I hope people don't mind the double post, but [MENTION=6801328]Elfcrusher[/MENTION] is right that responding to everything is starting to get too long for people to go through
Detail is a red herring, here. It's the approach that matters, not the details of the approach. How much detail you add to carefully licking the doorknob clean won't result in an autosuccess, ever (unless, maybe, you're immune to poison?). On the other hand, being skilled at poisoner's tools and wiping off the contact poison may very well result in autosuccess. Don't make the mistake that we're looking for a long, detailed explanation for anything done -- that sounds horribly boring.
Yes, you are, and no, it's not. The game revolves around actions, not skill checks. Skill checks are used when an action is uncertain and there's a cost of failure. You don't call for a skill check when a player declares their character walks across a room, do you? Is this a case where hairs have been split because there should be a roll?
In other words, I say that a discussion about how to handle skills has placed the cart before the horse because we do not yet know how we handle actions. Skills come after we get a handle on actions.
Okay, but let me call back to the original quote by [MENTION=6779196]Charlaquin[/MENTION]
"This is why vague statements like, “I check for traps” are a poor strategy. Yes, if I just said I check for traps without saying what I’m doing to check for them, we have little choice but to determine what my character was doing that resulted in that failure retroactively. The dice are generating the story - we didn’t really know what my character was doing until we found out whether it worked or not, and then we came up with a narrative explanation for the result. And if you like to play that way, more power to you! I do not like to play that way, because it puts my successes and failures in the hands of chance. I want my successes and failures to be in my hands. I enjoy the game more when I succeed because I thought of a clever plan or fail because I took a calculated risk and it didn’t pay off."
According to this, the player declared an action "check for traps" but that was not specific enough, so when the roll happened we had to fill in story of why the result happened.
The approach and action of "check for traps" is not enough. By accepting that it is enough for a roll to be called for, I am being told I am putting the cart before the horse... because the player needs to declare an action first? An action that has consequences? Like checking for traps?
How much more is needed? How specific an action must the player take? Where am I justified in calling for a check without somehow doing something seen as wrong by some of the posters here?
You are saying that I am calling for checks instead of actions, but a series of actions were called by the player. Why is that not good enough to call for a check in response?
This is where I'll harp on my hobby horse of not hiding the game. There's always going to be information disparity between the GM and the players in any game where the GM has secret stuff the players are trying to learn (what's in the next room, what the Duke is up to, did this shopkeep steal his own jewels, etc.). This is because the GM already knows the secret and is trying to get the players to learn it in a fun way. Because of this, GMs tend to create mysteries that depend on the players not knowing stuff, and then err on the side of hiding too much information. This is what leads to players spamming knowledge skills or investigation and perception checks to try to convince the GM to give up this hidden information via a high roll. In reality, these checks aren't doing anything in the fiction except convincing the GM to drop the next bit of hidden information. I say, don't do this as a GM. Make your mysteries based not on hiding information from the players, but instead on what will the players do once they learn the information. Then the GM's motivation isn't to hide information because getting it gives away the game, so to speak, but instead get the information to the players clearly so that the game of what they do with it can be played.
If my players are asking for these things (or fishing for them with action declarations), then I take that as me not doing a good job presenting the world to the players. This doesn't mean I don't expect my players to have to do things to learn things, just that such events are clear that they need to do something and with enough detail they can readily form an approach to how they want to do it.
I'm not sure I entirely follow all of this.
Information still needs to be hidden, otherwise the players wouldn't need to form an approach in the first place.
Information can be gained by rolling a knowledge check, otherwise what are knowledge checks used for?
Yeah, don't make plot relevant stuff revolve around a single die roll, but that doesn't mean plot relevant stuff can't be found with a die roll
Well, that seems to benefit you.
Yes, which is why I try and limit myself so that I am not using too much meta knowledge.
That's why I ask to roll instead of just assuming my character knows.
This still leaves the knowledge skills in a weird place. So, I use them in the exploration pillar. You have religion? That's awesome for figuring out a ritual or ceremony detail that can help you do something. A recent example was a sarcophagus with a detailed carving around it in a a language none of the players could read. The Wizard reached for his Comprehend Languages ritual, but the Grave cleric tried to decipher what the carvings might mean based on her experience as a Grave cleric. She rolled poorly on her religion check, and so accidentally triggered a curse that resulted in the occupants of the sarcophagus animating as mummies. On a success, she would have discovered that those in the sarcophagus were sealed in to protect against a cursed axe found in the sacrophagus (a beserker axe). As it was, the party didn't get this information and the dwarven barbarian attuned to it. Later fun was had!
