this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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I like critical failure.
Skilled people can sometimes choke under pressure.
Under pressure, sure. But a perpetual 5% chance of colossal failure seems absolutely insane when it applies to restful situations as well.
In games, realism is often sacrificed in favor of drama.
Yeah. That's what the magic is for. But I refuse to believe that a wizard who can conjure and drop a meteor on a city has a 5% chance of not recognizing the light spell.
Edit: I forgot the word chance.
Can you think of a better mechanic to represent choking under pressure? Maybe “trivial” skill checks should roll with advantage?
Yes. Pathfinder 2e has a good one.
Rolling a nat 1 or 20 doesn't mean Critical success/failure. It means it moves the success status up or down one: Critical success, success, failure, critical failure. In addition, that game also specifies that a critical is also achieved by your result being +/- 10 of the result.
So if you're attempting a DC 35 check (arguing with a god, let's say) with a +2 mod, a nat 20 would get you a result of 22, a critical failure. But a nat 20 bumps it up one success, so you get a regular failure. Whereas if the DC was 25, a 22 is still a failure but your crit means it's a regular success.
This has middling applications in D&D 5e, though. PF2e's DCs and skill bonuses are not constrained by 5e's Bounded Accuracy. So they can vary a lot more. In D&D's case I had to pull pretty much the highest possible DC the game suggests so there's not a lot of use cases for this. But it's still a better system for including criticals on skill checks. And this is why 5e doesn't have them normally.
There is the option for removing trivial skill checks, as mentioned elsewhere in the comments of this post, but most players I've had want to roll for the small stuff. Just expecting you succeed gets really boring after a while. Not to mention a lot of us bought shitloads of these clicky math rocks and want to use 'em. So while that's an option it's not one that I'm a particular fan of. Advantage I'm also not a huge fan of as it then feels like it cheapens advantage itself. I use both advantage and disadvantage sparingly in my games and have outright banned Silvery Barbs at my table for that reason. When you get advantage or disadvantage from something I like it to feel like an "Oh fuck" moment. A friend helping you out in a time of need or an something catching you completely off guard. My idea would be confirming critical failures.
For combat I understand a simple natural 1 equals a failure. That is under pressure and yes you can choke in those moments or just be bested by an opponent. But for skill checks you're proficient or an expert in during a non-pressure environment or situation it makes no fucking sense. Cut that chance down by making them confirm it.
Natural 1 on a Proficient Skill = Re-roll the d20. If you roll 10 or below then you critically fail. 11 or above and your result is treated as a simple 1 instead of a critical failure.
Natural 1 on an Expertise Skill = Same as above but the failure bracket shifts down to be 1-5 for a critical failure and a 6-20 for a simple 1.
That's how I'd run it anyway. Maybe shift the failure/success brackets but the same basic set up.
For most skills, there low level human equivalents in the real world who will never "choke under pressure" once when doing the thing thousands of times throughout their life. When we're talking about one of the heroes of a tale that are also "the best of the best", I think it's ok from a literature, fantasy, or gameplay standpoint for them to have a 100% success rate despite the fact that a failure risk would be possible in the real world. This is doubly true (DM point of view) when failure would be uninteresting or mess with suspension of disbelief. If an ace pilot is trying to fly through a bad storm to land where the firefight is going to happen, he bloody well makes it. I'm ok with "success with complications" on a 1, but the complications should be fun as well. You land ok, but the wind that hit at the last minute caused some damage to a wing. You might need to find another way out" or even "unfortunately, you weren't able to fly evasively enough because of the buffetting winds, so they know you're here.
Nobody wants Skyrim syndrome, where a master thief gets caught pickpocketing someone (we Bethesda players do something called save-scumming to keep the immersion). I used to go to a pickpocket show at the local renfair and the performer never got caught. And he was not a "master thief".
In epic scaled games, I work around this with a "reroll at -20". So the rogue in this case would have had about a 25% chance to recover on a DC10 check.
I also always include an in-game explanation. In this case, I would have made it a huge flashy "boon of insight" from the Paladin's deity.
Then it's all the more fun if the rogue actually manages the re-roll. "Dude, I even tricked your god!"
I would also RP right into it. "A voice from on high intones 'I dunno, seems legit, to me.'"
Similarly if the rogue actually fails:
"A voice from on high intones 'Seriously, you need to stop falling for this crap. I'm going to send you an amulet of insight or something. What's your next stop?'"
I listened to one video which suggested rolling 3 d6 instead. Crits on 3 and 18. Turns that 5% into 0.46%.
...yes, but that also has the trade-off of moving your rolls from a flat distribution where every value between 1-20 have equal weight, to a bell curve that peaks at 10.5.
Many of your rolls are gonna end up right around that 10-11 mark as a result. Which can be fine! #alldicearebeautiful
But it's not gonna be a great drop in replacement for D&D. D&D's skill checks are built around beating numbers that you're not going to reach as easily with 3d6 vs a flat d20.
Basically, more dice = more predictability and fewer wild swings of fortune. That is a more accurate model of reality.... But arguably less fun in a game.
Imagine the difference in dramatic tension in a game where the boss has 50 HP. In one scenario, you deal a consistent 5.5 HP each round. In the other, you deal 1d10 damage each round.
In the long run, you'll deal the same amount of damage in either system. But the randomness of a 1d10 creates more dramatic tension and excitement! When you roll a 1, it's a crushing setback. A 10? Instant jubilation.
This is why my house rule is nat 20 or 1 gets a second roll to determine the degree of the crit. A 1 followed by another 1 is your true fall on your face odds.
Which, as said elsewhere, is still a 1-in-400 chance. A commercial pilot lands a plane thousands of times in his life. 1d20 with a 1d20 confirm would mean no pilot ever survived to retirement.
And one could argue a commercial pilot has a fairly average skill level, the equivalent of a level 0 character with a ~4 points of proficiency (D&D3 mindset, I know I'm old). Someone who is 5 or 6 times that should have no meaningful risk of crashing a plane (and the plane should have no meaningful risk of dangerously malfunctioning 0.25% of the time)
Critical skill failure is relative to the situation, you don't chop your arm off everytime you critically miss in combat. Although if it makes sense for the specific situation, chopping your arm off might be on the table sometimes for a critical miss in combat. Same sort of thing works for skills. It would only be the worst reasonable result that comes to mind. Not that all of a sudden the worst possible thing ever happens completely out of the blue.
Personally I think the right method is to only roll when there’s pressure. If you’re good at a skill and there’s no pressure, then it just succeeds.