D&D 5E Consequences of Failure

[Charlaquin]

Maybe an option should be to just drop prone? It’s not ideal because you would have to wait until your turn to stand up again. But, if no other options are available...

Alternately, you could just take the damage, so that YOU get an opportunity attack against the monster trying to make its saving throw....

Yeah, I’d say dropping prone would have a reasonable chance of success and failure at reducing the damage from a fireball, absolutely!

 

[Tony Vargas]

Thread got away from me, so just dropping another random thought grenade:


What about degrees of success?

Say you have a character trying to concoct a way to deal with a suspected upcoming threat. It could be something like trolls & fire, or it could be something that doesn't have specific game-terms-defined weaknesses, but might have some obscure or situational ones in the fiction. Instead of a binary pass/fail, the DM compares one roll against two or more DCs:

Fail: The plan is less effective, the monster gains resistance or the PCs do reduced damage the first round or few of the combat.
Beat low DC: The PC determines there's no particular tactic that'll help, or chooses a tactic that, while pointless, doesn't reduce the party's effectiveness. Combat will be normal.
Beat high DC: The plan is effective, at least at first, the PCs get a damage bonus that lasts until the enemy counters it.

That's very abstract, of course, it could be detailed & concrete if that's your style.

 

[Lanefan]

Right, I nearly put that in my post - if Gygax had added a "Surprise" column to the saving throw table nothing too fundamental about classic D&D would be different ...

Now this has got me thinking, for my own game - could surprise work as (the equivalent of) a saving throw? Hmmmm...

(and bang goes this afternoon, as I mull this over and see if it could work)

I don't really see how saving throws fit with "goal and approach" at all. Or maybe it would be better to say that they look like a fairly uncontroversial exception, and then whether a particular table uses a more expansive approach to saves (including these sorts of Perception checks, or even knowledge checks as "save vs ignorance") seems more a matter of taste than a fundamental cleavage in resolution methodologies.

The one big difference between this and all other saving throws that leaps out immediately is this: all other saving throws are rolled in reaction to something that has already happened in the fiction e.g. a spell has resolved, a poison trap just got you, you've fallen into water and are trying not to drown, etc.

A surprise save (or more specifically, the save v ignorance) is - or at least seems - more proactive in that it's trying to deal with something that may or may not have yet happened or tried to happen in the fiction.

But that still doesn't make it a bad idea...

 

[Lanefan]

What about degrees of success?

Say you have a character trying to concoct a way to deal with a suspected upcoming threat. It could be something like trolls & fire, or it could be something that doesn't have specific game-terms-defined weaknesses, but might have some obscure or situational ones in the fiction. Instead of a binary pass/fail, the DM compares one roll against two or more DCs:

Fail: The plan is less effective, the monster gains resistance or the PCs do reduced damage the first round or few of the combat.
Beat low DC: The PC determines there's no particular tactic that'll help, or chooses a tactic that, while pointless, doesn't reduce the party's effectiveness. Combat will be normal.
Beat high DC: The plan is effective, at least at first, the PCs get a damage bonus that lasts until the enemy counters it.

That's very abstract, of course, it could be detailed & concrete if that's your style.

I'm a big fan of degrees of success - not as codified as your example here or as PF2, but as a guideline for narration of results.

On something fairly binary (e.g. opening a lock) with DC 12 a '1' is narrated as a much more emphatic fail than a '10'; ditto a '20' is narrated as a much easier success than a '13'. Where there's a spectrum of possible outcomes (e.g. persuading a guard, or sneaking through the castle grounds) then the roll will guide me-as-DM as to which option to narrate and-or whether to throw in any complications.

 

[Guest 6801328]

Thread got away from me, so just dropping another random thought grenade:


What about degrees of success?

Say you have a character trying to concoct a way to deal with a suspected upcoming threat. It could be something like trolls & fire, or it could be something that doesn't have specific game-terms-defined weaknesses, but might have some obscure or situational ones in the fiction. Instead of a binary pass/fail, the DM compares one roll against two or more DCs:

Fail: The plan is less effective, the monster gains resistance or the PCs do reduced damage the first round or few of the combat.
Beat low DC: The PC determines there's no particular tactic that'll help, or chooses a tactic that, while pointless, doesn't reduce the party's effectiveness. Combat will be normal.
Beat high DC: The plan is effective, at least at first, the PCs get a damage bonus that lasts until the enemy counters it.

That's very abstract, of course, it could be detailed & concrete if that's your style.

I like degrees of success, and my favorite system (The One Ring) has a really nice mechanic for it, but I would feel like I'm coloring too far outside the lines layering that onto 5e.

In general I find it works to have the mechanic result be binary, but the narration can be embellished as appropriate.

 

[iserith]

I like degrees of success, and my favorite system (The One Ring) has a really nice mechanic for it, but I would feel like I'm coloring too far outside the lines layering that onto 5e.

In general I find it works to have the mechanic result be binary, but the narration can be embellished as appropriate.

