Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 8471488" data-attributes="member: 97077">Narrating the result of the adventurers' actions and describing the environment are different parts of the play loop. See &quot;How to Play&quot; for details.When applied to the situation of the orc trying to intimidate a PC, the question may arise: &quot;Does the orc intimidate the PC?&quot; At this point, page 185 comes into play which states the player determines how the character thinks, acts, and talks. Because the player establishes this, there is no uncertainty as to the outcome of the orc's task and therefore no ability check is needed.If instead the DM is asking the question &quot;How intimidating is the orc?&quot;, this is not something ability checks resolve. There is no meaningful consequence for failure particularly as, again, the player decides how to react anyway. There is no DC the DM can set. It's just part of describing the environment. What the player has their character do in the face of that is up to them.Is a DM wrong for using dice rolls to inform their description of the environment in addition to how to narrate the results of the adventurers' actions? No. Do the rules support this? No. Will the game break if they do it? Not really, though [USER=6779196]@Charlaquin[/USER] makes a good point about a correlation between lack of Inspiration use and games that use checks for description of environment. I wouldn't know when best to spend it either in games where at least some ability checks were just for color.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="iserith, post: 8471488, member: 97077"] Narrating the result of the adventurers' actions and describing the environment are different parts of the play loop. See "How to Play" for details. When applied to the situation of the orc trying to intimidate a PC, the question may arise: "Does the orc intimidate the PC?" At this point, page 185 comes into play which states the player determines how the character thinks, acts, and talks. Because the player establishes this, there is no uncertainty as to the outcome of the orc's task and therefore no ability check is needed. If instead the DM is asking the question "How intimidating is the orc?", this is not something ability checks resolve. There is no meaningful consequence for failure particularly as, again, the player decides how to react anyway. There is no DC the DM can set. It's just part of describing the environment. What the player has their character do in the face of that is up to them. Is a DM wrong for using dice rolls to inform their description of the environment in addition to how to narrate the results of the adventurers' actions? No. Do the rules support this? No. Will the game break if they do it? Not really, though [USER=6779196]@Charlaquin[/USER] makes a good point about a correlation between lack of Inspiration use and games that use checks for description of environment. I wouldn't know when best to spend it either in games where at least some ability checks were just for color. [/QUOTE]

Verification