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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Satyrn" data-source="post: 7003824" data-attributes="member: 6801204">Contentious here, maybe, but not when I'm playing. Although I do sometimes make decisions I regret afterward, they're rare, and learning experiences for me.Nor am I worried about an ogre employed as a lumberjack, first because that sounds like an interesting storyhook, but also because I don't really see it as fundamentally different than four guys using axes. I wouldn't use ability scores and checks for a lumberjack's daily labour, so I'm not going to use it for an ogre's.For me, ability checks are used in the course of adventure, not labour. And that is also how I view pretty much every rule in the game. They apply to the heroes on an adventure and the challenges they encounter. I don't look to them to figure out how the mundane day to day world works.My criteria for certain/uncertain seem to essentially be "is this reasonably believable?" and "will it be more fun if if I roll or not, and where?"I say that, because with the ogre example my mind immediately leaps to "yeah, sure of course an ogre should be able to push over a tree" - and gauging from he conversation here most if not everyone thinks they could in a game playec cinematically, so I feel confident in that decision.And should I roll?  Outside of combat, with time to spare, no, I wouldn't because that's a waste of time to my mind. In combat, there ought to be roll, that's nearly an automatic decision. But where?  If the ogre is trying to block the path, then that might be the only place for a roll, so there it goes as a Strength check (DC 15).But if he's pushing it over onto the PC's then it might as well be an attack roll or a save because it ought to be more fun if the roll relates directly to the players. And when I'm sufficiently clever while DMing this scene, I'll "pause" combat momentarily -step out of the cyclic initiative stuff - to say to those players under and around the tree "the tree is falling swiftly down upon you or your friends, what do you do?" To those who say they dodge out of the way I give a Dex Save, against those who blankly stare at me I make an attack roll (or just automatically hit), meanwhile to those who would try to push the tree aside I give a Strength save and those true Strong Heroes who would try to push the tree back onto the ogre I'd give an opposed Strength check.That's what Ability score rules are for to me.</blockquote>

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