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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7977614" data-attributes="member: 42582">It's not just that they can't declare it. Players in BW can't do that either - they have to succeed at an appropriate Perception or Wises or similar check.And players in AW can't do that. But they can, for instance, go aggro, and if successful force another character to give them something they think the PCs want. This requires the GM to narrate something to give effect to the consequence - probably the handing over of the widget!What' distinctive about 5e D&D non-combat is that, canonically played, the players can't put any of these sorts of things at stake (outside of combat resolution). This is what I am saying gives the GM a special responsibility.You're talking here about whether or not the players get what they want (ie non-violent ineraction with the guards). But I had in mind something like what the OP describes. where the PCs have failed to achieve what the players were hoping for and the GM is establishing the consequences of that failure.What counts as "reasonable guard reactions" in that context is entirely in the hands of the GM. When the boss calls for them, do they have to come? Or do the PCs hear the sound of a fracas break out on the deck below, as the chief guard finally gets sick of one too many curt instructions from a boss who doesn't pay well enough? (This is more-or-less how Samwise Gamgee was able to free Frodo from Cirith Ungol even though he failed to enter the fortress through its under-gate in Shelob's lair.)I'm not saying that any particular answer to the question is the "correct" one. I'm just saying that if the GM choose to have the armed guards turn up, hands on sword-hilts then s/he has no real grounds for lamenting that her game devolved into one of lethal violence. I mean, s/he started it!</blockquote>

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