Consider two scenarios. In the first:
Player: I want to hack the Lytekkas mainframe.
GM: Make a DC 20 Hacking check.
And in the second:
Player: Okay, I’ve seduced the secretary to social engineer login credentials and Suzie has snuck in and planted a spoofed router to give us remote access. Let’s hack the Lytekkas mainframe!
GM: Make a DC 20 Hacking check.
When reduced to this core dynamic, we can immediately see that something has gone wrong here. Spread out over the course of several actions and multiple minutes of gameplay, however, this is a trap that a lot of GMs fall into. It can get even more egregious if failing the Seduction or Stealth checks can scuttle the entire hacking attempt, resulting in rolling to failure that actually makes the clever, detailed planning LESS likely to succeed than no plan at all.
Either way, though, this sort of thing is hopelessly frustrating to the players, and will quickly result in them no longer bothering to make plans. If their actions are pointless — or, worse yet, debilitating — why would they continue making the effort? Without correction, gameplay will become a flat, rote exercise. Players will also disengage from the game generally.
MAKING PLANS
I don’t know what plans your players might come up with. (That’s the fun part!) They might be simple and straightforward, or they might be astoundingly complex Rube Goldberg machines. But if the players come up with a good plan, then — compared to the default or bullheaded approach — the plan should mechanically do one or more of the following:
- Reduce the number of required rolls. (Which could include reducing how many characters need to make a roll.)
- Eliminate the need to roll at all.
- Increase the number of rolls, but not the total number of successes required across those rolls.
- Reduce the difficulty of the roll(s).
- Grant a bonus to the roll(s).
- Change the skill/ability being rolled (presumably to one the PC is better at).
- Reduce and/or change the potential consequences of a failed roll.
- Improve the potential benefits of a successful roll.
This is, ultimately, a specialized case of allowing player expertise to trump character expertise: The player has gone to the effort of making a plan, and that effort should be reflected in your ruling.
PLANNING TIPS
I frequently find it useful to explain exactly how the plan is benefitting the PCs.
Player: Okay, I’ve seduced the secretary to social engineer login credentials and Suzie has snuck in and planted a spoofed router to give us remote access. Let’s hack the Lytekkas mainframe!
GM: Make a DC 12 Hacking check.
Compared to our earlier example — where it was a DC 20 Hacking check — the careful planning of the players has had a huge effect! But if the players don’t know the original difficulty of the check, their perception may be that their plan was pointless.
GM: The stolen login credentials and wi-fi access point each reduce the DC of your Hacking check by 4, so I need a DC 12 Hacking check.
With a clear understanding of the benefits, these players will go looking for more opportunities to shift the odds in their favor.
What if the PCs come up with a bad plan, though? Do you still need to reward them by following the guidelines above? Absolutely not. (“Yes, I understand that you thought triggering the sprinkler system in the server room would make it easier to hack the network. But what actually happens is the servers are all knocked offline and you’ve lost your vector for making a Hacking check.”)
Along the same lines, it’s OK for plans to go awry. For example, failing the Seduction check can cause all kinds of complications or even scuttle things entirely, IF a success on that check would grant a truly meaningful benefit. That’s not rolling to failure; that’s taking a gamble. (In the movie Sneakers, a partial failure on a Seduction check gives the PCs access to a programmer’s ID card, but also causes the programmer to twig to what’s happening and raise the alarm halfway through their heist.)
COMBAT PLANNING
Tactical planning in combat should follow the same general guidelines as any other planning, but there’s a specific issue to watch out for in combat: action economy.
Whether performing stunts or coordinating with other PCs, if a plan requires a setup or supporting action, the potential benefit for that action must be larger than just making an attack yourself. To put that another way, you need to look at the total cost (including the opportunity cost) of the plan and make sure that the payoff is larger than the cost. If it isn’t, don’t be surprised when the players all default back to, “I hit it with my sword.”
