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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 7604643" data-attributes="member: 97077">What is the Arcana check for? I don't see an action declaration from the wizard in your breakdown.That's not the DM's problem. It's up to the players to play their characters effectively.My car doesn't use gasoline. That is the smart play. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />My players do because they have an incentive to. As an example from my current Eberron campaign, the players found a chamber in the dungeon containing crates covered in brown mold. I telegraphed an unusual chill in the adjoining chamber. A couple of characters ran afoul of it and took a bit of cold damage when they kicked down the door to said chamber. Everyone in my group is an experienced player. They knew this was brown mold and how to do deal with it (cold damage) and how not to use fire on it. But, they know that I change things up from time to time and, with the wizard having no cold-damage cantrips and only one spell slot remaining, they could not take any risks on this.So the wizard used mage hand to collect a small sample of the brown mold, not enough to do damage to anyone, with a test tube. He handed it off to the warforged fighter who has integrated alchemist's supplies. Ten minutes of testing and analysis, a wandering monster check (no wanderer), and a successful Intelligence (Alchemist's Supplies) check later, they verified it was brown mold. The wizard cast an ice knife spell, destroyed the brown mold, and they were able to obtain the schema they were seeking to complete their quest.The players chose to play effectively. All I had to do was describe the environment and narrate the results of the adventurers' actions.Yes, the player would have been better served trying to verify his assumptions before acting upon them. But based on the details you provided, this was a minor issue compared to how the group resolves conflict in my view. This wouldn't have been an issue in my group for many reasons.</blockquote>

Verification