D&D 5E Players: Why Do You Want to Roll a d20?

[Seramus]

IF there is a check called for by the DM, you are hoping it is for DEX (Thieves' Tools), which is your PC's strong suit.

I can also see Intelligence as a possibility in this. But I often ask for multiple attributes or skills when I ask for a check, such as Dex OR Int + Thieves’ Tools, or Cha + Persuasion OR Intimidate. This choice informs the DC and how the scene responds, of course.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I care about how many flips were made because it informs my description of how the world reacts to this action - maybe because monsters are about to burst into the scene and I want to know how far Mr Flip is, or the previously mentioned guy who is watching from the sides is willing to hire them if Mr Flip can do eight flips, but not if he messes up before four flips (what an amateur!), etc. Or more meta, if I have to talk with Mr Flip because he never even tries to attempt 10 flips anymore because whenever he does he usually gets no flips because this is a binary. He sticks with 6 flips these days.

Basically, sometimes a flip is just a flip - and sometimes it has an impact on several other things in the scene.

I think we're at the point that the example is morphing to the needs of the argument rather than remaining useful. I understand your approach, here, and I'm not denigrating it. I'm saying that there's another way to do it that doesn't ever involve knowing the number of flips done. I can determine anything that's important to me for a scene without having a sliding scale single roll tell me how many discrete flips are done. That's the sum of my point.

I will note, though, that not a single person other than you is insisting that a pass/fail check is either 10 flips or no flips. Pass/fail is just 'did enough flips' or 'didn't do enough flips.' The exact number of flips is largely flavor. A fail could be 9 flips, or 2. It's not important to me to have the check determine the exact number of flips completed because the number of flips is really a middleman for a different determination of success. I skip the middleman.

My focus in this discussion is in the degrees of success vs binary resolution, such as a player stating an achievable goal and then rolling MUCH better than expected and getting nothing for it (if something is possible to get) such as the silver medal / gold medal Mr Flip scenario or the average song / great song Bard scenario.

I used to use this method. I used to let the number on the die tell me what happened in the scene, but I disliked how that worked because the players began to expect it all the time rather than when appropriate, and started chasing 20s on the die rather than engage the fiction. The game felt disconnected, even as I tired it. I'm not saying this is your experience, but it was (is) mine with the resolution mechanic you're discussing. I find much better play (again, for me) by discarding the dice determining the fiction and going with the pass/fail for a stated goal using the approach to adjudicate the difficulty. The result can now be whatever works out, but my maxim for a roll is that it must change the fiction. No whiffs. You succeed, and the fiction changes by moving towards your goal (often, all the way); you fail, and it moves away from your goal. The exact nature of how this is represented in the fiction is wide open to whatever drives the conflict best.

Just to be clear, another poster made the claim that they do it only binary, and that any hiccups with an only binary approach is a failure to state appropriate approach/goals.

I personally love non-binary, and consider almost every ability check at my table to be a sliding scale with degrees of failure and success.

That's not quite the point. The point I made was that often the apparent need for a sliding scale is because you're using whatever you're rolling for as a proxy for an unstated or untested goal. In the case of the flips, 10 flips gets the PC something they want, fewer may get them something else or nothing. You use the sliding scale to determine the proxy value to determine the level of reward. And that's great, it's effective at doing this. I don't see the value in this anymore, and chose to test the end result goal directly. I use the check not to determine the proxy, but the goal's success or failure.

Both ways are valid, and I like how much you clearly love your style. You do you, and have fun doing you -- this is really the only goal of play. I like talking about how mechanics work, sometimes bluntly, but if you like how you play, then it's a good way.

 

[5ekyu]

For the painting story, I think this is a decent representation of style and focus.

If I have a large painting and someone wants to take the frame apart*, it might take a whopping 30 seconds. Probably less because somebody will say "Can I take the frame off?" to which I'll respond "sure".

But I digress. Minutiae like this doesn't come up in my game. It's just not worth the time and effort to play out for me. Describing details of what you're doing for mundane tasks is kind of boring. There are exceptions to the rule of course.

I'd rather focus on moving the story forward. Talking to NPCs, exploring, combat encounters. I don't get enough time to play anyway so something like this that doesn't move the story forward just gets narrated.

