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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imaro" data-source="post: 5725518" data-attributes="member: 48965">I thnk we both know the answer to this...   But again, what has this added to the gameplay or story? Is there a reason that this is a better solution in this particular case than actually having an NPC who knows the most direct route and seeing how the PC's handle the complication? See that's the piece I am missing... why is granting the players narrative control to create a shortcut to stop the villain in this situation objectively more enjoyable/better/etc. than having the NPC take the most direct route and having the PC's deal with that situation?   Wait so you have been granted narrative control through the use of skills...and you're saying the assumption shouldn't be that you will try to use one of your higher rated skills as opposed to a lower one when exerting it?? Really?  If I'm a character who is intimately familiar with the city we are in then I am going to assume that he has the Knowledge(local) skill or something similar... otherwise he doesn't have intimate knowledge of the area per the rules. Thus I will succeed more than I will fail in any roll involving that skill (going by average DC's). That said it then becomes easier and more reliable for me to fall back on my "knowledge of shortcuts" in any chase scenario than to think of anything else and thus it will most likely become my fallback in that situation. That's what I am saying.  I think it's almost improbable that in this situation a player will purposefully choose to use a bad skill.  No we should have the freedom to set up conflicts, paradigms and obstacles that challenge the PC's to find other ways to approach and solve problems... How is this any different than DM fiat that adds a trap, terrain or whatever to a fight in a room in order to make the encounter more challenging and/or force the PC's to use different tactics in order to overcome it?  And if the situation always has the same setup, guess what... you're probably going to end up rolling the same things every time.</blockquote>

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