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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9874247" data-attributes="member: 7026594">"When you were there" is no contradiction to what I wrote.  <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="🤷‍♂️" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f937-2642.png" title="Man shrugging    :man_shrugging:" data-shortname=":man_shrugging:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" /> I'm not going to try to argue what you saw at the tables you sat at.Out of curiosity, seeing as you were there, can you think of any written references from 1974 or 1975 to rolling under an ability score as a common method of resolution?  Snarf and I and a few others had a big discussion about this a while back.  As we all know, the first time TSR described it as an option for a general resolution method was in 1981 Basic. I have no doubt that the concept was older, but I've often been curious about documentation for that. The 1978 Players Handbook has one or two similar special cases, the closest being the Dig spell describing how someone avoids falling into a pit, but the language used* implies that this is an unusual procedure, something they don't expect the readers to already be familiar with.  Describing it as a kind of saving throw rather than the now-standard terminology of "ability check" which we've all been used to for decades now, and which I think made its first appearance in a TSR product in the glossary of the 1989 Players Handbook. *"Any creature at the edge (1’) of such a pit uses its dexterity score as a saving throw to avoid falling into the hole, with a score equal to or less than the dexterity meaning that a fall was avoided."Bearing in mind that people were inventing it as they went, and it didn't become common to apply the term "roleplaying" to describe it until a year or two later, as publishers struggled to figure out a better term for these games than "Rules for fantastic medieval wargames campaigns". <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> We all know there was no "persuasion skill", but of course one of the few mechanics which did exist was the reaction roll (p12, Men & Magic), which laid out how to roll dice (adjusted for Charisma) to determine, for example, whether an NPC could be talked into serving or helping the PCs.5E always had and currently still does have a similar idea as a rule.  Don't roll unless there is both a meaningful chance of success or failure, AND a meaningful consequence for failure. The PH mentions this right in the first paragraphs of the rules for checks (p10), and the DMG breaks it down in more detail for the DM on page 27.That's a bit of an overstatement about 3E. While 3E did over-mechanize for my tastes, it also includes the rules for Taking 10 and Taking 20 to eliminate unnecessary checks.</blockquote>

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