NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Vegepygmy" data-source="post: 4610584" data-attributes="member: 40109">A conscious action for the player, yes. This is where we fundamentally disagree. In my view, the fact that the player is describing what the PC is doing has no bearing whatsoever upon whether the PC is doing something consciously or not. I get that. I just don't see how you make the leap that because the player makes a conscious decision about what game mechanic to use, the PC must also be making a conscious decision. And I suspect this is at the root of our disagreement: is "taking 10" the norm or the exception? Based on your comments above, I think you would say it is the exception, because the player (and thus the PC) has to consciously decide to do it. I, on the other hand, consider "taking 10" to be the norm; it's what everyone does almost all the time when they aren't in unusual circumstances (i.e., threatened or distracted). That's what I think Chris Sims was really saying in regards to his "house rule" -- that if the players really understood the rules correctly, they'd be taking 10, because that's how the people who wrote the rules intended to model ordinary, everyday skill checks like driving a car around town. They didn't expect players to choose to roll the checks and crash their cars 1 out of every 20 times they get behind the wheel. (If you ask me, those writers forgot two basic principles: most players like to roll dice, and few players read the rules very closely.) I still don't think you understand me on this point. What I was attempting to illustrate is that when I am driving "normally," I am doing so carefully/cautiously/conscientiously enough to avoid making simple mistakes (not that by driving normally I can avoid simple mistakes). In game terms, I'm taking 10...because if I wasn't, I'd be rolling my skill checks, which would mean that at least 5% of the time I'd be making a simple mistake.</blockquote>

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