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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8273951" data-attributes="member: 82106">OK, this is an interesting point of discussion. I simply take this to mean that skill checks must literally map to a single character action taken in the fiction. So a player has to say something like "I try to sneak past the guard at the entrance." and that must reference an entrance and a guard already established in the fiction, and that this specific action, in and of itself, if it has a failure state and a success state, then the GM may call for an ability check (presumably a DEX check modified by Stealth proficiency). There is really no explanation of what is meant by these states existing. Now, maybe the actual DMG text is more informative, but from what you wrote I don't know that the GM is obligated to explain what those states are to the player, or even to define them at all beyond determining that some sort of distinctly different resulting fiction state could be presented, in principle. It doesn't really say that the GM is obliged to actually follow through with any specific fictional change (though I think it is fair to assume). So, the important part to me is the last phrase there, a single discrete task, which modifies the fiction in one of two ways, one for failure, and one for success. What it SEEMS TO IMPLY is that ability checks don't cover a more abstract case, where maybe failure simply increments a tally that might aggregate failures and trigger some consequence at some point not directly related to the specific action being taken NOW. It seems to direct GMs to take each check in isolation as it comes and treat it as a discrete thing without (fictional situation aside) any consideration of context. Taken as a rule it would seem to outlaw any sort of SC-like, or Clock-like process.</blockquote>

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