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<blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 7443109" data-attributes="member: 97077">I think the reason players are always quick with &quot;I'm helping&quot; is because there's no cost or risk to it. Adding restrictions to whether they can help or putting it behind an ability check doesn't necessarily solve the problem (if it's seen as a problem, that is) of players being quick with &quot;I'm helping&quot; because there's still no cost or risk to it. The specific requirements of Working Together only really shut out picking locks since to my knowledge that's the only thing that requires proficiency, so Working Together will work in most situations (provided the approach to the goal of helping is reasonably helpful). If Working Together comes at the cost of not performing some other useful task (like Keeping Watch), it starts to look less attractive. I'm not too keen on a general risk of hindrance rule, but something like that might also see a reduction in Working Together. In D&amp;D 4e, for example, Aid Another required a DC 10 check which was pretty trivial to most characters unless they were untrained in the skill being used, but if you failed that check the person you were Aiding suffered a penalty to his or her roll instead.What's also at play is that DMs are probably asking for too many ability checks. Helping becomes even more important to avoid a lot of failures per session. If there's no uncertainty as to outcome AND no meaningful consequence of failure, then the character just succeeds, no roll. If DMs just think about that a little harder during the game, the number of times they call for ability checks falls quite a bit in my experience and so might attempts to Work Together.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="iserith, post: 7443109, member: 97077"] I think the reason players are always quick with "I'm helping" is because there's no cost or risk to it. Adding restrictions to whether they can help or putting it behind an ability check doesn't necessarily solve the problem (if it's seen as a problem, that is) of players being quick with "I'm helping" because there's still no cost or risk to it. The specific requirements of Working Together only really shut out picking locks since to my knowledge that's the only thing that requires proficiency, so Working Together will work in most situations (provided the approach to the goal of helping is reasonably helpful). If Working Together comes at the cost of not performing some other useful task (like Keeping Watch), it starts to look less attractive. I'm not too keen on a general risk of hindrance rule, but something like that might also see a reduction in Working Together. In D&D 4e, for example, Aid Another required a DC 10 check which was pretty trivial to most characters unless they were untrained in the skill being used, but if you failed that check the person you were Aiding suffered a penalty to his or her roll instead. What's also at play is that DMs are probably asking for too many ability checks. Helping becomes even more important to avoid a lot of failures per session. If there's no uncertainty as to outcome AND no meaningful consequence of failure, then the character just succeeds, no roll. If DMs just think about that a little harder during the game, the number of times they call for ability checks falls quite a bit in my experience and so might attempts to Work Together. [/QUOTE]

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