D&D thread
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@Gurth Doesn't that leave natural 20's?
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@PleegWat said in D&D thread:
@Gurth Doesn't that leave natural 20's?
The more modern systems I'm aware of (Pathfinder, 5e) don't have a natural 1/natural 20 effect for skill checks.
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@Gurth said in D&D thread:
@Gribnit said in D&D thread:
Cackle is OTT. (N=stupid)d4 d20 rolls with no change of expression is a better form.
Far better to let the players roll some kind of test that’s sure to fail, than for the GM to roll some dice in secret, though.
...
Don't worry, the results are not used. You roll the d4 for the scare die count, have them roll, and roll the scare dice while looking up / calculating the player's roll's result. You don't even need to look at your d20s while rolling, technically, if you can still act concerned about the results.
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@izzion said in D&D thread:
@PleegWat said in D&D thread:
@Gurth Doesn't that leave natural 20's?
The more modern systems I'm aware of (Pathfinder, 5e) don't have a natural 1/natural 20 effect for skill checks.
For which I'm very grateful. That whole "ok, roll for it/Got a 20!/Great, you convinced the king to sell you his crown for a pair of old shoes!" memetic nonsense was stupid.
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@Benjamin-Hall I think that for crits and fumbles, there needs to be situational awareness and DM judging. When it makes no sense for the roll to either crit or fumble, just treat it as normal success/fail. And for situations that cannot happen at all, just ignore the result entirely. Maybe change the reaction from the NPCs or something.
Another thing that ended up in discussion today in my RPG group was the idea that you could drop skill checks when there are no constraints or dangers. Like, if you are going to pick a lock and there is nobody around and nobody will come, just automatically succeed if a character has the skill. Just say "it will take you x minutes to pick this lock" modified by player skill to have an appropriate amount.
Thinking about it, that does give me an idea..
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@Atazhaia said in D&D thread:
Another thing that ended up in discussion today in my RPG group was the idea that you could drop skill checks when there are no constraints or dangers. Like, if you are going to pick a lock and there is nobody around and nobody will come, just automatically succeed if a character has the skill. Just say "it will take you x minutes to pick this lock" modified by player skill to have an appropriate amount.
That's stock D&D 5e. Don't roll unless all of the following are true:
- The task can be failed with reasonable probability, where what that means depends on the table and situation. Don't roll for normal things, basically.
- The task is not impossible.
- Failure and success both have interesting consequences. Time is only interesting if it matters.
Basically, avoid rolling for situations where failure just results in no change.
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@izzion said in D&D thread:
@PleegWat said in D&D thread:
@Gurth Doesn't that leave natural 20's?
The more modern systems I'm aware of (Pathfinder, 5e) don't have a natural 1/natural 20 effect for skill checks.
In Pathfinder 1e only a very few skills have special results for 1s or 20s. (Use Magic Device, for example, has adverse effects if you roll a 1 and it's a failure.)
In Pathfinder 2e, a 1 lowers the level of success one step, while a 20 raises it one step. (The steps being Critical Fail/Fail/Success/Critical Success.) All checks can result in Critical Success or Critical Failure, but they may not be different from a regular Success or Failure.
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@PleegWat said in D&D thread:
@Gurth Doesn't that leave natural 20's?
Not if you don’t play D&D, or some other game in which one specific die result gives bonuses. As I think I’ve also mentioned before, my favourite system is Shadowrun ≤ 3rd edition, in which a test is made with a number of open-ended D6s equal to the rating you’ve got, trying to beat a target number with as many dice as possible. This lends itself very well to just letting players roll the dice to try just about anything, without having a guaranteed success result happen every so often.
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@Atazhaia said in D&D thread:
Another thing that ended up in discussion today in my RPG group was the idea that you could drop skill checks when there are no constraints or dangers.
That's what 3.0 and 3.5 RAW literally say. Might be some mileage in the notion...
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@PleegWat said in D&D thread:
@Gurth Doesn't that leave natural 20's?
Natural 20 on an impossible skill check means you still fail but in a really impressive way
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@boomzilla goddammit, this seems like it happens 5 times out of 100, wtf
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@boomzilla said in D&D thread:
And for me who plays intelligently made systems, the natural 1 would be a crit and pin the goblin's hand to his crotch!
