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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8059114" data-attributes="member: 16814">Duration is one of the things that triggers a passive check.  It could also have been the GM not wanting to tip their hand at that juncture.And, yes, they were allowed a check because the GM thought that the action had an uncertain outcome with a clear negative for failure (the monsters surprise you).  That the action declared -- running full tilt -- was poorly suited to the goal -- notice monsters -- meant that the GM applied disadvantage.  It's pretty straightforward an example if you don't look at it as thwarting the core play loop.  If you do assume it means that passive checks are always on rather than being a subset of the normal resolution mechanics, then, yes, it will appear to be an inconsistency and a problem.  Ok, let me try this example:  the player states that their character swings their sword, using a specific real world combat technique, and declares the result is that the foe they are facing is stabbed through the heart.  Is this something you'd allow, or would you say, "yeah, sure, maybe make an attack roll first?"If so, then the example you give is just as trivial.  That the player states knowledge doesn't mean that their character is actually capable of enacting that knowledge.  The GM can adjudicate it like any other action.  That can be saying nope, yep, or roll.  It's no different.Now, the player can have their character state, emphatically, that they know exactly how to run their business, but that's not true until tested.  Just like the example in the OP -- the player can have they're PC emphatically state the NPC is a lich, but that doesn't make it true.I will take a sidebar and discuss a kind of action declaration I think is a problem, and that's one that violates the agreed genre constraints of the game.  Trying to repeatedly do sci-fi stuff in a D&D game, for instance, is a mismatch of genre.  This is, however, an out-of-game problem and needs to be dealt with there, like any other violation of the social contract.  Expecting the game rules to enforce play when it falls outside of the ambit of the game is going to cause trouble.  If you have a social contract that says no "metagaming", however your group defines it, then this isn't something the rules should ever address -- it's your tablerule, you deal with it at the level of the table, not the game.</blockquote>

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