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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6671814" data-attributes="member: 996">The issue here is that you need only one success to get the necessary knowledge, with no penalty for failure.But, as anyone who remembers the world before 5g phones & Wikipedia knows, when you ask a group of people a question, they'll come up with both right and wrong answers, and it's more a matter of personality than veracity which one they settle on as a consensus.There's a couple alternate ways you could handle whole-group knowledge checks:The old-school or 'simulationist' way would be to have the DM make all the checks behind the screen and tell each player what they 'know,' making up wrong information for failed checks, and telling characters who barely made or barely failed that they 'weren't sure,' and characters who succeeded for failed by a large margin that they were 'certain.'  Then let them RP to a consensus. The 4e more 'gamist'/'narativst' way would be to set a number of successes needed to get to the right answer (or failures to get the wrong one, or combination to reach no conclusion, but in either case 'fail forward' to move the story along).  In 4e you'd just use the formal Skill Challenge structure, in 5e you'll have to make something up.The obvious, and simpler on all counts, "5e way," though would be the (drumroll) - Group Skill Check!  (Yes, I know 4e had group skill checks too.) Everyone rolls and if at least half the party succeeds they get the right answer.  If they fail, you can either give them no information, or, if there was at least one success perhaps, conflicting information that is partially true.One thing I like about 5e is that it actively discourages jumping the gun like that.  I've never liked the players calling out checks in any system.  Even in 4e, it'd bug (me outside of the structure of a Skill Challenge where I'm often asking, specifically, what skills they want to use, and to 'make a case' for them).  In 5e, no DM should put up with it!  The resolution system is clear:  the player states the action (not a 'skill') and the DM decides how it will be resolved - which may or may not involve calling for a check (which may or may not be the one the player was hoping for).  And that's the very problem we're talking about.  5e makes it to easy for anyone to try most any check, and that gets tedious.  Consequences are certainly one way to cut down on it.  Only having the first character to declare an action make a check would be another...</blockquote>

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