Yeah, I guess I come across a little hostile towards the idea of trying to enforce speech patterns (and that came out hostile too), but I've mostly been defending myself for the past week, so I'm going to be a tiny bit bristly.
Also, tone is hard in these sort of discussions. A sarcastic "Yes, you are right my confusion comes from you saying I'm not declaring actions when I am declaring actions" might not come across fully.
No worries. I was attempting to point out, with a bit of levity, that the frustration with having to constantly defend one's self against the same tired points over and over again runs both ways here. In hindsight, I too came off more bristly than I intended to, and I apologize for that.
Then again, I'd like to point something out. I'm not quoting the rulebook at people. Which is what I was objecting too. See, [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] has been quoting the same passage of the book for this entire thread. Saying the exact same thing, over and over and over. If you want to compare my typed out answers to that, well, I can't stop you. However, the comparison between my debate and a repeated "read the rules on page 15 of the Player's Handbook" is stretching it in my opinion.
I think it's important to take into account the context surrounding Isereth's quoting of the passages in question. Isereth is a firm advocate of trying the rules as written first before altering anything, so that one knows how the designers intended the game to be played, and is better equipped to depart from that intent with specific intent. He's not saying "you're doing it wrong, look, here's where the book says so!" He's saying, "here's where D&D 5e tells you how the designers intended play to work. Don't knock it till you've tried it." And I've seen a few commenters say that this style isn't anything new, they played with DMs who did it that way in the 80s, and it wasn't for them. But D&D 5e wasn't out in the 80s. If you haven't tried running
D&D 5e that way, you should really give it a shot before you judge it too harshly. It might work out better than you expect it to.
A goal and an approach.
"I want to roll perception to listen for an ambush beyond the door" would work.
Yes. "Listen" is a approach and "for an ambush beyond the door" is a goal. I can also tell from "I want to roll perception" that the player thinks their Proficiency in the Perception might be applicable, if there is uncertainty in the result of listening to try to determine if there is an ambush behind the door.
"I want to roll perception to see if I notice an ambush beyond the door" wouldn't?
No. "See if I notice an ambush behind the door" is a goal, but no clear approach is indicated in this statement. What does your character
do to try to notice an ambush behind the door?
"Man, there have been a lot of ambushes in this dungeon. Bet there's another one lined up. I want to roll perception, let's see if we can get the drop on them instead" wouldn't?
No. "See if we can get the drop on them" is a goal, but no clear approach is indicated. I do, however, get the sense that the player is anticipating a potential ambush, and since they seem to think their Proficiency in the Perception skill will be relevant if their action has an uncertain outcome, I'm guessing that "see if we can get the drop on them" isn't really their
immediate goal, but a planned goal for a potential future action after they have confirmed or denied their suspicion of an ambush.
"I want to use my senses to detect if there is an ambush up ahead, may I roll perception?"
"I want to use my senses" is an approach and "detect if there is an ambush up ahead" is a goal, so I do technically have what I need to adjudicate that action. However, in this case I would clarify first, because I have a feeling the player probably doesn't want to taste the door. Probably something like, "Ok, I'm hearing that you want to determine if there is an ambush ahead, and that you want to use your senses to do so. By 'senses', you mean hearing, smell, touch,
and taste?"
Maybe it is just because I'm writing the examples, but the approach is decently laid out in all four.
Only if you consider "roll perception" to be an approach. It's not. Rolling perception is something the
player does to resolve uncertainty in the outcome of the
character's action. In order to determine whether or not it is appropriate for the
player to roll perception, I need to know what the
character is doing that might have an uncertain outcome.
Sure, I believe you. But, I wonder if we have different ideas of certainty and uncertainty.
See, I hate "Certainty" in a lot of ways. If my players are "certain" they can walk through a dungeon and catch every trap, then why am I bothering to place traps. They wouldn't be "certain" without hard evidence they could do so, and if they ahve that kind of assurance, then it means there is no point in caring about the traps.
But, if they only think that the Duke is behind everything, even if they've got a lot of evidence, then it will be good to be proven right. They are only "certain" after it has been resolved. The "uncertainty" makes it more interesting.
Yes, we are indeed talking about different kinds of certainty here. Of course the players shouldn't be certain they can walk through a dungeon and catch every trap, or that the Duke is behind everything. They should, however, be certain of their immediate environment, their own capabilities, and the likely outcomes of their actions. They should be able to reasonably evaluate their chances of success and risks of failure, so that they can be confident in their decisions. They should be able to trust that the world responds to their actions in a logical and consistent manner.
