Tonguez
A suffusion of yellow
That does raise the question of how that theory of doing things handles things that are player against player.
Thats why I like active defense rules that let the PC parry, but only for player v player
That does raise the question of how that theory of doing things handles things that are player against player.
Active player acts. Bob wants to hit you with a sword? Bob rolls.
Re advantage and disadvantage - in my PAR if you could apply feature ABC to "make me less likely to get hit" you can do so under PAR. If not, not. So, in your use case, if inspiration could not be used against enemy to hit rolls, it cannot be used for your AC rolls.In 5e, there's a reason to have a mix of things.
While there's lesser versions of the same idea - Advantage/Disadvantage is important in this consideration. If everything is "player roll vs NPC/monster defense" then the players always have a chance to apply Advantage, from Inspiration, or from whatever other sources they can cook up. And generally, the PC's proficiency modifier is involved.
When it is "NPC roll vs spell save" or the like, the PC's proficiency modifier isn't involved, and they are less likely to otherwise impact the roll in the moment.
So, the math is different in the two cases, leading to the players having to think a bit more about what their best strategies are.
A better mechanic would be for the GM to roll randomly, in order to determine whether the boulder falls on the character in the first place; but that leads to the unfortunate situation where they roll behind a screen and inform you that you have died.
The problem with the theory of doing things is that everyone is always doing things. Bob wants to hit you with a sword. Joe wants to dodge the sword.
Within the fiction, both Joe and Bob are doing things. The people in the fiction aren't taking turns letting each other try things. "Active player" is a metagame concept we require to build a resolution process we can use, but doesn't actually denote "active character". This gets worse when there's an inanimate intermediary - Bob makes rocks fall on Joe. Who gets to roll - Bob for making rocks fall, of Joe for dodging rocks? In this model, Joe never gets to roll to dodge rocks.
The difference is relevant because it determines who gets to modify the die roll. The person making the roll typically has a boost from that.
I don't care how the fiction makes it look. We're talking about how the rules function. Don't muddy the waters.
Um...
*I* don't care... *We're* talking... Bit of a royal we, there? Because *you* define what *everyone else* gets to talk about? I don't think so.
That aside, though....
First off, this is the General RPG forum. There's no one "The rules" here. If we are talking about D&D or Pathfinder, then how the rules function is already well-defined: sometimes the attackers roll, sometimes the defenders roll. No discussion needed, it is pretty clearly written.
But, the OP asks about preferences. Not how the rules do function, but how we prefer them to function.
I do not think the rules and the fiction are so easily separable. For example, when a player says he wants to drop rocks on his enemy, this is not an action that is clearly detailed in the rules already. You have to take the fiction the player is suggesting, and turn it into rules! If there is some distance involved, you have the awkwardness that the rocks may take time to fall to the target, and therefore should not hit on the active player's turn. Some things take time to resolve, so going strictly by "active character" sometimes the attacker rolls, sometimes the defender rolls, depending on the distance between them.
So, we see that while folks speak about desiring consistency, we have to ask *what* will be consistent? Many may be thinking "do-er rolls", "action initiator rolls" and "active character rolls" are equivalent, but they aren't always.