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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7293971" data-attributes="member: 16814">Do you find that supposing ridiculous and unmade arguments for others which you then defeat handily actually works for you?  Personally, I like addressing others like they're intelligent people and not the kind of people that would think 'hurr, I'm gonna use this thermyometer thingie to scare that balrogy guy!'  For starters, they appreciate not being compared to idiots, and secondly, it actually advances the conversation.Right -- either I assume I know what they mean or I have to stop and ask them what they mean.You do see the point, here, right?  My method makes it clear that the players have to supply an approach and a goal, for which I will provide the necessary resolution mechanic.  The 'announce a roll' means that now I have to negotiate those things with the player with the resolution result already known.  If they rolled a 1, what happens then?  Are they going to negotiate an approach that isn't 'well, I did that standing waaaaay over here, which is probably why I didn't see anything?'  If they do, then you have players that enjoy knowingly placing themselves into failure positions.  Not everyone's like that.You gave an example of 3 skill checks, all of them different only in the skill names.  The results were largely similar -- vaguely interesting backstory about the altar and what it looks like and which cult might use it.  None of which get to the challenge presented by the altar, which is get the treasure with a minimum of ouches.  So, yeah, they're all guessing skill checks hoping to find out what the actual challenge may be.  So far, in your responses, you haven't given them any information on the actual challenge and instead have provided backstory and framing.I thought I had made it clear already that all of the answers you provided for those guessed checks would have been provided for free and in the clear without a single check, and likely without a question, made.  This is because I assume that Indiana Jones doesn't need to make a check to recognize an Aztec artifact -- he just knows.  He needs to make a check to avoid the traps around the Aztec artifact, because that's the interesting bits.  I treat my party like their competent and don't hide information behind 'guess the gate' skill checks.Also, I'm going to clearly state the challenge -- the altar will be visibly pulsing with a not-light and a distinctly cold and greasy feel to the air near it.  The party will know that the altar contains something they need already -- it's likely the reason they're here, after all.  The challenge will be to identify what the altar will do and where the something is hidden inside the altar.  Saying "I roll religion, got a 21!" is you guessing religion will tell you something useful, and now I have to guess what it is you think you're trying to find out.  Maybe it's easy to guess, maybe it's not, I don't know (and we have a specific phenomenon of extremely strange and outlandish plans named after a member of my group -- if we say someone is pulling a Bob (name changed to protect the guilty), we all know exactly what that means -- they have a plan that could be described charitably as outlandishly weird).  And, sure, I can then engage in finding out what they want, but, if, after that, religion doesn't help because it doesn't provide any more information that was already provided at the outset (because, natch, I knew they were proficient in religion), then that's wasted time.  Time that could have been avoided entirely by having them state their intention and goal ahead of time and then picking an appropriate check.  If the goal is to look for clues to what the altar will do, and I know there are runes etched that power the ability, maybe the best check is an INT check to decipher them?  And, maybe religion is an appropriate proficiency for that check?  But so might arcana or history be.  So, rather than dealing with three announced rolls from three players in three different ways, no one rolls until I've set an ability and consequence.And I strongly believe there should be a consequence for every roll.  In this case, I'd probably have a failed roll identify that the altar will react badly if the secret compartment is manipulated.  This doesn't identify the energy type of the trap and falsely interprets the actual trigger mechanism, which is simply touching the altar.  The next stated action may have very bad consequences because of this failed roll.  And, best part, no one had to guess anything.No, because I never assumed your position was that the DM couldn't ever call for a roll.  I correctly understood it as players can call for their own rolls.  Given as how I've never made any argument that implied the DM could also call for rolls and have only addressed the rolls called for by players, I'm not sure what led you to believe I might misunderstand this point.</blockquote>

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