D&D 5E DMG 242 Resolution and Consequences suggestion

[clearstream]

I've been trialling the resolution and consequences rules and finding them problematic. The reason is that bearing in mind the target, the target minus 2, and the target minus 5, is a cognitive burden that my brain seems unwilling to undertake whilst DMing. Nevertheless, I love the idea of these rules and appreciate that they work well in games like Dungeon World.

Thus could I suggest a huge simplification to them. Success at a Cost happens on exactsies i.e. if my player makes exactly what they need then that comes with a complication. Costly failure happens on an unmodified 1 (that also fails) even though that makes it rare I feel like it works well because my players always seem to expect something horrible to happen to them if they roll a 1. Whereas needing a 14 and rolling a 9 doesn't evoke any similar expectation of disaster. I realise this partially (but not wholly) conflates the degrees of failure and crit success or fail rules and I'm fine with that.

Critique welcome. What do other DMs do?

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I do like the success at a cost idea.
Especially in small parties, missing by 2 can mean the difference between a win or a TPK. It may be more intersting if the party barely succeeds, but at a cost instead of dying.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I've been trialling the resolution and consequences rules and finding them problematic. The reason is that bearing in mind the target, the target minus 2, and the target minus 5, is a cognitive burden that my brain seems unwilling to undertake whilst DMing. Nevertheless, I love the idea of these rules and appreciate that they work well in games like Dungeon World.

Thus could I suggest a huge simplification to them. Success at a Cost happens on exactsies i.e. if my player makes exactly what they need then that comes with a complication. Costly failure happens on an unmodified 1 (that also fails) even though that makes it rare I feel like it works well because my players always seem to expect something horrible to happen to them if they roll a 1. Whereas needing a 14 and rolling a 9 doesn't evoke any similar expectation of disaster. I realise this partially (but not wholly) conflates the degrees of failure and crit success or fail rules and I'm fine with that.

Critique welcome. What do other DMs do?

I wouldn't make success on a failure when rolling exactly the DC because all you're effectively doing then is raising all the DCs by 1.

Personally, I don't sweat the numbers. Did they miss by a little? Let them succeed at a cost (fail forward). Did they miss by a lot? You could make them fail utterly (setting off the trap in the process of disarming it, for example) and/or let them succeed at a greater cost (trap goes off but it's now effectively disarmed and you can grab the treasure). You know the DC (presumably) and you know what the player rolled, but there's no need to actually perform any math if your brain balks at it, just eyeball it.

A cool idea I came across a while back is to offer the player a choice based on their check. For example, let's say the player fails their disarm check on an exploding chest trap by a moderate amount. You might tell them that they've set off the trap but on a slight delay. The character can either dive for cover (avoiding the damage) but the contents of the chest will be destroyed, or he can channel the explosion outward (saving the contents of the chest but getting caught in the explosion). In the fiction, of course, if he chooses option B it's less that the character is willingly getting blown up, but rather that he is working frantically to prevent the explosion and only succeeds to a limited extent before the bomb goes off.

 

[Quickleaf]

I've been trialling the resolution and consequences rules and finding them problematic. The reason is that bearing in mind the target, the target minus 2, and the target minus 5, is a cognitive burden that my brain seems unwilling to undertake whilst DMing. Nevertheless, I love the idea of these rules and appreciate that they work well in games like Dungeon World.

Thus could I suggest a huge simplification to them. Success at a Cost happens on exactsies i.e. if my player makes exactly what they need then that comes with a complication. Costly failure happens on an unmodified 1 (that also fails) even though that makes it rare I feel like it works well because my players always seem to expect something horrible to happen to them if they roll a 1. Whereas needing a 14 and rolling a 9 doesn't evoke any similar expectation of disaster. I realise this partially (but not wholly) conflates the degrees of failure and crit success or fail rules and I'm fine with that.

Critique welcome. What do other DMs do?

I've been doing something similar in my GMing for a while now. It adds a lot to the game and I highly recommend it.

While you can handle the mechanics any way you like, what I've found is even MORE important than the mechanics is:

WHICH checks are narratively significant enough to warrant extra thought (in terms of resolution & consequences)? And WHICH checks are better handled quickly as per standard D&D?

The rolling stuff (e.g. if you roll a 1, if you roll exactsies) tends to encourage a more arbitrary evaluation of what's narratively significant. IME, that can mismatch with players' expectations and my expectations. Instead, I decide WHICH checks to handle with more involved resolution/consequence rulings, based on the narrative "weight" of the situation, the suspense at the table, and involvement of the players. If many players are at the edge of their seat & it feels like the game is at a turning point – those are the kinds of checks I look for.

 

[Bacon Bits]

Usually I only do this sort of thing for stuff that the PCs can't really fail at for campaign reasons. For example, if the PCs are expected to find an item by searching a room, I make them roll. Instead of success determining whether or not they find it, success determines whether or not they have any problems or complications when they find it. I don't do anything like DC - 2 or DC - 5.