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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 7588850" data-attributes="member: 6779196">I thought that too, until I played under a DM who used the “middle path” method of action resolution. Turned out, the reason I felt that way was because I was subconsciously registering the fact that my choices didn’t matter. I could describe my attempts to disarm the trap any way I wanted, but at the end of the day, it was going to result in a DC 15 check no matter what I said. The most I could hope to do was convince the DM to let me roll Arcana instead of Thieves’ Tools, or get Inspiration if he thought my idea was cool. So I got bored of coming up with clever ways to try to disarm the trap that didn’t actually matter anyway. I started just announcing which skill I wanted to use to make the DC 15 check that I had no choice but to make, which if anything was actually less interesting, but at least it went by faster. I thought I hated traps because of this.With the “middle path” adjudication style, it’s different. My choices actually mattered. Depending on how I wanted to go about dealing with the trap, I might not only get a say in what skill I got to roll, I might not even need to roll. An idea that seemed like it would work might just work. And when I did need to make a check, it was tense! I knew my method might work, but it also might blow up in my face, and I had to seriously consider if it was worth the risk, or if I should try coming up with a safer approach. Suddenly my character’s fate was in my hands, instead of just the result of an arbitrary dice roll. Suddenly I wasn’t just thinking about which skill I had the highest bonus with, I was thinking about how my character might go about it. I wasn’t just asking myself if I should take the risk, I was asking myself “would Sathe take that risk?” I was roleplaying! Imagine that, disarming a boring old trap wasn’t just a speed bump any more, it was an opportunity to roleplay, to make choices as I thought my character would, and to have those choices actually matter!Also, just an observation here:Why are traps once in a blue moon under your method and ten times in a row under the “middle path” method? Are you under the impression that traps are significantly more common under the “middle path” method as a matter of course?</blockquote>

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