Bamboozled
Well-spotted, Fighter! That is indeed the Unnamed Pirate Ship II sailing off into the distance and leaving your party to die. Insult to injury, you guys are stranded in snipe territory. That’s a double-whammy!
While it’s unsurprising that Thief and Wizard failed to spot the deception, I would have expected more from Cleric. He’s usually so in tune with these Sense Motive situations. I guess it goes to show how everyone rolls low sometimes. The problem comes in when you’ve got to justify that mess narratively.
While we’ve talked about portraying intelligence in the past, there’s also the equal and opposite scenario. Whether it’s due to your own poor decisions as a player or the perverse antics of the dice, your normally on-the-ball character has found themselves in a we’re-smarter-than-this situation. They’ve fallen for an obvious ploy, stepped into a basic trap, or failed to remember mission-critical details. How do you maintain your character’s aura of competency when they done goofed?
The conventional wisdom here is to opt for outside interference. We see this malarkey with physical action all the time. The floorboards broke beneath your expert burglar. Your martial arts master was momentarily blinded by a bleeding headwound. A seagull bonked your dashing pirate in the face mid rope swing. The same strategy can apply to mental/social activities. If we’re in an Insight check situation, the criminal masterminds lying to you were “impossible to read.” If your learned wizard forgot some critical monster lore, then they took a sick day during that Defense Against the Dark Arts class back in undergrad. Maybe the elven tongue itself is famously easy to mistranslate. These are all plausible excuses for an oopsie, but there is another option on the table: Being smart doesn’t mean you’re immune to mistakes.
Like so many gamers, I love my power fantasy. I think it’s cool when my investigator notices the detail; when my wizard remembers the countercharm; when my silver-tongued bard successfully flatters the wealthy patron. But when these characters fail, it can be just as rewarding to show off character qualities like excessive pride, strain under pressure, or unfamiliarity with a strange new environment. In other words, you can transform misfortune into memorable RP. And with a little creativity, you can still look cool in your floppy pirate hat while you’re doing it.
Question of the day then! When your character is the one with the crappy rolls or the poorly-conceived plan, how do you react? Do you roll with the punches? Invent an excuse? Or do you sulk sullenly and glower at your character sheet? Tell us all about your own greatest screw-ups and most memorable misadventures down in the comments!
EARN BONUS LOOT! Check out the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. We’ve got a sketch feed full of Laurel’s original concept art. We’ve got early access to comics. There’s physical schwag, personalized art, and a monthly vote to see which class gets featured in the comic next. And perhaps my personal favorite, we’ve been hard at work bringing a thrice monthly NSFW Handbook of Erotic Fantasy comic to the world! So come one come all. Hurry while supplies of hot elf chicks lasts!
Well, I kinda expected this. :-/
Also, Wizard? You’re not supposed to yell at the snipe; you should clap your hands thrice. :p
I see that we were in different scout troops. 😛
Since snipe’s live near the coast it’s not impossible that they’ll actually find one, through Wizard’s shouting would probably scare it away.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snipe
(My favorite Snipe Hunt story is the one about a new recruit whose sister happened to have one as a pet that he went and borrowed when his new unit decided to prank him)
On to the discussion question: For crappy rolls I prefer just accepting it and moving on, including as a GM. Don’t mock it or dwell on the failure, a simple “your shot misses them and hit the tree behind them” or “your sword blow bounces off their armor” is more than sufficient. I find that making a lot of excuses just end up drawing attention and making the character feel more incompetent rather than less.
In much the same way that someone in real life that made a long protest of excuses for why their mistakes aren’t their fault would come off as insecure and incompetent.
The last effect here is strongest when someone get’s a streak of unlucky rolls though a single instance of a sudden gust of wind pushing an arrow out of the way is a lot let conspicuous than 7 coincidences in a row
When I asked Laurel about her history with today’s topic, her response was, “Mix it up.” The excuse works once in a while. The character actually fucking up can be fun sometimes. But you’re right: a simple “you miss” should 100% be part of the mix.
I once played in an evil pathfinder campaign, where I played an elf wizard who was a mixture between Lucius Malfoy (Harry Potter) and René Belloq (Indiana Jones). Basically an upper class historian. His nemesis was a gnome called James Blondi, who he blamed for killing his wife (Technically it was my character who killed her, some friendly fire while trying to kill Blondi).
