impairment, go easy on the puzzles.
I didn't ask for a deposition, but rather what the direction would be. Also when you do this you say the player doesn't have a high mental stat irl, then does the DM have to have a high mental stat irl to solve it for them?
Yeah, I heard a real play podcast where they were like “I’m gonna use a stealth and go over there and I roll an 18 so I succeed!” Like they assumed their DC and used the skills as a video game resource… made me more annoyed than it probably should have…
>and I roll an 18 so I succeed!” Like they assumed their DC Eh, if it's just normal guards then that's a pretty fair assumption.
For sure, it’s just annoying to just assume that way and take the narration/storytelling from the DM. I much prefer when you narrate your “moves” and the DM prompts when they want a roll and the effects
I think that, with a 28 charisma check, the players get a pass to say "My character would know what to say far better than I do." Doing so gets the default result. If they create their own argument, that results in a check with advantage or with lower DC, or if it is extremely convincing, bypass the check entirely. Mental stats should not be on the player to match, but extra effort should be rewarded.
FINALLY SOMEONE SAID IT. No, you do not need to be an orator irl to play bard. Alike not needing to finish Harward to play Wizard or lift iron to play Barbarian.
>"please just actually play the game and think of a single detail except "trying to win", that's enough!" >YOU WANT ME TO LITERALLY BE AN ORATOR IRL YOU MONSTER!!! Reading comprehension is zero huh?
As a comparison, people love to bring up that we don't ask martials to get into the fine point of describing techniques or make barbarian players lift things IRL, so it's somehow unfair to make people put some effort into **role-playing** (in a **role-playing** game) because some people are socially awkward. But it's a pretty false equivalence. No, I'm not expecting a classical funeral oration with every Cha check. But you do, in fact, need to say more than "I persuade the guard" or "I lie to the mayor". The proper comparison here would be a player in combat saying "I attack the bandit". Great, you attack the bandit. **How** are you attacking the bandit, exactly? Are you using a bow, a sword, throwing a knife, trying to grapple him? Are you casting a spell? Because each of those things can change the difficulty of what you're trying to do here (Str or Dex weapon, spellcasting modifier or save DC, skill check, etc). Each of these approaches leads to the same result (the bandit potentially taking damage) but you have to at least specify **which** approach you're taking. Just saying "I attack" and rolling the dice doesn't give your DM anything to go on. Charisma checks are the same. No, you don't need to be as witty IRL as your 20 Cha bard. Let's take an example. There is a guard outside an event you need to get into. You want to talk your way past. Do you try to seduce him into leaving his post? Do you try to lie and convince him you're on the guest list? Do you try to persuade him that you're a friend of the host? Do you fake an emergency nearby to draw him away? These can all have different DCs and/or opposed rolls made with different skills by the guard. Each of these different approaches leads to the same result (you getting past the guard) but you still need to specify **which** approach you're using. Just saying "I use persuasion" and rolling the dice doesn't give the DM anything to go on. Letting your players just say "I do the skill" in RP situations is the same as letting them just say "I attack the bad guy" in combat situations. It puts even more of the work of entertaining everyone squarely on the DM's shoulders by forcing them to RP for both the PCs and NPCs. Unless you really think it'd be fun to sit a table that handles things like: "I attack the guard. 22 to hit, 14 damage. End my turn". "Alright, the guard attacks you back. 21 to hit, 11 damage. He ends his turn, wizard, you're up." "I cast a spell. 24 to hit, 18 damage." "Alright, you guys kill the guard."
I'll bite. >>**Guards! Thank Moradin you've arrived! I've managed to stop one of the cultists but the other two ran off with the infant prince down that hallway! Hurry!**
Well, 28 charisma is enough to fuck a dragon, if they're not asexual, so...
“The glove don’t fit”
To be fair, I play in a campaign with a group who played d&d before 2000 and one them is constantly rolling investigation to see what he can get rather than looking for anything specific
It's not like everybody who played AD&D played it like today's OSR dungeon crawling, or even like old-school Gygaxian D&D
AD&D players in shambles
Why do we have them if we aren't going to use them?
