D&D General Hope and Fear In D&D

bedir than said:

I'd lean into what D&D already does, and since ad/disad is frequent in 2024, use that --- but different.

Hope is when you roll with ad/disad and BOTH results are success
Fear is when you roll with ad/disad and BOTH results are failures

This could help generate more variety in success and failure if you don't want to do graduated results per @Benjamin Olson post

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I think that is too rare a circumstance for my purposes here, but it is a cool idea for just general use

zakael19 said:

Let's see, DH has Crit, Full Success, Success with Complication, Failure with Momentum, and Failure with Complication. It's got a...3% higher chance to crit I think? Removing crits, the Hope/Fear outcomes are 50/50.

Could just roll a d6 split in half alongside the D20. 4/5/6, best outcome; 1/2/3, complicated outcome. Sell it to the players by saying that if they fail a skill check, on a 4+ the scene evolves in such a way that they might be able to recover?

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This is why I suggested the odd=fear, even=open idea. It is essentially 50/50, so why add an extra die?

Reynard said:

This is why I suggested the odd=fear, even=open idea. It is essentially 50/50, so why add an extra die?

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Because more dice are fun!

(I glossed over that part)

Reynard said:

This is why I suggested the odd=fear, even=open idea. It is essentially 50/50, so why add an extra die?

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As @zakael19 suggests, more dice are always welcome. The nest thing about the d6 as implemented in the Cosmere rules is the feel-good element the bonus the Complication adds to the main die toll, which makes a Complication potentially desireable to a player while spicing up the narrative.

Parmandur said:

As @zakael19 suggests, more dice are always welcome. The nest thing about the d6 as implemented in the Cosmere rules is the feel-good element the bonus the Complication adds to the main die toll, which makes a Complication potentially desireable to a player while spicing up the narrative.

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The suggestion was not the d6 presented earlier, but a simple 50/50. So what's the difference.

Reynard said:

The suggestion was not the d6 presented earlier, but a simple 50/50. So what's the difference.

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Math rocks go clackity clack.

Parmandur said:

I would suggest a look at the Cosmere RPG Plot Die mechanic, because the Plot Die takes the 5E resolution mechanic and adds on Opportunity/Complication as a second axis that would be pretty easy to attach wholesale to D&D.

Essentially, if the DM calls for the Plot Die, the players rolls the d20 check as normal plus a d6 with 4 possible results:

• 33% chance nothing extra happens, straight success or failure
• 33% chance of an Opportunity, whether the d20 roll succeeds or fails something positive for the player happens too
• 16.5% chance of a Complication, with +2 to the d20 for succees or failure but either way something of a setback happens
• 16.5% chance of a Complication, with +4 to the d20 for succees or failure but either way something of a setback happens.

This could add that non-binary experience to standard 5E without needing to rebuild much of anything.

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I was going to recommend this.

Reynard said:

On Wednesday, I ran a first session of my new monthly Daggerheart campaign. On Thursday I ran like the 30th session of my ongoing D&D 2024 campaign. One thing I really missed during the latter was Hope and Fear from Daggerheart. Not so much the metacurrency aspect, but the narrative informative aspect. This succeeded but with a complication. This failed but it presented an opportunity. Etc.

So I started to think about how to add that dimension to D&D. And really the easiest and most obvious thing to me would seem to be to determine "Hope" when a d20 roll comes up with an even result, and "Fear" when the die as an odd result. (For clarity, I mean the raw number on the die, not the total check result).

I don't really think it would be worth building a whole metacurrency system for this, or to implement it in the initiative system. If I were to do that, I would just change the campaign to run it with DH. But I do like informative dice, and I think non-binary results add something to play.

Have to implemented some sort of system that adds failures with opportunities or successes with complications? If so, what and how? Do you find that it improves D&D (especially 5E) play? If you tried it and it ended up not working or being worth the effort, what happened?

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Personally (as a DM) I could have a lot of fun with this if it's merely meant to inform the player on how much Ying they can expect in their Yang and vice versa, but I'd find it too tedious if it reflected a separate, tangential axis. The method is simple, so point for that, but the frequency is too high if it happens on every skill check.

Even if a pass/fail test is by definition binary, the result can already be interpreted in myriads of ways. A roll in D&D rarely tests only one thing; it usually tests several things happening simultaneously. For example, it's rare that one makes an Athletics check just to climb a wall. Oftentimes, we tests to see if the character made it all the way up AND/OR made it up fast enough AND/OR made it up quietly enough AND/OR made it up without hurting themselves AND/OR made it up without losing stuff AND/OR made it up without spending X resources etc. A failed tests can already mean any of these things.

If a character is attempting to climb a surface, I rarely have them fall or simply make no progress on a failed check; it just halts the action. Typically, they'll make it up but alert the guards, or fail to climb fast enough to catch up with the bad guy, or drop their pack, etc. That's what their failure represents. As such, I'd find it tedious to look for a complication in addition to any of those things failing, and it would set players to expect that description for a "success with complication", robing me of my ability to narrate failing forward unless the dice specifically said so.

I prefer the play on advantage/disadvantage suggested earlier because 1) the frequency is already lower and 2) situations with advantage/disadvantage are already better suited for emphasis of success/failure, opportunities in failure, and complications despite success.

Reynard said:

This succeeded but with a complication. This failed but it presented an opportunity. Etc.

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Early 5E published stuff often encouraged degrees of success or failure depending on the margin by which the player beats or misses the target number. That seems to have gone by the wayside, probably because players didn't like it.

Reynard said:

This is why I suggested the odd=fear, even=open idea. It is essentially 50/50, so why add an extra die?

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I think divorcing the two rolls prevents weirdness with the Advantage/Disadvantage system.

For example, say you succeed above a 10, and get Advantage. You roll 17 and 16. Going hard by the rules, you are supposed to take the higher number, so you got a "fear". But in some cases, the player would rather have a "open", and thus prefer the 16. Does the player get to pick? If the rolls were 17 and 8, could you choose the failing roll to avoid fear? I could probably manufacture a number of scenarios that aren't intended.

Keeping the hope/fear roll on a second die maintains the A/D system as intended. You could potentially also implement a second A/D system related to hope/fear, if desired.