Unfortunately, it turns out that it can be quite difficult to find this balance, particularly if you’re responding on-the-fly to some bespoke plan the players have just thrown together. And it turns out most RPGs aren’t designed to help you with this. (Although there are some that do.) So there are a few rules of thumb that I use.
First, if this is a one-off situation, I’ll err on the side of making the payoff more powerful. I’d rather have it be worthwhile than not, and even if I get it wrong, it’s a one-time advantage, not the end of the world. (If the setup is easily repeatable in every fight, on the other hand, you need to be a little more cautious so that it doesn’t become something abusable and, therefore, boring.)
Second, instead of making a check as a separate action (which carries with it the opportunity cost of whatever else the action could have been spent on), incorporate the check into the existing action. Now you just need to balance the payoff against the increased likelihood of failure (due to the additional check), and that’s a lot easier to do.
Example: You’re playing in a system that doesn’t normally track flanking bonuses, but a player wants to flank an enemy to help another PC’s attack. If you required them to make some sort of bespoke flanking action instead of their normal attack, the benefit to the other player would need to be larger than the potential damage of the attack they passed up. But if you instead rule that they can take a penalty to their attack to grant a bonus to their comrade’s attack, that’s a lot easier to balance.
Alternatively, if a PC is spending an action to do nothing except set something up, then the benefit of successfully setting it up should be, at a minimum, granting a full bonus action (either to their future self or another PC). For some reason, this can often feel as if it’s “too much,” and there are systems and situations where trading one type of action for another isn’t balanced (so I’m not saying that every set up should be granting a blank check). Keep in mind, though, that even with the exact same action, simply delaying when it’s taken from the moment of setup to the moment of payoff is already a disadvantage (albeit it balanced by the potential benefits of being able to batch actions up).
FURTHER READING
The Art of Pacing
The Art of the Key
GM Don’t List
In combat specifically, I find that new players often want to take creative actions that really work against the system. Here’s a somewhat contrived example (assume Pathfinder 1e rules)
GM: Player, you are on the ground with the orc standing over you menacingly. Be aware that standing up next to the orc will give him an attack of opportunity, and that you can attack from the ground with a penalty.What do you want to do?
Player: The ground is just dirt, right? I grab a handful of dirt and fling it at the orc’s face to distract him, and roll to a crouch while thrusting at the orc’s belly
GM, thinking: That’s a cool idea, reasonably cinematic, and makes sense.
GM, also thinking: That’s a pretty textbook Dirty Trick combat maneuver. The character doesn’t have Improved Dirty Trick, so they’ll take an attack of opportunity for trying-exactly what they’re trying to avoid. They have a horrible CMB compared to the orc’s CMD, so they’ll probably fail. If they succeed, they’ll Blind the orc which will prevent the second AoO at least, but they’ve taken one for the chance to avoid another. That will use their Standard Action, so they can’t do the attack, but they could at least stand up.
GM: You can try to throw the dirt, but you’ll take an attack of opportunity for trying and I don’t think you’re likely to succeed. If you do succeed, you can stand up without taking an attack of opportunity, but you’ll have used your standard action already and can’t attack. If you succeed, the orc will be Blind for one turn, but he can use his Move action to clean his face and remove the penalty. And he’s probably not planning on using the Move action for anything else…
Player: So you’re saying I can try to do something, take an attack, and probably fail, or I can just stand up and attack?
GM: Pretty much
Player: … Fine. I guess I just stand up, and attack
GM, rolls AoO: Oh dear, that’s a crit
The whole exchange just isn’t very fun. The player was invested, came up with a plan to overcome their disadvantage and accomplish what they wanted, only to be shut down and told to just do the boring stupid thing-and got smacked heavily for doing the thing they knew was dumb but were basically told they had to do anyway. The last part was random chance, but Murphy tends to have a say. The GM would like to let the player do something fun and reward them for engagement, but the rules seem clear enough. The player’s plan makes getting tripped into an advantage, which doesn’t seem fair or sustainable in the future, and even if you just let them negate the trip and stand up without the attack of opportunity that’s a significant nerf to tripping and makes a number of much higher level options obsolete.
