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<blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 7000579" data-attributes="member: 97077">I don't agree. I'm making a statement about the NPC: The character was successful in his action and it reveals the guard's body language says he's lying. That is a fact earned by a reasonably-stated action declaration and, in this example, a sufficient result on an ability check. I'm not saying &quot;You think he's lying.&quot; I'm saying &quot;He's behaving as if he's lying...&quot; or more directly, &quot;He's lying.&quot; There will be no uncertainty with regard to this after I have narrated the result of the adventurer's action. The uncertainty (and the tension, depending on the stakes) happens after the action declaration but before the roll.I think quality definitely plays into the chance of success, but there are different factors that inform quality in my view. I'm not looking for anything technical, just something clearly stated (goal and approach) that is appropriate for the situation. It can't just be any old thing and we let the dice decide. That gets things backwards in my view because we are charged to first judge the plausibility of an action, decree automatic success, failure, or uncertainty, before we ever ask for a die to be picked up. To that end, there is an element of subjective assessment by design. You can limit that with asking for more ability checks; however, the DMG warns against this and, for good reason in my view if you're into &quot;immersion,&quot; - because if players figure out that their decisions don't really matter and it's mostly up to the dice, then roleplaying can diminish.To be clear, my resistance is to trying to create uncertainty after the ability check is resolved, not so much the format of the action declaration. Though questions DO annoy me. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="iserith, post: 7000579, member: 97077"] I don't agree. I'm making a statement about the NPC: The character was successful in his action and it reveals the guard's body language says he's lying. That is a fact earned by a reasonably-stated action declaration and, in this example, a sufficient result on an ability check. I'm not saying "You think he's lying." I'm saying "He's behaving as if he's lying..." or more directly, "He's lying." There will be no uncertainty with regard to this after I have narrated the result of the adventurer's action. The uncertainty (and the tension, depending on the stakes) happens after the action declaration but before the roll. I think quality definitely plays into the chance of success, but there are different factors that inform quality in my view. I'm not looking for anything technical, just something clearly stated (goal and approach) that is appropriate for the situation. It can't just be any old thing and we let the dice decide. That gets things backwards in my view because we are charged to first judge the plausibility of an action, decree automatic success, failure, or uncertainty, before we ever ask for a die to be picked up. To that end, there is an element of subjective assessment by design. You can limit that with asking for more ability checks; however, the DMG warns against this and, for good reason in my view if you're into "immersion," - because if players figure out that their decisions don't really matter and it's mostly up to the dice, then roleplaying can diminish. To be clear, my resistance is to trying to create uncertainty after the ability check is resolved, not so much the format of the action declaration. Though questions DO annoy me. :) [/QUOTE]

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