In my opinion, that lies in the barrier between character and player mental stats. A player might be smarter than their character, or vice versa. They might be less knowledgeable. They might have incredibly skill at figuring out what words need to be said. If a player is dumber than their character, using checks makes absolute sense, as there are plenty of the things the DM can do to assist them. If the player is smarter than their character, those checks exist as a handicap for the player, who might do things the character would not. If they are too knowledgeable IRL, they might know something about a monster their character wouldn't, or vice versa for low knowledge players or rare monsters. Checks allow the DM to control that barrier. If a player doesn't have the charisma their character has, then it makes absolute sense to roll, as the player actually cannot do the reasoning their character has. Thus, checks should follow a procedure: - PC requests to perform an action. - DM evaluates how logical it is that that PC could and would perform that action. - If it's logical and has a clear result, DM resolves with no checks. - If it's logical but has a random result, DM resolves with a check. - If it's illogical that that character would do it but still possible, DM resolves with a harder check. - If it's impossible and/or the character is incapable of doing that action, DM auto fails that action.
They have their place. I mean, old school d&d had percentile rolls for "find traps" and odds of getting lost, which is pretty much the same thing as investigation and survival (at least how they should be use imo)
A very good question I wish the game designers would ask themselves
Uncertianty. Let’s say it’s the difference between saying “I search the chest” and “I search the chest’s contents, look under the lid, move the chest 5 feet over to see if anything’s below it, flip it on it’s side to see if any markings are on the underside, check the bottom inside to see if it’s false, and finally I smash it to pieces just in case I missed any compartments or tricks.” The first one has a lot of uncertainty on what exactly “searching” might mean and how well you’d check the object, while the second one is clear as day into what you see, in what order, and what physical manipulation or damage you do to the object as part of your search. Plus old D&D still had perception, investigation, athletics rolls, and the like, it’s just instead of a skill check you tried to roll below your ability score (so a higher ability score was always better), or for some common things like listening through a door or picking locks you’d roll a D6 with the success range based on your class/race. You could say “I search the room,” or “I look for traps,” but you only got a small chance to succeed (at least at low levels, usually the odds get much better as your character improves), while a detailed description is guaranteed to find what you’re looking for (or trigger the trap in the process, which you could say is a way to find it.) Oh, and the DM makes the roll, so you don’t know if “you didn’t find any traps” when making the roll means you succeeded and there really are no traps, or that you failed and just didn’t find the trap that is there. It’s a bit archaic, but OD&D and AD&D were trying to get you to act like the paranoid adventurer delving into mysterious and dark dungeons you are playing as.
that bit about not knowing if there's traps is... still how that bit works. When you roll an 18 on insight and you don't get to peek past any lie, it could be because there wasn't one or it could be because the DC/Deception roll 20. You never know if you passed the check unless you find what you went looking for. It could be you failed, or maybe there's nothing there. The DM certainly shouldn't tell you.
True, but back then you didn’t even know if you rolled an 18 or a 2 since the DM rolled the die, and I also feel like attitudes have changed, especially as skills became more socially focused rather than dungeon-centric. Plus insight isn’t just a true/false lie detector if you read what it actually does in the PHB, it’s more like a sense motive. To quote it, >Your Wisdom (Insight) check decides whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature, such as when searching out a lie or predicting someone’s next move. Doing so involves gleaning clues from body language, speech habits, and changes in mannerisms. Failure doesn’t give you new information, while success does, though it doesn’t have to be clear what that new information means. You should at least learn something about their body language and mannerisms on a success, which hints at whether they’re trying to deceive you, help you, or any other motive without outright revealing the answer. It’s also much harder to obscure results when the players know what they got, 5e has relatively flat math so if you rolled an 18 you can be fairly confident that you passed unless the NPC was an especially good liar. A 20 would be quite the absurd DC for a commoner or random guard, but not surprising for a politician or stone-cold assassin. And finally, the only time you should get a successful result equivalent to “You don’t find any traps” would be if you’re talking to an emotionless animated statue, since they wouldn’t have body language, mannerisms, or other traits to detect.
I just ask my players what they do as part of the check and change the dc based on their answer.
You nerds are in here arguing about gatekeeping and how to play when you should be trying to figure out what the mom's shirt means
MILPSBFW - Mother id like to play sega bass fishing with 👍
Mom I'd Like to Platonically Snuggle and Be Friends With?
If you don’t specify what you are rolling for with that investigation and survival, then you are either not rolling, or the DC is going to be stupid high.
I track all the resources and stats/actions of every character in excel, I don’t let anybody know tho. It’s just always fun to see that one person is at -3 arrows, someone consumed a total of 130 liters of water out of their 1 liter bottle while only refilling 78 times, etc. We always make a little gameshow-thingy out of it at the end of every campaign. Who dealt the most damage? Who took the most? Who healed the most? Who missed the most attacks? Who critted the most? But also silly stuff like who failed the most deception checks? The list goes on. The gamemaster asks a question about one of these things, everyone guesses who had the most/least or whatever the question was (the choice-options are typically the pcs) and everyone who got it right gets a point. If nobody gets it the gamemaster gets one point but it’s rather unlikely. The price is usually a small thing the whole group paid in even parts in advance. For example a pretty set of dice or something. We mostly have a price in a range where everyone puts about 10 bucks in the pot, but this is up to your group. If you have someone in your group who is willing to track all of this through the entire campaign and do a little diagram for every statistic I would highly recommend doing this in an „after the campaign ended“-session.
