D&D 5E Players Self-Assigning Rolls

[5ekyu]

You're assuming things not in the rules, though. Nowhere is anything other than "The DM calls for the ability check...". If you're going to start adding in stuff that isn't written, then I get to add in things like a nuclear blast into the damage of a longsword, since no rule says that isn't a part of longsword damage.

So. To be clear. Your position is if something is not explicitly allowed in the rules, it is not allowed AND if anything not in the rules is allowed then everything is allowed?



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[Immoralkickass]

You've never been wrong about something before? Never assumed something incorrectly? That's all he's saying. He's just telling you that he and his characters are free to assume anything they want, and they can. You might want to think things through a bit better before you call someone else stupid, especially since that's a clear violation of the terms here.

That's not my point. The point is, if you go ahead and roll whatever you assume to be the skill required, don't blame the DM for ignoring your roll, and surely, don't feel stupid if you 'wasted' your nat 20. I call a spade a spade, and if he is stupid, then its just a fact.

But most importantly, like many have said before me, it goes against the spirit of the game.

 

[Charlaquin]

Again, that is not the same thing as saying "if a roll is made, a failure chance will be added even if it was not there."

The DMG goes into even more detail on various level of dice use in different game for different playstyles, yet even there the "if you roll i add failure in that was not previously there" is not presented as a rule.

"If its above 90 we will serve ice cream at lunch" does not mean "we will never serve ice cream if its below 90" and certainly does not mean "if we catch you eating ice cream we will turn on the heat until we get it to 90."

No one is saying they make up chances of failure that wouldn't have otherwise existed.

Right? You see the difference?

Can you please stop doing this? It's condescending and rude.

So i have two cases you have given good info about...

secret doors - you say i chose to do the knife mortar scrape to look for secxret doors and the info i get back basically nothing about secret doors but i get back "no seams" type responses and if i wonder about confidence i am confident i found no seams and if i want to actually know how that applies to being sure about secret doors i get to try another check using another skill check which seems to turn it into a two skill proficiency.

Knowledge that you didn't find a seam does absolutely give you information about the presence of a secret door. It tells you with absolute certainty that the seam of a hidden door is not there. Granted, that does not necessarily mean that there isn't a secret door, but if there is one, it apparently doesn't have a seam. Now, keeping in mind that my goal is not to thwart you but to give you opportunities to make meaning decisions and interact meaningfully with the world, if you're a player in the game and not a person on the internet trying to poke holes in my argument, this should probably tip you off that there is most likely not a secret door. If your concerned that there might still be a secret door that doesn't have a seam, you're welcome to try something else to give you more information about a secret door. You could try the flour trick to find out if there's a draft from a secret door. You could try tapping on the walls listening for a hollow spot. You could try looking closely for variations in the stonework. Whatever. But keep in mind, I want secret doors in my games to be detectable by common sense methods.

Healing poison - i tell you i use my herbal poultice a to slow poison and i wont need to now medical stuff to assess the result you will give me cuz - what -will it be clearer than the seam thing?

Not enough information. You're cherry picking an example I intentionally left overly simplified in direct response to your complaints that my answers were too full of lengthy prose to try to use it as an example of my methods not giving enough information. This makes it really difficult to continue this discussion under the assumption that you are arguing in good faith.

Are you aware that for some medical cases "the pain goes away" is a good sign and for others it is a very very very bad sign? Same for fevers? Same for chills? Same for a whole lot of symptoms for a whole lot of problems?

Oh my god, WHO CARES? We're here to play a pretend game together, not to take a medical exam. I give information with the intent of helping you make decisions with confidence that the world will behave in an internally consistent way, not to trick you with "Haha! You thought the pain receding meant frodo was getting better, but secretly it was the kind of poison where that means it's getting worse!" My relationship with my players is not that kind of adversarial.

So, if your description for the poison poultice thing is equally a report of "application was successful and fever broke[or any symptom subsides]" leaving me to interpret that as good or bad - heaven help me if its some demonic arcane poison where there is actually no medical basis for symptom to results assessment - or is it going to be an actual assessment of success failure to the goal - curing the patient/slowing the poison, etc and not just the test results like we got with the knife and mortar?

