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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 8278193" data-attributes="member: 7026594">This.  Gygaxian-style Skilled Play can involve dice rolling, but the role of player skill is largely in minimizing the necessity of dice rolls.  As a general rule, the more skillfully you play the less you have to rely on your luck.You will still have to sometimes!  Combat will come down to attack rolls or spells when it breaks out.  Although with skilled play you can avoid, negotiate with, or frighten off foes and have to resort to attack rolls less often.  You pick your spots for gambles, and maximize your odds where you can.  Skilled Play can involve the rolling of dice- for example, say that you have an intractable foe (warband of skeletons or orcs, for example) and you have a single Fireball spell.  It would be Skilled Play in the Gygaxian sense to employ a ruse or bait or strategic retreat to draw the enemy group into a room or area where you could maximize the number of them who would be caught in the area of the Fireball, even though the enemies will still get saves.  By being smart and engaging with the fiction, you've improved the effectiveness of the Fireball, though final resolution will still involve mechanics and dice.This discussion brings to mind the Saving Throw meta discussion from not long ago.  A Saving Throw is specifically a fiction-emulation mechanic to represent the last lucky chance or hand of fate which saves the hero.  A significant element of old school Skilled Play is avoiding having to make saves.  Saves are there to give you a chance after you've already made play/narrative choices which put you in danger. I remember an OD&D session I played last year, in which my elf, Athanor, had chosen to enter the dungeon unarmored to function as the party Magic User rather than a Fighting Man.  We had a couple of frontliners and a few hireling warriors, so I spent most of the session in the middle or rear ranks of the party.  At one point exploring a room which had been part of a Roman-style bath house, a giant spider crawled out of a crevice and attacked the party.  I was one of the three characters closest to the spider when it emerged.  Rather than retreating immediately, I decided to shoot it with a bow along with the others.  Sadly we missed, and wouldn't you know it, the spider made a beeline for me, hitting and forcing a Save vs. Death/Poison.  Thankfully I rolled the 12 I needed, but, given that I was unarmored, it would have been a better play for me to retreat with Athanor and minimize the risk of death, letting the armored characters face it up close.</blockquote>

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