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<blockquote data-quote="Bill Zebub" data-source="post: 8479754" data-attributes="member: 7031982">One error that I think continues to be made, which can lead to different interpretations, is to treat the dice roll, and the success condition, as having something to do with the quality of the effort.&nbsp; (And this is related to the debate about the language used to declare an action.)Example: when I say that I'm going to attempt to hide, what it really means is that I'm trying to hide from somebody (even if I don't know who that somebody is yet).&nbsp; It's the tree falling in the woods thing: if there's nobody around to notice me, there's no meaning to 'hidden'.&nbsp; (We can dive into that claim if you disagree, but I won't bother unless somebody tries to contest it.)Whether I succeed or fail at hiding isn't just about my character, it's about my character in relation to other characters (NPC and PC) who might see me.Translating that to the current context, if an NPC is lying/persuading/seducing/etc., &quot;success&quot; isn't just that they did it very well, but that it worked on the target.&nbsp; A lot of the posts seem to suggest that if, say, the DM wants the merchant to &quot;roll Persuasion&quot; (sic) and rolls high, the merchant was persuasive in an objective sense.&nbsp; But, using goal and approach, the actual goal was to persuade the PC.The reason I think this is confusing is that some action declarations, &quot;I climb to the top of the wall&quot;, &quot;I try to recall who this god is&quot;, &quot;I look for tracks of the bear&quot;, there is no other character/creature involved.&nbsp; Let's call those &quot;intransitive&quot; action declarations.In &quot;transitive&quot; action declarations, success is absolutely dependent upon the target.&nbsp; There is no independent/objective successful &quot;hide&quot; or &quot;shove&quot;....or &quot;persuade&quot;, &quot;intimidate&quot;, etc.I'm not sure that will make anybody switch sides in this debate, but there have been a number of posts with example scenarios in which I feel like this distinction was not understood.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Bill Zebub, post: 8479754, member: 7031982"] One error that I think continues to be made, which can lead to different interpretations, is to treat the dice roll, and the success condition, as having something to do with the quality of the effort. (And this is related to the debate about the language used to declare an action.) Example: when I say that I'm going to attempt to hide, what it really means is that I'm trying to hide [I]from somebody[/I] (even if I don't know who that somebody is yet). It's the tree falling in the woods thing: if there's nobody around to notice me, there's no meaning to 'hidden'. (We can dive into that claim if you disagree, but I won't bother unless somebody tries to contest it.) Whether I succeed or fail at hiding isn't just about my character, it's about my character in relation to other characters (NPC and PC) who might see me. Translating that to the current context, if an NPC is lying/persuading/seducing/etc., "success" isn't just that they did it very well, but [I]that it worked on the target[/I]. A lot of the posts seem to suggest that if, say, the DM wants the merchant to "roll Persuasion" (sic) and rolls high, the merchant was persuasive in an objective sense. But, using goal and approach, the actual goal was to [I]persuade the PC[/I]. The reason I think this is confusing is that some action declarations, "I climb to the top of the wall", "I try to recall who this god is", "I look for tracks of the bear", there is no other character/creature involved. Let's call those "intransitive" action declarations. In "transitive" action declarations, success is absolutely dependent upon the target. There is no independent/objective successful "hide" or "shove"....or "persuade", "intimidate", etc. I'm not sure that will make anybody switch sides in this debate, but there have been a number of posts with example scenarios in which I feel like this distinction was not understood. [/QUOTE]

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