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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5896287" data-attributes="member: 42582">No. I'm wondering whether this new system will make as big a difference to action resolution practices as is being suggested.Correct.This relates back to something I wondered about on the first page in response to Lanefan - is the player allowed takebacks once the GM explains what sort of check is required? There are dimensions here both of verisimilitude/role "inhabitation" - a player can legitimately claim that his/her PC would have some sort of understanding of the situation and his/her ability to deal with it - and also of gameplay fairness - the player of a cleric may start down a course of action hoping to exploit high WIS, and feel a bit shafted when the GM adjudicates it as an INT situation instead.I would expect many groups to drift this approach to something like: "If I do that, will it be an INT or WIS check?", and look for confirmation from the GM before locking in.I think this is very true. Although that baggage is different from group to group.My feeling is that there are two things missing from what Rule of 3 describes (which is not to say that they are necessarily missing from the new rules):* guidelines to the GM on how action resolution is to depend on what (in the fiction) the PC is trying to do;* a wider distribution of stakes for action, so that players have some sort of reason not always to regret missing out on rolling their best stat.Burning Wheel provides one example of an approach to action resolution system which is similar to what is described (player explains PC's action, GM stipulates what has to be rolled, player then rolls). But it is clear on these two further points:* a player must declare both task (what the PC is doing) and intent (what s/he is hoping to achieve) - the GM's stipulation of what sort of check is made focuses on task, but the GM's adjudication of consequences for success/faiure is based on intent, and so until both are on the table, action resolution can't proceed;* there are very elaborate guidelines for the GM's adjudication of failed checks (and the way that failure is to focus more on intent than on task) which help ensure that the consequences, for the players, of failing checks are not as severe as they often are in D&D (where the stakes are very often life vs death), and there are also PC advancement rules which make hopeless or near-hopeless checks a necessary element of advancement.I don't think that D&Dnext will do very much to change the stakes of D&D, but at least on the first point, it would be good if extra steps are taken to change not just the nature of checks, but the way that fictional positioning feeds directly into GM adjudication.</blockquote>

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