The tension between player knowledge and character knowledge

[strangebloke]

If those answers aren't good enough reasons for you, state why, not other reasons why you would know. I already covered if you think your character would know with possibly allowing a roll, and how that info could be wrong.

In-universe is very subjective. It may or may not exist in a DM's game.

What I'm saying is that "they're low level and haven't encountered this monster before" is not sufficient to justify them not knowing what an owlbear is. You can't prove that they wouldn't know about it. Owlbears aren't freakish 1-of-a-kind monsters.

I mean you can do the same thing for anything. If a character wants to tie someone up with some rope, some DMs might ask for a check and if you roll a 1 you forget how to tie a knot and the rope just falls to the ground untied.

The problem with these examples is not that there was a check but how you are interpreting a failed check. A failed nature check to identify a horse doesn't mean you don't know it's a horse, it means you miss out on some other information. For example maybe the failure means you don't recognize that this horse is a specific breed that is exclusively bred as mounts for royalty and that a non-royal riding that type of horse is a grave insult.

Oh sure, but that's skew of my point. A player won't need to make a check unless they're trying to determine something beyond "its a horse."

And yes if Throgdor Thewmighty background was that he worked in the royal stables there would be no need to make a check he would auto-succeed to find out that extra piece of knowledge. That's all just the basics of DMing, what's fair game is naturally up to the DM not least because it can change from one setting to another. If playing in the Sword Coast of FR then every adventurer would know that fire is needed to kill a troll because trolls are common enough. But in some setting where trolls are exceptionally rare then it wouldn't be common knowledge and the character will either straight up not know or make a check.

Sure, that makes sense! But this is my point: The impetus should be on the DM to prove why a check is required beyond simple fiat. In this case you've proved why the character couldn't know about trolls so it'd be legit to require a troll-identification roll. But such scenarios are by necessity rare.

Throgdor knowing more then Steve about world is the whole point of the skill check. It's to give Steve information that Throgdor might know. But to dismiss the possibility that Steve knows things about the world that Throgdor doesn't is nonsense. If Throgdor is newly arrived to this area because he's such a world traveler his chance of knowing that there is a special breed of horse reserved specifically for royalty is going to be low. He's not from the area but maybe he heard about it, so we roll to find out if Throgdor actually knows or not. Meanwhile Steve who is playing Throgdor because his old character died last session and that character was a prince of this royal line and so knows not only knows about this special breed of horse, but that the horses are descended from Pegasi and that the royals would give nearly anything to someone who could bring an actual Pegasus so that they could breed with it.

This is well outside the reach of tactical considerations and gets into the specificity of information I talked about earlier. Specific setting/campaign/character information someone would have no way to know in character is a completely different beast from "knowing about vampires." In this case, as I said earlier, its trivial to prove why Throgdor wouldn't know the breed of horse for free.

If the DM has already indicated enough familiarity with the creature encountered to accurately deduce it's named type, I don't see why the players should assume less than complete knowledge, or why it wouldn't fall to the DM to explain the extent of that familiarity.

yeah this is a good rule of thumb. When I do throw some kind of cosmic horror at my party, I will usually refer to it as "a dark, twisting thing" and refuse to name it. Sure, it might be be a modified sorrowsworn or something but if its supposed to be un-nameable, I'm not going to name it, because that defeats the purpose of the mystery.

This is why the "roll to know vampyr" thing is so annoying.
DM: "The vampire ends its turn"
Player: "Okay, since this is a vampire...."
DM: "Hold up, how does jim KNOW its a vampire??"
Player: "I..."
DM: "ROLL RELIGION"

[Carlobrand]

This always seems to me like a Session Zero debate, that should be settled before the campaign really gets underway. ...

Agreed. The game is first and foremost supposed to be fun. That means it should reflect the preferences of the gamemaster and his players, and some DMs and groups are ok with acting on player knowledge. However, telling a player his character cannot act on the knowledge in his own head amounts to an informal rule, and players need to know the rules up-front.

It's also situational. Dragons are the stuff of legend, campfire stories, and bards' tales. I am not going to complain that everyone knows a black dragon spits acid. And, it's not exactly a great leap to assume an ice devil is immune to cold damage. Too, the characters themselves, even at first level, are not neophytes. Fighters start into the game comfortable in armor, skilled in a fighting style, and with a couple of noncombat skills to their credit. I'm perfectly willing to say there's a chance they encountered some more obscure fact about the characteristics of ice devils while listening to the stories of their fellow warriors at some point before they started their adventuring career: make an intelligence check. Certainly a cleric might claim a proficiency bonus since demons are the sort of thing that are likely to crop up in religious training, and a wizard certainly could if he took the Arcana skill. Most folk are pretty reasonable if you literally give them a chance.

