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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5910605" data-attributes="member: 42582">There are RPGs that support this. For example, Burning Wheel has the Assess action, which (i) can provide augmenting dice to your own and other PC's actions, and (ii) can allow the player to stipulate certain features of the local terrain/room contents (BW assumes a degree of player control over the fiction with certain knowledge and perception checks).D&D does not have these sorts of mechanics. Looking around can be helpful (eg in 4e it allows a Perception check against Stealth), but there is no mechanical framework to make it a smoothly integrated part of combat as Assess is in BW. It has strong elements of "mother may I". D&Dnext may move D&D in a different direction, but I think it is more likely to keep Percpetion as a minor (or free) action and give the wizard PC more wizardly things to do.I don't know of any empirical evidence for this. I have players who don't like the one-shot-wonder style of tradional low-level D&D magic-users, who are happy with 4e.It's about engaging the game via your PC, and particularly via that feature of your PC (like magic use) that is, for you as a player, definitive of your PC.Playing D&D is playing a game. Part of playing a game is playing.I GM for a lot of tactical game players. At one stage my group consisted of two Australasian M:TG champions, two local PBM champions, and a fairly serious Bridge, Poker and Diplomacy player. (The first three are now out of the group for various reasons, the fourth still with us. Unsurprisingly, he has the most optimised PC.)These players don't mind losing (which is not to say that they don't enjoy winning). And they are happy not to break the game. When exploits emerge, as they often do, we will work together to house rule it away, or reach a gentlemen's agreement not to go there.But they want to play the game with the PCs they've built.The time the PCs all got trapped in a cage and had to do sneaky stuff to get their weapons back before they could then break out and trounce the goblins? Fun.The two or three times the dwarf fighter has had to pull out his longbow to plink away rather futiley at a target too far away or too high up to charge to? Amusing.It being routine for a PC to have to engage the action resolution mechanics with some third-rate default option that is not part of the players' vision or schtick? A feature of no RPG that I'm aware of other than low-level MU play in classic D&D.</blockquote>

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