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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6023101" data-attributes="member: 4937">Honestly, I think that you can design it right back out with out changing things.  From your example, I believe you are assuming that the rules work in ways that they don't actually work.Once again, there are claims being made here about the system and how to change it that are dependent upon already having broken the rules as written.  Under RAW, the proposition, "I search the room.", is strictly speaking against the rules.  The search skill does not allow 'rooms' to be searched.  It is often used that way, I agree, and we could argue over the legitimacy of wanting to use it that way, but strictly from an evaluation of the rules, "I search the room" is not a rules proposition and is probably too vague both as an in game proposition and as a rules proposition.  Indeed, it is more vague as a rules proposition than it is as a game proposition.  The correct response in most cases by the DM is not, "You find nothing.", but rather, "I need more concrete information about what you are doing than that.  I need to know who searches where, and in what order, and how you intend to get from the square you are standing in to other parts of the room.  Otherwise, it will be impossible for me to ajudicate what happens under the rules because I won't know exactly what you are doing."It's important to note that this proposition, while for the most part an informative one and closer to being consistant with the rules, still is potentially too vague.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but by the rules search allows you to examine by sight and touch a 5'x5' area.  I 'search the walls' can be in this case extremely vague:a) If there is a trap along one of the walls, we may need to know the order in which the walls will be searched.  This is particularly important with multiple searchers.  Similarly, if there is something to be discovered on one wall, say a warning, that might alter the way in which the player searches the rest of the room, we really need to know whether he searches the west or east wall first and whether when he searches that particular bit of wall how close of attention he pays.  More on that later.b) If there is a time element involved (the PC doesn't know it, but goblin reinforements will enter the room in 20 rounds) and there is a secret door in the walls, we certainly need to know the order in which the walls are searched.c) If more than one thing is to be discovered, a single die roll probably will not suffice for the whole room.  If the player rolls a 20, you may not want the result to be 'you find everything in the room', and conversely if he throws a 1, you may not want the illogical result of 'you find nothing' when some of the things are rather obvious.   Did the 18 apply to the walls, or to the rock?d) If the walls are 20' high and something beyond reach is hidden, it is not clear how 'I search the walls' necessarily finds the thing.  Did the player climb the walls?  Did he crawl on someones shoulder?  Did he observe the upper wall only at a distance?  Or did he fail to consider the possibility at all?e) The player has just specified a very extended period of action.  For a 30' x 30' room, the player has probably just specified 70+ rounds of action, including searches and moving carpets around.  The big problem with this is that sometimes you won't be able to answer this proposition because of spending or inserted propositions by other players.  It would be highly appropriate at this point to ask the other players exactly what they will be doing for the next 7 minutes or so.   Worse yet, if the player had implied he was taking 20 on the search by leaving off the die roll, he may not have realized that he's just specified two hours of going over the room meticulously.  You'll probably want to clarify that as well.I thuroughly agree, but in the case of search, so does the rules.   Search has some extreme complexities that I've discussed in other threads, and neither the old school nor the new school methodology is fully acceptable in all situations, but I believe you've created a very bad example of demostrating that.  A much better example is created when the player actually abides by the rules but is vague about what the search of the 5'x5' area entails in the situations where you know that the details are important, but the player cannot know that.  Handling that without passing metagame information is extremely difficult, because suddenly we want granularity that we previously didn't need.  And again, even your understanding of the rules suggests you are used to using very low granularity.  Another equally bad problem is that the RAW aren't actually as explicit as I've just been here in that they are rather vague about whether searching means 'touching'.  That is, can you search a doorknob without touching it?  Equally bad is that they are vague on the level of interaction involved.  You'll need to create concrete expectations for your players about what, "I search X" will be interpretted as.  For example, in your case, the player very helpfully provided actions to go along with his inspection, but you'll need an understanding of whether, "I search the rock" implies, "I lift/move the rock", or simply, "I stand close to the rock and look at it."  And frankly, that would be true if "I search the rock" is used as a proposition in 1e as well.This statement is a special case of Celebrim's Second Law, and hense I completely agree with it.</blockquote>

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