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@Atazhaia said in D&D thread:
And for me who plays intelligently made systems, the natural 1 would be a crit and pin the goblin's hand to his crotch!
Well, if the bolt were to instead pin the goblin's hand to the female elf's crotch…
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@Atazhaia how can they be intelligently made if the sign distinction is considered fundamentally significant or even close to the significance of a linear vs bell distribution?
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@dkf said in D&D thread:
@Atazhaia said in D&D thread:
And for me who plays intelligently made systems, the natural 1 would be a crit and pin the goblin's hand to his crotch!
Well, if the bolt were to instead pin the goblin's hand to the female elf's crotch…
That's not covered in RAW, for characters to even have crotches you need to introduce called shots or some other splat.
Technically, there isn't even facing...
In the epicyclic explanation for the lack of facing and called shots, D&D creatures rotate about their vertical axis and revolve around an external vertical axis. Miss chance and fortification are accomplished by modulating the latter or the former, respectively.
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@Gribnit said in D&D thread:
for characters to even have crotches
You have clearly never looked at FATAL.
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@Gurth said in D&D thread:
@Gribnit said in D&D thread:
for characters to even have crotches
You have clearly never looked at FATAL.
Nothing in RAW lets me look at FATAL, either.
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No sane person should ever look at that.
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@Gribnit said in D&D thread:
@boomzilla goddammit, this seems like it happens 5 times out of 100, wtf
Well, have you shot a lot of crossbow bolts at goblins in your time? How would you know what tends to happen?
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@boomzilla whenever I start a new game I shoot at a goblin 100 times, just to get a feel for things, and of course role-playing each shot is also good practice with a new character.
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@boomzilla said in D&D thread:
@Gribnit said in D&D thread:
@boomzilla goddammit, this seems like it happens 5 times out of 100, wtf
Well, have you shot a lot of crossbow bolts at goblins in your time? How would you know what tends to happen?
If you don't drastically inflate the rate of "weird things happening," then it's just never going to happen. You really don't make that many rolls per hour at a table.
(I once GMed for a wild mage character, and with a 1 in 20 chance of weird things happening on non-cantrip spells, it happened just once or twice in a campaign that went to 15th level.)
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@Gurth said in D&D thread:
@Gribnit said in D&D thread:
for characters to even have crotches
You have clearly never looked at FATAL.
For a sane RPG system, Eon has a detailed hit table with crotch available. And yes, our DM has a knack for rolling crotch on that one (2% chance on a d100 iirc).
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@Atazhaia which end of the die? Player levels give you an intrinsic roll bonus, and GM levels continue that with the option of flipping the sign, so they tend to roll low after awhile.
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@boomzilla said in D&D thread:
In my last session, an enemy rolled a critical fail in their attack and because the DM couldn't be bothered to find our crit fail table he just said they did critical damage on themselves. Next turn I tried to throw a net and got a natural 1 so in the interest of fairness I trapped myself in it
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@Jaloopa I'm so glad that modern D&D has abolished the crit fail tables. The idea that the d20 even represents your own efforts (as opposed to the random factors that are not in your control) makes no sense in context--that's what the modifier is.
The d20 represents
- random factors in the environment. Gusts of wind, imperfect footing, etc.
- the movements & such of your opponent (the static factors are captured in the AC).
So a nat 1 could just as well represent your enemy being very good or a gust of wind pushing the arrow off course. But it won't represent you being a doofus and shooting yourself.
/rant
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@Benjamin-Hall said in D&D thread:
But it won't represent you being a doofus and shooting yourself.
This overassumes the primacy of the individual will in the actions of the individual. Being a doofus is an environmental condition.
Also, you've overassumed the intent of the system as to the meaning of the d20 roll in a way that no player would tolerate. Rolling a 20 shouldn't be a nonachievement for the player, but apparently you'd rather all glory be to the "environment"? How nice for the GM.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in D&D thread:
@Jaloopa I'm so glad that modern D&D has abolished the crit fail tables. The idea that the d20 even represents your own efforts (as opposed to the random factors that are not in your control) makes no sense in context--that's what the modifier is.
The d20 represents
- random factors in the environment. Gusts of wind, imperfect footing, etc.
- the movements & such of your opponent (the static factors are captured in the AC).
