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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7003607" data-attributes="member: 42582">I understand that this is how you prefer to play the game. But it doesn't strike me as consistent with what the rulebooks actually say.Page 77 of the SRD saysThe GM calls for an ability check when a character or monster attempts an action (other than an attack) that has a chance of failure. When the outcome is uncertain, the dice determine the results. For every ability check, the GM decides which of the six abilities is relevant to the task at hand and the difficulty of the task . . .That sets out a clear order of operations:(1) Determine certainty/uncertainty of action; (2) If uncertain, frame action as ability check, including (i) determing ability to be used, and (ii) setting difficulty.Your procedure reverses the order: first do steps 2(i) and 2(ii), then use that to settle (1).Putting to one side the question of which procedure is preferable, to my mind they're quite different procedures. For instance, on your procedure the ogre can probably never push over a tree; whereas on the rulebook procedure the ogre can if the GM decides that it's not uncertain (eg because dramatically appropriate!) and hence doesn't engage the ability check rules.This is how Marvel Heroic RP handles this sort of thing. But I think it's a bit more contentious in a system like 5e, which has STR scores and DCs for STR checks and the like.I mean, should we be worried that the ogre can push over the tree as part of an attack but not as part of a systematic forestry team? (Or if the ogre can push over trees all day long, but the ability score rules say that it can't, then what are those rules for?)To me, and following on from my reply just above to Saelorn, I wonder what the criteria for certain/uncertain are meant to be.Well, 4e handled this through metagame conventions (around genre, "tiers of play", DCs by level, etc). That's how most "cinematic"-style games work, I think (qv Dungeon World, Marvel Heroic RP, Maelstrom Storytelling, HeroWars/Quest, off the top of my head).This came up on an old thread - maybe the DCs above 30 one.On that thread I made the point that 5e combat doesn't use bounded accuracy in the same way as ability checks do, because hp and damage both scale dramatically with level. So it is easy to set combat tasks which a 1st level character has almost no chance at but a 20th level character is almost guaranteed to succeed at (eg beat up a hill giant - I haven't run the maths, though on the old thread I remember running it for a pit fiend - I'm just relying on intuition here).Although 5e is meant to hark back to classic D&D, in some ways it is very much it's own creature - it lacks the non-linear progression of AD&D, but also lacks the non-bounded DCs of 3E and 4e, and lacks the default tiers of play/genre logic of 4e. Bounded accuracy plus single-check resolution with linear bonus progression is a curious thing.To me it doesn't feel all that close to Gygaxian AD&D. But it feels very close to 2nd ed AD&D "disregard the rules when they get in the way of the story"!I think this has always been a tension (maybe not quite the right word?) in D&D: is 18 STR on my PC sheet primarily a mechanical statement (to help resolve actions) or a descriptor that the GM should keep in mind when narrating what happens? Free-wheeling tree-pushing ogres seems to prioritise the STR entry in the stat block as a loose descriptor than a mechanically robust entry (except when we come to combat proper, eg to hit and damage bonuses, where as [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] pointed out the maths for some reason gets all precise!).</blockquote>

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