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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 6550755" data-attributes="member: 6775031">As the DM, I ask for a check when the resolution of an action is uncertain. A player was looking for something suspicious on a bookshelf, so I asked for an Investigation check to notice the hidden switch, which failed. Another player started pulling all of the books from the shelf, which automatically triggered the switch, so no check was needed.As a player, I don't usually ask for a check, unless I think that the DM has forgotten about a relevant ability that might make the difference between whether or not a check was allowed. If I say that I'm a dwarf, so it makes sense that I should have above-average exposure to gems, then that might convince the DM that calling for a check is the more appropriate course of resolution.That's very much a specific-DM issue, though. In general, it's the DM's place to ask for a check, but my particular DM likes to remind us that there's no way he can possibly keep track of all of our character-specific abilities, so we should remind him whenever it might matter.Particularly with Deception, I would expect a check to be required every time (unless my bonus to the check was high enough that it couldn't possibly fail to beat the king's passive Insight). There's always a chance that you could fail, because your ability to deceive hinges upon the king's ability to be deceived. And even if there might be some sort of unusual circumstances going on, where no check would be needed, it would very-much be a one-off in-game reason for it. Maybe the king is an illusion, or being dominated, or something else. I would expect to be asked to roll in any case, so as to not spoil the effect.For something like Athletics, Sleight of Hand, or any of the knowledge-type Intelligence skills, I wouldn't expect that a check should always be necessary. Sometimes the wall is so easy to climb that no check is necessary. A check is not necessary when there is no chance of success or failure - when the DC is so low that you cannot fail it by rolling a 1, or so high that a 20 will not let you succeed. There are walls that would need a Athletics check at DC 0 to climb, but there is no king with a passive Insight of 0.If I don't roll, the DM will prompt me to roll. If I consistently don't roll after declaring an attack, the DM is likely to become upset since I'm wasting time in a situation where everyone clearly knows what is expected. Everyone knows the rules for combat. They are extremely cut-and-dried, with very little room for DM intervention.It sounds like my check was high enough to beat the king's passive Insight, but not high enough to beat his adviser's Insight. This is one of the obvious outcomes, and I would probably attempt to act on my Deception before the adviser could advise the king to not listen to me (depending on the circumstances of my Deception, of course).I'll assume that was just a bad example on your part, though. A better example would be failing by one or two, so the king isn't sure if he completely trusts you, and he'll finance your endeavor but also wants to send his loyal henchman along to supervise. That's an outcome between clear success and failure, and it's something I would be more likely to accept since there were so many possible outcomes anyway. Although Deception does have a binary outcome - either he believes me, or he doesn't - there's no saying what he'll do with that outcome. He can believe me, but still not want to help me because of blah blah politics whatever; or he can not believe me, but help me anyway because he has some ulterior motive that we don't even suspect. The practical outcomes are all over the board. I don't think I know what's going to happen (with any great certainty), so I can't have that expectation broken.Contrast with combat, and its extremely precise rules, where we know exactly that succeeding on this attack check means the orc takes 4-11 damage which progresses her x% toward unconsciousness or death. I think I know what's going to happen, and that there's a zero percent chance of injuring my teammate or being disarmed, so breaking that expectation feels like a violation of the game rules - of how I think the world works.</blockquote>

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