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The tall grass ambush is a perfect example. The question that needs to be asked is, "Why is the grass tall?" After all, it wasn't described as particularly tall until the ambush occurred. The players had no chance to react to the idea that something might be hidden in tall grass until the...

Just like there might be a cook in the room?

So, to put it another way, there is no actual difference. The only difference is how well we can cover over the fact that the material is created based on nothing more than completely arbitrary reasons which have nothing to do with the players or the game world whatsoever. It's simply a...

Except that it's pretty close most of the time. That's why we have fairly flat bonuses. Most of the d20 tests that you make in 5e D&D will be roughly in the neighbourhood of 60%.

You've never made a group check? That's 4 or 5 rolls right there? You've never had the group climb something? You've never had any effect that forced everyone to make a check? You've never had something try to sneak up on the party? You've never had the group make perception checks? Right...

I will guarantee that that is not true. I know that for a fact. In any situation which calls for multiple skill checks in your games, your players fail far more often than they succeed. I know that without even sitting at your table, and, I guarantee that if you were to track it for the next...

This is something I've REALLY struggled with both as a DM and trying to get players on board with this idea. The notion that because Player A failed a check, something bad happens to Player B is very hard for a lot of players to wrap their heads around. Getting them into the habit of spreading...

True, I've never played in your game, but, by your admission, they are failing fairly often. The idea that there is only challenge in failure is one that is so incredibly ingrained in the hobby that it's almost a truism. And it's incredibly toxic. It permeates so much of play and is the...

One of the absolute best pieces of DMing advice I ever took from a module (and I have no idea what module this came from, it was too long ago) was, "So long as the players come up with some sort of plan, they succeed. Don't worry too much about the details. It's far more interesting to see...

Except in your examples, you simply piled on yet more skill checks, the failure of which will result in total failure - the vase gets dropped, the guards get woken up, whatever. Sure, you added an extra step. Doesn't really matter. The players will still almost assuredly fail. If you...

And thank you for so eloquently highlighting my point. Three separate checks to get through a kitchen, multiplied by each PC and any failure = they are heard and bad things happen. The odds of them successfully navigating this are pretty much zero.

And that's fine as far as it goes. Except that in practice, "won't succeed 100%" actually means "won't succeed ever". Because the DM is very poor at calculating odds and piles on check after check in order to get the "scramble to figure out having to do something else". IOW, most of the...

Not saying that you don't already know this, but, for the audience, I would point out that 10 rolls at 2% is not equal to 20%. That is the problem in a nutshell. A LOT of DMs do not know the difference.

Unfortunately, in practice, what this means is that the PC's will nearly always fail. Because the DM simply piles on check after check until the PC's fail, and that failure will almost always be catastrophic. You call it granular, I call it punishing for no reason. Having seen this in play...

And we're saying that there is absolutely no difference between one completely arbitrary die roll resulting in an encounter and another completely arbitrary die roll resulting in an encounter. Your forest encounter teleports all over the map, so long as the PC's are somewhere in that forest, at...

You SPECIFICALLY stated in the quote, that you didn't care if it was quantum or not. I mean, I directly quoted you. From the player's perspective, they can never actually know if the encounter was quantum or pre-planned. It's not possible to know unless the DM tells them.

Now that was a Nat-20 Jump check for that leap of logic. Sorry, but, no. That's not how that works. Just because your arguement is without merit says absolutely nothing about the quality of your game, just that you are not very good at fashioning a logical argument. And, since I, at no...

No, you're playing the game wrong. When your argument gets shown to be without merit, instead of accepting that your argument was without merit, you simply change the example. Thus we go from "it's not quantum" to "I don't care if it's quantum". :lol: Thus the exhausting element of these...