I just thought of a great way to get players to volunteer more information on their own without me coaxing them.
Player, I investigate the statute.
DM: (Assume the least actionable form of investigation possible). By looking at it from 10 ft away it looks like a statue to you.
Player: I get right up to it and look it over
DM: Give me an investigation check
Player: rolls a 15
DM: you notice that part of the inside mouth doesn't fully touch the outside rim. It looks like this statue is possible made of two different pieces
Player: I stick the end of my javelin in the statue to see if I can pry it apart
Maybe the problem of not good enough player descriptions takes care of itself if you just assume the player does the least amount of work possible when it comes to their actions
See this kinda gets at the heart of it to me. There are posts way back in this or the other recent threads to this point.
The problem with the "i check for traps" followed by the "lose hand" is the Gm jumping all the way past "ooops" without that being an understood thing at that table.
often it seems these "problems" that are so horrendous we need to overhaul resolution and scenes are examples of two strangers sitting down for the first time ever and where the first case is a "well past ooops" moment.
A basic simple concept for me that i started as far back as defore there were "e" attached to AD&D was to never have the first narrative past "ooops" be an actual "ooops".
So, the first, second, third or so on time someone "checks for traps" in a campaign, i give them good solid narrative examples of how both success and fails will be described. This is not "just in a dungeon" but in general across quite a few. We establish how things can play out so that we are using the same language.
So maybe one time they fail a roll and the narration goes farther into touching and they find out there was some dark smudge that smells bad but it wasn't toxic "now." maybe another time they make the roll and see signs of dead insects in a way that makes them stop before touching... spotting some oily paste that they almost missed. After those and a few more times, especially if they see that they can say "only by looking" etc they stop short of the full monty (both good and bad) but that basically it is still gonna come down to the following - is there something they can detect before it goes off or not and that is determined by their skill vs the challenge?
NOTE - the contact touchy stuff is to me a bad example - contact poisons get thrown in really stupid ways IMO - but its such an easy one to use to illustrate the issue. i cant think of the last time i had a contact poison on door or chest kind of situation in an actual game.
But, as a general broad guideline for play, well before a "well past ooops" comes up in my game, the "scope" of actions involved with "check for..." has been shown in play multiple times already, so there is no room for the sudden shock at "but wait i didn't say..." confusion.