Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
If that was the case, then we wouldn’t need to rely on the dice roll to determine whether or not they touched the chest with their hands.Yes it does. And You can embellish it as much as you want.
But we do require the players to make clear what enemy they are attacking and with what weapon. This is analogous to the chest situation - I know the player wants to find out if the chest is trapped, just like I know the player wants to kill the gnoll. I don’t know what the character is doing to try and find out if the chest is trapped, whereas I do know what the character is doing to try and kill the Gnoll. “Attack with my sword” conveys information that “check it” does not.You're again expecting unreasonable level of granularity. They player already decided they examine the chest for traps. We don't require players to describe whether they're aiming the gnoll's legs with a swing, stabbing their chest or aiming for their head either.
Nothing is difficult about it, but it does take the decision of what the character is doing out of the player’s hands. It requires either the DM to make the decision, perhaps based on the result of a die roll. This is a circumstance I wish to avoid."I examine the chest for traps."
"Roll investigation, DC 20."
What is so difficult about this?
The player doesn’t have to guess how I imagine traps are detected or disarmed, they simply have to listen to my description and make decisions. But no, this technique is not purely my invention. It’s something I first picked up from the D&D Next playtest, which had specific verbiage about how to resolve actions, most of which is also found in the 5e PHB and DMG, slightly rephrased in some cases. It’s a technique I did not use when running 4e, because its language around resolving actions was different. I found, upon running some games during the D&D Next playtest, that the game was much more enjoyable for me and everyone I played with when I used these techniques than we had done with 4e (which is a big part of why 5e is my favorite edition, despite still loving 4e and wishing a lot more of its ideas had been adopted by 5e).And I am certain that this is RAI. That is how this is supposed to work. If some specific method would be required, it would be listed in the rules of this trap. The whole "guess how GM imagines traps are detected and disarmed" thing is purely your invention.