I'm going to convey information through in-world description. And I'm going to do it in a way that empowers the players to make informed decisions. So, yeah, if the attempt is successful, I'm going to describe that in terms of its directly observable results, such as "his fever starts to break" or "his symptoms subside", regardless of whether or not that's true of all poisons in real life. If it's not working, I will convey that through directly observable results as well, "There's no noticeable change." If this is because it's some kind of magical poison that can't be cured by mundane methods, I'll endeavor to convey that information as well. "This seems strange to you. You're familiar with poisons and their herbal remedies, and this really should have worked. Some other factor must be at work here." And then Investigation might be able to tell you that it's demonic in nature or whatever.

If they player asked "how sure am i if this is helping" would they also need a successful int check or just be told "you are sure you put it on them and sure the [insert change described]" like we saw in the secret door example you cited???

First of all, you don't need an Int (Investigation) check to get confirmation that you didn't find a seam in the secret door example. If you recall, I said that I would tell the player they are 100% certain there is no seam if they asked, and that they could be as confident as that knowledge makes them that there is no secret door. And again, keep in mind that I'm invested in the players' ability to make informed decisions, so I'm not going to try to trick them with seams that can't be found or whatever. Second of all, if the player asked how sure they were the herbal poultice was helping, assuming a die roll wasn't involved, I would be equally happy to confirm, they are 100% confident it is working (or is not working, whatever). If a die roll was involved. This could also likely be determined logically anyway, since if I don't call for a dice roll it's because the action had no chance of success or no chance of failure (or no consequence for failure, but this action clearly does). So if there wasn't a roll, it's pretty easy to work out that you are 100% confident in its success or failure

It occurs to me that this is a pretty terrible comparison, because in the check for secret doors example, the goal is to gather information, whereas in the herbal poultice example the goal is to cure a poison. It has much more direct and obvious results. Remember, this whole tangent started because we were talking about rolls with hidden information, where the character might not know how successful their acti

See, i am fully down with rewarding players for catching clues and hints... thats part of the story and narrative and mystery/puzzle solving part of the game. to me its integral to the story.

this is just the first case i think the puzzle solving part of the game being required for actually interpreting the outcome of the characters using its aptitudes and skills for the basic functions they are designed for as the default practice. At least, for some skills cases if not others, hard to tell at this point.

You don't need problem solving skills to correctly interpret my descriptions if you're not assuming I'm acting in bad faith, trying to trick the players.

But i will give you this.... if you explained to me right away at chargen that investigate would be used to actually translate the results of the other skill rolls on an ongoing basis, in addition to its own uses, i would expect you would definitely i think see a lot more proficiency into investigate put in play.

Investigate - the follow-up skill for the others.

More like the follow up skill for Perception, but yes. I do tell players who haven't played in my games before that I run the relationship between Perception and Investigation differently than a lot of DMs they might have played with before do, and specifically that for me Perception gives you direct sensory information and Investigation allows you to interpret that sensory information. This does mean players who are very confident in their own problem solving and lateral thinking skills will often skip Investigation and players who want that insurance policy make it a high priority.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I guess I'm looking for ways that other DMs deal with situations where players roll the dice for skills without being asked to do so. What say you?

I have been playing since 1st Ed was new and no group that I have been a part of ever allowed dice rolling before the DM called for it. Until the DM said "roll the dice", nothing you tried to roll in advance would count. It was also a good way to weed out the impatient players who either did not care anything about experiencing an actual story or anything non-combat at all.

That said, the addition of the Take 10 and Take 20 rules in 3rd Ed, and the Passive skill checks in 5E, cut down on some of the excessive dice rolling. Knowing that 10+ all your bonuses in a skill guarantees getting a normal success in many situations helps move things along.

 

[Charlaquin]

Exactly, you get it. Finally.

A character and a player can make an assumption, act on that assumption and the GM tell them the results of that action without it being a federal case.

It can be simply handled directly with the skill and other info gathering system

If i see shiney and check for magic there does not **have to be added** a penalty to me, nor does there have to be a separate means of resolution.


My character's error in judgement does not need to create a different process at arriving at a resolution.

Maybe the character is an idiot for thinking shiney means magic but whether or not it happens to be magical or not does not need to completely change how the "check for magic" is handled.

