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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9098931" data-attributes="member: 42582">4e DMG pp 73-75:You describe the environment, listen to the players’ responses, let them make their skill checks, and narrate the results. .  .. When a player’s turn comes up in a skill challenge, let that player’s character use any skill the player wants. As long as the player or you can come up with a way to let this secondary skill play a part in the challenge, go for it. . . . However, it’s particularly important to make sure these checks are grounded in actions that make sense in the adventure and the situation.Fiction is fundamental to the framing in skill challenges. And as the result of each check is narrated, there is new framing and hence new prospects for skill checks to be declared.Here's an example, from actual play, of how this works:Notice how the fiction matters?Outside of a skill challenge, fiction also matters. A [cold] power can freeze puddles or ponds; a [fire] power can set things alight; you have to lie down to take cover behind/beneath a table, but not to take cover behind a tree trunk. Etc. Here's an actual play example that illustrates the point:Although the actual play report doesn't mention it, I have a memory of the player choosing a "targets enemies" rather than "targets creatures" attack vs the spiders in the library precisely so that he would be able to make an Arcana check to avoid burning the papers with his fiery burst. (We both took it as obvious that if you're using "targets creatures" then you're just filling the whole area with flame, to the significant detriment of the books.Another example I remember is when the PCs (as played by their players), before fighting a purple worm, obtained sacks of lime to neutralise stomach acid. This reduced their ongoing damage, when one of them inevitably got swallowed, from 30 to 20 hp per round.To reiterate: the GM is discouraged from using pre-conceived fiction to say "no" to action declarations is not the same thing as fiction doesn't matter.</blockquote>

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