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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 7611434" data-attributes="member: 16814">If I may, at this late juncture...This argument is about something that's entirely downstream of the real issue, which isn't being address clearly enough (although [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] has touched on it repeatedly):  what a character thinks is irrelevant to the game structure.  The game let's players have the authority to declare actions for their characters.  This is, really, the only authority players have outside of character build (creations and leveling).  What a character thinks is just something the player establishes as color for the action declaration if they care to do so.  So, of course the player has complete authority over what the character thinks, because the rule say that they player has complete authority over what the character tries to do.  You cannot have the latter if you have restrictions on the former.  So, in the case of the thunderwave scrolls, the player has the authority to declare this action for their character.  What the character is thinking here is color -- it's not important at all; the game doesn't care at all.  If, however, the player wants information from the setting, then they can establish an action declaration for how their character is attempting to gain this information, which, presumably, the player will then use for future action declarations.  Again, though, what the character is thinking is not part of this except as a emergent phenomenon of play.Now, this is entirely anathema to a number of playstyle conceptualizations, but it is how this system is written.  Anything that the players or GM wish to layer on top of the 5e system is up to them  [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] has pounded this point home often), and more power to them.  But, again, if you, as GM, are placing limits on what characters are allowed to think, the outcome is that you are declaring certain categories of action declaration as off-limits.  Consider why you want to do this -- what does this gain you?  I used to think that it was important to have such controls to encourage "roleplaying" in my players, but it turns out they're adult people that don't really need such external controls and I'm having much more fun not playing thought police with my players.  It's also made me realize that if my game rests on the players pretending they don't know things, then I really need to step up my game.  If I'm using Earth Elementals, for example, the players maybe knowing they're weak to thunder damage is the last thing I care about -- them knowing this will not, in any way, reduce any part of my game.</blockquote>

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