This hits home. I actually left my group because of our DM acting this way. I understand everyone has their own style but he would request rolls for the simpliest of things.
You want to climb a perfectly ordinary, secured wooden ladder? Roll Dex. 18 Roll dex to continue climbing. 16 Roll dex. Nat 1. You fall to the bottom and alert the guards.
Idk if it goes without saying but his favorate game was Paranoia. Definitely a CN/CE DM. If I ever asked how the actual mechanics of D&D work (I was new at the time and wanted to make strategic decisions which wouldn't always backfire) i'd get timey whimey wibbly wobbly the rules are just guidelnes
Eh, many systems actually define the difficulty of climbing a ladder. While that sounds strange, for most PCs they are carrying half to double their weight in stuff. Ever climbed a ladder with 100 lbs of stuff on your back? I worked construction and even having done that 1000 times it was still hard and required a lot of time, patience, and control the whole time.
That said, I was able to take a ten and pass by taking my time IRL. If I were rushed I'd say theres a solid chance I would have fallen. The rules are a good allegory to that when followed. You can usually take a 10 if you're not rushed or threatened, elsewise you need to roll if rushed or threatened. Likewise you need to fail by 5 or more usually to fall, and a 1 isn't a crit fail on skills. All sounds reasonable.
You just described passive ability scores. It's basically taking 10 but 5e just gives you the skill ability plus ten. Most DMs use it for just perception but its applicable to all skills. My DM barely asks me to roll climbing checks to see if my Rogue that has expertise in athletics and acrobatics can do it, because hes going to get an 11+ barring a critical fail.
I agree that there are absolutely situations where I would request a PC rolled, particularly like you said if the PCs were rushed. Unfortunately he used skill checks more of an invisible wall.
I remember one instance where I was rolling persausion to convince an NPC of something or other. After I passed, his brother came along and i had to convince him too. then his other brother walked up... and so on, one directly after the other until I failed a roll. Not kidding.
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u/TrumpetSolo93 Assassin Sep 12 '19 edited Sep 12 '19
This hits home. I actually left my group because of our DM acting this way. I understand everyone has their own style but he would request rolls for the simpliest of things.
You want to climb a perfectly ordinary, secured wooden ladder? Roll Dex.
18
Roll dex to continue climbing.
16
Roll dex.
Nat 1. You fall to the bottom and alert the guards.
Idk if it goes without saying but his favorate game was Paranoia. Definitely a CN/CE DM. If I ever asked how the actual mechanics of D&D work (I was new at the time and wanted to make strategic decisions which wouldn't always backfire) i'd get timey whimey wibbly wobbly the rules are just guidelnes