So a nat 1 could just as well represent your enemy being very good or a gust of wind pushing the arrow off course. But it won't represent you being a doofus and shooting yourself.
/rant
On one hand, a hardened adventurer, capable of taking down the most powerful of foes, having a 5% chance of doing something ridiculous 5% of the times they try to swing a sword is ridiculous and silly. On the other hand, it can cause some really memorable moments and it's not really any more ridiculous than things like 8 hours sleep taking you from the brink of death to fully ready to take on the next dragon. I suppose it depends on the tone of the campaign
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@Jaloopa said in D&D thread:
@Benjamin-Hall said in D&D thread:
@Jaloopa I'm so glad that modern D&D has abolished the crit fail tables. The idea that the d20 even represents your own efforts (as opposed to the random factors that are not in your control) makes no sense in context--that's what the modifier is.
The d20 represents
- random factors in the environment. Gusts of wind, imperfect footing, etc.
- the movements & such of your opponent (the static factors are captured in the AC).
So a nat 1 could just as well represent your enemy being very good or a gust of wind pushing the arrow off course. But it won't represent you being a doofus and shooting yourself.
/rant
On one hand, a hardened adventurer, capable of taking down the most powerful of foes, having a 5% chance of doing something ridiculous 5% of the times they try to swing a sword is ridiculous and silly. On the other hand, it can cause some really memorable moments and it's not really any more ridiculous than things like 8 hours sleep taking you from the brink of death to fully ready to take on the next dragon. I suppose it depends on the tone of the campaign
So a level 20 fighter, attacking a training post, will kill themselves within an hour, just from stabbing themselves on nat 1s. A level 1 fighter takes much longer. Which means that the more trained you are...the worse you are?
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@Benjamin-Hall said in D&D thread:
@Jaloopa said in D&D thread:
@Benjamin-Hall said in D&D thread:
@Jaloopa I'm so glad that modern D&D has abolished the crit fail tables. The idea that the d20 even represents your own efforts (as opposed to the random factors that are not in your control) makes no sense in context--that's what the modifier is.
The d20 represents
- random factors in the environment. Gusts of wind, imperfect footing, etc.
- the movements & such of your opponent (the static factors are captured in the AC).
So a nat 1 could just as well represent your enemy being very good or a gust of wind pushing the arrow off course. But it won't represent you being a doofus and shooting yourself.
/rant
On one hand, a hardened adventurer, capable of taking down the most powerful of foes, having a 5% chance of doing something ridiculous 5% of the times they try to swing a sword is ridiculous and silly. On the other hand, it can cause some really memorable moments and it's not really any more ridiculous than things like 8 hours sleep taking you from the brink of death to fully ready to take on the next dragon. I suppose it depends on the tone of the campaign
So a level 20 fighter, attacking a training post, will kill themselves within an hour, just from stabbing themselves on nat 1s. A level 1 fighter takes much longer. Which means that the more trained you are...the worse you are?
False. Combat rolls are different than training rolls. The fighter attacking the post is taking 10.
This is literally explicated in RAW for skill checks, btw.
Although, with an excessively literal-minded GM with a marginal grasp of the rules, it could of course still occur. This is not the system's fault. If you wanted a bell curve you shoulda used 2d10..
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@Benjamin-Hall I'm not sure that works. The 20th level fighter has the same chance of fumbling as a 1st level one, so he won't stab himself more often. The matter therefore becomes a question of scaling damage output v. hit points, and - in a sensible edition of D&D, possibly also the less sensible ones - the latter will typically outpace the former.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in D&D thread:
So a level 20 fighter, attacking a training post, will kill themselves within an hour, just from stabbing themselves on nat 1s. A level 1 fighter takes much longer. Which means that the more trained you are...the worse you are?
It's a 5% chance in either case. And the killing self bit is only if crit fail means you hit yourself. In the systems I am used to, the crit fail tables tend to be causing missed turns and penalties of varying grades. The most serious one in DoD would be the one where you hit the closest ally instead. I may have shot the healer twice with flaming arrows...
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@Benjamin-Hall said in D&D thread:
@Jaloopa said in D&D thread:
@Benjamin-Hall said in D&D thread:
@Jaloopa I'm so glad that modern D&D has abolished the crit fail tables. The idea that the d20 even represents your own efforts (as opposed to the random factors that are not in your control) makes no sense in context--that's what the modifier is.