And usually this doesn't apply to abilities, but sometimes it does. I've on the spot homebrewed a lot of things. I've had clerics roll spellcasting checks and use channel divinity to cleanse an area of corruption, or heal a torn soul (literal). They aren't certain these things are allowed, but they are certain they can ask, and if it makes sense in the fiction (and doesn't unbalance the mechanics of the game too horribly) I've got a decent chance of allowing it. They trust I'm not going to have them waste time on things that aren't going to change, but there is some wiggle in what exactly their abilities can do.
See, I wouldn't like that. That would undermine my confidence in the consistency of the world. If your players skills and abilities don't consistently behave the same way - if sometimes they can heal torn souls with Channel Divinity and other times they can't - then it's no surprise that they don't wan to describe what their character is actually doing in the world to try to figure out if there are monsters waiting to ambush them. They aren't certain how the world will respond to that action, because sometimes it works one way and sometimes it works another. It's only natural that they would feel the d20 is more reliable than their own sense of what might happen in response to their characters' actions. Which is saying something considering how swingy d20s are.
Fair enough, but a lot of things are defined by the rules in ways we don't use them. For example, there is no action for swimming or climbing. Those are types of movement. So, by a purely tyrannical reading of the rules if you ask a player to give you an action, and they say "swim to the other side of the river" they are wrong, because the game defines actions and that isn't one.
But action is an English word. "Skill check" is just rules jargon. You're not using a natural-language meaning of a word that also has a specific rules meaning, you're using a rules term to mean something other than what the rules system it comes from says it means.
It's why I don't like this idea of "but this is very specific in the rules, so you can't use the term this way" because we use terms all the time in ways that aren't quite 100% accurate, and being 100% accurate all the time leads to more problems than it solves.
But your use of "skill check" as interchangeable with the rules term "action" is causing actual confusion. Using the English definition of "action" to describe something that is an action by the english definition but is not an action as defined by the rules of D&D is not.
Nope, perfectly fine premise. Just narrow in scope.
It would only be flawed if it had been intended to address people who did not think a roll was necessary, but by specifying a roll is being asked about, it tells you that those people are not being addressed.
Now, we've obviously moved far far away from the premise of this thread, but it is worth considering.
Just so we're clear, are you saying that people who don't think a roll should be called for to determine whether or not a character who is not lying is lying should not participate in this discussion?
I gave an alternate style of the result, then got swarmed by people calling me out for taking away player authority, and defending why in my circumstances that has become a natural outlet.
While the entire time I have said that I would have allowed wiping the handle to bypass the check.
If people want to pile on me, that is fine, just don't accuse me of making claims I never made.
You gave an alternative style of the result of
failing on a check that you said you wouldn't allow to fail. Do you not see why that might be confusing?
I'm only dying because people are stabbing me.
It's an expression. "A hill to die on" is a cause you defend in spite of significant resistance. Historically, it carries connotations of defending a point with no real tactical value. I'm saying that this point you've chosen to defend to the death doesn't seem to me like a point worth dying for.
This is like ordering food at a burger joint with a friend who gets ketchup with their fries and hates coca-cola, saying you prefer mustard to ketchup for your fries. Then getting screamed down because your friend doesn't like coca-cola and how dare you implicitly accept that coca-cola isn't the primary drink of burger joints across the nation.
It was never the point, but I've spent so much time defending something I never said that you seem to be convinced I had to have agreed with it somewhere.
Except that coca-cola has nothing to do with mustard on fries. Your alternative style of resolving the action in the example is directly related to the action in the example. You can say "but I would allow wiping the handle to automatically succeed!" until you're blue in the face, but as long as you keep following it up with, "but
if we did agree to roll for it, this is what failure should have looked like," the first part doesn't really mean anything. A better analogy would be that if someone used mustard on fries as an example of a bad combination of foods, and you said, "obviously I would put catchup on my fries, but
if someone did put mustard on their fries, they should go with dijon." Which kind of mustard is least disgusting on fries was never a point of contention, why are you bringing it up? The whole point was that putting mustard on fries is obviously gross. But the fact that you keep saying "yeah, it's gross, but
if you put mustard on fries, you should use dijon!" makes me question if you really do think mustard on fries is gross. I know you keep saying it, but you sure seem insistent that dijon is better than yellow on fries. Almost like you're speaking from experience.