So, how do you handle stuff like this? There’s a lot of less egregious cases that basically break down to trying to get an attack with a rider, which seems like it’s something that could be adjudicated to everyone’s satisfaction, but I at least struggle with this at the table.
Another way to solve to the problem of the first example is by using vectors. The GM could decide that hacking the mainframe is too complex an action to be resolved in one action and tell the players they need to find a way to gain access and/or permission. Then the players come up with the plan to seduce the secretary and plant the router, arriving back at the second half of the example organically.
@Dark Canuck: Broadly speaking, I just try to avoid playing games that suck. And mid- to late-era D&D 3E/PF where the designers decided everything should be locked behind a feat sucked. A lot.
One of the things I used to do is read through D&D 3E feat lists, grab the cool combat maneuvers, and just remove the feat requirement. The feat would instead, like the feats from the original PHB, offer improved versions of these combat maneuvers.
When it comes specifically to “attacks with riders,” check out 5th Edition Called Shots.
The wi-fi access point in the example seems to me like it would fall under “reduce and/or change the potential consequences of a failed roll” rather than “reduce the difficulty of the roll”. If the PCs don’t have to be in the Lytekkas building to access the mainframe, then they don’t have to worry about being caught by security if their hacking attempt fails.
I’d also add one more to the bullet-point list of possible benefits: “make the roll possible in the first place”. As Wesley said, gaining access to the Lytekkas mainframe could be a necessary first step in hacking it. It depends on the situation, though:
If you’re playing Shadowrun, and acquiring restricted information from Lytekkas is the job, then the correct response to “I want to hack the Lytekkas mainframe” is “Okay, how do you plan to do that?”
On the other hand, if you’re playing Delta Green and the Lytekkas mainframe is just one of several possible sources of information about a person of interest, then it’s probably not worth spending a lot of game time on the details. As long as it’s not part of an air-gapped network, just have the PCs make a Hacking check and move on.
By the way, I *love* Sneakers! It’s one of my top three favorite movies of all time. (The other two being Charade (1963) and The Princess Bride.)
@Dark Canuck: A few things to keep in mind that I’ve found helpful.
The fictional framing of the scene can be really important in how it feels. If the orc is just standing there menacingly it can feel weird you can’t get a nice handful of dirt and try to fling dirt at his face. If you just got knocked down to the ground and the orc is trying to bring his axe down on your skull in the next second it makes sense that grabbing that dirt and accurately flinging it is a much more difficult task.
Give a broad look for mechanical options to support fiction first plans. Shutting the plan down follows from deciding the plan is definitely the dirty trick maneuver and going to blind the target for a round. That is absolutely a good fit for the action but not the only fit. You could say that throwing dirt in the orc’s face is taking a full defense, you could just say they make a dust cloud and it imposes -1 to the next attack roll like dazzled does.
@wyvern – the problem with “make the solution necessary for being able to advance the game” is what if it fails?
Same as if you offer them the gamble as in Justin’s Sneakers example (which I also love) but there are no other possible options. Then it’s not a “high risk, high reward” choice. It’s a Hail Mary.
They work in movies because Murphy doesn’t have final script approval.
Players can fail. But that should only happen when they’ve made poor choices. Not when the dice go against them once.
@Wyvern: I’ll have to check out Charade. I’ve never had the pleasure.
This is ultimately, one of the big issues that make GMing hard.
People often talk about the difficulty of adjudicating and making things more interesting than “You suceed/you fail”, but even before the roll is made, you are already having to:
Pick a DC
Decide whether missing that DC means failure, or partial failure.
Decide which skill to roll, and if they have advnatage/disadvantage.
Decide how and if to communicate this to your players.
