D&D General When Was it Decided Fighters Should Suck at Everything but Combat?

[Thomas Shey]

No, rolling to see who knows the thing is still bad play. Let the players decide if they know the thing. Or have the GM decide who knows the thing. Or don't even have 'who knows the thing' be a conflict at all.

i have never spontaneously just had information appear in my head.

You're obviously not old enough.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I suppose, but I have a hard time believing you don't think rules for a water voyage aren't practically possible.

Oh I think they are entirely possible! Sort of like The One Ring created a whole sub-system for overland travel.

Which I realized, after playing TOR for a while, was dissatisfying because there were no interesting decisions to be made. You just followed the algorithm, rolled dice, and the only real decision you could make would be whether or not spend Hope in order to win one of the canned, deterministic "hazards".

Which is what I suspect would happen with most generalized sea voyage rules.

That said, as with the example of rock climbing, I think you could develop more interest seagoing rules, but it would be a lot of ink and paper for a subsystem that only gets used for one specific thing. So really I'd rather just improvise "scylla and charybdis" encounters myself as the need arises. Although I guess I wouldn't mind a book with a few hundred ideas to steal from.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Sure, and to be clear it’s rare to hear me say this but the DM doesn’t need to do that. It’s more natural to let the other players interpret it themselves.

You are certainly welcome to prefer/enjoy that, but I wouldn't go as far as calling one way (or the other) "more natural".