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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 7999328" data-attributes="member: 6779196">The player is certainly allowed to ask if a certain proficiency is applicable if they’re unsure, but I don’t require them to, and I encourage them to trust their instincts in such situations.Yes... I don’t see any problem with that?I don’t think DM empowerment has anything to do with it. I am exercising my power as DM to say, “this is how ability checks will be resolved at my table.” I’m not disempowered because I allow the player to decide for themselves if they think one of their proficiencies is applicable.In my experience, most players are not trying to game the system, and those who are will find a way to do so with or without this rule in place. And I still fail to see how the player making the decision instead of me is a bad thing in this instance.Obviously other DMs will have their own way of doing things, not everyone would be comfortable letting the player make that decision, and that’s fine. I’m just saying what works for me and why.Calling it a stealth skill check instead of a Dex (stealth) check doesn’t change the mechanics, but defaulting to calling for skill checks (or whatever you want to call the combination of d20 roll + ability modifier + proficiency bonus if a specific proficiency is applicable) rather than calling for an ability check and then either deciding a proficiency that applies or allowing the player to do so is a different process. The former starts and ends with selecting one ability, skill, or tool from the list of existing abilities, skills, and tools, and calling for a check with it. Because this is a very long list, in my experience most DMs narrow it down to just the 18 skills, or occasionally the 18 skills and 6 abilities, leading to the commonly-expressed problem of tool proficiencies feeling useless. Sometimes a DM might choose an ability and a skill that isn’t usually associated with it, though in my experience this is a vanishingly rare occurrence. The latter  process starts with selecting an ability (a much smaller list to chose from) and calling for a check with it, and ends with determining, possibly with the help of the player, if any of the skill, tool, and maybe even weapon and armor proficiencies the character has might be applicable (or even allowing the player to make that determination themselves).</blockquote>

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