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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 7379114" data-attributes="member: 97077">First, it might be worth examining whether you're asking for too many checks. If you are calling for a check for just about anything that sounds like it might line up with a proficiency or your players are asking to make checks (as is very common) or just making them unprompted, it may be that theses approaches are encouraging the players to want to increase their chances of success on the ability check by the few means they have to do that. This may be especially true if nothing happens on a failed check or if the stakes are really high. The problem is not the players here. It's a perfectly rational behavior in that kind of environment in my view. If you contrast that with a game where the DM more or less balances ruling success (or failure) against calling for checks, plus the players do not seek to make ability checks (and perhaps seek to avoid them as much as possible), then players know that they have a chance to succeed without rolling and thus they may feel the need for guidance is reduced. Next, on the "help action" issue, remember that Help action is for combat only. "Working together" is what you do outside of combat and that comes with some requirements. See Basic Rules, page 59. Specifically, a character can only help if the task is one that he or she could attempt alone. As well, the character only gets a benefit if it actually makes sense that two or more people working on the same task could actually be productive. So while this doesn't get rid of "working together" altogether, it may diminish it some.Finally, if you really wanted to go the route of limiting the spell in some way, you could just say that guidance only works on tasks reasonably related to the cleric's domain. Anyone trying to recall lore about something could receive guidance from cleric of a god of knowledge. Someone trying to bluff or pick a lock might find some truth in the guidance of a god of the trickster domain. The issue with this method, other than requiring your players' buy-in on the limitation, is that you're going to have to make more judgment calls on edge cases. If I were to go this route, I'd just tell my players what I had in mind and let them make the call as to whether the task fell into the scope of the deity's domain on the assumption they will act in good faith.But before you go that last route, I would seriously examine how I run the game, especially as it pertains to how the players describe what they want to do and how the DM adjudicates. I'd make changes here, if necessary, before tinkering with the rules.</blockquote>

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