New DM here, playing casually with my friends for fun during Quarantine. An interesting series of events conspired last night.
Udaron the Monk says: “looks around and notices the goliath.” (he then asks OOC for a perception check on whether the goliath looks friendly or corrupt/zombie)
I say, uh ok.
-rolls an 18-
I respond: “so as you look at the goliath, you don't really notice anything strange about him. You don't know a whole lot about goliaths, maybe never even seen one before. But as far as you can tell, he's not undead, or corrupt. He also appears to be sleeping.”
First, I was taken off guard by the PC asking outright for an ability check. Nobody at the table had done this before, and it was strange. I let him roll, since that's what he wanted to do. The way we’ve been playing, looking and observing is not something that I normally require PCs to roll for. Realistically, I imagine that if you just look at something, you would be able to tell if it's a zombie. (Maybe flesh hanging off, a certain smell, or other things that are just obvious.) If he hadn’t outright asked to roll for perception, I would not have made him do so.
In the end, he was upset because he thought his roll allowed him to glean more information from observing the goliath than I gave him.
A similar thing happened later in the same session, when he tried to persuade the innkeep to let him and the team stay for free for 3 whole months. He once again asked to roll for persuasion, and he rolled a 16. Obviously you cannot convince the innkeep to let 4 total strangers stay in the inn for free, so I (secretly) made the DC 30. He therefore failed his persuasion attempt, and was not happy.
My questions:
- Should I have even allowed the PC to make the rolls?
- Should I simply have told him that a roll is not necessary and gave him the outcome of his efforts?
- Since I allowed the PC to make the roll, am I bound to letting the events play out as the roll dictates?
Best Answer
There's a lot going on here, so let's break it down.
It's OK to not have a roll and simply answer the question
From Chapter 7 of the PHB, under "Ability Checks":
The other convention generally used in D&D 5e is that only the DM calls for an ability check.
The DM asks the player for a roll, not the other way around
Here is what I have found works best. If a player tells me they want to roll an ability check, I respond with "What are you trying to do? Describe that to me." When they do that, we are back to the way the game is played by design.
Per "How to Play" (Basic Rules, p. 4):
I will either just answer the question, or go with the action moving forward (yes, you swing from the chandelier) or, I'll call for an ability check if it seems to need one: that's usually a matter of "This may succeed or fail, let's find out before we proceed."
What your player did was get the order of operations backwards.
What the player ought to be doing is describe to you, the DM, what they are doing and / or what they are trying to find out or to do. Then you, as DM, either answer the question (without a roll) or describe what they are asking about (without a roll), or, you ask them to roll an ability check that fits the situation since success or failure is in doubt.
In the above case, it appears to me that the roll (if you wanted one) might have been Wisdom (Insight) rather than Wisdom (Perception) if they are trying to discern the goliath's attitude toward them or the party.
You did the right thing. Persuasion checks are not mind control. Your player may be used to D&D 3.5e, where sometimes Diplomacy 'checks' had some outlandish results like that.
If your player pushes back when you remind them that Persuasion is not mind control, point them to the PHB and have them look up the 2nd-level spell Suggestion, or the 5th-level spell Dominate Person. Magic spells hold the kind of power they are trying to wield.