Where the debate comes in is what kind of things might be common knowledge and what kind of things require a roll - and how we handle it. My thing is: there's a hell of a lot of knowledge out there, and not all of it sticks. I had to memorize the capitals of all 50 states in the eighth grade; I doubt I could get more than 5 of them correct today, but I do know the capital of the state I happen to be living in. If a wizard wants to tell me that extraplanar beings are a wizard's stock in trade and wizards should just know that ice devils are, curiously enough, immune to fire, I would answer: "You are correct, and that was almost certainly in one of your training classes. Now, do you remember it? Please roll." On the other hand, I as a DM cannot object if he avoids his usual go-to fire spells in this particular combat - his choice of tactics is his own. I might however reduce the experience awarded a bit if a fighter blurts it out to everyone, then fails his intelligence check to see if he knew that, but the team as a whole nonetheless changes their strategy, because that datum made the fight a bit easier for them than it might have been. It really depends on how egregious the issue is.

[Sorinth]

Oh sure, but that's skew of my point. A player won't need to make a check unless they're trying to determine something beyond "its a horse."

Sure, that makes sense! But this is my point: The impetus should be on the DM to prove why a check is required beyond simple fiat. In this case you've proved why the character couldn't know about trolls so it'd be legit to require a troll-identification roll. But such scenarios are by necessity rare.

This isn't a common monster in this setting/campaign so you might not know much about any abilities/weakeness, roll a XXX check. Is that enough "proof" or is that DM fiat.

This is well outside the reach of tactical considerations and gets into the specificity of information I talked about earlier. Specific setting/campaign/character information someone would have no way to know in character is a completely different beast from "knowing about vampires." In this case, as I said earlier, its trivial to prove why Throgdor wouldn't know the breed of horse for free.

Does "knowing about vampires" mean the character knows that casting Banishment on a creature ends the Vampire Charm effect? Because that seems dubious, there's a vast gulf between your grandmother telling you stories of blood sucking creatures of the night called Vampires and therefore your characters know about vampires and tactically useful information like that particular trick.

[Carlobrand]

...Does "knowing about vampires" mean the character knows that casting Banishment on a creature ends the Vampire Charm effect? Because that seems dubious, there's a vast gulf between your grandmother telling you stories of blood sucking creatures of the night called Vampires and therefore your characters know about vampires and tactically useful information like that particular trick.

That would be a wicked argument, and not one that I as a gamemaster am certain I could win. The party observes that one of their number is behaving uncharacteristically, is treating the foe as a trusted friend, etc. when the party had regarded him as a dangerous foe. Without more information than that, the cleric banishes the foe to another plane, reasoning correctly that if the foe is casting some form of charm spell and is not present to communicate with the afflicted party member, the afflicted party member cannot be influenced by the foe, and the worst they'd have to deal with is him raising objection about his trusted friend being teleported away someplace - that and a royally pissed off foe returning to that spot in about a minute. The afflicted party member is not likely to become violent just because his friends in the party teleported away his friend the foeman; at worst he's just going to be very pissed. The party can lead the affected member away and deal with his anger elsewhere. The cleric doesn't even need to know the foe is a vampire; that works on pretty much anyone who tries to charm someone, and using magic to charm people is common enough that most people would suspect magic if a friend started acting strangely. The only clue that the charm was vampiric is the afflicted member becoming free of the spell when the vampire is banished rather than complaining bitterly about his friend being teleported off for the next hour. I would be hard pressed to prove that the cleric acted on specific knowledge of the details of a vampire's charm ability.

Your point is correct: knowledge of the existence of a creature does not translate to detailed knowledge of its specific strengths and weaknesses. But, the devil hides in the details. Making a claim that the player acted inappropriately is likely to lead to the kinds of arguments that really spoil the fun. Best be very, very certain before making such an allegation, and best be prepared to back off if the player can offer some alternate rationale for their actions.

[Sorinth]

That would be a wicked argument, and not one that I as a gamemaster am certain I could win. The party observes that one of their number is behaving uncharacteristically, is treating the foe as a trusted friend, etc. when the party had regarded him as a dangerous foe. Without more information than that, the cleric banishes the foe to another plane, reasoning correctly that if the foe is casting some form of charm spell and is not present to communicate with the afflicted party member, the afflicted party member cannot be influenced by the foe, and the worst they'd have to deal with is him raising objection about his trusted friend being teleported away someplace - that and a royally pissed off foe returning to that spot in about a minute. The afflicted party member is not likely to become violent just because his friends in the party teleported away his friend the foeman; at worst he's just going to be very pissed. The party can lead the affected member away and deal with his anger elsewhere. The cleric doesn't even need to know the foe is a vampire; that works on pretty much anyone who tries to charm someone, and using magic to charm people is common enough that most people would suspect magic if a friend started acting strangely. The only clue that the charm was vampiric is the afflicted member becoming free of the spell when the vampire is banished rather than complaining bitterly about his friend being teleported off for the next hour. I would be hard pressed to prove that the cleric acted on specific knowledge of the details of a vampire's charm ability.

Your point is correct: knowledge of the existence of a creature does not translate to detailed knowledge of its specific strengths and weaknesses. But, the devil hides in the details. Making a claim that the player acted inappropriately is likely to lead to the kinds of arguments that really spoil the fun. Best be very, very certain before making such an allegation, and best be prepared to back off if the player can offer some alternate rationale for their actions.

