How yall do puzzles

What do you guys do for giving puzzles to your players? i have no idea how it's supposed to go because the 2 times i tried it they got stuck and needed lots of hints or just found an alternate wayl

Greetings waggben30,

What do you mean by "giving puzzles to your players"?
Are you talking about a 'hand-out' that they have to solve, or are you talking about describing a situation in which there is, for example; a series of levers that have to be pulled to lower a bridge so the players can cross?

Chapter 2: Running the Game in the DMG talks about Puzzles in a few locations:

• Problem Solving (talking about types of players and players that like to problem solve)
• Running Exploration (talking about the things your Players might run into)
• Tracking Time (Discusses how to estimate the duration it took to solve a situation)
• Ability Checks in Exploration (Info on using Ability Checks to solve situations)

I know these links are not exactly what you were asking about, but they give good info.

At our table, typically, the players will walk into a room or area, I'll explain what they see, hear, smell, feel, etc.
Something along the lines of:

You enter into a 20ft square room with no windows or doors, the air is still, and smells musty giving you the impression as if no one has been in this room in a while.
There are paintings on the three walls, and a large statue in the middle of the room.
What would you like to do?

From that point, it's up to the players.
They could just leave the room, or try and figure out if there is anything interesting.

Things to think about if you placing a 'Puzzle' for your players to figure out:

1. Putting important Adventure Information behind a puzzle is a good way to frustrate your players.
2. What seems easy to you will not seem easy to them.
3. You don't always need to have a way to 'solve' your puzzle, you can always just place something in front of them and see what they do. If they come up with a good way to solve it, let them know they solved it.

There are Puzzles you can find all over online, entire books devoted to puzzles to put in front of your players

Hope this helps :)

Cheers!

This is why I don’t do puzzles; they challenge players rather than the characters.
But to try and give you a productive answer. If my players were stuck, I might call for a skill check and use the result to give them a hint. Depending on the puzzle, something like a perception or investigation might let them notice something they hadn’t. Or even insight (I know technically it’s only meant to be used when dealing with people, but I sometimes house rule it to help with filling a gap in logic.)

Or just a straight int or wis check and give them the answer if they’re really stuck. I always figure the 20 int character is going to be way better at solving any puzzle than any of the players at the table.