Yeah, thinking about it, I see your point. The goal is to sneak past the guards, so, failing any one of the checks is a fail of the goal. The check and the goal are separate elements - the check simply answers the "how" of "How did you get past the guards".
Well, I would say the approach answers “how did you (attempt to) get past the guards,” and the check answers the question “did it work?” But yeah, within this framework you have to think of the action as a separate thing from the skill check. In some other frameworks, “action” and “check” are pretty much interchangeable, but in this one they are two separate things; the PCs take actions and checks are used to determine the efficacy of those actions.
I'm not sure I agree that all skill checks work like this though. Knowledge checks are pretty much indivisible from the goal - I'm trying to remember some piece of information, roll the check. There really isn't too much in the way of separation there.
I don’t think it would be right to say that all checks work that way either. There are plenty of DMs who use other frameworks for action resolution and their games function fine, so clearly not all actions have to work that way. But all actions
can work that way, if you want them to, and I find there to be a lot of advantages to using that framework consistently throughout the game.
Knowledge checks, or as I prefer to say, lore recall, is one type of action that can be a little awkward to fit within the goal/approach framework. Iserith does it by asking that players render their requests to recall lore in the form of an action with a goal and an approach, e.g. “I think back to my studies in the monastery to try to remember any relevant details about this creature.” Personally, I find that unwieldy, and what I do is I make lore recall pretty much automatic. I’ll give you additional details about creatures and the environment based on your background and Proficiencies, and if you want to learn more you have to do so through interaction, by observing, experimenting, studying, etc. I’m sure there are other ways people handle lore recall in their games, including good ol’
“Can I make an Arcana check to see if I know anything about these runes?” method.
And, really, skill contests are somewhat separate here since there are multiple goals in play. The guards want to spot stuff. The character wants to sneak through. Whose goals are more important? After all, if I narrate a specific plan, the DM may allow me to bypass the guards without a roll. Can the NPC's also do the same thing? Seems a pretty strong advantage to PC's if not.
I just see contests as resolving situations where two or more characters are acting with opposed and mutually exclusive goals. One side will succeed in their goal, and the other will necessarily fail. Which one succeeds is determined by who gets the higher result on their check. As for NPCs succeeding without checks... I suppose, in theory. Personally, I don’t always resolve NPC actions the same way as I would PC actions. But they do often succeed without having to make checks, so I guess yeah.
OH, and no, I don't have anyone on ignore.
Oh, good, I’m glad
But, yeah, I'm thinking that there's some serious hair splitting going on here. How about this example:
I'm trying to hold a door shut from the zombies on the other side. Bog standard contest right? They win, the door opens, I win, the door stays shut. But, again, I don't stop holding the door if I fail the check. I'm still holding the door. I haven't failed the check at all. But, because you have separated the check from the actual actions in the game, now you have added a fail condition to skill contests - I have failed my goal.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re envisioning in the fiction here. How did the zombies get the door open with you still holding it?
The issue with this is, it forces all checks to be black and white. Say I'm climbing a 50 foot wall. Now, with standard movement, it would take 4 checks to climb that wall (climb checks are half speed). To succeed in my goal (get to the top), I need to succeed 4 checks. Fair enough. But, my second best result is 4 straight failures. If I make the first three checks and fail the fourth and fall, then I take the most damage. The stakes rise with every check. But, the previous successes don't actually increase my chances of a subsequent success. So, my best "fail" is to fail 4 straight rolls. There is no "partial success" in the Goal and Method approach. Since any roll MUST have a fail condition.
Well, first of all, climbing doesn’t normally require a check by 5e RAW. You can just climb at half your speed, unless there are exceptional circumstances preventing you from doing so. But for the sake of this example, let’s assume such circumstances are present. Maybe the wall is too sheer and featureless to climb normally. So under this framework, to accomplish the goal is scaling this wall, the PC needs an approach that has a reasonable chance of succeeding that goal. Maybe they have climbing spikes that they plan to use to make their own hand and foot holds. I would rule that an action like that would succeed in the goal automatically. You can climb the wall at half speed. Now, if the approach also has a chance of failure... maybe the climbing spikes were salvaged from a corpse and are old and liable to break under the PC’s weight. In that case, we have a possibility of success, a possibility of failure, and a consequence for failure (specifically, falling). So in that case, I would call for a Strength check to resolve the uncertainty, and the player could suggest an applicable Proficiency, such as Athletics or climbing kit. I would not call for four checks, though. I’d just call for one. On a success, you can get to the top safely, climbing at half speed. On a failure, you will fall before you reach the top and take 2d6 damage from the fall (I went with 2d6 because I’m leaving the specific height from which the PC would fall abstract, and that’s the damage you’d take for a 25 foot fall, which is the midway point on this climb).
Side note, it’s interesting to me that you suggest calling for four checks here, when earlier you were very concerned with insuring that the potential reward outweighed the potential consequences, factoring in the chances of failure. If it requires four successful checks in a row to get to the top of this wall, your chances of success are going to be pretty low even if you have a solid bonus to the check, so I would think you would want what ever is at the top to be a
significant reward to make this proposition worth the risk.
Which makes it a great too in some cases, but, a rather poor one in others. Maybe in my "hold the zombie door", failing by less than 5 only lets one zombie past. When you remove the "fail condition" to the die rolls and allow for partial successes, you gain a lot more flexibility.
I find the binary nature of checks in this framework very flexible, myself. But lots of people like having degrees of success on a single roll. Personal preference, I suppose.