Personally, I often pause, say, “Make a… religion check…” and I allow them a moment to possible negotiate a different skill.
but what I’m REALLY doing, is giving myself more time to think.
what I often try to do is have in mind:
A minimum dc/target for partial success/success with a cost.
Decide a DC for a the heroic success
If they beat that by a good margin I’ll throw in a little extra humilitation for enemies or awe from onlookers.
But as Justin points out- the communication matters. And thats an easy thing to get lost in the chaos of the action. And why its important to keep reading these posts even when you’ve been doing it for 25 years!
@wyvern – the problem with “make the solution necessary for being able to advance the game” is what if it fails?
Good thing I didn’t say that then. In both my examples, hacking the mainframe is just *one* possible solution. In the first one, the goal I specified wasn’t “hack the Lytekkas mainframe”, it was “acquire restricted information from Lytekkas”. In the second one, I explicitly stated that the mainframe was “one of several possible sources of information”.
Single-point-of-failure skill checks *are* a problem, and one that Justin has talked about and proposed solutions to in multiple articles throughout the history of this site. But that’s not what I was talking about. I merely pointed out that if you’re trying to hack the the Lytekkas mainframe, it’s not unreasonable for the GM to ask you how you plan to gain access to the mainframe. Just like you have to gain entry to someone’s house *before* you can roll a skill check to break into their safe.
@Dark Canuck: This is a scenario where framing is crucial.
Fighting dirty is surprisingly hard to do. Not everyone is running around with Pocket Sand(tm) ready to throw it in their enemy’s face, and a lot of dirt is not great for throwing at people. Moreover, that orc is probably not standing over you flexing menacingly, he’s probably trying to follow up that strike that knocked you down, the framing of the combat just gives the character an opportunity to do something before he does (because Pathfinder 1e is using d20 style turn based combat). So that’s what the Dirty Tricks feat represents, the ability to *actually* improvise and throw dirt in your opponent’s face effectively.
In this scenario, you have a few options:
1. You can tell him “that won’t work. The dirt here isn’t loose and dusty, it’s peaty clay. You can’t grab a handful of it without ripping out a handful of grass roots.”
2. You can let him try to use the feat without training. I’m not as familiar with Pathfinder 1e, but in PF2 Dirty Tricks lets you apply Clumsy with a Thievery check, so I might let him do that at a penalty.
3. You can improvise something that accomplishes some of what they’re trying to do. “So you can throw a handful of dirt at them, but it will cost you one of your attacks and it will still trigger the Attack of Opportunity. He’s coming right at you, and he’s swinging for blood. But I’ll give him a -2/-4/etc on the Attack of Opportunity since he’s trying to avoid the dirt.”
What is critically important here is to ensure that the player understands the choice they’re making. The absolute biggest trap is to let the player try something but then have it not work because the player didn’t realize it required something their character is terrible at.
@Wyvern: I disagree that single-point-of-failure skill checks are a problem.
I say that as someone who uses the three clue rule and similar techniques constantly, and evangelizes about them to anyone who will listen.
But I think its important to remember that every adventure, every single one, is experienced linearly by the players. And that means that every adventure can and may come down to a single point of failure. This is because even in a three clue rule investigation, you can absolutely reach a point where every possible lead has been missed, misinterpreted, lost, what have you and the players perceive only one viable path before them. If they fail in any check required for that path, they fail the adventure. This is fine. Assuming that failure was ever a real option, but if its not I’d question why your group was bothering with skill checks and not using a storytelling system that allows the players to determine outcomes.
What’s interesting is that once we accept that failure is an acceptable outcome to an adventure, we can choose to intentionally lock success behind a single check. We can use the narrowness of the path to success as a tool to construct the tone we want for our adventures.
The usual counterargument is that failure is a less satisfying outcome than failure, but frankly I’ve had enough unsatisfying successes to believe that whatever the possible outcomes, the real problem is that they need proper effort put into them and most people instinctively put more effort into thinking about what will happen if the players succeed in an adventure than if they fail.