Banishing the Vampire absolutely makes sense, it even makes sense to do if nobody is charmed as you can have everyone gather themselves, ready an action for when the vampire comes back, essentially getting a free round of actions. So yeah I don't think there would be any accusations or arguments for someone using Banishment on the vampire. They may well discover that it does in fact break the charm as a side bonus. I think the original example was the PC using Banishment on the charmed PC to break the charm, and that's where it makes sense for the DM to say hold up, why do you think that would break the charm?

[KorvinStarmast]

I make a lot of my setting-specific information public on the setting wiki. Players are allowed to use their own discretion as to how much of that their characters know.

It's really cool that this kind of tool is now available; we didn't have this back in the day, and I like being able to look up a little bit but not have to go down the 'lore' or 'canon' rabbit hole. {I am a player in Phoenix' game world}

In my experience, I have more fun when the question isn't "what do you know" most of the time, but instead is "what do you do with what you know?"

Yeah, that works for a lot of tables.

[1] Dilligas Husty, the bard from the Jungle of Fangs area, would have never seen an orc at level 1. Or even heard more than wild tales. Heck, she'd likely have never seen a dragonborn or a halfling. Tsun Azur, halfling paladin from the Sea of Grass, would have never seen an ophidian (yuan-ti). But each would be very familiar with what the other one doesn't know about. And neither of them would know what the heck a trikine[2] was. They're all familiar with all of it now, of course.
[2] a three-headed mutant cow native to the Great Eastern Dustlands, whose milk can be distilled into an incendiary or lamp fuel. And who tend to explode on death.

OK, now we have to go to the Great Eastern Dustlands, since Tsun will want to adopt one.

This isn't a common monster in this setting/campaign so you might not know much about any abilities/weakeness, roll a XXX check. Is that enough "proof" or is that DM fiat.
Does "knowing about vampires" mean the character knows that casting Banishment on a creature ends the Vampire Charm effect? Because that seems dubious, there's a vast gulf between your grandmother telling you stories of blood sucking creatures of the night called Vampires and therefore your characters know about vampires and tactically useful information like that particular trick.

I have two questions.
What was the first edition of D&D that you played?

Spoiler: The Joke question

Show

Why do you hate your players?

[Pex]

There is a reverse metagame. There are things characters know or should know the player hasn't a clue to what it is nor even know they should be asking the DM a question about it.

On the player's side, this is where they can asks for knowledge checks, especially on monsters they are facing. A player may know what a mindflayer can do, but a successful roll gives him permission for his character to act upon that knowledge. Even if the player doesn't know what a mindflayer can do, his character certainly can. A successful roll has the DM tell the player the needed information and the player acts upon it. A DM has to get over it players know to use fire or acid against trolls and silver against lycanthropes without rolls because in gamedom it's too iconic. Why those and not the mindflayer? There is no satisfactory answer.

On the DM's side the DM prompts for a roll. The party encounters a statue. The DM asks the cleric player to roll Knowledge Religion. Success means he recognizes it as this ancient culture's depiction of a deity which can mean something depending on adventure context. Failure means no information given and it's proper for the DM to disallow piggyback and deny the wizard a roll when the player prompts because of the failure, unless the DM deems it possible for the wizard to know. When it comes to battling a monster the DM can prompt for a roll, but usually a player would do it.

Sometimes though, the DM and/or a player needs to get over it generally. Accept the party responds to knowing the monster without a roll because the players know. It might be best for that particular gaming group. It can get just as silly everyone pretending not to know stuff. It's stupid for the wizard player to keep casting Fire Bolt against the Wyrmling Red Dragon because how dare he metagame knowing the dragon is immune.

[KorvinStarmast]

Sometimes though, the DM and/or a player needs to get over it generally. Accept the party responds to knowing the monster without a roll because the players know. It might be best for that particular gaming group. It can get just as silly everyone pretending not to know stuff. It's stupid for the wizard player to keep casting Fire Bolt against the Wyrmling Red Dragon because how dare he metagame knowing the dragon is immune.

Overall nice post, and your last paragraph (which I heartily endorse) works great at an actual table where real people actually play, but is not as well received in a theory-crafting-mechanics-obsessed site like GiTP. Thus the optimization and RAW psychosis that 3.x furthered (there were ample serving of that before, let's not kid ourselves) continues to poison the well.

[Sorinth]

I have two questions.
What was the first edition of D&D that you played?

Spoiler: The Joke question

Show

Why do you hate your players?

1e, but 2e is probably the more correct answer as I was quite young when playing 1e and can barely remember it whereas 2e I played for a long time and can remember much better. Does that explain why I hate my players

[Abracadangit]

There is a reverse metagame. There are things characters know or should know the player hasn't a clue to what it is nor even know they should be asking the DM a question about it.

On the player's side, this is where they can asks for knowledge checks, especially on monsters they are facing. A player may know what a mindflayer can do, but a successful roll gives him permission for his character to act upon that knowledge. Even if the player doesn't know what a mindflayer can do, his character certainly can. A successful roll has the DM tell the player the needed information and the player acts upon it. A DM has to get over it players know to use fire or acid against trolls and silver against lycanthropes without rolls because in gamedom it's too iconic. Why those and not the mindflayer? There is no satisfactory answer.

