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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8729307" data-attributes="member: 6801228">So things a low level party either can't do, or the Bard taking one of their only two expertises and instead of focusing on literally anything else, focusing on perception. Only then will you accept that they have invested heavily in their ability to spot danger. I generally don't start assuming a level of investment based on how they could build in the future, and instead look at how they build with the resources they had. And I don't dismiss an investment just because they could have possibly done more.All I am doing is not altering the terms of the example. Isn't that the goal? Isn't the goal not to shift the goal posts until we are both arguing entirely different situations tailor-made to support our arguments? All the fighter could have done is make wisdom their highest score. Or wait a few levels to get feats and such to improve their perception even more. Is that seriously what you would have expected from them? And the problem with "not having a specialist" is that there may not be a need for a stealth specialist, there may not be a need for a persuasion specialist, there may not be a need for an arcane knowledge specialist. There is always need for a perception specialist. So, you must always have someone with high wisdom, investing in those feats, in every single game. Or otherwise it is "on them" for not being prepared.So no matter what the party does, unless they spend gold to get more bodies, they cannot possibly even attempt to try and be safe. Especially with how you were running it before where they needed one person to look for traps, one person to look for secret doors, and one person to look for monsters. At that point I guess just forgo the mapping and agree to get utterly lost, because trying to not get lost just leads to you getting ambushed. Now, let's set aside your belief that the rules support this, because my belief is that they don't and you have made it clear you hate discussing our beliefs. What is the advantage of doing it your way? What is the advantage of making this such an incredibly hard decision that will always leave them vulnerable no matter what they do? I'll go first. The advantage of my way, where looking for danger includes all the possible types of danger is that the party doesn't need to hire NPCs (which means I don't need to roleplay those NPCs and the players don't need for me to inflate the coin they receive to cover expenses). Additionally, they can feel like they actually have a chance to be safe. They are in a dangerous area, but when they declare they are on the lookout for danger, they are on the look out for danger. This matches with what they are imagining in their minds when they declare the action. And it gives them the ability to do other things as they travel, without feeling like those things will get them killed. This can vary widely, covering everything from discussing with a freed NPC while they travel, or fiddling with a strange magical device they discovered.Because if someone is looking for ambushes, they should have a chance to spot the threat before they turn the blind corner. Maybe they see a shifting shadow, maybe they see a weapon glinting around that blind corner the enemy didn't properly conceal. Maybe there is a creak of leather as they shift. Then, after noticing the signs of a potential ambush, they tell the party that they think an ambush is ahead. Now, if they are dumb (which trained killers used to dangerous situations should never be assumed to be dumb) they are loud enough that the enemy charges out, which isn't an ambush, because no one is surprised. If they aren't dumb, then they have a chance to act before the enemy realizes they have been spotted. They may even counter-ambush, depending on their strengths and tactics. The only way I see this not working is if looking for monsters preparing to ambush you can not possibly detect an ambush being set up around a blind corner, which I do not believe is the case.So, you've known since Tuesday when you posted this? That makes me wonder why it wasn't until Thursday/Friday when I said "moving slowly and carefully forward" that your answer started changing. I'd go back further, but the conversation snarls after monday and it isn't easy to trace back when I first start with this example.No, I don't think you are lying. I think that you are continuing how you've played and been taught to play for decades, and that you don't seem to realize that the bad things you are picturing when you state things like "actively manuevering PCs into unavoidable traps" aren't what we actually find problems with. What you don't seem to realize is that in your pursuit of how you think the game should be played, you are doing the exact same things that many of us have come to see as problems. You may place a poisoned needle in the door handle, and you won't move it or force people to touch it. But you need to know, absolutely need to know, who touches that door handle and when they touch it. But what is the consequence of that? The consequence I've found, not from anything I've ever done, but simply from the behaviors of players I inherited from others, is that no player will ever touch a door handle, unless they have first specified that they are wearing a full-plate gauntlet and angling their hand so that any needles won't pierce. Those are the ones who never had to deal with an adamantium needle that punches through gauntlets.  And how do I know this? Because I still have players checking every door and every hall and every room, even though I rarely run traps at all. And I myself, I was in a game where we ran into a single treasure chest that was trapped. We then used mage hand to open every single treasure chest from that point on, and the DM lamented that we were never going to trigger another trapped chest, because we were never going to physically touch another chest, or another door, or another drawer. And we didn't. Which meant either the traps were pointless because we were never going to interact with them or the DM had to come up with traps that weren't pointless. And you can keep calling me psyologically traumatized, but that's what I heat every time you say you need a "specific" approach. We need to know if we do the wrong thing, if we make a mistake, so that we trigger the trap. Or just like the examples Mannahim gave of those garden walls, need to know which garden wall they go up, because they might be traps. Or why the example of the desk needed to know if you are opening the drawers, because there might be a yellow mold trap in the drawers. And I fully understand that just having them roll to see if they trigger the trap or not won't stop anything. Because they will still seek to remove any ambiguity about the risk and take extreme measures to protect their characters. But that is where this divide comes from. When you ask that question it is no longer something like "how does my character search a room" which can be some fun RP. It is "what can I do to eliminate any and all possible risk from this scenario, because if I don't, I'm screwed by what I forget." And some of us don't find that fun or engaging. It becomes white noise and busywork. Standard Procedure #7 engage, and it no longer becomes about playing the game or stepping into our characters, it is a repetition of the same things we've done 100 times, because that's the only safe option.I've abandoned any hope of ever getting an answer from you about what is important in your games. It seems like it is all just randomly generated and connected by the thinnest strands. And yes, I've argued that the level of detail given should be plenty. Because I'm sure if I go and look up rock-climbing or talk to a gymnast I could come up with all sorts of specific details I could ask when someone says that they climb a wall or do a flip. I've got a little musical experience, I know that is someone says "I want to play a sad song on my viol" that I could ask if they are playing in a major or minor key, if they are using a 3/4 time or a 5/8 time. I could which specific song they play. But none of that actually matters, and I assume that their character plays a properly sad song without getting into the details of HOW sad, or sad in which way. I don't even need to ask whether or not they sing an accompaniment. These are all details that would matter if I'm making a movie in my mind that needs to match the player's movie, but there is a difference with climbing, flips, and playing sad songs. There are no traps that can trigger from doing the wrong thing. It is impossible. So you don't need the detail. There are only two times you need that detail. Investigating a physical space. Talking with NPCs. And I only agree with one of those.You couch it in nicer language, sure, but you don't deny that other people who share your position do say exactly that. And so if you want to know why am I bothering, there it is.</blockquote>

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