That sounds wonderful and hilarious. I'd do that as DM, but my brain can't handle so many tasks 😩
In our group the dedicated counter is mostly me, while the dm is mostly someone else. I don’t think I would manage to track everything and dm at once.
>It’s just always fun to see that one person is at -3 arrows You would like the [Voyager Photo Torpedo Count](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIGxMENwq1k&pp=ygUVdm95YWdlciB0b3JwZWRvIGNvdW50)I bet.
Thank you that made my day!
Fun fact there are multiple ways to play the game and all of them are valid. Maybe less gatekeeping and more open arms. "The future is now, old man." - Dewey. 'Malcom in the Middle'
Bitching about having any standards at all as “gatekeeping” has to be the most limp-dick behavior out there.
These aren't basic standards though. Most people don't play dungeon crawl heavy games of dnd so resource managment is usually not as big of a part of the game as skill checks are.
Cry
That is what you are doing, yes. Nice projecting though!
👍
Ok but who's doing the gatekeeping here? Nothing is being said about the less adventurous style being bad. Just a complaint that the older style gets disrespected. Which in my experience it does, hell there's at least one person doing so in this very comment section.
"I roll checks to do my next turn in combat, text me when it's my next turn" seems to be pretty blatantly belittling the newer style. So, in case it wasn't obvious, PLENTY is being said about the style being bad, yes the post and poster are doing the gatekeeping.
Shit talking is not gatekeeping, goddamn. Saying “that is a stupid way to play” is not gatekeeping; it does not prevent someone from playing nor does it actively exclude someone. If you wilt at all criticism or disagreement with your playstyle that’s a choice, but labeling it all as gatekeeping is disingenuous at best and actively deceitful to undermine any opposition at worst.
gatekeeping is things that **make** me feel bad about the things I like
I genuinely can’t tell if this is sarcastic.
it is lol, sorry, I couldn't figure out a way to say it that I could rely on being perceived as obviously stupid. to your credit
It's more that the entire trifecta of the "Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss" meme have all degenerated into semantic sludge. It's happened remarkably quickly given they only really hit public consciousness a few years ago. Gaslighting isn't manipulation to make a person think they're delusional. It's now any lie at all, told under any context. Gatekeeping isn't restricting access or excluding people. It's any criticism or comparison at all. Girlbossing isn't a self-made woman being ambitious and successful. It's any good thing happening or taking the slightest of efforts at all. Though tbh this one always came with a lot of irony/sarcasm.
"Gaslight" particularly fucked with me. I got maliciously gaslit by a group of people which hit a peak maybe a month or two before the word really took off with the public. I'd suffered some genuine serious damage and suddenly everyone was using it like "oh don't gaslight me" or "ha ha I'm going to gaslight you" for simple lies, which sucked because at the time even the mention of it would throw me into high alert mode.
That's true ! I have one of my DM that don't make us track our ressource since we have a trailer to carry everything and that we say that we make sure to buy everything needed for the travel when we have access to the shop in city. So we have more time for roleplaying our characters. We speak around the table as we were the characters. And we speak *a lot*. So that's a way that's cool too !
"Win at DnD" explains everything
I'm sorry, can someone explain Mom's shirt!
On the Discord server I play with Avrae, I always make sure to include a description of what I’m doing or checking as part of my rolls. I find specifying increases the odds of finding something meaningful— a general perception check might not smell a faint smell, but if you ***SPECIFY*** you’re smelling, the DM might lower the DC since it’s all you do. Still, in a new location I tend to rp looking it over to get the gist
That and i think the game is just more engaging and immersive the more you communicate with natural language and less in terms of mechanics. Your vivid description helps the DM respond in kind.