The d20 represents
- random factors in the environment. Gusts of wind, imperfect footing, etc.
- the movements & such of your opponent (the static factors are captured in the AC).
So a nat 1 could just as well represent your enemy being very good or a gust of wind pushing the arrow off course. But it won't represent you being a doofus and shooting yourself.
/rant
On one hand, a hardened adventurer, capable of taking down the most powerful of foes, having a 5% chance of doing something ridiculous 5% of the times they try to swing a sword is ridiculous and silly. On the other hand, it can cause some really memorable moments and it's not really any more ridiculous than things like 8 hours sleep taking you from the brink of death to fully ready to take on the next dragon. I suppose it depends on the tone of the campaign
So a level 20 fighter, attacking a training post, will kill themselves within an hour, just from stabbing themselves on nat 1s. A level 1 fighter takes much longer. Which means that the more trained you are...the worse you are?
I mean, if you were a grandmaster fighter forced to fight a training post for an hour, the end of your own blade would start to look really good.
Assuming you couldn’t just go postal (since you’re stuck being LG due to some horrible curse, presumably)
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@GOG At level 20, the fighter is attacking 4x/round, while the level 1 attacks 1x. I've seen the math done.
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@Benjamin-Hall Does D&D keep the crit success on attacks even with the removal of crit fails?
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@Atazhaia A 1 on an attack roll is a failure, but only that. A 20 on an attack roll is a crit, which doubles the damage dice. No other effects (barring magic effects) from either.
Nat 1 and nat 20 also have meaning for death saving throws, but that's different.
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@Atazhaia said in D&D thread:
@Benjamin-Hall said in D&D thread:
So a level 20 fighter, attacking a training post, will kill themselves within an hour, just from stabbing themselves on nat 1s. A level 1 fighter takes much longer. Which means that the more trained you are...the worse you are?
It's a 5% chance in either case. And the killing self bit is only if crit fail means you hit yourself. In the systems I am used to, the crit fail tables tend to be causing missed turns and penalties of varying grades. The most serious one in DoD would be the one where you hit the closest ally instead. I may have shot the healer twice with flaming arrows...
One of the guys I played with always managed to trip over an invisible tortoise, to the point of his character starting to try to find it.
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@Carnage Ah, yes, the invisible tortoise. Bane of all adventurers!
@Benjamin-Hall So there is only regular fail, regular success and critical success? So no chance of stuff going wrong more than a miss, but can do execptionally well if lucky?
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@Atazhaia A 1 is a guaranteed miss. Even if you'd normally have hit. But otherwise, yes.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in D&D thread:
@GOG At level 20, the fighter is attacking 4x/round, while the level 1 attacks 1x. I've seen the math done.
I did say "sensible edition of D&D".
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@GOG Turns out that all editions since 3e have this same issue. 3e was actually the worst (due to how crits and crit fails worked).
And there's no way I'll accept that 2e and before were in any way "sensible". They were piles of unconnected mechanics thrown together without thought.
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@Benjamin-Hall said in D&D thread:
@Atazhaia A 1 is a guaranteed miss. Even if you'd normally have hit. But otherwise, yes.
But the system is pretty much built so there is not risk of things going horribly wrong for whatever reason, as the worst thing that can happen is a missed attack.
Remind me why people think D&D is a good system again.
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@Atazhaia said in D&D thread:
@Benjamin-Hall said in D&D thread:
@Atazhaia A 1 is a guaranteed miss. Even if you'd normally have hit. But otherwise, yes.
But the system is pretty much built so there is not risk of things going horribly wrong for whatever reason, as the worst thing that can happen is a missed attack.
Remind me why people think D&D is a good system again.
Those two sentences are completely orthogonal. Personally, in a game that expects combat, I don't want the people who use attacks to be at high risk of "things going horribly wrong", especially if that risk scales upward with expertise. It turns it into a farce. "Yay, 1/20 I cut my ally's head off or throw my sword across the battlefield!" Even 1/100 is too often.
D&D models people who are better than average. And people who are better than average don't hurt themselves or their allies like that.
Maybe in a game where combat was always "something bad has already happened", or in a game of slapstick, crit fails might have meaning. And even then, they'd have to apply to all interactions, because otherwise the people casting spells (which rarely involve attack rolls) would be immune, while the weapon types are killing each other and themselves. Which enforces "spells uber alles" even more.
