Search results

The rock is pre-established and is there whether they climb or not.

First, they aren't probably moving about. Very few people are constantly roaming around the house at every minute of the day. They are probably in the same place they have been for a long while, which for a cook would be in the kitchen during daylight hours or early darkness when morons will...

Surprise depends on passive perception beating the DC of the roll of the stealth. So passive perception is the king here. Let me ask you this. What if there is no stealth roll? Passive numbers are used to represent the average of an act that is constantly being performed. If a group is...

An argument can be made that they are not worse off. :P

Plenty out there for you.

Very few complications are like that, but you are correct that skill can help avoid those few. Most complications happen despite skill.

Then there is no roll to determine surprise, because stealth doesn't determine it. Perception does. You can have all the stealth in the world due to a high roll and if someone's passive perception will pick you up anyway, no surprise. So even with your odd definition of a roll that determines...

I don't agree with that premise. Why must the system tell me why the climb check failed for it to seem real(have verisimilitude)? If the DM narrates a rock bearing my weight crumbles and my PC falls, that makes it seem real.

Given that I've said otherwise at least 6 times in this thread, why would you even ask that? If the cook is present on the other side of that door regardless of success or failure, a successful stealthy lockpicking might keep her from being aware that it happened.

If you think about it, damage on a miss has sort of been present since 1e. The nature of hit points mean that even if I hit an ogre with my axe, I can fail to hit physically. I can swing and get very close(a hit that does skill hit point damage), the ogre could stumble and jerk out of reach of...

That makes no sense. A complication is a complication, even if someone fixes it quickly and easily because they are skilled. Something doesn't have to be unfixable or a huge setback in order to be a complication.

No, because it's not what he said, or what is happening. A roll determines stealth, NOT surprise. You might as well claim that perception causes surprise, because if you fail the perception check you don't see the stealthy group. There is no surprise roll at all.

That's not true. Traveling stealthily can completely avoid the encounter if it doesn't notice them. Becoming invisible when they hear something coming can avoid it. There are things that they can do. They can't stop a monster from being there, but then it would still be there at that time...

I always went with thankful. We're going to get old eventually, why rush it. :P

When I was 32 I was talking to a woman in a store and I made a comment about something from the 80's. She was like, "You aren't old enough to remember that." When I told her my age, her demeanor changed completely. She stared at me intently and said, "What's your secret! You have to tell...

I wouldn't be surprised, either. He was very social and made a lot of friends. The photographer who took the photo he was in is Lisa Law, who was in that scene and took a bunch of photographs, then years later realized that she had basically chronicled that era with her pictures. Wow! That's...

I suppose of the lock picker shouts that would work, but the just the sound of picking the lock probably wouldn't be enough. I do get the point, which is why I think fail forward is good for those that want to play that way. It's not for me. Not exactly. I do like the success with a cost if...

It's there due to a successful roll. The DM successfully rolled the chance that a wandering monster would appear. You don't see a difference between the DM and the players? Because to me that's a significant difference. Only one of them involves the encounter being there or not there...

Alerted by what? It's unlikely that the cook could hear the lockpick attempt from somewhere else in the house. I did not say it specifically as traditional play, but just that the DM could do it since the DM has the authority to do it. I could also strike all the PCs down with bolts from the...