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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 6973645" data-attributes="member: 6677017">This is a DM call. The question I try to ask myself is: "What type of PC behavior do I want to encourage?"If there are 5 rolls and I'm more likely to stab myself in the foot than move the opponent, then I'm never going to try this again, and I'm probably not going to try something similar (see grappling and other maneuvers more complex than "I hit you with weapon" in 3e).If, on the other hand, a single successful (possibly opposed) check guarantees that something cool happens, with a second check to see if the particular tactical circumstances cause an additional cool thing to happen, then I'm going to feel motivated to be creative and do all sorts of interesting things in the right situations.If you are afraid of your players finding something you've ruled too far in their favor and repeating it endlessly in a way that outshines class abilities, then you may want to be conservative. On the other hand, you may want to let the players know that you may not always be consistent in your rulings, but that you want to try to let them be cool.I prefer the second option I gave--making it easy to improvise cool stuff--because it encourages players to actually do that stuff, which I want to have happen. Unfortunately, I have this automatic processing that happens when someone suggests such an action, that unconsciously evaluates it against all class abilities and such for balance, as well as analyzes whether I want this happening all the time (precedent), which generally means my first response is to say you can't do that.To counter this tendency which is at odds with my goals, I've explained the situation to the players, and encouraged them in those situations to just say, "Are you sure, DM?" (as in, "Are you sure you don't want to allow this?") as the reminder to me that I want to allow that stuff, and I can always disallow it next time if it is a problem.</blockquote>

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