D&D is a complicated game. It takes some time to understand what’s happening in it. It takes patience and experience to be proficient at it. I wish that proficiency was a requirement for being confident about it but, alas, those stars don’t often align. Also, astrology is pure palaver.
Enter Chris’s Law: “any sufficiently complex system will have a non-zero chance of misinterpretation.” (I doubt I get to lay claim to this idea. We’re just having fun here.)
Let’s unpack and examine some of the common misinterpretations. These are things that I’ve seen or experienced, either in my own play or in the wide world of commentary. As ever, it’s not my goal to hurtfully single out or “punch down” at anyone. If you think something here is about you, take that as an indication that you’ve helped shape my thinking in some way. You are [not] always on my mind.
Some of these things show up more in players who are new to the game. These issues aren’t exclusive to novice players. Some of these crop up still among players who have been at this for years. My goal here is to enumerate (some) barriers to play and contribute some ideas to mitigate those barriers. We have a duty to each other to be good stewards of our pastimes; this is what it sounds like.
Action Economy
I actually double-checked the indices and tables of contents of my 5e and 5.5e (I still hate that label) to make sure this term wasn’t in there and… nope!
This is game design term that’s used to describe the way that a system governs all of the activity within itself. “Action economy” is an expansive, numinous concept with all sorts of intersections and multi-modal interaction models colliding and ricocheting against each other with fractal complexity.
Let’s keep things as simple as possible (but no simpler!) and put this fence around the concept: action economy is how you know when you can do something and how much of it you can do.
D&D combat is where we get a rigorously-defined action economy, and it is complex. We should not be surprised that it is also misinterpreted.
“Action” vs “Bonus Action”
This often comes up for newer players, but there are a few different flavors that sometimes crop up among the well-seasoned.
The typical misinterpretation goes something like “I used my Action to [do thing], so now I will use a Bonus Action to [do other thing].” In this case, both “thing” and “other thing” are major activities like attacking, casting a spell, using some item from inventory, or interacting with something in the environment.
The other variety, the one that more-tenured players sometimes posit, goes something like “I have two things I’d like to do, and they’re both Bonus Actions - can I do one of these as my Action?” An example of this is a Monk spending a Focus Point to use its Step of the Wind class feature (Disengage and Dash, both), then spending another Focus Point to use Flurry of Blows (two Unarmed Strikes) and taking no other Action. The player argues that they have enough Focus Points to do so (true), the PHB does not limit how many Focus Points can be used on a turn (also true), and both features require a Bonus Action (also true), so they contend that they ought to be allowed to make this exchange.
In the first case, the player is tripping over ambiguous, similar terms. In the second, they are bargaining. Both are quite reasonable, neither is nefarious, and both run contrary to the actual rules of the game. “Action” and “Bonus Action” are not interchangeable units: they cannot be bartered or exchanged one-for-the-other. This isn’t Catan and these aren’t sheep.
In my experience, a good explanation usually satisfies the question. Here is one of mine:
On your turn, you can take an Action and what you choose to do determines what sort of dice roll I might ask from you. Some kinds of characters have other things they can do as a “Bonus Action” (finger-quotes are mandatory!) - that’s usually a pretty small and specific list that should be listed on your character sheet if you have any.
Mainly, the point of confusion rests on naming the two activities so similarly. It is notable that I have not encountered anyone stumbling in these ways over the “Reaction” activity - maybe that concept is better isolated by the use of a different, albeit similar, word. This is not the only instance of too-similar names causing confusion; I’ll cover another one later.
Other game systems have preempted these issues. Star Trek Adventures defines its action economy with “major actions” and “minor actions” that allows a player one of each per turn. Lancer, Hundred Dungeons, and Shadow of the Demon Lord employ a transactional economy that presents a choice between one “action” or two “quick actions” per turn. Pathfinder eschews the named categories altogether and assigns a numeric cost to various “acts” that can be paid from a pool of action points available to a player each turn.
This is not a new issue in D&D. The authors have passed on several opportunities to rename or reconfigure the components of the action economy in ways that would better embrace new players and enable interesting options for everyone. We are left treating this choice as damage and routing around it.
Playing the Role / Telling the Difference
Some players love to act out and give voice to their character’s conversations. Some (me) will extemporize, at great length, whether you want them to or not. Others are more comfortable giving a general description of what their character would say and rolling the dice to see the outcome. Thankfully, there is no “right” way to play the game: it supports both styles, even alongside one another.
It can be difficult, though, for the other players to know whether you are speaking as the player or as a character. This is especially the case when your character voice closely resembles your own speaking voice, when players are not well-acquainted with one another, or when any number of processing (language, social, emotional, etc.) barriers are present.
Players of all experience levels can fail to notice or understand which entity - the real or the imagined - is active. Group and interpersonal familiarity, or lack of, can make this more difficult and inflate the effects of mis-reading the situation. Games played online - where players might never see one another, have disparities in audio/video equipment, dissimilar personal surrounding, etc. - are vulnerable to this, as are in-person sessions.
I have seen cases when a player has made off-handed insults about an NPC that were interpreted by the GM as character-voice comments that provoked the NPC to anger. Likewise, I myself, as GM, have confused players by not making a clear-enough transition from the speech of a shady, untrustworthy NPC to out-of-character narration critical for the scene.
