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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 7859689" data-attributes="member: 53980">I'm a sandbox GM myself, who is perfectly comfortable with party failure.Giving the players the clues they need to proceed in an investigation isn't any more an example of railroading than not locking the entrance to a dungeon behind a single pass/fail skill check.The players still have the option to not investigate, or quit the investigation at any time. They are able to pursue the investigation by whatever methods they deem suitable. They still need to come to the right conclusions about the clues on their own. And they still might miss facts that are relevant but not critical to the investigation. Nothing about any of that is a railroad. All I'm saying is that the puzzle shouldn't become unsolvable due to a single bad roll (and, IMO, generally not even due to a bad rolling streak).What I'm basically trying to get at is that you don't force the players to roll a Perception check to notice a dead body lying out in the open, do you? Similarly, it's not unreasonable (IMO) to assume base competency for characters in other areas. In my opinion, the character performing the autopsy should get the basic facts that can be derived from the corpse without rolling (such as obvious cause of death, as well as a general timespan during which the death likely occurred). Then the Medicine check, if successful, can grant additional information such as the fact that this person was poisoned before they were stabbed, as well as a more precise time of death.Along those lines, any character who thinks to check by the window should notice the footprints in the garden outside. A good survival check might give them an idea of the assailant's weight, based on the depths of the tracks.If your opinion is that any of what I just described is  a railroad, then you and I differ greatly in how we define that term.</blockquote>

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