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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 7193256" data-attributes="member: 20323">[MENTION=6892365]Triumph_Fork[/MENTION] Here's how I do it:1. Get clear about the risk vs. reward in advance. What's the ideal outcome for the PCs? What is a consequence of failure? What complications might occur?2. Let the players decide what they're doing, how they're approaching the challenge.3. Determine if their description merits multiple individual checks or one group check. Many situations will only merit a group check – multiple individual checks are usually better suited to more complex (and less frequent) situations. If doing individual checks, determine if any PCs are Helping others & figure out a logical sequence for individually acting players to take their turns in (it helps to ask "could player X's actions influence what happens in player Y's scene? if so, X goes before Y). 3a. Remember ONLY roll dice when the outcome is in question. If you, as DM, have a player role-playing very well, making an intelligent argument that would be totally convincing to the greedy smuggler, you're perfectly within your rights to judge it to be an "auto-success." In situations like that, I often won't even reference the rules, and just role-play the NPC accordingly. Not only is this permissible for the DM to do, it's to be encouraged. I'll let others debate the theory of "player skill vs. character skill" – in practice, I've found it just works.4. Interpret the results of the check(s) with a "degrees of success/failure" model. Beat Difficulty by 5 or more? That's a great success – the PCs get some kind of boon, and sometimes I let them pick from a few I list off / sometimes they have something in mind. Fail the Difficulty by 5 or more? That's a disastrous failure – the PCs suffer a complication, often I let them pick from a list of complications (which are often a mix of written-in-advance & created on-the-spot).5. Narrate the results based on those outcomes/complications/boons.And I want to call out one thing...If a player said something like this, I'd encourage him to roleplay or describe exactly what he was doing. My interpretation, based on what you shared, would be that the player is asking to make an Intimidation check but wants to use Strength as the ability for the check instead of Charisma – most likely because their PC is strong but uncharismatic. IOW he's trying to game the system, and hasn't even bothered to come up with an interesting narrative to justify it.If he couldn't come up with an interesting narrative, I'd consider ruling it an automatic failure or requiring him to make a Charisma (Intimidation) check with disadvantage.</blockquote>

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