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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7482759" data-attributes="member: 42582">At the risk of repetition - my preferred reading is that the rules tell you how many feet you can certainly jump (ie a distance in feet equal to STR). But page 64 - especially read in light of p 59 - seems to me to leave it open that jumping further is possible, but not certain. That is to say, it leaves it uncertain.Which I have - like everyone in the real world who ever jumped an unusually long distance, I do it by trying hard. (In the real world people have jumped unusually long distances without using pogo sticks, ramps, valuts, parkour or magical enhancements.)Nonsense. A player who says "I jump" or "I jump as hard as I can" has described an approach to the goal of getting over the cavern, and has not said what skill s/he wants to use.It then falls to the GM to adjudicate this.Clearly jumping is an approach that can achieve the goal of getting across a chasm. The only issue between us is that you regard it as certain that, everything else being equal, trying to jump further than what the rules on p 64 permit will fail. Whereas I take the view that the presence of the rule on p 59 implies that unusually long jumps are possible but not certain, and hence provide occasions for the use of the ability check mechanic.And no one with whom you are arguing disagrees with this.The only point of disagreement is that you take it as certain that, everything else being equal, a character cannot jump further than the distance provided for on p 64. Whereas others disagree. Given that disagreement - ie the view that it is not certain that a character can clear a greater distance with a leap, nor certain that s/he cannot - those others (including me) take the view that the matter is uncertain, and hence something which is to be resolved by way of an ability check (in accordance with the rules on pp 6 and 58, which say that if the outcome of a decared action is uncertain than it is resolved by way of a check).No one is saying that it is the player's role to do this. But they are saying that it is the GM's duty, under the rules, to call for a check if an outcome is uncertain. And they are saying that the outcome of an attempt by a 15 STR character to jump over an 18' chasm is uncertain. It is not certain to succeed because 18 is greater than 15. But it is not certain to fail, because it is eminently possible for a person's best leap to be 3' longer than a leap they can make with no risk of failure.This disagreement over what is or is not uncertain may be intractable; but it shouldn't be intractable to observe that this is the focus of disagreement. There is no disagreement about the methodology of action declaration or resolution.I don't agree with this! The jump rules seem fine to me.What it tells me is that the game offers no general methodology for determining what is or is not uncertain. Nor is there any general principle about whether or not statement of what actions are permitted (eg like that on p 64) are to be exclusive of other possibilities, or not.I assume that this relaxed approach to drafting (it contrasts markedly with many other RPGs I'm familiar with) is a deliberate aspect of the "big tent" goal of 5e.</blockquote>

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