Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Funny you resurrected a thread from last year to make this comment. Tools now have a lot more clear uses in the newest PHB. https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/free-rules/equipment#Tools
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
I'm starting a new campaign and am building a professional gambler. Your insight into Carousing gave me an idea. I intend to get my DM to allow me to adjust the random Carousing roll by +/- 10 for each Gaming set proficiency to make money during downtime.
Just keep in mind that those skills come with a price - assuming you’re winning regularly because of the skill you’re also more likely to have to deal with sore losers. So be prepared for knife fights and gambling hall brawls
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Gaming sets in D&D 5e aren't just about rolling dice - they're tools for immersion, roleplay, and adding depth to your character's background. If you're proficient with a gaming set, you can add your proficiency bonus to ability checks made to play a game with that set. This means you can use your skills in a more narrative context, like bluffing in a card game or reading an opponent's tells.
I have seen this mentioned a few times in this thread, "you can add your proficiency bonus to ability checks ".
So if you are proficient with dragon chess, what skills can be used and based on https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dnd/br-2024/equipment#OtherTools you can do a wisdom bonus, plus the proficiency bonus. What (else) would be needed to determine if you roll for advantage?
Depends on what your aiming for but Skills like Insight, Deception, Slight of Hand could all be relevant to a a character playing a game. Or wasnt that what you were asking?
Thank you, myself being an unimaginative tool, I was trying unsuccessfully to figure what other skills can be used.
So has an example to get a roll on a d20 to determine success, Using dragon chess
wisdom bonus
Proficiency +
Skill either history (for knowing previous maneuvers) or insight understand the opponent's style)
Add those three +/- and add to the roll.
I saw a mention of an advantage on rolls, so how is that determined for a tool/game?
Would it always be a DC (win = 20)? Can the DM roll for the opponent and high score wins?
Can/should the DC be modified to account for the opponent?
If you have proficiency with both the skill and the tool, you don't add the proficiency bonus twice. You add it once, and roll with advantage.
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Yeah you can do that
You can't add the proficiency bonus twice, if that's what you're saying. See my post above yours.
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So yes, I'm responding to an old query and I'm going to more or less echo what was said above, but I will also try to expand it a bit.
Gaming sets are tools. It appears that when you make a roll to use a tool you have basically three options.
The first is when you have no proficiency in the tool. In that case you make either a skill roll for a relevant skill or a tool roll with no proficiency. A couple of examples:
If a skill is appropriate but you don't have proficiency in the skill, you still make the roll. You just make it without any proficiency bonus, just like any other time you make a skill roll.
The second situation is when you have proficiency in the tool but don't have the relevant skill or there is no relevant skill. The tool has a listed ability and you use that ability plus your Proficency Bonus. A couple of examples:
As a note, it may be important to remember that, RAW, a skill is not being used. Things like Guidance might not provide a bonus since they talk about applying to skills. (n.b.: I am not saying that a DM who allows the Guidance bonus is wrong. There is a very compelling argument to be made that it would still apply under RAI. I'm merely pointing out the RAW condition)
The third situation is when you have proficiency in a skill and proficiency in the tool involved. In that situation you roll the skill with Advantage. It is important to realize you are rolling the skill and not ability modifier + tool proficiency because skills may have bonuses that exceed a simply proficiency bonus. The last set of examples:
Full disclosure, this is my interpretation of the rules. I wouldn't say I am House Ruling this because I honestly believe this is how the designers intend for the rules to work. However, there is nothing written that I am aware of that spells it out in these explicit terms. (There's also nothing I'm aware of that explicitly states something different. If there was then I would not maintain this position).
As far as the DC of the roll, that is highly situational. The majority of times the DC is relatively static (this lock has a DC of 15, cooking food is DC 10, etc.). In the case of gaming sets, however, it may be a straight up DC for a game like craps, but when the set is used to play against an adversary then the DC would probably consist of opposed rolls.
e.g.: The player is playing cards against an NPC. The player has proficiency in cards and Expertise in Wisdom(Insight). The NPC has proficiency in cards, Dexterity(Slight of Hand), and Charisma(Deception). The player wants to try and read any tells the NPC might have so they roll Wisdom(Insight), which probably has a very high bonus, with Advantage. That is compared against the NPC's Charisma(Deception). Meanwhile the NPC is trying to cheat, so they roll Dexterity(Slight of Hand) with Advantage. The player does not have proficiency in Wisdom(Perception) but they still make a Wisdom + PB roll because of their proficiency in cards and that roll is compared against the NPC's result.
If the Wisdom + PB roll beats the Dexterity(Slight of Hand) roll then the cheater gets caught. If it doesn't and the Wisdom(Insight) roll doesn't beat the Charisma(Deception) roll then the NPC wins through successfully cheating. If the Wisdom(Insight) beats the Charisma(Deception) and the Dexterity(Slight of Hand) beats the Wisdom + PB roll then it becomes a question of margins. If Wisdom(Insight) won by more than Dexterity(Slight of Hand) then the NPC successfully cheated (i.e. didn't get caught) but they didn't cheat well enough to actually win the game.
