Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bill Zebub" data-source="post: 8796334" data-attributes="member: 7031982">100% incorrect.  I don't expect you (or anybody) to remember what other posters say in various threads, but I have always been a very active proponent of ability checks (and skills, where applicable) being used in exactly one situation: when the player declares an action in which the outcome, as determined by the DM, is uncertain, and there is a cost to failure.For example, if somebody wants to pick a lock, and there's no time pressure, and if they fail the situation is unchanged (that is, whatever is locked is still locked) then I don't call for a roll.  It's either not possible for them to pick the lock, or I just rule that eventually they succeed.  Or maybe the cost of failure is that they break the lock, leaving evidence of what they have done (if the situation is such that this would be a bad thing.)So, no, I don't want there to be no cost or risk to using skills.The spare the dying cantrip is an interesting case.  It's true there's no cost to using it, unless what you are doing is giving up your turn to cast it.  That's a cost.  If the combat has ended and the unconscious player is still making death saves...then, yeah, in that case there's no cost.  On the other hand, in my experience that's such an uncommon scenario that spare the dying isn't high on my list of annoying cantrips.  Unlike guidance, which tops the list.Maybe it's ok to have a zero cost cantrip that is just the right thing in very rare circumstances.  In that cast the "cost" is the one you alluded to earlier: you chose that infrequently used cantrip over a more generally useful one, so you should get to save the day for free every now and then.  But when a cantrip is incredibly useful, it's not much of a cost to choose it.</blockquote>

Verification