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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest 6801328" data-source="post: 7798564">It's not the same outcome, because with success you're in combat with somebody prone.  With failure you're in combat with somebody standing.  And if you hadn't tried you wouldn't be in combat.Now, I suppose it could be argued that both outcomes are worse than doing nothing at all, but presumably this wouldn't have happened unless that player had decided this wasn't true.And, really, this is (also) a semantic game, because knocking somebody prone uses an attack action, so what really happened here is the DM gave the PC a surprise round.  If he failed with his shove it's still a wasted turn.And even if you don't want to agree with that, the same principle applies out of combat: clearly there was SOME reason he wanted to shove him prone, and the DM let him take some kind of action.  So if the shove failed he has then squandered his chance to do something for free, outside of combat.And, finally, if this isn't a high stakes situation...if there really is no consequence for failure because, say, he was shoving a friend into a snowbank for a joke...then there's no need for a roll.</blockquote>