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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Swarmkeeper" data-source="post: 8652875" data-attributes="member: 6921763">You prefer rules that delineate how widely known a fact is in the game world?  That sounds... unnecessarily prescriptive.  I'm not sure that's exactly what you are saying, but it kinda seems like it.As DM, yes, I do determine what is common knowledge in my world.  The published adventures do a little bit of this as well.Any combat action.  Just like all the examples of "Other Activity on Your Turn" (PHB pg 190) can be done with any combat action.Which is why I think it good practice to tell the player the DC of what their PC is trying to accomplish.  I'm not a fan of a DM calling for a roll and determining, seemingly after the fact, that the roll was "high enough".  That, to me, is arbitrary.I mean, what are you looking for from a player if not some reasonable specificity about what their PC is doing in the game world?  Call it arbitrary if you want but not every statement from a player can be codified.  Otherwise we could just skip the human DM and have a computer handle it for us.  I don't think that is exactly what you are saying, but I suppose I'm not fully understanding your grievance either.In a game where the players can propose almost anything for what their PC is trying to do, a DM often has to make calls using the advice in the rules.  Is that something you are objecting to?I'm only defending it because it accomplishes the goals of play at our table:  to have fun and create an exciting, memorable story.  I'm not redesigning anything when we play.  I simply make quick adjudications based on what the PCs are doing in the fiction and utilizing the advice on how to run Ability Checks that are in the rules."I don't know, why would your character know something about this monster?  Is there something in their backstory, background, or training that could be useful?"The player's job is to give the DM something to work with to make a fair adjudication.  The rules give clear advice on how to set a DC and when to employ ability checks.  Otherwise, yeah, ignore that advice and we are just arbitrarily rolling dice.</blockquote>

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