For combat, I favor the "I swing by sword at his head" followed by you deciding if the attack hits and how effective it might be based off factors such as proficiency, strength, enemy's abilities, etc. Though wording is very important in these instance. Can't say something like "I make a flurry of attacks and cut off his head" because that implies that: 1. you can do multiple attacks at once and 2. You just killed them. As the GM you can always overrule that and say something along the lines of "But the enemy defends against the attacks and avoids losing his head" or some such, but being mindful of ruling for cause-and-effect would also be best.

As for out of combat stuff, I think it'd be best if we chose when we do our rolls, even for something like perception. Now we could have a passive perception (For Orchid his is 13) so if anything that is trying to hide can't beat a 13, Orchid would spot it. But if he's not actively looking, then he won't know to do a perception check to beat a 13 or higher. Yeah it's kinda a pain to constantly do perception checks, but at the same time it's sort of in-character, you know? Would your character be the type who's always on the look out, or would he sometimes just sort of stumble into a situation and take whatever is given to him?