No one said anything about being interrupted. The scenario was that the thief made enough noise while picking a lock that the cook heard it. When the thief opens the door, there’s the cook.
As for RAW, if you haven’t caught on, I don’t care what RAW says.
Yea, it’s not written in the very sparse description presented in the book. I’m using common sense and creativity to come up with another way to handle the outcome of the attempt to pick the lock.
If I stuck to RAW then no thief would ever make too much noise when picking a lock and all locks would be capable of being picked in six seconds… which are absurdities.
One of the good things about having a GM is that they can help with rulings where the rules don’t quite handle things on their own.
Yeah, that’s just dumb.
So you only ever accomplish one hex in a game session? There’s never more than one such decision point made by the players per session?
And what about in more specific locations? Not wilderness travel, but dungeon exploration? Do you use random encounters there? If so, how can you possibly predict all their potential movements to the point where you have all the possible random encounters ready to go ahead of time?
It may surprise you, but I agree with all of that. Home brew just isn't particularly applicable to a rules discussion. Unless you're saying something like, "Yes I know the rules say X, but how I do it is Y, because that makes more sense to me."
In a rules discussion if you skip the first part and just argue Y, it come across as arguing that the rules say or include stuff that they don't.
An incredibly shorter amount of time than the hours in-between checks.
Not even those. I might create a furrier, since those won't be in pretty much every town and only has the possibility of being in one. That would require a roll.
And before you say something like, "Aha! You do it, too!" I have long said I don't run a perfectly traditional game. I also improvise a lot, because I just don't have the time to prep like I did in my much younger days. That doesn't mean that in a discussion about how traditional games try to do things, I should include my differences.
I’m gonna tag
@AlViking here. Al, this is the kind of legacy rule I was talking about. Read the above. There is no actual system there. There are multiple suggestions for methods to determine a random encounter but they basically cover the gamut. You can simply decide or you can roll every so often, or that often, or this often.
And this doesn’t connect to other elements of play the way it did in earlier editions. Searching a room for treasure or a secret door took time, which meant you risked a random encounter. It created a decision point for the players.
Now, it’s just a suggestion to the DM to either make something happen or roll some dice to see if something happens… whatever you want!
The whole of the 5e DMG is just a bunch of suggestions. The game says the rules to play are in the PHB and the DMG uses language in pretty much every chapter has language about how it contains suggestions and guidelines.
None of the 5e DMG "rules" are written as hard rules like the PHB rules are.
Frankly the idea that you can make all such rolls ahead of time seems strange to me, but I believe that you and some others do so. I don’t think it’s by any means the norm. And as far as processes go, that’s fine! But this part of the discussion was about how rolls are used to determine elements of play during play rather than ahead of play, so I don’t think your change to this is relevant in the broader sense.
I just don't see any sense in being the middle of a roleplaying session and then being like, "Okay, everyone stop for a while so that I can roll random encounters, then open books to find the appropriate tables, then roll what the encounter is, then open the monster book to find the monster, then figure out how it will wander by. You might as well pull out your phone or a book, because this will be a little bit."
That's incredibly disruptive and in my opinion, detrimental to the enjoyment of the game session.
I don’t know why you continue to compare two people. There’s only one thief. It’s about failure and what that means versus success and what that means for that thief and no other.
Because literally dozens of posts were about how the more skilled thief will encounter the cook less. It's a part of the scenario, even if you haven't brought it up yourself. If failure is based on skill, and it is, then a less skilled thief in the same circumstances will be more likely to run into the cook or other household member.
How is “best” not a quality of the attempt?
It is, but there isn't a lesser quality than best. A roll of 2 is the best the thief can do with his skill level, just like a 19 is. It's not as if a roll of 2 indicates a poorer quality attempt than the 19. If the 19 will be quiet, so will the 2.
Sure. I don’t think this is contradicting what I’ve said.
My point is that on a 5, instead of simply failing to pick the lock, instead the thief makes enough noise to attract the attention of the cook.
Right, which is why it does contradict what you said. A successful check is at the same quality as a failed attempt, because both are the best the thief can make. Making more noise would indicate a poorer attempt, which isn't what the roll is showing.
But we’re literally talking about ways to do things differently than have been done traditionally. So yeah, it’s absolutely relevant. And insisting on RAW being the only thing that matters misses that point entirely.
Right and it’s that inconsistency that’s the issue.
Right, but it's not the "quantum" part. It's the timing part or who is doing it part.
Well are you a neutral arbiter?
Or are you making all decisions with the principle of “make the characters lives not boring”?
Those two things are at odds.
I do my best to be. And no they are not at odds in the least. Every moment of the characters' lives doesn't have to be not boring for their lives to be not boring. If they are pirates for 5 years and then decided to travel inland to raid a dwarven stronghold, a boring walk does not suddenly make their lives boring.
If you are playing the game, their lives cannot be boring. Only the players' boredom matters here.
Lacking some external signifier, how would Mike ever know or think that Mary is playing her character unfaithfully?
Easily. If Mary has been roleplaying her LG Paladin of Truth and Justice, and then suddenly without any in-fiction reason for it starts stealing from every store and robbing passers by, it's pretty obvious she's being unfaithful to the character she set up.
That's an extreme example, but once characters personalities, goals, etc. have been established during the game, most of the time it's pretty clear when the player is being faithful or unfaithful to what they set up. The rest of the time one of the other players usually asks why the player in question had his PC do that, and at least at my table, the player almost always has a good reason the other wasn't aware of yet about the PCs personality.
