As you noticed in your edit, I was picking up on the fact that your examples both involved combat. Apologies if I misunderstood you.
No worries, I just think I put
much less importance on the specifics of a given example than you and some others in this thread do.
I was using the threat of a randomly-triggered complication (shorthanded as “random encounter”) as one possible example of a way to introduce a cost for failure, and therefore challenge, to the “searching the room” scenario. Such a complication does not need to be combat, and randomly rolled complications need not be the only way to introduce a cost of failure and make the scenario challenging. Alternatively, if the scenario isn’t meant to be challenging, then I don’t see any need to call for a roll to find what’s being searched for in the room. If the thing is hidden only because it makes sense in the fiction for it to be so and not with the intent of challenging the PCs, then... Why not just have them find it when they search for it?
I would argue that if the object is hidden only because it makes sense in the fiction for it to be so and not as part of a challenge (IOW, as a flavor element), then the only thing requiring a roll to find it does is introduce the possibility for the players to fail to find it, thereby causing them to miss that flavor element. The players can’t know the thing is hidden unless they find it, so if they can fail to find it, then who is that bit of worldbuilding actually serving? Not the players.
The players won't see every part of the world. That's a good thing. And the hidden gem or whatever can also just be a bonus. You roll well, or search very thoroughly, or both, and you find a cool extra. I genuinely don't understand how that could be controversial. Like...i guess it's like an easter egg? Do you really not include anything in your games that is just...extra cool stuff that the players might not ever see?
Wh... what? I don’t understand how the stakes could matter if they aren’t a challenge... meaningful stakes are precisely what makes something challenging. I don’t... This statement makes no sense to me.
I am equally confused. I don't even know how to explain that a thing that doesn't matter can be challenging? Like it's...the two aren't...what?
If it must be overcome through effort...it's a challenge. It may be a challenge that you can just ignore without any negative consequence, but it's still a challenge. Climbing a cliff face is a challenge, regardless of whether you
need to get to the top. Even if you're secured and totally safe, it's still
hard to do. It's...literally...challenging?
I agree. And if the reason for the thing being hidden is not to challenge the players, then what is the benefit of those possible outcomes? In my evaluation, if the thing is hidden to make the game world feel alive, that goal is actually harmed by making failure to find it a possible outcome. Maybe success at a cost might be a more desirable outcome, but in that case you’ve introduced meaningful stakes and now it’s a challenge.
The goal is actively helped by a chance of failure, because the game isn't just one scene. The item itself isn't important, but knowing that they
will miss things in their adventures, that the world is bigger than what they see, enhances the world. Sometimes, you turn left, and you just don't get another chance to go down the other passage, and you never meet the weirdo pairing of a djinn green knight and her dryad artificer wife.
But, again, a lot of the time it isn't about a chance of failure, as such, but instead about adjudicating what type of success occurs, or what happens alongside the action.
You're right, it is false, but only because Iserith misquoted the example.
If you say your character paces around looking at the walls and furniture for clues, you have no chance because to find it would require opening drawers.
If you search the furniture, you get a check to see whether you find it because looking under the folded clothes in the top drawer of the bureau is something that your character might do as part of a search.
Of course if you specify that your character is checking under the clothes in all the drawers of the bureau, they will automatically find the key, no roll required.
Sure, if the player says that they are just kinda standing there looking at the room, they aren't searching it. A reasonable DM would ask for clarification at such a bland declaration.
As
@Cap'n Kobold says, I paraphrased and got the player's action declaration wrong in what you quoted above. But the point stands: The game expects players to be reasonably specific when describing what they want to do. This is so the DM can determine the character's chance at success.
Here we go again: It's a
suggestion if it supports my argument. It's a
rule if it supports yours. I see what you're doing there. So I guess the rules on Hiding, also in a sidebar in that same chapter, aren't actually rules?
Well, no. The rules are the rules, and advice on how to use the rules isn't. The stealth sidebar is written pretty explicitly as rules.
The sidebar you used just doesn't support the idea that anything I ever described in this thread would have no chance of success. Saying "I search the entire room thoroughly" would suffice, even if we treated that sidebar as rules.