Which doesn't mean it was a bad play experience, just that I value expediency and moving the narrative forward more than getting into the weeds of what people are doing to accomplish goals.

*Although honestly I can't imagine it coming up. If I roll for random treasure and it's "art" it's going to be portable.

This does bring to mind a thing that may not have been mentioned, in my games at ytime ehen sonething is going on as GM I sometimes offer two different skill combos - open to more if suggested - to achieve a result.

So, maybe you can figure things out by an investigative approach or a more insightful approach - reading people or reading the scene and patterns. Muscling your way thru he crowd nor dexterous flipping inbetween.

 

[Seramus]

I will note, though, that not a single person other than you is insisting that a pass/fail check is either 10 flips or no flips.

That’s my definition of degrees of success. If you have any number that is not 0 flips or 10 flips, you are using degrees of success as I define it. So when people tell me they don’t use degrees of success, they’re either using a different definition and I have to gingerly suss that out from them, or they really are saying they run games where the only result is 0 or 10 - which is what I considered a dark comedy.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That’s why it’s important for the DM and Player to agree on the stakes before the roll. There are scenarios where a player might want more than one thing to happen. In that case, I usually ask which of the number of things listed is the priority - the one they really want - and which are lower on the priority list. Once ranked, I set DCs. The highest priority of the player gets the lowest DC, and the higher they roll, the more of their priorities they achieve.

I’ll give an example from one of my games. Player was a bard, in combat with an ogre on the back of a carriage in a chase scenario with other players attempting to escape. Bard wanted to fancy-dance past the ogre, drop down to the horse and sever the hitch, riding away with the unhitched horse and leaving the ogre to drift on the back of the carriage.

I asked my player what one thing he most wanted to happen, and how he planned on making it work. Definitely he wanted to sever the hitch. Next he wanted to be on the horse after the hitch was severed, and last was getting past the ogre. He was going to rely on his natural agility and balance to tumble, vault, and land where he wanted to (that says a Dex check to me).

I asked him to make a Dex (acrobatics) check versus DC 10 to sever the hitch (not at all complicated), 15 to sever the hitch while escaping on the horse (a bit trickier), and 20 to bypass the ogre unscathed. One check - whose outcome determined how many of those priorities he could accomplish. He agreed with my proposal. (He didn’t have to. Sometimes we refine it).

If I remember right, he didn’t hit the 20 but got close. So the ogre took a swipe at the bard as the bard fancy-danced past it (some damage there), but he was able to get onto the horse, cut the hitch and leave the ogre drifting on the now-horseless wagon while the rest of the party escaped on mounts. That ended the chase.

So it doesn’t have to be only binary. The die result matters, but I don’t use the die result to generate outcomes in the fictional scenario - just the mechanical scenario. We discuss outcomes first, set DCs as needed, and then roll on that. Once the mechanic is done, we go back to the narrative and reset into the next bit of play loop.

This is cool, but I not a fan of action chains quite this long. I feel it incentivizes trying complex action chains and hoping for hot dice, which runs counter to preferences. I could see doing something similar to this, but, in my case, since it's a chase scene, I'd likely use the ogre as a penalty rather than a direst obstacle -- failures to succeed around the carriage result in ogre, kind of thing. In this case, I can see an action to drop onto a horse and cut it free as a declared action within my preferred time/complexity windows, with a success meaning no ogre and a failure meaning you still do it, but ogre. The riding away successfully would probably be a later check after everyone else gets their turn to do something, with ogre again being the likely fail condition.

I strongly dislike the "roll high and expect to get more stuff than you asked for" mode of play, anymore. Again, preference, because it does work for the goals stated in this thread. I just find it imposes on the DM to come up with awesome things that the PC does on a good success past what the player declared, and also to state the horrible things the PC does on a 1 (that the player didn't declare). I've changed my preferences over time. Now, I like actions to be firmly in the player's area of responsibility. I already have enough to do as DM.