"I want to see if it's magical." <--- That's a goal.
"By carefully studying it and looking for signs of arcane modification." <--- That's an approach.

If the object is not magical, there is no chance of the method successfully achieving the goal, so no roll is necessary. "You don't find anything that would indicate magical abilities."

You're getting the cause and effect mixed up. Rolls should always have consequences for failure, not because DMs should make up consequences for failure when none would otherwise exist, but because if there wouldn't be a consequence for failure, there shouldn't be a roll.

Also, side note - Even if you're in the "players should be able to initiate their own rolls" camp, Arcana checks should probably not be able to tell whether or not an object is magical, so as to not devalue the Detect Magic spell.

 

[5ekyu]

No one is saying they make up chances of failure that wouldn't have otherwise existed.

That section you quoted to make this marvelous assertion to was in response to this poster shown here below...

In 5e a roll is only called for when the outcome is in doubt. By rolling you are placing the outcome in doubt, even if it wasn't prior to the roll.

Was not the first to raise that either.

 

[Henry]

I don’t make pre-emptive rolls because I consider that impolite to my DM, full stop. I often consider it counter-productive because the people who pre-empt the DM with a roll are in my experience the exact same players who don’t bother to explain what they’re doing, they just announce a high result and expect the DM to let them succeed. They’re Also IME the same people who roll, and if they get a low roll don’t say anything and pretend like they didn’t make a roll, and then roll again more publicly if the dungeon Master DOES later call for a roll (a.k.a. Cheating your guts out).

I’ve never sat at a table where a player auto-assigned rolls outside of combat in order to make the game smoother (if you’re one of those people and I game with you you’ll show me something new) Most who do want to make the game run smoother usually wait for the DM to call for a check, or just ask if a check vs. skill X would help, and then make the roll.

 

[Charlaquin]

That section you quoted to make this marvelous assertion to was in response to this poster shown here below...

Was not the first to raise that either.

As a way of demonstrating why players initiating rolls is a bad strategy.

Let's say I'm playing in a game where the DM does allow players to initiate their own rolls, and I find a cool shiny sword. Let's also assume, as the above example does, that this DM allows Arcana checks to be used to tell if something is magical or not.

Now, if I want to figure out if the sword is magical, I could say, "I make an Arcana check to see if it's magical," I open the door for that roll to turn out poorly, and for the DM to say "You can't tell" based on that result. But if I instead say, "I study the sword carefully, looking for runes, markings, or other signs that someone may have placed an enchantment on it," I don't open that door. Of course, the DM might say "Make an Arcana check to see if you find anything," at which point I'll make the check and abide by the results. But I'm also inviting the DM to decide "you know, that action you just described doesn't have a chance of failure. You see some runes engraved on the hilt that say 'Flametongue' in Draconic." Waiting for the DM to ask for a roll, even if you're allowed to initiate rolls on your own, gives you more opportunities for automatic success.

 

[Maxperson]

So. To be clear. Your position is if something is not explicitly allowed in the rules, it is not allowed AND if anything not in the rules is allowed then everything is allowed?

Nope. My position is simple. If it's not explicitly allowed, then it's a house rule to include it. The DM is the only one allowed to call for rolls unless he house rules things to be otherwise.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Now, if I want to figure out if the sword is magical, I could say, "I make an Arcana check to see if it's magical," I open the door for that roll to turn out poorly, and for the DM to say "You can't tell" based on that result. But if I instead say, "I study the sword carefully, looking for runes, markings, or other signs that someone may have placed an enchantment on it," I don't open that door. Of course, the DM might say "Make an Arcana check to see if you find anything," at which point I'll make the check and abide by the results. But I'm also inviting the DM to decide "you know, that action you just described doesn't have a chance of failure. You see some runes engraved on the hilt that say 'Flametongue' in Draconic." Waiting for the DM to ask for a roll, even if you're allowed to initiate rolls on your own, gives you more opportunities for automatic success.

In your example, waiting for the DM to initiate rolling would also give more opportunity for automatic failure. If it's a magic sword, but it's not the kind with runes or markings on it, then searching for runes or markings would automatically fail, where examining it through unspecified methods might succeed.