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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hriston" data-source="post: 8061076" data-attributes="member: 6787503">That passage deals with fictional positioning (or lack thereof). The character lacks the fictional positioning to undertake the player’s declared action at that time. Taking a step back and clarifying the situation gives the player a chance to revise the declaration to one that’s possible given the circumstances.I think it’s a trap the DM can fall into to think the contents of a PC’s head constitute fictional positioning. I made this mistake recently when a player said their character was looking for a certain herb which had been established as having water-purifying properties. I asked the player how they expected to find this herb just by looking considering their character had never seen it before. (Its existence had been established earlier by a check to discover it accidentally. ) I realized through conversation that the player had a different conception from me about the initial act of discovery and that their action declaration was based on the character having a mental picture of the herb. At that point I decided the action could be attempted because it relied on the character’s thoughts which are firmly in the province of the player, and the ensuing check became about whether the character’s mental picture was correct and whether the herb was actually present in the environment. What I tell my players is that one of my jobs is to describe the environment and that their characters’ thoughts are not part of the environment. A player is free to invent the needed fictional positioning for an action that relies on their character’s thoughts.</blockquote>

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