Portent on Party Members (and other non-combat pvp elements)

[Nagog]

So a while back I was playing a session 1 with a group of players I hadn't met before in a homebrew campaign/setting. During an early interaction, the Divination Wizard and our Rogue were first coming into contact with our Fighter. Because the setting had some racism towards elves, the Elf Rogue rolled a quick check to pull her hood up to hide her ears from the newcomer, intending to keep her race a secret. The Div Wiz used this opportunity to change their high roll to a 6, because he felt "There shouldn't be any secrets among the party". Frankly, this rubbed me the wrong way, despite not being a part of this interaction, as I felt the Wizard player was enforcing his playstyle on the Rogue, and in narrative, it made no sense for him to want everybody to know his companion was a race most people hated. Has anybody else had this kind of experience? How would you handle it? I feel much less inclined to play with this player now, as I feel any attempt to deviate from how he wants the party to play will be met with a Portent against it. Would using Portent be a visible thing in-game, and if the Wizard kept using it like this would it be reasonable to bring it up in-game?

[ThatoneGuy84]

Of course portent has a visual representation in the game, to me most mechanics should.
Legendary resists are an example of when something is "failing" and some special manifestation turns that into a success.

So when I dm, I ask the player to describe the manifestation of the power they are using, for things such as portent or lucky ect.

Would I be upset by the player doing that? Probably not, it is after all a game, and I enjoy the effects of a bad roll as much as a good.

I'm not I would have made the player that wanted to pull her hood up do any sort of check in the first place though, so that parts on the DM.

[Guy Lombard-O]

Well, first off here's the text of the ability:

"Portent - Starting at 2nd level when you choose this school, glimpses of the future begin to press in on your awareness. When you finish a long rest, roll two d20s and record the numbers rolled. You can replace any attack roll, saving throw, or ability check made by you or a creature that you can see with one of these foretelling rolls. You must choose to do so before the roll, and you can replace a roll in this way only once per turn. Each foretelling roll can be used only once. When you finish a long rest, you lose any unused foretelling rolls."

So right off the bat, we can say that the instance in your session 1 shouldn't have been allowed for mechanical reasons, since you say that the wizard "used this opportunity to change their high roll to a 6".

That aside, I don't know of any elucidation from the WotC in any format about how noticeable Portent is. It doesn't take any time (not action, bonus action or reaction), nor does it have any obvious component-type language. And the fluff is that the wizard merely foresaw something rather than changing anything. So I'd say it's not observable.

In terms of how to deal with this soft-PVP, that's difficult. Since it's not even "happening" in the game (just a kind of foresight), I don't think you can legitimately address it in-game without metagaming. Which only leaves discussing it out of game (and possibly rules lawyering the wizard player whenever he tries to use Portent post-roll, which doesn't exactly sound like fun for anyone). I'll agree with you that it would very much get under my skin - much like any other type of unnoticeable soft-PVP would (like stealing loot before the rest of the party knows about it).

But...maybe this one instance wasn't representative of how the wizard player is going to act all the time? Was this the only time in the session that really presented the wizard with a chance to affect some roll? If so, then it's possible that he was just so excited by the chance to use this new power that he went and did something messed up. I wouldn't give up all hope of having the game be okay just because of that single incident. But, yeah. It's a serious black mark against that player. I don't think a pointed comment to that player is out of place.

[Jerrykhor]

"There shouldn't be any secrets among the party" sounds like another comment i heard before. I was interested in an on-going campaign so i asked the DM about the party line-up. He told me, "You should not know that, just roll what you like and deal with it." It was the first time i heard such thing.

Not surprisingly, i met my fair share of people who thought it was okay to do what your Wizard did, such as cast Charm spells or Suggestions on their party members. More surprising is the fact that most DMs are very willing to just play the spectator until someones feelings are genuinely hurt.

[Kurt Kurageous]

"There shouldn't be any secrets among the party" sounds like another comment i heard before. I was interested in an on-going campaign so i asked the DM about the party line-up. He told me, "You should not know that, just roll what you like and deal with it." It was the first time i heard such thing.

Not surprisingly, i met my fair share of people who thought it was okay to do what your Wizard did, such as cast Charm spells or Suggestions on their party members. More surprising is the fact that most DMs are very willing to just play the spectator until someones feelings are genuinely hurt.

PVP is fun for one or at most two players, and just sucks for everyone else. Passing secret notes, stopping the game to have out of room chats, they all suck.

My line on secrets is, "there are no secrets between players." It's possible for characters to be unaware of shenanigans, but the players will know it. This limits the PVP.

I've banned PVP outright in my game. Its hard enough to get a bunch of anti-hero edgelords (young players) to form a party with a common purpose without having turds in the punch bowl.

[KorvinStarmast]

Not surprisingly, i met my fair share of people who thought it was okay to do what your Wizard did, such as cast Charm spells or Suggestions on their party members. More surprising is the fact that most DMs are very willing to just play the spectator until someones feelings are genuinely hurt. I played in a lot of old school games that would now and again get some impromptu PvP action, particularly outside of the dungeon/combat. Some DM's encouraged it, and others would try to calm things down because they'd seen that kind of play lead to people leaving a group or otherwise having negative OOC real life social conflict. This kind of thing varies so much from table to table, in terms of what players are comfortable with, that it's worth discussing beforehand.

[AHF]

Well, first off here's the text of the ability:

"Portent - Starting at 2nd level when you choose this school, glimpses of the future begin to press in on your awareness. When you finish a long rest, roll two d20s and record the numbers rolled. You can replace any attack roll, saving throw, or ability check made by you or a creature that you can see with one of these foretelling rolls. You must choose to do so before the roll, and you can replace a roll in this way only once per turn. Each foretelling roll can be used only once. When you finish a long rest, you lose any unused foretelling rolls."

So right off the bat, we can say that the instance in your session 1 shouldn't have been allowed for mechanical reasons, since you say that the wizard "used this opportunity to change their high roll to a 6".

That aside, I don't know of any elucidation from the WotC in any format about how noticeable Portent is. It doesn't take any time (not action, bonus action or reaction), nor does it have any obvious component-type language. And the fluff is that the wizard merely foresaw something rather than changing anything. So I'd say it's not observable.

In terms of how to deal with this soft-PVP, that's difficult. Since it's not even "happening" in the game (just a kind of foresight), I don't think you can legitimately address it in-game without metagaming. Which only leaves discussing it out of game (and possibly rules lawyering the wizard player whenever he tries to use Portent post-roll, which doesn't exactly sound like fun for anyone). I'll agree with you that it would very much get under my skin - much like any other type of unnoticeable soft-PVP would (like stealing loot before the rest of the party knows about it).

But...maybe this one instance wasn't representative of how the wizard player is going to act all the time? Was this the only time in the session that really presented the wizard with a chance to affect some roll? If so, then it's possible that he was just so excited by the chance to use this new power that he went and did something messed up. I wouldn't give up all hope of having the game be okay just because of that single incident. But, yeah. It's a serious black mark against that player. I don't think a pointed comment to that player is out of place.

Nailed it. Shouldn’t have been allowed mechanically and it is bad form to do this to someone who isn’t your friend IRL, imo.

[Stattick]

The rule at the table where I play most often, is that PVP is alright, BUT we're a group of mature players, and being a jerk IS NOT alright. We don't do a lot of PVP, but some of the occasions that it's come up have been in some of the most riveting things that have happened at the table. If PVP ever came up in a bad way, I'm sure that we'd talk through it like mature adults.