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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Xetheral" data-source="post: 8195171" data-attributes="member: 6802765">Well said. And although I think you understand, just to be certain I want to emphasize that my thinking each of the interpretations is valid does not mean I think all inteprepretations are equally strong. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />That seems like an excellent summary both of your narrower reading of the phrase "At the DM's option" and how that leads us to different results. However, I'm not sure I'm comfortable ascribing the difference in how we read "At the DM's option..." to an overall difference in our proclivity to call for checks. Even if there is such a difference, I think it's more likely we're just taking different approaches to textual interpretation.Thanks for clarifying. I see a bit of conflict between identifying climbing conditions as subjective and leaving them up to the DM, while simultaneously saying that both ends of the similarity scale are clear. The latter requires yet another decision about who gets to decide how broad the clear ends of the scale are.If the DM gets to make that call, then there being clarity at either end doesn't mean anything, because the DM can still rule however they want--the whole scale is subjective. If the DM is instead constrained to only make calls in the subjective middle portion of the similarity scale, then who decides where the subjectivity ends and the clarity begins?Maybe objective wasn't the right world, but it still seems to me that you're applying an external rubric to determine what climbing complications are clearly similar to the examples and what climbing complications are clearly not similar/not complications. I'm not sure where that external rubric is coming from, other than that it appears to be based on your best judgement of what is and is not clearly similar. And while that definitely works at your table, I'm not sure it's a practical solution at other tables when you aren't around. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Likewise!</blockquote>

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