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<blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 6747327" data-attributes="member: 97077">I like how you looked to yourself as the problem here. Many DMs look to the players or the game system when something goes awry when it's often an issue with the DM's approach. So good on you for thorough self-examination and implementing solutions in light of what you found. Not enough DMs do this in my experience.I'm not sure I can agree with how you lay this out and would like to suggest a simpler way of looking at it:It's the player's skills and the character build that work together to determine the outcome of a challenge.There is no &quot;character responsibility.&quot; After all, the character is not real, so it's all on the player to place his or her character in the fictional position to accomplish its goals. When the player's stated goal and approach for the character falls short of certain success (or isn't quite certain failure), then the character's skills are used to resolve the uncertainty. Sometimes you succeed outright, sometimes you fail outright, sometimes the DM calls for a check and you hope that the die is kind and your character build is solid.I also think there is an inherent assumption in the way you say things that indicates it's expected for players to ask to make skill checks. As others have pointed out upthread, leaving your fate to a 20-sided die is not a particularly good strategy, so why a player would ask to make a check when success without a check is possible is kind of baffling. Players do not ask to make checks at my table. That would just be silly.But otherwise, I like where you're headed with this and look forward to the next article.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="iserith, post: 6747327, member: 97077"] I like how you looked to yourself as the problem here. Many DMs look to the players or the game system when something goes awry when it's often an issue with the DM's approach. So good on you for thorough self-examination and implementing solutions in light of what you found. Not enough DMs do this in my experience. I'm not sure I can agree with how you lay this out and would like to suggest a simpler way of looking at it: [B]It's the player's skills and the character build that work together to determine the outcome of a challenge.[/B] There is no "character responsibility." After all, the character is not real, so it's all on the player to place his or her character in the fictional position to accomplish its goals. When the player's stated goal and approach for the character falls short of certain success (or isn't quite certain failure), then the character's skills are used to resolve the uncertainty. Sometimes you succeed outright, sometimes you fail outright, sometimes the DM calls for a check and you hope that the die is kind and your character build is solid. I also think there is an inherent assumption in the way you say things that indicates it's expected for players to ask to make skill checks. As others have pointed out upthread, leaving your fate to a 20-sided die is not a particularly good strategy, so why a player would ask to make a check when success without a check is possible is kind of baffling. Players do not ask to make checks at my table. That would just be silly. But otherwise, I like where you're headed with this and look forward to the next article. [/QUOTE]

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