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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7592004" data-attributes="member: 42582">Well, to repeat what I said upthread, I think the most natural way to handle this is to (i) have the GM call for a check at a given DC on the basis of difficulty, or stakes, or prima facie uncertainty, or whatever else is the trigger for a check in that particular game; then (ii) apply the character ability to resolve that check, which may result in no d20 being rolled because success is guaranteed. (As I said, this is a recurrent feature of my 4e game as far as knowledge checks by the Sage of Ages are concerned.)If the GM, at stage (i), uses his/her knowledge of the character's ability in deciding that there is no reasonable chance of failure and hence no check required, well, I think the "goal and approach" advocates would see that as an instance of working as intended. I can see some possible problems here - eg there are two PC barbarians, one with STR 18 and one with STR 20, and the GM at stage (i) doesn't distinguish between them and thus does not give the 20 STR PC the benefit of that extra bit of STR. But I think that that is likely to be a marginal issue at most tables.Speaking from my own perspective, but also trying to make sympathetic sense of [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]'s, I think there is a bigger issue here which you're missing - or to put it another way, you're missing the dynamic of play wood because of the ability check adjudication trees.I play a game (be that 4e, Prince Valiant, Burning Wheel, or The Dying Earth) in which there are adverse consequences for failed checks. But that's only a special case of the bigger picture: there are adverse consequences for the PCs unless they act. The situation is framed so as to yield pressure on the PCs (and, thereby, their players) which will drive the game forward.So while your trapped warlock may choose not to try to bend the bars, because you recognise the prospect is hopeless and you don't like the consequences implicit in the GM's framing of the situation, you can be sure that something is going to happen that will force you to make some sort of choice. And if you don't try to escape now, then you give the GM licence to make that something a bigger deal, if only because the passage of time in the fiction makes it feasible for the GM to evolve the situation forward in an adverse fashion.This actually came up in the current arc of my Burning Wheel campaign: the PC sorcerer was in prison. One escape attempt went bad, and then he had to deal with various nemeses who came to visit him and strike deals with them in order to be able to get himself out. The choices of which checks to make and not to make affected the details of the unfolding situation, but the player wasn't able to avoid pressure simply by choosing not to engage certain elements of the fiction.What I've just described is of course not the only way to play RPGs, and my experience (in real life and on message boards) makes me think it's in fact a distinctively minority approach. In a game in which what's at stake is driven primarily by the GM's authorship and modulation of the "plot", then a consequences for failure approach becomes harder to implement. There was discussion of that not too long ago in <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?654367-GM-techniques-(especially-for-non-combat-challenges-resolution)" target="_blank">this thread</a>.</blockquote>

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