On the DM's side the DM prompts for a roll. The party encounters a statue. The DM asks the cleric player to roll Knowledge Religion. Success means he recognizes it as this ancient culture's depiction of a deity which can mean something depending on adventure context. Failure means no information given and it's proper for the DM to disallow piggyback and deny the wizard a roll when the player prompts because of the failure, unless the DM deems it possible for the wizard to know. When it comes to battling a monster the DM can prompt for a roll, but usually a player would do it.

Sometimes though, the DM and/or a player needs to get over it generally. Accept the party responds to knowing the monster without a roll because the players know. It might be best for that particular gaming group. It can get just as silly everyone pretending not to know stuff. It's stupid for the wizard player to keep casting Fire Bolt against the Wyrmling Red Dragon because how dare he metagame knowing the dragon is immune.

Agree, especially with the "get over it" clause. This is why I never have a problem with it in my games, when players do this -- part of the fun of playing D&D for years is you know the tropes. The medusa turns you to stone, the troll needs fire/acid to stop regenerating, and so on, and being savvy to those details makes you feel like you know the world because you've been adventuring in it long enough.

There's another unpleasant element which happens in the games with metagame police: players will start trying to come up with clever ways of ACTING like they're discovering the information organically, so they have an excuse to know that thing moving forward. And if you're a DM who realizes that's happening and doesn't think there's a problem, I don't know what to say. Like who's even having fun, at that point.

Plus if you're a DM and you have a problem with people knowing those things, just refluff the dang monster! Turn your displacer beasts into feywolves, or your trolls into bugaboos. Now when your players fight the bugaboo, they won't know how its regeneration works, and they have no reason to guess that it's fire/acid. I don't know why so many DMs want to stick to classic monsters, and then get so frustrated when players know how it operates.

[GeoffWatson]

There are many different vampire legends.
Why would the one your character heard be 100% correct, with every detail from the MM included?

[Carlobrand]

There are many different vampire legends.
Why would the one your character heard be 100% correct, with every detail from the MM included?

How to blow your players' minds: use the Monster Manual as a guide for what is commonly believed in that culture about those monsters, rather than as an accurate source of information.

[Cheesegear]

I think this is a tough one because it is a fine line. In Frogreavers example below, is that an abstraction of a savvy combatant using knowledge of reach and timing to best engage an enemy or a player unreasonably capitalizing on the mechanical underpinnings of the combat rules?

You can't stop this. Just like you couldn't stop it in real life.
People who are in life in death situations regularly, and especially hand-to-hand and martial fighters, know all about reach, moves and counter-moves. The mechanics of a fight, are very well known by those who participate in them. There are manuals and manuals dedicated to real-world weapon statistics and skirmish acumen.

I imagine that adventurers would know this.

Characters knowledge of monster stats/abilities vs players

This is more difficult to work with. Experienced players just know what a hostile's statblock is. You shouldn't have to cast a Lightning Bolt at a Behir to know that it's immune to Lighting. And forcing a player to burn a spell slot just to 'figure it out' seems needlessly pointless. I don't even like when a player who's never even seen a Behir before, casts Lightning Bolt at it. It just feels bad, man. And not in the good way. Maybe I might give a context clue, like y'know, the Bebhir breathes lightning. Typically hostiles that do that tend to be at least Resistant to their own element. Probably.

This is why a lot of DMs prefer to deal with less-experienced players because everything always feels fresh. Once you've fought a monster - even once - and you know its mechanics, it's very difficult, as a player, to unlearn it. And once you - the player - know what's up, having the DM say that you can't do something, because reasons, feels like a punishment, because you know the choice is wrong one to make.

This is actually an RP vs. G argument. I will always side with G. D&D is game first, roleplaying, second. Especially in combat, where it becomes the most game-like.

Does the barbarian stay silent because solving the puzzle is not something his character would do?

A Barbarian with -1 Int can still pass DC 15 Int checks 20% of the time.

Unless you, the DM have ruled that the Barbarian can't roll, for whatever reason, then the Barbarian should be allowed to roll the dice. If you rule that a roll simply isn't required, then the Barbarian should be allowed to speak, because he already has passed the roll by virtue of the fact that the roll wasn't required.

Do we just take the table as an abstraction of the party instead of the player as the character?

This happens all the time when a party member dies.
'Oh my [new] character wasn't here for that, I don't know about this and I don't know what this is about.'

Bulls*. What does your party do when they travel for three hours? What does your party do during Short Rests and/or Long Rests? During 'off-screen' time, I'm just going to assume that the characters don't vanish, and/or spend long periods of time just staring at each other in silence. I have to assume that the characters talk to each other, even when the players don't.

That being said, when a player does have something to add, I can hope that they do it in character. Like, 'Why does your character knows this? You were literally raised by wolves.' I'm not saying you don't know it. I'm just asking how, please roleplay. This is probably the way I most flesh out backstories. A lot of my players don't like writing backstories, and I don't ask for lengthy backstories, either. But there is such a thing as emergent gameplay - which is basically all of D&D - and one of my favourites is having players justify how their characters know something, when they shouldn't. Because the justification is almost always a crazy story (although sometimes it also is 'My Dad told me'...How did he know? 'Uhh...Oh. My Dad was a Ranger...'), and that story is now canon (e.g; Well now that it's canon that your Dad was a Ranger, you can justify a lot of things, and you can also use 'The School of My Dad Told Me' as part of your roleplaying and fleshing out your character in roleplaying situations).