I played him as an utter prick. He looked down on everyone, especially gnomes and his go to move in any situation was trying to Karen his way through it. The main thing that made him work, apart form the comedic genius of my DM, was the fact that not only did I consistently roll like garbage with him, but almost every combat started with someone getting a crit on him, downing him instantly. Leading him to basically constantly suffer instant comeuppance for his arrogance. I had always planned on playing him as a character with a lot of hubris, but the way the dice added to the story was perfect.
Overall some of my favorite roleplaying moments have come from bad rolls, and it has lead to some of the best character moments I have seen. The possibility for something to go horribly and hilariously wrong is one of the things I love the most about roleplaying games.
[He looked down on everyone, especially gnomes]
To be fair, I think most people look down on gnomes… But not straight down; bad for the spine.
There was a bit of a problem with it when we encountered three gnomes standing on top of each other.
Tough life for a PC when even your player roots against you. I do think that’s healthy though. Identifying with your character can be fun, but a bit or role distance allows for its own kind of fun:
https://www.sociologyguide.com/basic-concepts/role-distance.php
I find it to be pretty necessary for me to distance myself when I play an evil character, or I have difficulties getting into the proper spirit of it. My default playmode is “Good person, who still wants to get rewards”, so playing someone who is outright evil can be difficult.
Of course it also helps to Megamind it up a bit. Makes it much more fun to be evil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy2zB8bLSpk
While I do short Out of character cursing like a sailor and thrwathening to perform dice sacrifice during a aeries of bad rolls, I do like to roleplay the failures more than successes, mainly for the reasons mentioned on previous page. Story time:
In WFRP we are having a chaos campaing and our warband was returning from successfull raid, even got a new imperial warship to fill up ranks. So as we were aproaching the port I realise that the southern ships run with more depth than our longboats and tell our warleader (anpther PC) that we should put some one up front to measure depth, my advice gets ignored, and behold not too long after the ship hits something hard and forces those on deck to roll Agility to stay upright, I roll a 100, so yeah a critical failure… My choise of role play was to describe my Berserker loosing his footing and falling over the railing, as he falls he yells “I told you to measure the de…*splash*” luckily my berserker is one of the few who can swim so I was able to get to the shore, soaking and having lost my great weapon (luckily our loot included better replacement) but otherwise in no worse condition. The GM was eager to let my plan to go through (while swimming is a basic skill very few professions learn any ranks in it, so most have half the characteristic to roll with), then he realised I can swim and would not need my fellows to try and rescue me and his disapointment would have only been better if I could have seen his face.
When the dice go bad, we’d usually go with some interpretation that doesn’t make the character look incompetent at their core skills. If my ranger flubs a perception check, it’s because he’s temporarily distracted… that something else caught his attention. If the rogue fumbles an acrobatics check, it’s a loose floorboard or something that messed with this footing. Etc.
Truer words never spoken. Ironic, too
Hoisted by my own petard!
Trying to quote “Being smart doesn’t mean you’re immune mistakes”
One of these days I’ll learn this pesky syntax!
Ha! I see you caught my little joke that I put in there on purpose for ironic irony purposes. That’s the sort of clever meta thing that only a writer of my level would even attempt! >_>
Yeah, let’s go with that. 😉
(Seriously, I like what I’ve seen of your writing, and to err is human.)
As my friend once said, “To err is human, but to pun is divine”. Based on that metric, I’d say Colin is somewhere between a patron saint and a demigod by this point
Yeah… your writing/level of humor is really… something ;P
My Swashbuckler NEVER fail his perception rolls.
.
.
.
He does often get distracted by a passing butterfly…
Your dude in a deadly battle: https://i.gifer.com/11aQ.mp4
But she gets to keep the hat, right?
I guess it’s fair the main party gets a deserted island episode
This is why my spellcasters always specialize in spells that ensure I’m not the one rolling dice. Someone else getting a good roll is almost universally easier to accept than me getting a bad one.
remember that snazzy crossbow I talked about the other day?
https://www.aonprd.com/Relics.aspx?ItemName=Dignity%27s%20Barb
Well I keep is mostly because it’s an artifact with (hopefully) role playing bonus.
When I exhausted all other options I shoot with it, even managed to kill BBEG last session (after 2 dead PCs and the end of all other spells).
Because In Game, after the dice are rolled (badly, like lower end of single digits, often), it’s pretty shit.
