Say, Pot, have you met my friend, Kettle?
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.
I think you two would get along, you have so much in common.
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.
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 don’t demand that players never say they roll Perception or chastise them for doing so. I ask that they tell me what they want to accomplish and how their character goes about it. They can be as specific and detailed as they like, or as simple and general as they like, so long as they provide me with the two things I need to adequately adjudicate their action without making assumptions or dictating what their character does - namely, a goal and an approach. Saying “I roll Perception” doesn’t provide me with that. Maybe it is enough for you to be comfortable adjudicating an action. Bully for you.
A goal and an approach.
"I want to roll perception to listen for an ambush beyond the door" would work. "I want to roll perception to see if I notice an ambush beyond the door" wouldn't? "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? "I want to use my senses to detect if there is an ambush up ahead, may I roll perception?"
Maybe it is just because I'm writing the examples, but the approach is decently laid out in all four.
I know you’re not going to believe me when I say this, but it does not take much time at all in my games. It helps that no time is wasted on unnecessary dice rolls. I also don’t build uncertainty - on the contrary, I run the game the way I do to build certainty in my players’ minds, so that they can feel confident in making informed decisions. I have an example a while back of a player who was really concerned about the whole player skill vs character skill thing, until we had a talk about it, she agreed to give it a try, and she loves it. She is the most confident and creative player in my current group when it comes to describing actions.
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.
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.
Well you’re going to get a lot of pushback on that, because the term skill check has a specific meaning within the rules, and you’re using it to mean something else.
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.
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.
A fundamentally flawed premise, because we do not all agree that Insight should be rolled if an NPC is telling the truth.
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.
Then your message is extremely unclear. You have been arguing for an alternative ruling of the result, which is implicitly arguing in favor of the call to resolve the action by way of a dice roll.
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.
Again, it’s a super weird hill to die on, given that “no, you fail, take damage” was arguably the least contentious part of the example. Sure, the hypothetical DM shouldn’t have said “no, you fail, take damage.” But the greater issue with that ruling is in allowing the possibility of failure in the first place. If you want to argue that DMs should be specific about why actions fail in terms of the narrative, instead of just saying they fail, fine, but the example under discussion is a terrible one to reference to make that point.
I'm only dying because people are stabbing me.
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.
