as a player you should really internalize the intent/task sentence structure. “i wanna open this door by prying it open with a crowbar,” “i wanna set fire to the hay bale with my firebolt,” “i wanna haggle this price by commenting on some minor scratches.”
very often i see players only stating one of these. either “i wanna open the door” or “i cast firebolt on the hay bale.”
what the intent/task structure does is properly communicate to your GM what a success/failure state looks like, and what kind of challenge they propose. sometimes players have a very specific outcome in mind, but when they just state the task, even a successful attempt will be disappointing because the GM does not know what you want to achieve. and vice versa, just stating your intent puts weight on the GM to not only come up with the consequences to the actions, but what even causes them to begin with.
THIS THIS THIS. I CAN’T GET OVER THIS ENOUGH.
D&D is so bad at teaching you how to play it that we often don’t realize how bad it really is until you start to consider that the basic language for taking actions in the game is something the players will be interacting with WAY MORE than they’ll even be rolling dice.
I as the DM need to be able to adjudicate whether or not dice need to be rolled and what DC they’re going to need to obtain their goal. Letting me know your intent lets everyone get what they want.
All of this of course comes out of the days of adversarial play, where you had to sucker the DM into saying YES to your bullshit plan before putting it into action, so players learned to keep their cards very close to their chest.
COUNTER DM tip though: When a player asks to do something with a clear intent in mind, you as the DM should respond “ sure, because of (reason why thing will be easy or difficult) that’s a DC of (X).” Which not only gives your player more information to work with, but also cuts down on the back and forth of adjudicating the diceroll. This also provides a template for auto passes and deflection “This door was designed to keep people like you out, and has been reinforced for just that purpose, you could probably pry at it for hours and only succeed in blunting your tools” or “ With the summer heat and lack of rain there’s no need to roll to hit, that pile of tinder goes up in flames with nary a spark. ”