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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 6070983" data-attributes="member: 6668292">I disagree. You're certainly more familiar with the rules, no question about it. But, I clearly understand the difference between "the player says what he wants, GM consults guidelines, GM interprets player action via guidelines, GM tells player how it plays out" and "player tells GM exactly what is happening, mechanically and in the fiction."Right. And true player fiat would give him the ability to declare these things, and not have to clear it with the GM. Just like a player does not have to clear an attack roll with the GM (exercising player fiat according to the original poster), the player needs to not have to clear this through the GM if he is to have the same amount of player fiat.That is, as I said, the player says what he's doing (and what that means mechanically, as you've outlined), and then rolls happen. There is no "say yes" or "GM lets you" or "GM interpretation" or the like. That undermines player fiat (even "say yes").I agree with this as long as the player gets to make the decisions on each part. If the GM is translating it, then I disagree.And it's determined by the GM, not the player. That's what makes it "mother may I." From the DMG:The book makes it fairly clear (in the DMG, at that), that the DM is the one who is determining the mechanical aspects. The guidelines do give strong support for players ("If the action is related to a skill (Acrobatics and Athletics cover a lot of the stunts characters try in combat), use that check" is very reliable for players), but the DM is explicitly the person making the mechanical decisions ("it’s your job to resolve unusual actions when the players try them").This is why I labeled it as, at best, strongly supported "mother may I" in function. You have to hope your DM agrees with the skill use ("I hope he lets me use Acrobatics over a Dexterity check"), agrees with the difficulty ("it seemed Easy to me, but he picked Moderate"), and effects ("I wanted to slide him and damage him with the kick, not just slide him"). If the player got to determine these things, then it would be player fiat; as it stands, this is very, very different from "I attack him, using my [power] to gain [effect]." It's reliant on the DM to translate and interpret things mechanically, and while it has strong guidelines, it's not player fiat.Side note: [sblock]Backing us up in the conversation a couple pages, I wanted to address this:Looking at the page, I think you might be determining things differently from how the books suggests, too. Didn't you mention, in your earlier example, dealing encounter damage, since the player used up an encounter power? That doesn't look like how the rules function, to me:This makes it look like if you can push someone into a fire over and over again, then you should use the normal damage expression. This seems supported in the example:And, didn't you mention, in your earlier example, the Rogue's own encounter power getting used up to perform the maneuver? I'm not sure that happens, by the book, either:This is just giving you a way to judge damage dealt. If the 8th level Rogue had used her encounter power and Sneak Attack, she'd be dealing more (4d6+5ish to 2d8+5), thus it's okay to use the high damage value. As far as I can tell, it's not saying to actually consume her encounter power to deal that level of damage.[/sblock]Just thought I'd give my input. I know you said if you're wrong, you'll continue to use it that way, so I'm not trying to convince you to change your game. Though if I'm right, I'll probably revel in how you opened your post to me ("but I think you aren't groking it because, to be honest, I don't think you're familiar enough with the ruleset to understand what happens at a mechanical level here"). As always, play what you like <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=":)" />Oh, very true. I agree.I think both can make for a good game, too, but I see no reason the guidelines can't be set up in a way that favors PC-control over GM-control, barring things that break those guidelines pretty much completely. As always, play what you like <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=":)" /></blockquote>

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