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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8442417" data-attributes="member: 6779196">Combat doesn’t demand more descrptive detail than any other part of the game.No, we determine based on the player’s goal and approach what rules, if any, are appropriate to use to resolve the action. Kill the gnoll is the goal, hit it with sword is the approach, no further detail is needed to make that determination, and the appropriate rules to use are an attack roll against the target’s AC. In the trapped chest scenario we have a goal but not an approach. “Check,” unlike “attack with sword” does not convey what the character is actually doing.How skillfully the character does what, exactly?But you don’t need to rely on the roll to determine what the character did to try and achieve their goal of killing the gnoll. The player already told you, they swung their sword at it, and the roll determines if that works. If we knew what the character was doing to try and find out if the chest is trapped, maybe an Investigation check could determine whether or not that succeeds. Or maybe it wouldn’t need to. Not enough information to say at this point.Let’s not overstate the complexity of the action here. We’re talking about a chest that was specifically described as shiny. It doesn’t take a galaxy brain to think of ways to try and test if it’s safe to open, nor to work out whether or not those ways are going to succeed.They do not need to use specific words. They need to use any one of the infinitely many approaches they can imagine, and they can describe whatever approach they go with in whatever words they wish.Indeed, they would not. They would only need to clearly communicate their goal and what the character does to try and achieve it, just like they do here.</blockquote>

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