[KorvinStarmast]

1e, but 2e is probably the more correct answer as I was quite young when playing 1e and can barely remember it whereas 2e I played for a long time and can remember much better. Does that explain why I hate my players

No, but thanks for giving me context. I've a good friend who loved 2e, didn't D&D for a long while and then came back for 5e and he's noticed that some of the "feel" is similar, for him.

What's weird about the stuff E.G.G. wrote for 1e in the DMG, and the reports of how he actually DM'd games, is that he talked a tougher game (DM versus player) than he DM'd ... but as that's second, third, and fourth hand info who can really say? With 2e, the voice (in terms of writing style) changed considerably and (for my money) it was a positive change.

[Frogreaver]

There is a reverse metagame. There are things characters know or should know the player hasn't a clue to what it is nor even know they should be asking the DM a question about it.

On the player's side, this is where they can asks for knowledge checks, especially on monsters they are facing. A player may know what a mindflayer can do, but a successful roll gives him permission for his character to act upon that knowledge. Even if the player doesn't know what a mindflayer can do, his character certainly can. A successful roll has the DM tell the player the needed information and the player acts upon it. A DM has to get over it players know to use fire or acid against trolls and silver against lycanthropes without rolls because in gamedom it's too iconic. Why those and not the mindflayer? There is no satisfactory answer.

On the DM's side the DM prompts for a roll. The party encounters a statue. The DM asks the cleric player to roll Knowledge Religion. Success means he recognizes it as this ancient culture's depiction of a deity which can mean something depending on adventure context. Failure means no information given and it's proper for the DM to disallow piggyback and deny the wizard a roll when the player prompts because of the failure, unless the DM deems it possible for the wizard to know. When it comes to battling a monster the DM can prompt for a roll, but usually a player would do it.

Sometimes though, the DM and/or a player needs to get over it generally. Accept the party responds to knowing the monster without a roll because the players know. It might be best for that particular gaming group. It can get just as silly everyone pretending not to know stuff. It's stupid for the wizard player to keep casting Fire Bolt against the Wyrmling Red Dragon because how dare he metagame knowing the dragon is immune.

I always find it a bit weird when it's argued that in a make believe game that the players can't make believe their character doesn't know something. That said, when the game does become having the character act as though he doesn't know something you do - the player is stuck in the awful predicament of finding a way to justify to everyone why his character acted X way. It just places him in a different kind of metagame. One where the metagame is about justifying your character taking an action when you as the player want him to.

[False God]

I stopped bothering and developed a whole new approach to my games.

My games are now isekais.

I was tired of players who clearly knew what was what having to make rolls to pretend to be informed. It wasn't fun, it was irritating, especially if the knowledge was well known among my players. Double especially if the die rolled poorly. Everyone would groan at the fact that we now had to "role play" that we didn't know fire damage stopped troll regeneration (or other common things like dragons being color-coded for damage immunity).

So what do all those skill points do now you might ask? Just like how their characters know how to cast spells or use special attacks based on their class, their characters "know things". Skill-based knowledge checks just mean a person is extra good at it, their "body" seems to be extra good at diplomacy or deception, even if the IRL person was not.

Character knowledge becomes player knowledge, player knowledge becomes character knowledge. One unified whole.

Nothing has fundamentally changed about my games except that I no longer have to worry about meta-knowledge.

[strangebloke]

This isn't a common monster in this setting/campaign so you might not know much about any abilities/weakeness, roll a XXX check. Is that enough "proof" or is that DM fiat.

Depends on a million things, like "how uncommon are we talking" and "is your player going to accept this." But by far the most important question is: "Why is it worth arguing over?"

I could see an underdark campaign where the players have been sealed underground, venturing to the surface for the first time only to fight a monster of the surface world. The players might know "its an owlbear" but it could be fun in that instance to insist "you have no idea what this is, its terrifying."

Suffice to say that such situations are exceptions that prove the rule.

Does "knowing about vampires" mean the character knows that casting Banishment on a creature ends the Vampire Charm effect? Because that seems dubious, there's a vast gulf between your grandmother telling you stories of blood sucking creatures of the night called Vampires and therefore your characters know about vampires and tactically useful information like that particular trick.

Can you prove they couldn't know how to do that? Because they're 7th level, they've been talking shop with tons of other adventurers for weeks or months now, and vampires are a known thing. Once again I reiterate: the DM needs to be able to prove it to the player, or the player is going to walk away annoyed.

In my view, the DM meddling with a player's control over their own character, their ability to define their features, should be done very carefully and for good reason. Unless they're blatantly breaking the rules and/or disrupting the game by annoying other players, let them do what they want to do.

Sometimes though, the DM and/or a player needs to get over it generally. Accept the party responds to knowing the monster without a roll because the players know. It might be best for that particular gaming group. It can get just as silly everyone pretending not to know stuff. It's stupid for the wizard player to keep casting Fire Bolt against the Wyrmling Red Dragon because how dare he metagame knowing the dragon is immune.

