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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8652849" data-attributes="member: 82106">I assume you are addressing your concern with the DC of opening the safe and the idea that the PC's safecracking ability is determining the existence of the letters in the safe. This is addressed in a number of ways (I'm not going to go back and try to dig up places where posters have done this before, but I observe that they have done so several times). First of all, the existence of the letters in the safe is determined not by the results of the check, but by the character's intent. In terms of in-world reasoning we imagine that the character has reasons to believe this is the correct safe to crack. It turns out she is right! If the safecracking attempt fails, well, maybe its because the safe is too tough, or possibly something else (the GM will have to determine the consequences in most SN systems I'm familiar with). The point is, while the safecracking check may REVEAL the presence or absence of the letters, it isn't CAUSATIVE of it, certainly not in the fiction! Secondly, the DC of the check is set based on the character's chances of cracking the safe because that is the proximate path to achieving the goal. The purpose of this design, as [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] just explained in <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/supposing-d-d-is-gamist-what-does-that-mean.687974/post-8652383" target="_blank">2171</a> is that it allows reasoning about the world. It also gives some teeth to the choices of 'skills' by the players for their PCs. The guy with good safecracking is, not surprisingly, going to have adventures where they crack safes and cool stuff happens! I mean, why else would I make a character that is a safe cracker? That's the whole thrust of this kind of agenda! As a player I get to decide what sort of stuff the story is about, safecracking, instead of, say, backstabbing, poisoning, or pick pocketing (just to name a few things that often get packaged together in FRPGs).</blockquote>

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