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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 7857367" data-attributes="member: 97077">Consistency within the context of the given campaign is all that really matters in my view. How someone else does it at a different table is likely not an issue for most players. The DMG could do a better job in my opinion about telling DMs the importance of consistency in adjudication, however. It seems to focus on consistency mostly in the context of the persistence of the campaign setting. Consistency in adjudication is just as important if you ask me.As for not having a listed standard leading to not knowing what players can do, I don't buy that for a minute. The game goes out of its way to tell you that "anything is possible" and to have players "describe what they want to do." (Granted, this is in the part of the book that nobody, and certainly not DMs, appears to actually read.) What's on your sheet are just a subset of what you can do and typically they are areas in which you have a better chance of success, if there's uncertainty as to the outcome of the task and a meaningful consequence for failure.So all the DM need do here is what the book says and encourage an atmosphere of anything being possible and asking players to describe what they want to do. Sometimes those actions will be supported by what's on the sheet; sometimes they won't be. Savvy players will then tend to start doing the stuff the character is good at more often than not. The only people I have personally seen that have an issue of not knowing what to do are players from other systems or editions of the game who have a preconceived notion about things. Children, new players to RPGs, and anyone who understands the above have no issue with coming up with stuff their characters can do in the absence of tasks lists and standardized DCs.Finally, D&D 4e and D&D 5e are not the same game. They don't produce the same play experience. In D&D 4e, for example, players are expected to ask to make skill checks and the DM is encouraged to almost always say "Yes." In D&D 5e, there is no such language. That alone creates for a different play experience at a fundamental level. Each is their own separate thing and a DM trying to play one game like the other invites upon himself or herself a whole host of problems which may include players not sure about what they can do.</blockquote>

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