(in D&D at least)
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
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Because I don't have everyone's modifier for every skill, ability, saving throw, and attack memorized off the top of my head, nor do I have magical foresight into whether or not they will choose to use abilities that would add more additional points on top of those modifiers.
I agree. In casual play you can rely on veteran players to know their stats. If they're the type to lie intentionally then they can leave the table. If they're making mistakes then maybe something goes a little too easily, oh well. The best DMs i had didn't give a shit and focused on rewarding players for learning.
No, you're misunderstanding, I'm not saying the player, I'm saying the DM. I'm not going to waste everyone's time at the table checking whether a 20 on the die could possibly succeed given their modifier when I can just ask them to make a roll. It's way quicker.
Ah yeah i see. A roll skips you having to sort through character sheets introducing a silent pause in the narrative to determine whether a check passively succeeds.
I was a little confused by talk of character sheets because the players have them right there and they should be carbon copy with what the dm has.
I meant that for checks as the DM you can save time by relying on players who you can trust to know the game and be honest, rolled or passive. I argue that a DM that asks for my stats has not yet been any less immersive for me. It takes a split second and I'll take it over railroading every time.
I think most people would say not letting you attempt to do something because they think your character can't possibly have enough of a bonus to do it is railroading. Again, like I said, I don't have foresight to know what the bonus might be. What if the bard decides to inspire them? What if the cleric uses guidance before? What if they have some item that gives them a bonus and they haven't written that in and just add it in the fly?
I agree completely!
Tap for spoiler
I assume you're just adding context because I don't believe dialogue has clashing ideas any longerI'm just disagreeing that allowing someone to roll when a 20 might not be enough is railroading.
Oh yeah obv a 20 is an autopass. Sorry i don't think i meant to argue against that in the first place.
You should at least have a general idea of your PC's skillsets. As in, don't let the country bumpkin make Arcana checks about monsters he's never seen, or let the stick figure try to punch down a wall. If you look at a character in a situation and think, "there's no way that could succeed," then they shouldn't be making a check.
Think of it from their point of view though. They want to try and do something. For me to just flat out tell them "no, there's no possible way" is discouraging and robs them of autonomy. Obviously for crazy extreme circumstances I won't let them, like "let me convince the king to abdicate to me!" type things. But if I think the DC should be 25 or something I'm not gonna bother wasting my time calculating what the theoretical maximum could be for the roll because I genuinely cannot know. The player can always do things I don't expect or use other players' things to help. For reasonable but implausible things I'll allow rolls even if a nat 20 wouldn't work because I'm not calculating what a nat 20 could theoretically be.
Plus, I often give people little flavor benefits for nat 20s even if they don't have mechanical success.
Why not? It could be fun! Of course non-critical rolls would be useless, but on a critical failure they could convince the whole party that dragons can't see movement, and on a critical success they could buy mere chance figure out where its voonerables are (it's a million-to-one chance, but it might just work!)...
Again, why not? All rolls, they take a bit of damage; critical failure, they break their arm or hand, and manage to dislodge a brick which starts a comically unlikely and extremely noisy Rube Goldberg chain reaction which ends up waking up and alerting all the guards; critical success, they hit the hidden button that opens the secret door (in another wall), starting a whole new subquest.
Why the hell not? You're the DM. Why do you not have copies of your player's character sheets?
I regularly play in groups with eight player characters, Kolkani. Do you want me to check all eight of their sheets and all their abilities that could possibly modify their scores or just ask them to make a Blah (Foo) check check and see what the result is? It's gonna be way faster for everyone to just ask them to roll.
How do you create fair encounters without knowing your player's character's stats? 🤨
I don't think I've ever needed more information than character level and a vague sense of whether that character/player is more or less effective in combat/social encounters than usual to make them. I definitely don't need to worry about whether they've got expertise in history, that's something they can bring up when I ask them for a history check
Just because I have a sense of what modifiers are and might check during encounter building doesn't mean I have them all memorized. That's genuinely like over a hundred numbers to have memorized. Plus I can look at a sheet while building an encounter and not waste anyone's time.
I never mentioned having them memorized. I specifically said you should have a copy of their sheets. lol
I never said I didn't have the sheets. You keep trying to make this about access to sheets.
Yeah; you just assumed I meant to memorize it, despite my initial comment straight up asking "don't you have your PC's sheets?" 🤦♂️
Throwing whatever you please at them. It's fair because they're informed of the risks and given opportunities to adjust their plans.
That’s partially less of an issue with fightclub