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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6852398" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think what you say is mostly orthogonal to the OP's point.In AD&D it was typically the GM who rolled the dice for thief abilities, but similarly, that is mostly orthogonal to the OP's point also.In an AD&D game, the player of the thief or bard says something like "I study the parchment - what can I read of it"? or "I study the runes - what do I know of their meaning and origin?" The GM then rolls the Read Languages or the Legend Lore dice, perhaps after asking the player for a % chance if s/he is not already familiar with what that is for a character of the PC's class and level.Analogously, in a 5E game the player might say "I'm learned in the lore of such-and-such - what do I know about this such-and-such that we can see?" Where the such-and-such might be a monster, a coat of arms, a magic sword, or whatever.The GM can answer with some information. Or the GM can set a DC and tell the player to roll. The GM can even say "You don't know anything", just as the AD&D GM can declare that the thief is unable to read the language if prior decisions about its origin mean that nothing could be known about it by the PC.But if the GM asks "What are you doing?" I think it is fair for the player to answer "I'm introspecting, consulting my memory of such things." In the Perception case, I think the player can equally fairly say "I'm looking, relying upon my native wit and training to discriminate small details one from the other." There is no rule in 5e that suggests that, unlike in AD&D, PCs cannot recall information that they know (but which the player cannot recall, because the learning of it took place "off stage"); nor that PCs can't discern details by concentrating on doing so, just as AD&D PCs can by listening at doors or looking for secret door mechanisms.Furthermore: Even if a particular 5e GM wants to insist that all perception and observation be handled in the second way that Gygax identified (eg actually describe what you are looking under, of what you are trying to manipulate), there is no reason to think that AD&D players will have a peculiar comfort with this that younger players will lack. Because that was not the only norm in AD&D, and having played at plenty of AD&D tables back in the day it was not an approach that I ever encountered as the norm (whereas I encountered a lot of use of Gygax's first method, of rolling dice).And if a 5e table does insist on doing things that way, then I think it would be good sport to advise players of this in advance so that they do not waste skill training on Perception (which has no work to do in Gygax's second method) or on knowledge or lore skills (which have no work to do if attempts at introspection and recall are not permitted, and all knowledge/information must be acquired via actual play).There would be nothing per se objectionable about a table that played in such a fashion and operated under such advice - I think that is probably how many tables worked in the early days of D&D, and before thief and bard classes were invented; and it reinforces the importance of sages as a resource, who even in AD&D were intended to be a big deal, and in my experience often were because lore/knowledge skills hadn't been generalised beyond the thief's linguistics and the bard's legend lore.But state it up front so that players can make character building choices accordingly.</blockquote>

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