I would use the opposed rolls to represent multiple hands being played, not individual ones. That explains why the NPC can successfully cheat and still lose. They can't cheat every single hand and the player is good enough at reading them that they fold on those hands where they do cheat. They don't necessarily know that the NPC is cheating, but they recognize when the NPC is confident he's going to win and they respond appropriately. It also allows for draws. Sure, each hand has a winner, but at the end of multiple hands the characters have the same amount they started with.
I think it's worth pointing out that in the second situation you're describing, the idea of an ability check with no skill at all has largely been stripped out of the 5.5e rules. While the rules don't explicitly say checks like this can't happen, all the situations where the 5e rules called for them have been modified to either make these checks into ability checks with skills, or into saving throws.
It's also worth noting, in that specific case, that you are still making (e.g.) a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check if the DM calls for one, even if you don't have proficiency in Acrobatics. The skill is still being used even if you're not proficient in it.
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Yes, you could make the roll with no bonus, but why? Your proficiency in the tool provides a bonus.
I will add that I would probably modify the ability being used by the skill being attempted, so if you try to bluff and you have proficiency in cards but not Charisma(Deception) I, personally, would have you use Charisma + PB instead of Wisdom + PB because of how you are attempting to use the tool. That is not, strictly, RAW, but even if you hold tightly to RAW your Wisdom + PB will most likely exceed your straight up Charisma roll. There might be some edge cases under the strict RAW, (low level character so the PB is also small and for some reason the tool they have proficiency in uses their dump stat) but those will probably be few and far between.
I'm sorry if I worded that in a misleading way. My point was that when you said this:
That was incorrect. If the DM asks you for a Wisdom (Insight) check to try to win a card game, that's still an Insight check even if you don't have proficiency in Insight and are adding your proficiency bonus because you're proficient in cards as a tool. A skill is still being used even though you're not proficient in that skill. This means that Guidance can still be used, as can any effects that give you bonuses specifically to Insight checks.
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True, but, RAW, you then have to give up the proficiency bonus from the tool proficiency since the roll you are making is a skill roll (without proficiency) and not a tool use roll. Is the bonus from Guidance going to exceed the PB?
And just for clarity, I am pointing out that is is very strictly RAW stuff and I'm trying to phrase it in a manner of 'consider this', not 'this is the way it is'. I, personally, would say 'roll the appropriate stat + PB + Guidance' (e.g. you don't have Charisma(Deception) but you are trying to bluff at cards, so roll Charisma + PB + Guidance because of your proficiency in cards) because I think that's what the designers would say. I am simply acknowledging the arguments (that I don't happen to agree with, but which are still valid) that there may be some additional limitations.
Again, that's not correct in the 5.5e rules. You're talking like something has to be either a "skill roll" or a "tool use roll", and not both. That just is not how ability checks in 5.5e work; an ability check can use both a skill and a tool. Aside from not being able to add the proficiency bonus more than once, there's nothing saying that a roll can't benefit from both effects that apply to the skill and effects that apply to the tool at the same time.
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I completely accept your argument that an ability check can be both a skill roll and a tool use roll at the same time (just without giving multiple PBs). I am merely acknowledging that there is an argument (again, one I happen to disagree with) that it can only be one or the other.
Just to add super quickly;
The 'point' of gaming sets (or any tool) is to provide other avenues for the game to be played. They allow for stories based around concepts like Casino Royale. Naturally they should not come into play with every adventure, they probably shouldn't dominate/solve the adventure, and shouldn't be a single roll (Bond still gets into plenty of life threatening situations in the movie rather than just rolling one die and wiping out Le Chiffre's bank roll). The 'base rules' are more for use when it is less important (e.g. party stops at an inn as they are heading somewhere else. Player wants to try and pick up some extra coin. A quick roll and we are moving on). If they are a critical part of the adventure, flesh out the rules like I did up above.
They can also be used to make a character more interesting. My bard has proficiency in cards, expertise in Insight, Deception, and Peruasion, and will often try to engage people in card games so he can do things like recognize when they are being deceitful, put NPCs at ease, pick up rumors, etc. He also uses it as a way to give assistance to people (such as poor farmers) without hurting their pride. (Damn, you're cleaning me out. Tell you what, for this last hand I'll play a song that will grant you a good harvest (i.e. Plant Growth) if you win, and if you lose you give me back half of what you took off of me. Deal?)
They provide opportunities that allow for stories that exceed the minimalistic 'kick in the door, kill the monster, take all the treasure' plot line.
To be clear, if you like the kick/kill/take style of playing, that's absolutely fine. It's a game and the objective is to have fun. Don't let people tell you that you're 'doing it wrong' because you are playing it differently from them. It is simply that, if that's you, gaming sets probably don't fulfill much of a role.
huh. learn something new every day.
I had not realized that having proficiency in a skill as well as the applicable tool gives you advantage on the roll.
Thanks, guys!
It should be noted that this is a change introduced in the 5.5e rules. Tables still using the 5e rules might not do it this way.
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