iserith
Magic Wordsmith
Don't forget the time wasting pixel bitching and gotchas! Perception cuts out the middleman and bridges the gap between a potentially poor description of a scene and the fact that I'm not actually there.
Man, I hate "old skool" play (ie, metagaming and not actually roleplaying the character you rolled, but just a super version of you with physical stats bolted on).
Perhaps there is a middle ground where DMs provide reasonably good descriptions of the scene and players are reasonably specific as to their goals and approaches, and the results of said approaches mean that sometimes you roll and sometimes you just succeed outright without reference to the mechanics. Where your character build is important, but so too are the things you choose to do in the context of the game world. Where "pixel bitching" is not really an issue and, due to the DM telegraphing hidden threats, that "gotchas" aren't a thing either.