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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5837895" data-attributes="member: 4937">This is a great example because it is exactly the sort of proposition that I expect to face as a DM.  And its exactly the sort of thing that made me love 3e more than 1e, because I feel 3e gives me better tools to deal with it.In 1e, it's clear to me what the player wants - but its not at all clear to me what I should say or what should happen.   The rules give me virtually no guidance.  Whatever I say, I'm making it up completely.   The implicit rule of, "In the absence rules, things work how they would in real life" is no help to me here.   I can try to imagine this in my head, and really that comes down to my opinion of how the monster moves.  Is my monster an idiot or a parkour star?   How many steps behind is the monster, and how many steps will adjusting his move cause him to fall behind?   The problem I typically faced in 1e is that when a player pulled a stunt, the binary nature of the stunt - monster falls or doesn't - tended to make me very conservative.   The outcome was generally never impressive, and never really satisfying to anyone.   I felt I couldn't afford to give the player 'I win' buttons, else the player would have the expectation that every plan - no matter how ill thought out - would work.    As a result, the rules pushed me to saying "No."But in 3e, I've got rules in easy reach.   The stunt is the player wants to make a nonstandard trip attack.   I can work with that.   We know have a non-standard proposition that I can convert into a standard proposition of the form "X chance of success, Y on success, Z on failure."   Everyone is happy.  The player doesn't get an 'I win' button, but he does get the chance of his plan being spectacularly successful.</blockquote>

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