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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 9141085" data-attributes="member: 42582">In the middle of establishing the fictional context for the action and its resolution.Here's an example, from Gygax's DMG (pp 80-81):Someone once sharply criticized the concept of the saving throw as ridiculous. Could a man chained to a rock, they asked, save himself from the blast of a red dragon's breath? Why not?, I replied. If you accept fire-breathing dragons, why doubt the chance to reduce the damage sustained from such a creature's attack? Imagine that the figure, at the last moment, of course, manages to drop beneath the licking flames, or finds a crevice in which to shield his or her body, or succeeds in finding a way to be free of the fetters. Why not? The mechanics of combat or the details of the injury caused by some horrible weapon are not the key to heroic fantasy and adventure games. It is the character, how he or she becomes involved in the combat, how he or she somehow escapes - or fails to escape - the mortal threat which is important to the enjoyment and longevity of the game.The crevice was there, all along, as part of the fiction - but it is not established, at the table as part of the fiction except subsequent to the resolution of the saving throw (ie if the player saves, it turns out there was a crevice there for their PC to duck into).The contrast is with something like RQ, where the existence of a crevice should be established in advance, and provide a modifier to the die roll to avoid/survive the flames.</blockquote>

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