As a worshiper of Tymora, Goddess of Luck, Derrik Darkluster, Gentleman Adventurer is well aware that luck comes in both good and bad forms, and the dice have always done an amazing job of emphasizing that point. He has gotten incredibly lucky when doing so is what he needs to just scrape by, but at the same time he has also had a LONG constant streak of being unable to hit crap. Literal 50/50 odds on hitting and the entire combat from beginning to end resulted in zero hits.
Lady Luck can be fickle as hell.
Won’t that be rolling with failure something that some games actually got as a mechanic? 🙂
Are you talking meta currency type stuff?
“For every failure, you get a +1 XP?” I know I’ve seen that mechanic, but I can’t for the life of me remember where.
Powered by the Apocalypse games will usually grant you an experience point (or their equivalent) when you roll 6 or lower (complete failure)
Dungeon World, I think. I’m 99% sure it was a little more nuanced than that, but you captured the soul of the bonus EXP there.
You’ve stumbled upon what is one of my biggest pet peeves of this hobby. The prevailing GM behavior of just taking a failed roll and portraying your character as incompetent in open defiance of your wishes/what your character is built to do.
Don’t misunderstand me, if *I’m* the one getting a say in what a failed roll looks like in RP I’ll reasonably often have it be the character’s fault in some manner if that makes sense/is funny. But that’s pretty different from someone else declaring your character essentially just *isn’t* what you wish to establish them as.
I’m sure I’m hardly alone in the whole “Oh you want to climb a tree/walk while chewing bumblegum? Make a roll! Oh you failed an arbitrarily decided DC for an activity that shouldn’t require a roll at all? Guess your character is a bafoon and pratfalls. Oh and also takes damage even though you’re level 1 and even one or two points of damage puts you *much* closer to death.”
(Yes, this is multiple issues portrayed here, but they *very* often go hand in hand as they’re very classic bad GMing tropes.)
I have to agree with this. The whole weirdness of those situations are why 5e has kind of lost its luster for me. I mean, 5e is still probably the best “gateway” game for RPGs but by now I’m sort of sick of some of its peculiarities. The bad GM syndrome is a major factor too.
Too many GMs call rolls for things that shouldn’t be rolled.
It’s one of my bigger peeves with RPGs.
While I feel like 40K Wrath & Glory is bit bare bones it does have this idea of failing forward, when you fail a roll it’s not necesary of failure of the task, but takes longer, not a fully completed one or blows in your face while doing what it was supposed to do.
It also removes the very high mortality rate of older systems.
The concepts of “yes and” and “yes but” are generally good tips all around.
It’s really bad when Fighter is the one to figure it out.
Basically a Jason Mendoza in The Good Place moment there.
Yeah, when the guy whose entire shtick is being here for the brute killing and nothing else figures it out before the Rogue, the Wizard, and the Cleric…that must have been an incredible series of rolls.
Takes an idiot to recognize an idiot.
Jokes on Swash and Buckle – the DM prepared a Leviathan fight with ship combat in mind. And he sure as heck isn’t gonna let days of prep time go to waste because the PCs done goofed.
Funny thing is, with flight spells or very good paddle checks, the PCs could catch up to the boat again.
This. Also, I’d say that the Party should know better in the first place, but… it’s the Party. And Handbook-World.
How salty I get depends on how long the bad luck streak goes.
I can handle bad rolls. A whole night of nothing but bad rolls is going to make me grumpy, though. I’m not a big fan of nights where my role in the group could be approximated by a punching bag with “I skip my turn” scrawled on it.
Sounds of combat alert the party that there is trouble inside the bedroom of the princess we’ve been hired to protect, despite the female archer who we’ve stationed in the room with her.
My 24 Strength half-orc Crit-Fails an open doors check; he next swings his weapon to sunder the oak door; the enchanted great club goes sailing *behind him*, across the room, and down the funny stairs to the floor below. The half-orc begins trying to destroy the door with pummeling damage until the rest of the party arrives.
Other PCs & DM (after fits of uproarious laughter): “Your genuine fear for the combined fate of the princess and your teammate has driven you to the brink of madness–you tripped over your own feet in your headlong rush the door, then clipped the stone archway overhead with your mighty swing, disarming yourself from the shock of the stone’s unexpected resistance.”
I got to punch-kill ninjas in the ensuing combat, then heal *a lot* of people, so the injury to my pride was slightly assuaged.