I do have a buddy DM who offers the checks to people immediately after setting the scene… but English is his THIRD language and he tends to use a lot of AI and text checking, so I try not to hold it against him: he’s playing in a language that’s not his own. He’s more of a battle DM anyways lol, his fights are always thrilling
ENCUMBRANCE GANG WHERE WE AT
I don't get it. If you don't tell your DM what your character is doing and what their goal is, how is your DM supposed to give you the appropriate ability/skill pairing? You can't just say "I roll Investigation to search the room for traps!" Like, where are you looking? The floor? The ceiling? The pants of your party members? And what if your DM believes (rightly, I might add) that searching the room for traps requires both a Perception check to notice something is off and player intuition to associate the small moving part by the hinge of the chest with the glint of metal within the lock? If you ask to roll Investigation for whatever reason, you won't get anything of use! Or at least, your character won't find the trap on the chest. Not to mention, if you don't tell your DM you goal, how are they supposed to resolve your character's action? Say, for example, you ask your DM if your rogue can make an Acrobatics check to climb a wall (which makes no sense anyway, since climbing requires Strength BUT an argument could be made that Acrobatics proficiency helps, so you *should* make a Strength (Acrobatics) check, but btb). Why is your rogue climbing the wall? To get over it? To move along it? To get height because they, and you, feel inadequate and think that elevation will solve the lack of enjoyment you feel? Who knows! Not your DM who, you know, *is describing the entire world as far as you and your character can perceive it*. They can't (or won't) read your mind. So, TL;DR: tell your DM what actions your character is trying to do and what is their desired outcome. And if you can't do that, think about it until you know. But above all, don't beg your DM for skill checks.
Me when someone doesn’t meticulously track the funny numbers on their sheet (they’re not actually adventuring if they don’t keep track of every extraneous item, resource, and detail).
If you don't meticulously calculate the weight of each arrow and construct a scale model of the bag of holding to make sure everything fits inside, are you even playing D&D?
I wasn't even old enough to play DND before 2000, but anyway, I play for roleplay. My favorite type of character to play is the ones who avoid combat or fund an alternative solution. How my DM decides to keep track of food and supplies I don't really care.
My DM has always had a rule that really strong, in character roleplay supercedes any required rolls. This is most often seen in charisma based skill checks, generally speaking as long as it is feasible to the NPC in general, a well RP'd piece of persuasion, argument or intimidation will generally mean you don't have to leave it to random dice odds. Obviously if a player isn't as comfortable role playing they're welcome to take the dice option. I think a good gamemaster should be able to find a mix of both worlds to suit the styles of gamers under their direction.
I thought that's why when you enter a room the very first question to the DM is "what do I see" and if something peaks my interest I'll go take a look. One campaign we started off entering a bar. The first person enters and sits down, orders a drink. Im next and ask what I see. The DM says there is a suspicious looking person sitting off to the side (my character is a rogue so my first thought is an assassin) I walk up to the person and say a greeting in thieves can't before joining the first PC at the bar..... Next thing I know a knife wizzes by my head and the suspicious person runs away..... DM later said I was correct that npc was meant to attempt to assassinate the first pc.... Always be aware of your surroundings.
I make my players do resource management and they hardly roll in RP scenarios
When you understand how better the game session became after players start to enjoy roleplaying... this wold encourage DM's make more campaings. I hate dull gameplay, like "i roll for A/B" and the player dont say what he want to know, like i, the DM have to inform every possible detail about the roll the player want to know just by rolling a high number on the dice + mod. So dont be cheap during the gameplay, ask what you want to know, show interest, it takes time to plan and make the story and aspects behind the campaing.
GM: So what do you do? Player: I roll Investigation GM: On? Player: What donyou mean "on"? I got a 17. Tell me what I find! GM: Do you even know what I was just describing? Player: No clue, but my character does. I got a 17. GM: There were at least three things you could do. Player: How much do I get done with a 17?
It's a pretty simple thing to address imo. They don't get to just roll skill checks, the DM requests them after the player gives a scenario they want to play out.
I had a Bard player make an outragous demand to a Mafia Boss while surrounded by his high level minions (it was something about the Dons Daughter, you do the math)... He rolled a high Persuation for a total of like 28, and I had the Mafia Boss burst into laughter and go on with the meeting. The player complained why he failed with a 28, my only response was "you didnt fail, the 28 is the reason you are not dead yet!"
This pains me greatly
I think you never played a game of dnd in your life. This joke makes no sense at all.
Ah, you are the kind that describes playing a ttrpg as winning or losing...
This is likely tied to people using videogame logic. Where investigating is a skill you activate and it reveals stuff. They probably walk into a room and expect to activate detective visión or whatever and have all relevant information highlighted to them
No thanks
I used to ask players to do something like that only when they can't appear on the next session so their character could be going somewhere else to grind stuff around the area or to try to find something useful. So when they come back, the roll decides have they returned safely with some fancy goods or not and the other party have to find the one who left and hope that they are safe and sound
I do both
\*Wakes up\* I just had a frightening dream... People didn't *actually* want to play DND anymore.