No, I recognize the disagreement, it’s a big part of our larger disagreement. The thing is though, if you roll a 2, you objectively could have done better. There are 18 numbers you could have rolled and done better. So any interpretation of what a die roll represents that doesn’t acknowledge the fact that, no, a 2 is not the best you could have done, is not one I can agree with.
You’re establishing the cost or consequence for failure (in the tree example, the consequence is that it takes the established amount of time if you fail), making that cost or consequence clear to the player, and letting them decide if they want to roll or not. In situations you deem “not a challenge,” or as I would put it, action’s with no cost or consequence for failure, you simply narrate the results of the action without rolling any dice. This is literally exactly what I do, you just seem to dislike the way I frame it.
And when picking a lock, you’re moving a metal tool in a precise manner, in a pass:fail binary, you can’t pick the lock more or less, just pick it or fail. By what criteria is shooting a basket ball like an attack roll that picking a lock is not?
And the conversation has evolved since then. In particular, I’ve now learned that you draw a distinction between challenges and actions that are not challenging (and therefore should not be rolled for). Having learned this, I have come to the hypothesis that there is no situation that you would deem “a challenge” that I would say does not have a cost or consequence, and am asking for an example of a task that does not have time pressure, that you would deem challenging enough to warrant a roll, in order to test this hypothesis.
Is it? I’m not convinced that it is. I think something about the way I am expressing my point is giving you the wrong idea about what play at my table actually looks like, and that what we each actually do is, while not identical, very similar.
Gonna break the multi-quote cycle.
I know we do things differently, because in a situation where a lock *needs* to be picked, but there are literal days in which to do it, I’m still going to allow, at most, 1 roll per day. It represents your efforts toward picking the lock that day, and we work out together, partly before and partly after the roll, how long you spent trying if it’s a failure.
If, however, another character finds a way to help you, I’ll allow two rolls per day, and may give one of them advantage. The other player will make the second d20 roll, but it will be your modifier, because you’re the one taking point.
Thing is, this is largely acedemic, bc I wouldn’t include a lock that matters and has no time restraints or chance of breaking the unlocking mechanism upon multiple failures. It’s not a thing in my games. Ever. Such a lock is, at most, narrated without my ever even thinking about anyone’s skills, or a DC. It’s purely, exclusively, flavor. The game doesn’t change at all if I just say it isn’t locked.
Now, if it matters how soon you get it unlocked, then the roll helps me determine how long it takes. But you still aren’t making unlimited rolls. A roll determines how you do on picking the lock. Only when it’s crunch time and seconds matter does a roll strictly take place in 6-12 second increments.
In my game, crafting requires rolls. Failing could mean wasting supplies and time, or if you’re crafting my something new, it might mean progress is made in design, but that iteration is a useless hunk of parts. Still, simple crafting is one roll, whether it’s something that takes a few hours, a few days, or a few weeks. Complex stuff is a number of rolls determined by complexity. You know ahead of time how many rolls are required, and that only those rolls are allowed. Help might allow rerolls, but otherwise an ability check is used to see if you succeed, not how attempt one goes.