Say it again! You should, its true!

Just get over it, DND isn't surgery, its messy and improvised and wonderfully ad hoc. Sometimes (usually) letting the play go forward is more important than being technically correct.

There are many different vampire legends.
Why would the one your character heard be 100% correct, with every detail from the MM included?

why wouldn't they be?

[RSP]

A couple things on this:

- Not every setting is “commoners know Vampires are vulnerable to Radiant damage.” The DM, not the Players, are supposed to control how their setting works. If the Player is taking their knowledge of the MM into the game, with the excuse of “my character learned this from stories from the tavern”, well that’s just taking the DM’s ability to world build and crapping on it. The DM is the one who determines what stories are told in taverns, not the Players.

- The whole point (as far as I can tell), of having monsters with various resistances, immunities, and vulnerabilities, is to alter the challenge they would otherwise be to the characters, and add flavor to the creatures. That challenge is lessened if characters just know what to use or avoid in any given situation. As a DM, why use a Troll, if the Troll’s signature ability, it’s regeneration, is moot? You’re taking away part of what makes it a challenge. The flavor is moot, as the challenge is no longer “can the characters figure this out”, but rather, did the Players study the MM or adventure model enough?

- building on that, I believe encounters should be appropriately suited to the characters (not the Players). I, as a DM, can create encounters appropriate to the characters. I know their level and abilities and can build around that so each is relatively appropriate to some degree of easy, medium, difficult, deadly level, depending on what I’m going for.

I can’t build encounters based off of what Players know, as I don’t really have that insight. Further, my Players tend to have differing levels of experience, so what would be a good encounter built for one Player’s experience, might be a poor encounter for another’s.

- All in all, I feel if a DM is going to put the time and energy into world building and encounter designing, the least a Player can do is not try to undermine that effort. Doing so is just disrespectful to the effort the DM has put in.

Now, certainly, using the knowledge that fire stops a Troll’s Regeneration, is not the same level of a Player knowing that there’s a secret door in a certain the room, because they studied the module the DM is running the night before. But they are both examples of using Player knowledge to undermine the challenge created for the characters.

[Tanarii]

I detest knowledge checks. 5e Lore checks are to determine if you recall info you know right now in the heat of the moment, not determine the state of the character's knowledge. And that applies more generally, ability checks aren't designed to be state-of-your-character checks, they're resolution checks for if you can do something in the heat of the moment. (Note that automatic success with time rules cover things that are not heat of the moment.)

That said, if success or failure at something should depend on a character ability score, there should be a check involved. And vice versa. If there's not check with the ability score involved, it doesn't depend on that ability score. It depends on player and DM fiat.

Player-character separation is a myth. In that it's not something inherent. We have to draw artificial lines, we have to metagame, if we want to pretend that our character doesn't know something we do know. Reacting based on player knowledge of rules information isn't metagaming. Reacting based on the knowledge that you know something you know and your characters doesn't is metagaming.

Its impossible to have your character act as if you the player don't know the thing when you as a player know the thing. The best you can do make a best guess as to how your character might react if you the player didn't know the thing. And folks often get that wrong by just doing the opposite of what they would do. That's not the same thing. That's why ultimately player-character separation is a myth. It's impossible.

[Sorinth]

Its impossible to have your character act as if you the player don't know the thing when you as a player know the thing.

And yet the DM does it all the time with NPCs.

[RSP]

Its impossible to have your character act as if you the player don't know the thing when you as a player know the thing. The best you can do make a best guess as to how your character might react if you the player didn't know the thing. And folks often get that wrong by just doing the opposite of what they would do. That's not the same thing. That's why ultimately player-character separation is a myth. It's impossible.

Completely disagree. The entire nature of the game is the Players are pretending to be a character. When my character faces a demon, I (the Player) don’t freak out - I know it’s pretend.

Likewise, I can separate my knowledge of 5e Trolls from what my character knows, and, though I (the Player) know about the connection to the Regeneration and fire/acid, not use that knowledge, if my character wouldn’t know it.

[Reach Weapon]

- All in all, I feel if a DM is going to put the time and energy into world building and encounter designing, the least a Player can do is not try to undermine that effort. Doing so is just disrespectful to the effort the DM has put in.

As above, if the DM says troll, then it's the DM communicating all the information that carries to the table. If we're respecting the time and energy DMs are putting into confronting characters with creatures with which they are unfamiliar, it might help if the DM actually does that for the players.

[strangebloke]

A couple things on this:

- Not every setting is “commoners know Vampires are vulnerable to Radiant damage.” The DM, not the Players, are supposed to control how their setting works. If the Player is taking their knowledge of the MM into the game, with the excuse of “my character learned this from stories from the tavern”, well that’s just taking the DM’s ability to world build and crapping on it. The DM is the one who determines what stories are told in taverns, not the Players.

I would argue that the topics players look into in their down time is their purview. You might need to step in with a hard "that information isn't known here" in some cases (if they know some obscure detail about the location of some artifact for example) but this isn't something you should do lightly. Players hate being told they have to take actions they know are bad, and this isn't surprising. If they choose to do such a thing themselves, that's another matter entirely, but dictating that something widely known in our universe isn't known in the fictional universe will almost always garner a negative reaction.

