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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5845897" data-attributes="member: 4937">The problem here isn't that I'm not comfortable smithing up rolls on the fly.  The problem here is whenever I hit one of these decision points, I'm going to pause and reflect on how I should resolve the sitution.   In other words, I'm going to think to myself in very rapid succession, "What's the most fair resolution here?  Should this sort of tree in this situation be resolved with a straight up ability check on a D20?  Or should I used 4d6?  This is a fir tree, so it does have radiating limbs, but on the other hand, the limbs might be high up.   How high up are these limbs anyway?   Should I apply a modifier for the type of armor being worn, because I darn sure would apply one to the thief if he tried it in a suit of plate mail?  Is the math I'm proposing fair the thief player, or did I in fact just propose a resolution that made it more likely for the cleric in plate mail to climb the tree than thief cat burgular?", and so forth.  That's a burden on play.  It's also a burden on play if I don't think these things, and then the player thinks, "WTF, why does my thief only have a 60% chance of climbing the tree, and the cleric in plate mail has a 70%?", or the player thinks, "WTF, IRL I've been climbing trees since I was a kid, and now my character just fell out of the tree and took 2d6 damage?  How hard is climbing a tree supposed to be anyway?  If it was this dangerous, why did my character even try it, instead of backing out before he got so high?"   In other words, bad decisions and overly brisk decisions designed to 'move things along' can sometimes land a DM in trouble, and tends to reduce player trust.   Once you lose player trust, there is a greater temptation for the player to argue with your proposed fortunes and to move from proposing actions to proposing resolutions - which is just a headache if it starts happening.Moreover, this is a burden on play I tend to want to remove to 'design time' rather than 'play time'.   I want to be able to say generally, 'This is how trees are climbed', and be able to reference that at least mentally when the player proposes to climb a tree, or else I want to be able to say "Climbing THIS tree has this difficulty.", referencing the generic system in a clear way that doesn't require me to read a lot of notes.</blockquote>

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