So, you don't roll knowledge checks except when you do?
Edit: May be a bit snarkier than I intended, but seeing if they can piece together those carvings is a perfect knowledge check. However, in my understanding of your conclusion, the check failed so they got wrong information which led to them triggering the curse. Perhaps I’m wrong and the curse was triggered by them touching it in an attempt to decipher… but then success or failure of the roll would have led to the mummies, because touching it activated the curse.
So, either I’m misunderstanding your conclusion, or your knowledge check led to the player learning the wrong information on a failed roll. Which is exactly what you said you didn’t like.
To me it's kind of like playing Monopoly and a player in that game refusing to roll the dice or pay rent when they land on the property belonging to another player. I'm sorry, but you have to roll the dice and pay rent when the rules say you have to do that. Otherwise, you're effectively refusing to play the game. Sure, I can reach over and roll the dice for you and move your token around the board and sort through your cash and pay rent when you need to. But why are you even here?
Same for describing what you want to do as a player in D&D 5e. If you can't even do that, why are you here?
Because they enjoy building a story together?
Just because they can't describe how a lightning bolt killed the lich king in the final climatic moments of the campaign or how Jimmy failed to disarm a trap doesn't mean they can't play the game.
Remember, this line of conversation started because you (and many others) took offense to how I would have narrated a failure of the dice in an extremely sarcastic example. How could a poisoner miss poison on a door handle if they spent five minutes looking at it from every angle?
Well, the only way I can imagine a professional missing that kind of detail is because they weren't paying as close attention as they thought.
And, it isn't a situation I normally handle, because normally, I don't have players call out looking at the door handle. I also rarely have traps on door handles.
That's the DM's problem in my view and why "metagaming" is the DM's fault almost all of the time. If they want not knowing something to be part of the difficulty of the challenge, he or she needs to do that without demanding the player act as if they don't know something they do know.
Since this applies directly to myself and my knowledge, as that was the nature of my answer, then I will respond in the specific instead of the general.
I know a lot, A LOT, more about this game than most of my DMs.
Maybe not knowing something was the challenge, maybe they just didn't think anyone would know and it would be a cool reveal. Maybe they don't even know. Sometimes my asking to roll for a knowledge check about something I know has revealed that I knew a detail about that lore that the DM had no clue about.
This is why I ask to roll, instead of just assuming that my character knows everything that I know. Because I know far more than most characters should know at low levels.
An ability check is not a task. It's a mechanic used to resolve the outcome of a task, when the outcome is uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence of failure. "Does my character know what a Black Pudding is?" is not a task either, and likely to get an answer like "I don't know, does he/she?" in my game. Contrast with "I draw upon my experience as a sage to recall what I may know about black puddings, having read about such things in the world's greatest libraries." Now we're getting somewhere. The DM can decide, based on that description, whether the character succeeds automatically, fails automatically, or whether an ability check is called for. An added benefit is that in some cases we learn something interesting about the character's background.
Okay, so square this circle for me.
I should not ask to roll for what my character knows, I should just have them know what I know.
Except that can be dangerous because the world might not be the same as what I know, because the DM changed it.
So I should come up with a backstory reason why I should know.
But how do we know if I actually know, for example, how do we know that this Sage actually read anything about Black Puddings?
To me, there is uncertainty. When there is uncertainty, you roll the dice. But I should not roll the dice unless things can become worse by failing. And failing to know something is not a consequence worth rolling dice about. Also, I should never ask for a check, I should just declare I know.
After all, if I declare my character is a monster expert, then I do not need to ask the DM if I know anything about these monsters. I tell the DM I know, because I am a monster expert, and they cannot tell me I do not know.
This is the morass I am finding myself in, with this thread.
I so very much agree with this. It's the player's job to say what their PC is doing, at least in general terms - and different levels of abstraction are appropriate to different parts of play. Occasionally a player seems to treat it like a video game with the GM as their flesh-server. Not good.
I agree, but as this discussion has progressed we have this,
"I check the door for traps"
failed roll
"Okay, what happens"
"I don't know"
Player is at fault?
So, I should ask the player to be more specific with their action.
"I look over the entire door, taking a magnifying glass to sections that seem likely to hide traps"
Roll? Outcome is still uncertain, they could miss something
But, can't just have them not find anything, that isn't enough of a consequence to their roll. So...
"As you peer through the magnifying glass, you forget to stand far enough back accidentally press against the door and trigger the blade trap"
Also wrong because now I've told the player what they were doing. Also, the player should have told me how they failed?
Taken as a whole, this conversation has grown very confusing to follow what advice people actually are trying to give.