There is no One True Way to resolve this. I will advocate for players - regardless of their role - to discuss ways to more clearly indicate when it is a character speaking vs a player. Some players use a specific voice or tone for their character (personally, I know of a funny-talking tabaxi, a halfling with a high squeaky voice, and a goblin halfway to MTV’s Bevis). Some pursue a blended narration-enactment approach, issuing a “my character says” or a “talking out-of-character” as appropriate. In the world of Live-Action Role Play (LARP), rules systems define specific, unambiguous signals for out-of-character activities.
Ultimately, I think this one comes down to paying attention to other people, considering what they would be likely to know or perceive, and intentionally making the effort to be clear about your intent as a player. Sorry, folks, there is no magic bullet here - just plenty of difficult work worth doing.
Going Rogue
The Rogue is an iconic D&D class with roots in the early days of the game. Rogues play best when they are fast, silent, and never attack alone. At Tier 1 (level 1-4) they leverage circumstances to do reliable bonus damage, and they can avoid taking damage to make up for low health and hit points. Support Ally. Move Fast. Hit Once. Get Out.
This is a the other case of confusion stemming from naming things the same: the Rogue’s Sneak Attack damage bonus. This one trips usually trips up new players, but I have seen more experienced players pause to check their understanding of it. This class feature lets the Rogue deal some extra damage (sometimes a lot of extra damage) on their regular attack, provided certain conditions are met, once per round.
In play, I’ve seen players wrestling the choice of “do I Sneak Attack, or just do a regular one?”, ask if they need a different kind of action for it, or simply not employ it because “I forgot to be sneaking”.
I’ll admit that this is not a big issue, but it falls under what I consider “cognitive barriers” that need to be handled gracefully. I’m calling this one out as a caution that folks all read and interpret things differently. Tossing a “well actually…” at a player is not being a Good Steward: it is alienating, undermines their confidence, and disconnects them from the experience. Don’t shut people down, steer into their skid by talking through the circumstances, looking for how it can apply. Even if you see that it would not apply, stepping through each of its conditions for use can be helpful, engaging, and instructive.
Skills, Abilities, and Saves
Believe it or not, skills have not always been a part of D&D, and they have undergone multiple changes from one edition to another. The 5e (and 5.5e) treatment of skills is largely carried over from 4th edition (or so I’ve come to understand, I only started playing in 5e).
Reading through any 5e published adventure, the line between skills and abilities is blurred nearly out of existence, with every ability check being described lockstep with an applicable skill. Typically, the only time an ability is listed by itself is in the context of a saving throw, because saving throws do not benefit from skill proficiencies.
We’ve just talked about three different things - abilities, skills, and saving throws - with two different kinds of rolls. What is the difference between these things? How do you know what you should roll? What bonuses, if any, apply?
First up, let’s talk about the ability check. If you consult the PHB index, the term “skill check” points you back to the “ability check” entry. There technically is no such thing in D&D as a skill check. Instead, characters rely on their abilities, augmented by a particular skill, to perform tasks. If that feels arbitrary and pedantic, it’s because the game made it that way by strongly suggesting a formal, universal, finite list of skills, each inextricably bound directly to a single skill.
The confusion that I often see arise has little to do with abilities and skills, but with the idea of a saving throw. 5.5e largely doesn’t help matters by unifying ability checks and saving throws under the generic term “D20 Test” - a noble effort to demonstrate that similar mechanics underpin both, but instead injects confusion that the two are somehow interchangeable.
Let’s establish the difference between the D20 Tests. Ability Checks (or skill checks, if you prefer) are appropriate when the character is intentionally trying to do something that they have initiated: searching a room, recalling a fact, climbing a rope, etc. Saving Throws are appropriate when a character is trying to resist an effect initiated against them: grab hold of a ledge while falling, resist a spell, keep their footing.
These ideas can get jumbled and some activities, like initiating and escaping a grapple, can lend to the confusion more than reduce it. When deciding between an ability check and a saving throw, the most important consideration is intention: if the character intended to initiate the activity it’s (probably) an ability check; if the character is reacting to something, it is (probably) a saving throw. Even reconciling the difference in tests for grapple breaks along this line: preventing the grapple is a saving throw, escaping the grapple is an ability check.
Another difference exists between the two. Ability checks can be augmented by skill proficiencies. Saving throws can get a boost depending on the character’s class. There is never a case that allows a character to use a skill proficiency on a saving throw.
RTFM
This isn’t a misinterpretation so much as a misconception that every player needs to read the Players Handbook, cover-to-cover, before joining in. This is well-intentioned, but misguided. The PHB is 384 pages, cover to cover. Here in America, that’s 384 more book pages than half the adult population reads in a year.
Players who are interested in joining a game should read enough of the rules to be familiar with key terms like “abilities”, “skills”, and “initiative” and how the game generally flows - but they aren’t required to. That’s 30 pages of the latest PHB, and half of that page-space is artwork. Even then, it’s not possible or advisable to enforce a requirement to read the books.
Be a Good Steward! Invite new players to join a simplified, stripped-down game and then step them through it so they can learn the game by playing the game. After the session, point them to the (free) Basic Rules. Remind them that their local library has the PHB in circulation. Suggest a Friendly Local Game Shop where they can pick up a copy of their own if they want one. Please don’t point them to Amazon (everyone knows you can buy stuff on Amazon), it cuts out the local businesses that are vital supports for our hobby, reducing the shelf space they’ll dedicate to our products.
I collected some of the points of confusion that I commonly see. What are you all encountering out there? What misconceptions, interpretations, or issues do you see coming up over and over again? How are you addressing them when they do, and what results are you seeing?