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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8825294" data-attributes="member: 6779196">We’re talking about when a check is being called for, so game speak is already happening regardless of whether you state the DC abs stakes or not.Why don’t they? A person trained in lockbreaking should very much be able to make a reasonable assessment of the difficulty of picking a given lock.Nor can the player. But they should be able to make a reasonable guess, which stating the DC and stakes allows the player to do, just as their character would be able to do.I’m doing no such thing. I’m being transparent with the mechanics so that the player can understand the things their character should.Oofta already spoke for Oofta, and made it clear they had not tried it my way. Oofta is who I was speaking to, I made no assumption about your experience.Ok. That’s your experience. My experience has been quite different - my games were vague and nebulous before adopting these strategies, which made immersion impossible. I also find it much easier to immerse myself in the character when playing with DMs who use the same or similar techniques than with DMs who hide information in the name of curtailing metagaming. So, when you say “your approach doesn’t work for me because I care about immersion,” that doesn’t track. Immersion is a big part of why I use the techniques I do. Maybe it wouldn’t work with the way you prefer to immerse yourself in your characters, that’d make sense.I’m not arguing anyone should center the game. As I’ve said several times, my approach is very much fiction-first. Doesn’t mean things that improve the gameplay experience aren’t also positives.Sounds like a poorly-run combat to me. Loath as I am to direct people to his website, the angry GM’s article, “How to Run Combat like a &@$! Dolphin” gives pretty good advice on how to alleviate this problem.Here’s a neat thing you can do: tell the players the monsters’ AC and not only do you never have to say the dreaded numbers out loud again, you even need the exchange of “did I hit?” “Yes/no” any more. The player will know immediately if they hit and can go straight to narrating the results, every time.I know, I know, “there’s no way the characters could know the target’s AC.” Except yes, there absolutely is. If the target is wearing armor, it’s common knowledge how protective that armor is. And it’s not at all implausible for a trained adventurer to be able to tell how nimble an opponent looks, or how tough a monster’s hide is.</blockquote>

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