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Message: <blockquote data-quote="5ekyu" data-source="post: 7586391" data-attributes="member: 6919838">To me there is no way the very broad presentation of ability checks survives this degree of "did it exactly say you can do that? If not, nope" either as a representation of intent or playability.Are your survival checks and wisdom checks completely limited by not only the list provided but a strict parsing of that text? Dexterity checks? Intelligence checks? Social checks?Is what your takeaway for how 5e says about the scope to use ability checks "only strictly what is explicitly described here even down to how`?"Your Wisdom insight check determines whether you can determine the true intentions of a creature..." Pause - the check determines... and the uncertainty is determining the true intentions- "such as when searching out a lie..."Example in question is searching out a lie. At a very basic reading, you determine that this person is trying to deceive you, his intentions in this moment is to lie to you. But let's look later on...The DM might ask you to make a wisdom survival check to follow tracks, hunt wild game, guide your group through, frozen wastelands, identify signs that owlbears live nearby."In each of those, would you on a success give the **player** some clues  that the player then must use their own personal knowledge to solve? Does a successful guide thru frozen wastes check mean the player gets orienteering info to use in himself figuring it out? Dies the player need to then make their own personal "not freeze to death" decisiins given clues? Or does success mean the **character's skill** and the successful check mean the character makes the right use of the ingo?For "signs of owlbears" do you provide some feathers and some pictures of footprints and rely on the player actually knowing what an owlbears track looks like for the player to figure it out? Or does the character see signs, read the signs and the **character** know owlbear?More importantly, if a player is in an area without owlbears but with trolls, fo you decide that because strictly the skill references owlbears not trolls and so using that skill as a "troll detector" is not allowed?That's just staying within wisdom and insight/survival.The list of cases would grow with pretty much every ability snd skill if we chose to sometimes parse strictly and sometimes not, sometimes decide its *character succeed* and other times its *character waits for player to succeed*.Me, player decides when, where, for what they apply the charscter trait, but the checks determine the character success and the results.I have found over the years that creating two tiers of skills/traits/powers - in-player resolution and in-character resolution as core mechanic of system - leads to worse results that player application and character resolution across the board does.So, I dont do that.</blockquote>

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