I prefer to reserve my "things going horribly wrong" for plot moments. You tried to do some kind of ritual, but you misunderstood the requirements. Etc. Not routine actions.
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@Benjamin-Hall As I said, a sanely designed system would be able to handle both sides of the scale. But then again, D&D seems to be all power fantasy where you walk around with a party of übermenschen slaying dragons left and right with little risk of bad stuff happening to the PCs.
And yes, DoD does have critical fail for spells too. It works differently from the critical fails for physical combat, though, from the spell fizzling to things going horribly wrong moreso than the physical combat can. Physical combat is you miss your next turn to your weapon breaks.
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@Atazhaia said in D&D thread:
@Benjamin-Hall As I said, a sanely designed system would be able to handle both sides of the scale. But then again, D&D seems to be all power fantasy where you walk around with a party of übermenschen slaying dragons left and right with little risk of bad stuff happening to the PCs.
And yes, DoD does have critical fail for spells too. It works differently from the critical fails for physical combat, though, from the spell fizzling to things going horribly wrong moreso than the physical combat can. Physical combat is you miss your next turn to your weapon breaks.
There isn't symmetry there. The symmetric term for "you can critically hit" is "so can the monsters." Critical fails are just "you're a bad person who is incompetent surprisingly often."
Personally, I don't find crit successes or crit fails to be of much value. Because they're just pure chance. And "the dice hate/love me" isn't something that aids roleplay or makes scenarios more meaningful. It's just random noise. So I prefer (and it's a matter of taste) to minimize their role.
And "yay, 1/100 or more your weapon breaks" is stupid. What that implies about weapons (that they're made out of glass or something similarly fragile) destroys all verisimilitude. Which is another problem--how many weapons are people going through before they learn to fight? Because it takes a whole lot of practice. And spells are even worse like that--if there's a 1/100 chance of (say) summoning a demon to eat you, then no one would be able to cast spells, because they'd all have been eaten by demons during training.
On one forum I'm on, there's a saying called Grod's Law. Which states
You shouldn't try to balance something by making it annoying to use.
And that's what those rules do. High on annoyance, low on actual meaning.
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@Benjamin-Hall Now do critical threat range (that can increase success up to 1/2). Well, there's critical hit confirmation in the way, but for true munchkins that's not a problem
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in D&D thread:
@Benjamin-Hall Now do critical threat range (that can increase success up to 1/2). Well, there's critical hit confirmation in the way, but for true munchkins that's not a problem
Another thing I'm glad that 5e ditched (well, two things). The second mainly due to the extra rolls involved--I prefer streamlined action resolution.
Although there are a couple features that increase critical hit range (Champion Fighter 3, Hexblade Warlock Curse), but only by 1 (so 19-20).
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@Benjamin-Hall And graze mechanic?
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@Benjamin-Hall You have to remember that crit and fumble does apply to the monsters as well as the players. They are not a onesided thing, and they do add excitement to the combat. Combat is also not a routine situation, unless everything you do is combat.
That said, weapon straight off breaking I'd probably not put on my fumble table. A lowering of durability or similar is fairer methinks, then the weapon would only break if it was already damaged from before or very fragile.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in D&D thread:
@Benjamin-Hall And graze mechanic?
Depends on implementation. If you mean "hitting exactly the target's AC means <something special>", I prefer not. And it's not included.
However, 5e does have the concept that some effects (spell or otherwise) have some (reduced) effect even if the target makes a successful save. The most common of which being "1/2 damage and no other effect". So a spell like thunderwave, which deals damage and pushes targets away on a failed save, has the line that targets that succeed take half damage and are not pushed.
This is easy to do, because it doesn't require any nested or conditional rolls. You already know if they succeeded or failed and already have that branch, it's just extra code in one branch. Something like a graze introduces a third branch (attack roll == AC). And critical confirmations require an entirely new, conditional roll, with different rules.
My guiding principle is that things that happen a lot should have very simple resolution mechanics. It's ok if things that only happen once in a blue moon are more complex, but the stuff that happens once or more per turn (on average)? Should be very fast. Basically a "critical path optimization." I prefer more, smaller turns over fewer, more complex turns.
