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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8723055" data-attributes="member: 6779196">It is the DM’s job to interpret the rules and apply them using their best judgment. If the DM rules that an action should be resolved by way of a Dex save, then a Dex save is the way by which it shall be resolved. But, if you don’t like that example, imagine I said they called for a Dex (Athletics) check when you wanted to make a Dex (Acrobatics) check because you’re proficient in acrobatics but not in athletics. Point is, the player doesn’t get to decide what mechanics are applied to resolve their own actions. And yes, sometimes that will mean some of your character’s features won’t be applicable to some actions.But they can’t know there’s nothing in the room if they don’t search it. They can make a reasonable educated guess based on the description of the environment and the presence or absence of telegraphs therein, and decide based on that educated guess whether or not it’s worth their time to search. That’s a decision that’s up to the players to make, not me.sigh I keep telling you, I do have lots of knowledge of what’s going on. What I don’t have knowledge of is what among “what’s going on” will end up being important and what won’t. To answer your question, yes, if there’s something hidden in the room, I will know it’s there.As do PCs, when the person hiding fails to beat the PCs’ passive Wisdom (Perception) with their Dexterity (Stealth) check.Yes, you are wrong about it. I set up the initial conditions, and the players do what they will from there. I can’t know if any given thing in the environment is important, because I don’t know what the players will do with it, or even if they will ever see it. Like, imagine a room hidden behind a secret door, with like a dragon-slaying arrow in it. Maybe the players will find the room and take the arrow, and maybe later they’ll encounter a dragon and use the arrow to slay it. In that case, the arrow ended up being pretty important. But when I designed the dungeon and placed a hidden room with a dragon slaying arrow in it, I didn’t know if the players would find the room, I didn’t know if they would take the arrow, and I didn’t know if they would end up encountering a dragon later. It could have ended up being entirely unimportant. We have to play to find out.I don’t know if there will be a roll to which the the bardic inspiration could be applied. I’m not sure what safe zone you’re talking about, but regardless, 10 minute dungeon turns don’t have to mean the dungeon tries to kill the PCs every 10 minutes. There are lots of dials you can adjust - how many turns pass between rolls for complications? How likely is a complication to occur when such a roll is made? How deadly are the complications? Adjusting these parameters is a great way to create dynamic difficulty; maybe the Dungeon of Terrible Deadliness has more frequent, more likely, and more deadly complications than the Cave of Mostly Just Bats. Either way, the time pressure still encourages the players to weigh their priorities and be economical with their decisions. Mayne that doesn’t sound like fun gameplay to you, and that’s fair enough, but it’s a lot of fun for me and the people I play with.No, not when they move to the center of the room. When they declare an action (with clear goal and approach) that could succeed at finding the trap, could fail to find the trap, and has consequences for failure.Different action than what? You didn’t describe any action in the example.Then we have different definitions of reasonable specificity.I can imagine searching a room as a thing someone could do, but there are so many possible ways a person could go about doing so, I cannot form a clear mental picture of how a player’s character is doing so, unless they narrow it down for me or I make assumptions, and I do not want to make assumptions about the what the player wants their own character to do.No, because it’s still too vague what they are doing in their search of the room. It leaves the fictional action an abstract haze, which doesn’t work very well for forming a consistent shared fiction.That’s a way one might choose to resolve such an action, sure. For me, it’s too abstract. Can’t form a clear mental picture of what actually happened to result in the trap being sprung or not.Why can’t they? They can make up whatever they want.You seem awfully concerned about the possibility of failure without a roll, to the point that you would rather risk a swingy d20 roll than try to pursue success without a roll. That seems absolutely bonkers to me, but it is certainly your prerogative.See, that sounds awesome to me. We’re gradually learning more about the character through play. That’s emergent storytelling right there, which to me is what D&D is all about.I don’t agree that it boils down to the same thing at all. Like, I guess, in a strictly mechanical sense they might be resolved similarly. But in the former case you’ve generated and established a cool story about this character and their relationships with the people they met while studying magic, while in the latter case you have nothing but a vague abstract haze.<img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="🤷‍♀️" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f937-2640.png" title="Woman shrugging    :woman_shrugging:" data-shortname=":woman_shrugging:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" /> Sorry you feel that way I guess.</blockquote>

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