What I want to examine is how the way your character is framed through their abilities shapes the decisions you make, and ultimately, the experience you have at the table.
This is a very interesting point. However I don't currently have abilities like this. Still the creatures might and so might the tools so that will inform how tge player interacts with the game and enable me to be less combat-focused.
Very good enounter tables to use.
Opening Stuck Doors. 2-in-6 -> STR check with disadvantage.
While I agree that rolling for things you want them to succeed at can unecessarily stunt the narrative, when combined with the idea in this article of rolling to see how well or poorly you do it could be used to give you narrative fodder. Like this example of the door. You don'tneed to roll but rolling might give you a nice connecting moment so you'renot skipping through the adventure to the 'good' stuff not having any fibre in amongst the sugar.
When players are attempting something that you have already determined will succeed, it can happen that circumstances suggest there could be a cost to it. For example, climbing a very difficult surface. The cost could be lost time (always a precious resource when you track time with the random encounter die), broken tools, exhaustion, injury, etc. Or the inverse - even faster than expected, went up real quiet, etc.
.
"Can I use Stealth to climb down the well?" "No," I said, "No, you may not. You can use a rope to climb down the well."
.
The DM gives another +2 for the handsome tip and decides 18 is good enough to make a good impression.
You could also make the roll a part of the solution. i.e. if they'retryong to do something hard it might tilt the balance ratger than it being the focus.