Especially because, if a roll is required, the probability of a nominally 'smart and informed' character, even one with a relevant proficiency not knowing the detail is in fact pretty high. If you set the DC of knowing lycanthropes are weak to silver as being 10, a +2 INT level 5 fighter with nature proficiency still fails about 20% of the time. IME such a failed check will be deeply frustrating to a player.

- The whole point (as far as I can tell), of having monsters with various resistances, immunities, and vulnerabilities, is to alter the challenge they would otherwise be to the characters, and add flavor to the creatures. That challenge is lessened if characters just know what to use or avoid in any given situation. As a DM, why use a Troll, if the Troll’s signature ability, it’s regeneration, is moot? You’re taking away part of what makes it a challenge. The flavor is moot, as the challenge is no longer “can the characters figure this out”, but rather, did the Players study the MM or adventure model enough?

Resistances and immunities are still tactically interesting if people know about them? Like, obviously? Players aren't always going to have trivial access to fire or radiant damage, and if they do have something like a flametongue or fire bolt, they were probably using it anyway. Heck, people build their characters around immunities and vulnerabilities. Its commonly known that poison and fire and necrotic damage can be resisted commonly. Indeed, in a game like Curse of Strahd players know going in that its helpful to build a character with radiant damage, so they do. Is that metagaming?

- building on that, I believe encounters should be appropriately suited to the characters (not the Players). I, as a DM, can create encounters appropriate to the characters. I know their level and abilities and can build around that so each is relatively appropriate to some degree of easy, medium, difficult, deadly level, depending on what I’m going for.

I can’t build encounters based off of what Players know, as I don’t really have that insight. Further, my Players tend to have differing levels of experience, so what would be a good encounter built for one Player’s experience, might be a poor encounter for another’s.

- All in all, I feel if a DM is going to put the time and energy into world building and encounter designing, the least a Player can do is not try to undermine that effort. Doing so is just disrespectful to the effort the DM has put in.

Now, certainly, using the knowledge that fire stops a Troll’s Regeneration, is not the same level of a Player knowing that there’s a secret door in a certain the room, because they studied the module the DM is running the night before. But they are both examples of using Player knowledge to undermine the challenge created for the characters.

I just think this is taking something that's very trivial altogether too seriously. "Making a knowledge check to know about trolls and fire" isn't an important or interesting part of an encounter. If a player wants to know something and it can be known via knowledge check, the usual thing that happens IME is that one guy will make the check, fail, and then everyone else makes the check, with raw RNG guaranteeing that someone knows about trolls and fire, at which point that character just yells "Burn him so he stops healing himself!!"

like, say you set the DC at 15 (really high for this sort of thing IMO) and the average modifier is a +0, that's a 84% chance of making it in a group of five.

[Segev]

And yet the DM does it all the time with NPCs.

He tries, but it's still difficult. As any player who uses illusion spells can attest.

[Pex]

I detest knowledge checks. 5e Lore checks are to determine if you recall info you know right now in the heat of the moment, not determine the state of the character's knowledge. And that applies more generally, ability checks aren't designed to be state-of-your-character checks, they're resolution checks for if you can do something in the heat of the moment. (Note that automatic success with time rules cover things that are not heat of the moment.)

That said, if success or failure at something should depend on a character ability score, there should be a check involved. And vice versa. If there's not check with the ability score involved, it doesn't depend on that ability score. It depends on player and DM fiat.

Player-character separation is a myth. In that it's not something inherent. We have to draw artificial lines, we have to metagame, if we want to pretend that our character doesn't know something we do know. Reacting based on player knowledge of rules information isn't metagaming. Reacting based on the knowledge that you know something you know and your characters doesn't is metagaming.

Its impossible to have your character act as if you the player don't know the thing when you as a player know the thing. The best you can do make a best guess as to how your character might react if you the player didn't know the thing. And folks often get that wrong by just doing the opposite of what they would do. That's not the same thing. That's why ultimately player-character separation is a myth. It's impossible.

Semantics. It makes no significance difference in the combat if the wizard rolling a knowledge check is doing so to determine what he knows about the abilities of the mindflayer or the check is to determine how much he can remember at the moment the mindflayer appears and the party is saying "oh feces!'

[strangebloke]

He tries, but it's still difficult. As any player who uses illusion spells can attest.

I think playing stupidly on purpose is possible. It's easy to play a big dumb undead monster who just rushes whatever's in his field of vision. It's when you want to play someone who's nominally quite smart but has bad information that things get difficult.

[False God]

I would argue that the topics players look into in their down time is their purview. You might need to step in with a hard "that information isn't known here" in some cases (if they know some obscure detail about the location of some artifact for example) but this isn't something you should do lightly. Players hate being told they have to take actions they know are bad, and this isn't surprising. If they choose to do such a thing themselves, that's another matter entirely, but dictating that something widely known in our universe isn't known in the fictional universe will almost always garner a negative reaction.

