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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AaronOfBarbaria" data-source="post: 6845676" data-attributes="member: 6701872">I neither have a set of breakpoints, nor do I make any kind of judgement calls about what a player is or isn't allowed to have their character attempt to do besides this one:If there is no possible way - can't be guessed, couldn't have been heard of or read somewhere, couldn't have been surmised from hints found by the character up to this point - that a character could come to the conclusion of trying that action, then it is cheating for the player to do that thing.It is extremely rare that such a thing ever happens, as there really isn't much that a player might dream up doing that their character actually needs to know some specific thing in order to have dreamed up.I don't find that to be the case, but then, as I said I am very much pro-"explain how your character thought that up" than pro-"character stats set limitations beyond the modifiers defined in the game."I like to do a thing I call the "new player test" - each thing that a DM (me or otherwise) thinks might be a problem, such as a character blurting out a thought that came to the mind of the player or deciding to shove an enemy into a nearby fire rather than attack with a weapon, I ask "Would there be an issue if the player doing this thing was known to have no clue at all about the game rules in play (i.e. that using fire is a particularly good strategy against the specific enemy faced) or whether they are right or not (i.e. they are genuinely guessing "star" is the answer to the puzzle)?" And if the answer is "No, there would be no issue if a new player did that." then the answer must be that there is no issue if any player does that, or a double-standard (and a form of thought-policiing and forced meta-gaming in the name of 'avoiding meta-gaming') is in place.Beyond helping the player build their character so that it is suitable for the campaign it is to be played in, I don't concern myself with remembering or re-checking whatever details might be on a character sheet. A character's Intelligence score is not one of the things that I keep in my memory, where their race, gender, and other details that are immediately apparent to the NPCs that I am portraying are. Of course, as I've noted, I don't think I actually have any reason to care what the score specifically is when a player speaks in character - they are either saying something that is fine for them to say because it would be fine for any player to have a character say, or they are saying something that is entirely impossible for any character to ever say, and that is what triggers the response of "Woah, wait a sec, that can't be said."I have to disagree.This is the key to what my questions were testing: whether the DMs that answered think details which I do not consider to have any impact on what a character is capable of saying - because the game rules don't in any way say that they do have that impact - are required in order to let a character speak a guess.</blockquote>

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