 

[Ovinomancer]

That’s my definition of degrees of success. If you have any number that is not 0 flips or 10 flips, you are using degrees of success as I define it. So when people tell me they don’t use degrees of success, they’re either using a different definition and I have to gingerly suss that out from them, or they really are saying they run games where the only result is 0 or 10 - which is what I considered a dark comedy.

Then, sure, you've managed to define the term in a way that your argument succeeds, because only a ridiculous person would disagree with your argument premised on that definition. Is there something useful you gain by doing this -- making an argument defined in such a way that only a ridiculous person could possibly argue against it? I see absolutely no value in this definition -- it's trivial and pointless.

 

[Charlaquin]

That’s my definition of degrees of success. If you have any number that is not 0 flips or 10 flips, you are using degrees of success as I define it. So when people tell me they don’t use degrees of success, they’re either using a different definition and I have to gingerly suss that out from them, or they really are saying they run games where the only result is 0 or 10 - which is what I considered a dark comedy.

That’s a very strange way to define degrees of success. Most people would define it as there being more than two possible outcomes. And the way I run the game, there are not. You can pass or fail, but there is no exceptional success, near success, near failure, or dramatic failure. The number of flips really doesn’t matter, what matters is, did you do enough flips to achieve your goal, and the only two answers to that are “yes” and “no.”

 

[Maxperson]

As an example from recent play, my character wanted to take a large painting the party found as loot, but the frame was impractically large to transport. I described my goal/approach of painstakingly disassembling the frame using the small, precise tools included with my Thieves' Tools, and asked if I could make a DEX (Thieves' Tools) check. The DM considered my proposal, and decided that knowledge was more important than precision to this task, and called for an INT (Painter's Supplies) check. This reduced my bonus on the check from +12 to +0, and so the check was failed, damaging the painting. The outcome was identical to what would have happened if I hadn't proposed a check, but I was happier knowing that the DM had considered my opinion, and the DM had the foreknowledge that the check's likelihood of success was going to be very different than I had anticipated when I declared my action.

I go about it from the other direction. I just state the approach and goal and let the DM figure out the check. If I think that another check, such as your thieves' tools example might be better, I will then throw it out there for the DM to consider. Most of the time I don't need to toss out my idea, because the DM and I are on the same page.

 

[Seramus]

That’s a very strange way to define degrees of success. Most people would define it as there being more than two possible outcomes. And the way I run the game, there are not. You can pass or fail, but there is no exceptional success, near success, near failure, or dramatic failure. The number of flips really doesn’t matter, what matters is, did you do enough flips to achieve your goal, and the only two answers to that are “yes” and “no.”

Our argument was about someone who was falling, and you said they couldn’t attempt all three goals. Just one of them, which was mutually exclusive with the other two. That’s how we got onto the whole “only 10 flips, or 0 flips” thing.

 

[Bawylie]

This is cool, but I not a fan of action chains quite this long. I feel it incentivizes trying complex action chains and hoping for hot dice, which runs counter to preferences. I could see doing something similar to this, but, in my case, since it's a chase scene, I'd likely use the ogre as a penalty rather than a direst obstacle -- failures to succeed around the carriage result in ogre, kind of thing. In this case, I can see an action to drop onto a horse and cut it free as a declared action within my preferred time/complexity windows, with a success meaning no ogre and a failure meaning you still do it, but ogre. The riding away successfully would probably be a later check after everyone else gets their turn to do something, with ogre again being the likely fail condition.

I strongly dislike the "roll high and expect to get more stuff than you asked for" mode of play, anymore. Again, preference, because it does work for the goals stated in this thread. I just find it imposes on the DM to come up with awesome things that the PC does on a good success past what the player declared, and also to state the horrible things the PC does on a 1 (that the player didn't declare). I've changed my preferences over time. Now, I like actions to be firmly in the player's area of responsibility. I already have enough to do as DM.

Well, if you look at it, the Bard’s proposal wasn’t anything outside of the normal action economy. It’s basically move some distance and take some action. All of that is permissible, by the rules, and not a long action chain.

The DCs at work here are to see whether the bard could accomplish all he intended within that framework.

If the proposal really were “too much” (2 actions for example), that’d probably get a “Nah you know you won’t be able to manage that. Which of those two things is a must-have?” from me.