D&D General Blending individual checks into group checks

[Lakesidefantasy]

Would you allow the PCs that failed to be part of the group check? I'm thinking yes since he may have failed on his own, but can add something as part of the group. I would still count it as a failure. Not sure if I would group check after one or two people try.

You bring up a good point, though. "Blended" is a good choice of words because this "blurs" the line between what is accomplished by the individual and what is accomplished by the group. Opening a door may not be the best thing for a group check; maybe lifting a portcullis would be better because we can get maybe three people on it simultaneously, whereas how many people can we really get effectively pushing on a door? One?

But, I think that all misses the point. We want to rein in dice dependency a bit. It often happens that if one party member does something, we all do it--we're "walking the chimera." It gets old and repetitive, and usually I see Dungean Masters just say "No, you can't do it too. This is something this Player's Character is doing."

This "blended" thing is interesting because it tackles that line between what is an action performed by multiple characters collectively and what is a collection of actions performed by multiple characters. Ultimately its the Dungeon Master's call.

 

[Charlaquin]

Would you allow the PCs that failed to be part of the group check? I'm thinking yes since he may have failed on his own, but can add something as part of the group. I would still count it as a failure. Not sure if I would group check after one or two people try.

The idea is that once the third person is added, the two failures are retroactively considered to be part of the group check. So you have two failures and one pending. Which would still be a group failure even if the pending check succeeds, so you’d need a fourth person to contribute, and for them to also succeed, otherwise the door remains closed.

 

[GMMichael]

Consider the iconic case of a stuck door: the strongest PC tries to open it, the DM has decided that the result should be random, and calls for an ability check. The strongest PC fail, so another player has the idea of their PC try but fails as well... at this point the DM has already opened the Pandora box of letting others try, and sure enough every other PC is now going to, largely increasing the odds.

I'm not really seeing why the weaker PCs should get a shot at opening a door when the "strongest PC" couldn't do it. Unless . . . a smart PC is rolling on Intelligence to understand something the strong PC missed?

What if, after the second PC either trying on their own or granting advantage to the first with Working Together, the resolution blends into a group check? It means, all the checks now count together and half of them need to succeed. The third PC trying won't be able to succeed alone because the first 2 already failed, so both the 3rd and a 4th need to succeed. If only one of them does, an additional 5th and 6th would be needed. This kinds of smooths the probability out again.

Sure, but that seems to assume that the PCs are working together. If all the weak PCs say "I want to try opening the door," well, that's a bit short of "we work together to open the door."

I'm just really hoping that the DM has an interesting outcome besides "roll again."

 

[Charlaquin]

You bring up a good point, though. "Blended" is a good choice of words because this "blurs" the line between what is accomplished by the individual and what is accomplished by the group. Opening a door may not be the best thing for a group check; maybe lifting a portcullis would be better because we can get maybe three people on it simultaneously, whereas how many people can we really get effectively pushing on a door? One?

But, I think that all misses the point. We want to rein in dice dependency a bit. It often happens that if one party member does something, we all do it--we're "walking the chimera." It gets old and repetitive, and usually I see Dungean Masters just say "No, you can't do it too. This is something this Player's Character is doing."

This "blended" thing is interesting because it tackles that line between what is an action performed by multiple characters collectively and what is a collection of actions performed by multiple characters. Ultimately its the Dungeon Master's call.

This is why I usually use this “blended group check” idea for knowledge checks. That’s somewhere where I feel like the narrative is clear. With tasks like opening a door, the math works but the narrative is a bit muddier.

 

[Li Shenron]

The idea is that once the third person is added, the two failures are retroactively considered to be part of the group check. So you have two failures and one pending. Which would still be a group failure even if the pending check succeeds, so you’d need a fourth person to contribute, and for them to also succeed, otherwise the door remains closed.

Yes, this is exactly the idea.

 

[Li Shenron]

I'm not really seeing why the weaker PCs should get a shot at opening a door when the "strongest PC" couldn't do it.

This is not a "rule", it's just an idea which can become part of the DM's "arsenal" of ways to grant or not grant checks. Whenever you don't see why someone should get a shot, they won't get it

And of course, the "open the stuck door" is just an example used to explain the idea. I don't even usually call for checks at all for opening stuck doors, but the premise for considering using this idea is that the DM actually wants a random resolution.

For instance, @Charlaquin just mentioned using this idea for Knowledge checks. I am usually quite picky on those, and grant checks only to characters with proficiency. But for a DM who normally allows everyone to roll Knowledge checks, I think group checks are a good idea to smooth the probabilities out.

One thing I want, is to keep a sensible narrative throughout. With group checks, I can typically use the "too many cooks spoil the soup" concept to explain why increasing the number of people working together doesn't increase the chance of success indefinitely.

 

[briggart]

I like the blended group check idea. I need to play around with it to see how it works at our table.

In a similar spirit, I've recently started imposing minimum ability requirements on checks in addition to DCs. So, some checks could be DC 15 Athletics, others could be DC 15 Athletics by somebody with STR 14 or more.