It's just more effort on the part of the DM in D&D 5e to no real gain as I see it. Success-Fail or Progress Combined with Setback. Easy to handle at the table as all you need is one DC. Some people like to make the role of DM harder for some reason when it is fairly easy if you just do what the book says, a book rated for Ages 12+. Then those same people often complain that it's a lot of work to DM!

 

[Campbell]

I think degrees of success work way better in systems with defined results or that use progress clocks.

 

[pemerton]

Your comment makes me think that the working definition of "goal and approach" in this thread is getting fuzzier again.

<snip>

I realize that inconsistent usage of the phrase "goal and approach" has been a challenge for communication in this thread, but your post (and other recent posts by a variety of posters) appears to be going further and conflating the phrase with PbtA-style resolution mechanics. Those games' rules specify a uniform resolution mechanic (which can be usefully compared and contrasted with "goal and approach") whereas 5e's rules specify a variety of resolution mechanics (only one of which explicitly involves "goal and approach").

Well I'm trying to use the phrase as a somewhat generic label for the approach being advocated by Elfcrusher, iserith, Ovinomancer, Charlaquin and Bawylie in this thread. It's not monolithic across those posters, but there's a broad consistency that - in 5e D&D - checks are made when called for by the GM in response to the player describing what his/her PC is doing, in an attempt to achieve something-or-other. If the GM think there is no doubt about what would happen, and/or if there is no menaingful consequence of failure, then the GM doesn't call for a check.

Within this methodology, "Roll Perception" or "Roll for surprise" or "Make a knowledge check" and the like all sit somewhat oddly. Hence the discussions about the gargoyles, the rune-carved standing stones, etc.

The rules of 5e emphasize that when players declare actions, it's best to specify both a goal and an approach. Nothing in the 5e rules suggest that that pattern should apply to 5e's other resolution mechanics, like saving throws.

So I agree that saving throws don't adhere to "goal and approach", but under the broadest definition of that term in the 5e context, there is no reason to expect them to.

<snip>

I can't agree with your assertion that 5e's rules call for ability checks to only be made as a result of player action declarations. Yes, when players are declaring actions, the rules say they should state their goal and approach and then the DM should then determine whether to call for a roll. But I don't see any support in the rules for the claim that all ability checks must follow this pattern.

Numerous elements throughout the rules suggest otherwise. Examples:

• Ability checks can be used to resolve monster actions in addition to PC actions (PHB: "An ability check tests a character’s or monster’s innate talent and training.")
• The rules call for certain active ability checks to be used defensively (e.g. when PCs/NPCs/monsters without special grab abilities initiate grapples, the target makes a contested active ability check).
• The rules specify that passive Wis (Perception) checks are used defensively when resolving opponents' Dex (Stealth) checks.
• Ability checks can substitute for saving throws to see if a character avoids a new hazard (e.g. "stay upright on a rocking ship’s deck" Dex (Acrobatics) example in the PHB).

All of these examples are cases where the rules explicitly call for or permit ability checks in situations other than the resolution of player action declarations.

I'm not carrying a torch for any particular interpretation of the 5e rules. I agree with you that all these features seem like exceptions to "goal and approach" - to me they look like saving throws, as I posted not far upthread. But I'm not particularly suprised by the reply you got from iserith.

One issue here is that the rules define Abiilty Checks and Saving Throws in procedural terms rather than functional terms, so that there are some mechanical aspects of the game where the die roll is functioning as a saving throw but is procedurally characterised as an ability check - your stay upright on the deck of a rocking ship is a clear example, as is the opposed check to avoid being grappled. 3E had the same thing - hence the Grease spell becomes overpowered at higher levels because Balance checks function as a saving throw in the context of that spell but the mechanics of the game don't scale skill checks in the way they scale saving throws. In 5e it doesn't cause a numerical problem (because of different scaling rules) but causes the sorts of debates that are occurring in this thread.

Personally I regard this as weak design - a concern for legacy labels and procedures leading to confused functionality and needless break points. But it's been part of D&D at least since AD&D 2nd ed (though I think 4e had less of it, because of the way it scaled skill bonuses and didn't draw such a sharp distinction between checks, attacks etc, and had no notion of saving throws in the classic D&D sense).

 

[Oofta]

Take a week or so off and ... wow. Lots o' posts. Also, just an observation. For lack of a better way of describing it, it seems like lots of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole by trying to have GAA handle everything D&D.

I have no problem with whatever style of play anyone wants to do. However when people say (or imply) that I'm not really playing 5E D&D because I don't play following a certain pattern but then have to ignore some sections and admit that other core aspects of the game like saving throws "don't really fit" maybe it's because GAA is a pattern that doesn't fit all aspects of the game. No matter how "intrinsically obvious" it may be to some people.

I don't think 5E has "weak design". It's just flexible in how you approach the game and what you want to get out of it. I also think the book is written in natural language, not as a technical design or legal document. Of course I one person's "make the game fit your style" is another's "sloppy writing".

 

[Tony Vargas]

"weak design".
flexible in how you approach the game and what you want to get out of it.
"make the game fit your style"
written in natural language
"sloppy writing"
evocative of the classic game

I'm not sure there's much of a difference to be found among those things.