Especially because, if a roll is required, the probability of a nominally 'smart and informed' character, even one with a relevant proficiency not knowing the detail is in fact pretty high. If you set the DC of knowing lycanthropes are weak to silver as being 10, a +2 INT level 5 fighter with nature proficiency still fails about 20% of the time. IME such a failed check will be deeply frustrating to a player.


Resistances and immunities are still tactically interesting if people know about them? Like, obviously? Players aren't always going to have trivial access to fire or radiant damage, and if they do have something like a flametongue or fire bolt, they were probably using it anyway. Heck, people build their characters around immunities and vulnerabilities. Its commonly known that poison and fire and necrotic damage can be resisted commonly. Indeed, in a game like Curse of Strahd players know going in that its helpful to build a character with radiant damage, so they do. Is that metagaming?


I just think this is taking something that's very trivial altogether too seriously. "Making a knowledge check to know about trolls and fire" isn't an important or interesting part of an encounter. If a player wants to know something and it can be known via knowledge check, the usual thing that happens IME is that one guy will make the check, fail, and then everyone else makes the check, with raw RNG guaranteeing that someone knows about trolls and fire, at which point that character just yells "Burn him so he stops healing himself!!"

like, say you set the DC at 15 (really high for this sort of thing IMO) and the average modifier is a +0, that's a 84% chance of making it in a group of five.

Everything this, so much this.

That's why I changed the way I run games. Meta-knowledge does not by-and-large, aid the players or their characters. Knowing there's a secret door behind the throne doesn't equate to finding the button that opens it. Knowing where both are still doesn't add up to a whole lot, because the other obstacles after that secret door may still exist.

All you've essentially done is skip a half-dozen "Spot", "Investigation", "Perception" (or their ilk) checks until someone finally rolls high enough to find it. The meta-knowledge just lets people skip the boring part "finding the door" and move on to the interesting part "where the door leads". The challenge isn't the door, the challenge is what the door leads to. Monsters, rooms full of traps, whatever. Even if a player knows every detail about each of those things, those challenges still need to be resolved. Aggressive monsters need to be fought and defeated. Cunning monsters need to be reasoned with or avoided. Traps need to be disarmed or avoided. Those checks are the interesting ones, and they're ones that specific meta knowledge often has little bearing on. So what if you know the treasure demon needs the Magic Treasure, you still have to go get it for them.

The fun and the interesting and the challenge is in the doing not the knowing.

I think playing stupidly on purpose is possible. It's easy to play a big dumb undead monster who just rushes whatever's in his field of vision. It's when you want to play someone who's nominally quite smart but has bad information that things get difficult.

It's especially worsened when it's a smart player combined with a smart character, who is stymied by bad rolls.

[Tanarii]

Semantics. It makes no significance difference in the combat if the wizard rolling a knowledge check is doing so to determine what he knows about the abilities of the mindflayer or the check is to determine how much he can remember at the moment the mindflayer appears and the party is saying "oh feces!'

Many times, yes.

But it's an important difference if you assume the character generally knows what the player knows as a starting point. Because in that case, the player (possibly in collaboration with the DM) can determine the character doesn't know something the player does without rolling. And the DM and/or player can decide if the character does know something instead of rolling, then decide if they need a check or not to remember right now. And the DM can call for a roll when the player is forgetting something their character has already been told, or had the information and hasn't put it together but the character might.

That's still kind of semantics, but viewing it differently gives a different view on when you might call for a check at all. As opposed to defaulting to "roll Bear Lore to see if you knows that bears crap in the woods", it follows the standard form of 5e checks:
1) determine if it's automatically successful or automatically a failure
2) if not determine if you have time to succeed without a check
3) if not determine if it's a secret result from the player / time saver for multiple rolls for the same thing done repeatedly by the PC (passive check)
4) set the DC.

And yet the DM does it all the time with NPCs.

No they don't.

DMs (try to) have NPCs act as if the DM is doing their best to pretend that the DM doesn't know thing thing that they actually know.
That is very different from the DM having NPCs act as if the DM doesn't know the thing. That's only possible by the DM not knowing the thing.

There's no actual separation. And the first may differ wildly from the second. And there's no way to know when they actually happen to line up, because you can't be in two realities at once to check.

[Segev]

DMs (try to) have NPCs act as if the DM is doing their best to pretend that the DM doesn't know thing thing that they actually know.
That is very different from the DM having NPCs act as if the DM doesn't know the thing. That's only possible by the DM not knowing the thing.

There's no actual separation. And the first may differ wildly from the second. And there's no way to know when they actually happen to line up, because you can't be in two realities at once to check.

"Tell me, again, why you invented a multiverse-portal and brought dozens of yourself here to this dimension?" "See, I run a D&D game, and I wanted to be sure my NPCs weren't acting on information I know and they don't, so I pulled copies of myself that aren't running this game over to have them run the NPCs for me."

[Carlobrand]

...DMs (try to) have NPCs act as if the DM is doing their best to pretend that the DM doesn't know thing thing that they actually know.
That is very different from the DM having NPCs act as if the DM doesn't know the thing. That's only possible by the DM not knowing the thing. ...

That is one powerful confusion spell. I am totally confused.