In my mind this is to differentiate between problems a PC could solve but didn't figure out how, from problems that are beyond that PC capabilities. It would probably make more sense to tie this to total bonus, but I feel it's simpler with ability scores.

I'm also thinking of bringing back 3e Take 10 mechanics (but maybe it should be Take 8 given 5e math) when there is no time pressure or other particular constraint.

 

[Thommy H-H]

Add me to the (short, apparently) list of people already doing this. If someone tries and fails a check and someone wants a go too, I say, "Okay, it's now a group check then." In general, if they succeed where the first character failed, you can treat it as either a successful group check (because 50% success), a retroactive Help (treating the second roll as Advantage on the first one), or just someone else trying. So it barely matters exactly how you rule it, but sometimes it's nice to be able to cite something. If it still doesn't work and more people are pitching in, then you want to be clear about what they're actually rolling for.

Though I should say, with knowledge checks especially, I actually quite like the narrative of the Cleric totally blanking on an Intelligence (Religion) question because of a bad roll and the Rogue randomly knowing it and then having to work out why that might be the case.

 

[Tigris]

Add me to the (short, apparently) list of people already doing this. If someone tries and fails a check and someone wants a go too, I say, "Okay, it's now a group check then." In general, if they succeed where the first character failed, you can treat it as either a successful group check (because 50% success), a retroactive Help (treating the second roll as Advantage on the first one), or just someone else trying. So it barely matters exactly how you rule it, but sometimes it's nice to be able to cite something. If it still doesn't work and more people are pitching in, then you want to be clear about what they're actually rolling for.

Though I should say, with knowledge checks especially, I actually quite like the narrative of the Cleric totally blanking on an Intelligence (Religion) question because of a bad roll and the Rogue randomly knowing it and then having to work out why that might be the case.

Well I can see how different people might want to try, but in the end this just makes every check a lot easier, and rewards the "not accepting negative outcomes" player behaviour.


If something should be possible to miss, and you want to give it a certain % chance that it misses, then

A the possibility to also do a group check increases the odds A LOT or
B the total odds including the group check are the same, but this means the first check will more often fail, and this simple check will now in average just take longer.


B is something which we saw happening in RPGs in other places before. In 4E D&D players wanted to have the same defense and attack scaling as monsters. "This must be a math error", and when this was changed monsters where suddenly too weak and one needed to use more and combats dragged more...
Or in 13th age where people wrongly assume the escalation dice is to speed up combat, because it adds + to attacks, but this is actually taken into consideration with enemy defenses, meaning that without it monsters would just have slightly lower defense overall. (It is an anti alphastrike mechanic instead).


A kinda is fine, but well as a gamedesigner (which a GM is to some degree), you normally want to set specific % to succeed in something, of course if you dont think about that at all and just randomly choose a DC, then it does not hurt to also allow a group check (except maybe time spent).



On the other hand if players falling a check would mean it stops the flow (like ok you cant open the door. Well sucks, you cant follow this lead, go around ask for another lead), then the skill check should be fail forward. "Oh you did open the door, but it made a lot of noise, and also some splinter are stuck in your arm, you lose 2 healing dice" or something.



On the other hand, if you want that other players also feel like they do something, then let them all help from the beginning, unless there is a reason they cant. Increase the DC a bit. Give the person with the best value advantage, and everyone rolls a dice. For each other person who succeeded on the skill check, the person in lead gets +2 to their check. (Like 4E used aiding others). Now everyone contributed together, it you succeeded as a team (even if the single roller succeeded on his own, if both dice are rolled at the same time and only 1 succeed, as often will be the case, people will feel it was thanks to team play because that gave the advantage).

 

[Li Shenron]

A the possibility to also do a group check increases the odds A LOT or
B the total odds including the group check are the same, but this means the first check will more often fail, and this simple check will now in average just take longer.
...
On the other hand, if you want that other players also feel like they do something, then let them all help from the beginning, unless there is a reason they cant. Increase the DC a bit. Give the person with the best value advantage, and everyone rolls a dice. For each other person who succeeded on the skill check, the person in lead gets +2 to their check. (Like 4E used aiding others). Now everyone contributed together, it you succeeded as a team (even if the single roller succeeded on his own, if both dice are rolled at the same time and only 1 succeed, as often will be the case, people will feel it was thanks to team play because that gave the advantage).

Uhm... I am not sure if it wasn't clear, but I meant 5e group checks, meaning that the group succeed if at least half characters succeed . These group checks do not increase the odds "a lot", in fact they generally decrease the odds compared to when a single PC attempts a task, because in most cases the PC attempting first is the one with the best chance. If the "group" in "group checks" is made by 2 characters, certainly the group checks increases the odds (two rolls, only one need to succeed). But as soon as there are at least 3 characters, things are not that obvious, even assuming all characters have the same chance... I can't do a detailed analysis, but my feeling is that if the individual task is easy (>50%) then the more characters try the better, while if it's hard (<50%) then the more character try the worse.