Do natural 1's instantly mean a failed save?

[1337 h4xor]

But his point still stands.


Is point is that the question/discussion is 99% academic; since it is very uncommon for a 1 to hit or for a 20 to miss; even without the 'auto' rules.

(now, I am being a bit of a pinhead... cuz I'm not sure if I agree with him or not, I am too tired to thinnk about it, but I am awake enough to see that he has a point, and you example did not address it.)

lol i did address it, i heard that it never came up ever... except epic leves well there's an example at alot lower than epic. I can make a 3rd level mage who's saves in his chosen school require a 21 to save.... things without a +1 bonus in that save shouldnt be able to make it.

my point is that people are saying that it never comes up... I'm showing you it does and imc and ones i play in quite frenquently.

 

[kreynolds]

It seems dumb to me that there is still a chance of failure when the DC is only a fraction of the save. My epic monk...

It is dumb, which is why the ELH, which is the basis of your epic monk, suggests to do away with autofailures and successes and recommends going with open-ended rolls. Personally, I'm glad someone had the foresight to address the issue when they were putting together the epic level rules.

 

[Endur]

Auto Failure Saves on a 1 is FAQ, not original CORE RULES

Auto failure of saving throws on 1 was not forgotten in the Core rules. The core design team deliberately chose to not make it a core rule. They put in the item destruction stuff to make it really bad if you rolled a 1. These rules were play-tested extensively (really the only WOTC D&D rules that were play-tested extensively, unlike Masters of the Wild, EPIC, etc.).

Later on (after several people left WOTC), the design team decided to add the auto-failure to the rules when working on the Deities and Demigods book. The idea was that Gods would be more powerful because they never fail on a 1, and that mortals would be more fallible. And so we now have an entry in the FAQ stating that a 1 is now auto-failure.

If they come out with a new version of the PHB or the DMG, they might add it to the book (or maybe not).

Tom

Saying that you only take it when it's 100% official, and that it's 99% only, since it appears in the official FAQ and in several official WotC Rulebooks (and would have appeared in the PHB itself, but was just forgotten) is splitting hairs.

 

[StGabriel]

unrealism in D&D

This all has to do with a fundamental rift between D&D and real life: D&D is random and gaining skill does not do what it should, i.e. give one very low variance (make them very consistent).

Before I express what I mean, let me say that I'm not really advocating big changes in D&D, simply explicating something about it that I think is fundamentally skewed with reality and that you have to face in your games.

Take as an example, a knife thrower at a circus. He gets to the point where it is no long really an issue of whether he will miss or not. At first, he missed all the time, with practice he came to develop skills such that his throws only by inches until he came to such a level of competence that he wasn't all worried about spitting that apple on top of the gal's head across the way.

This doesn't mean that in combat he should hit all the time. Combat is different. People are moving, they wear armor, they attack back, etc.

It does mean that he shouldn't miss by much, especially when he aims. He should not accidentally hit his friend in the back (unless there is grappling going on). This leads to the fact that critical misses really shouldn't happen or if they do should be VERY rare and he just shouldn't miss very often at all against targets that are stationary. If a person stands still in real life, who cares about his dex or even the fact that he has a bullet proof vest on, he will get hit by the expert marksman sitting 10 feet away with a gun/knife/whatever. There's really no if's and's or buts to it. It's just as easy as flossing for the guy to hit a head at that range.

A person with a jump of 10 should always be able to make a running jump of 15 feet. A person with a tumbling of 10 should always be able to do a good handstand, somersault or backflip (when not overly encumbered or stressed anyhow). Given this it makes sense that a person with a save of +15 should always be beyond succumbing to lesser magics.

18 strength is either enough to bench press 300lbs or it isn't, there isn't any 45% to it. Real life gates would have min strength reqs. If you have a 15 strength you can lift it, if not, more tries isn't going to do squat. At the boundaries of someone's limits there will be some chance, but up until the very boundary, the performance will be nearly identical each time. The person with a strength of 18 will never fail to lift a 200lb box. The person with a dexterity of of 18 will always be able to juggle 3 balls. A person with a climb of 10 can always climb a wall with decent handholds. Etc.

Instead of getting this behavior we have all kinds of buffoonery as supposed experts manage to flub things because they roll low numbers. An unencumbered big bad ass barbarian actually has a chance of failing to jump a 5ft chasm, even though he could step over it. A ranger fails to notice dinosaur tracks because he rolls low. People with military quality training miss the sides of barns on low rolls as well.

A half orc fighter with a 22str fails to lift the DC 20 gate, and then the halfling rogue with a strength of 10 succeeds. The rogue then rolls a 1 and his +10 climb isn't enough to get him up a steep incline. The wizard later rolls a 20 and and that's enough to get him up a vertical wall with sparse handholds.

I accept this state of affairs, but I don't wish to exacerbate it. Because of this, I try to keep natural 1/20 rolls out of my games.

---
StGabriel, the Taoist saint.

 

[hong]

Re: unrealism in D&D

A person with a jump of 10 should always be able to make a running jump of 15 feet. A person with a tumbling of 10 should always be able to do a good handstand, somersault or backflip (when not overly encumbered or stressed anyhow).

Um, take 10.

Given this it makes sense that a person with a save of +15 should always be beyond succumbing to lesser magics.

Possibly. Just as it also makes sense that a person with a save of +15 still can't completely control the essence of magic, and so remains vulnerable to even weak spells. Applying real-world analogies to magic is an oxymoron.

18 strength is either enough to bench press 300lbs or it isn't, there isn't any 45% to it.

Yep, just as in the game.

Real life gates would have min strength reqs. If you have a 15 strength you can lift it, if not, more tries isn't going to do squat.

Yep, just as in the game.

At the boundaries of someone's limits there will be some chance, but up until the very boundary, the performance will be nearly identical each time. The person with a strength of 18 will never fail to lift a 200lb box. The person with a dexterity of of 18 will always be able to juggle 3 balls. A person with a climb of 10 can always climb a wall with decent handholds. Etc.

Take 10 again.

A half orc fighter with a 22str fails to lift the DC 20 gate,

Take 20.

 

[Mark Chance]

Because...

I just think there should always be a chance of failure, other wise why have dice?

Well, I can stick the four-sided ones to my forehead with a little bit of saliva (preferably my own). That's one reason.

-- Mark L. Chance.

 

[StGabriel]

well . . .

IMC lifting is a DC of X. This is the core rules way, no? If so, then no, it is different in the game.

Regarding "just take 10" or "just take 20" . . .

Most of those situations are ones wherein failure means a penalty (for jumping and climbing the penalty is falling which is potentially damaging). You can't take 10 or 20.

---
StGabriel, the Taoist saint.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Re: well . . .

Most of those situations are ones wherein failure means a penalty (for jumping and climbing the penalty is falling which is potentially damaging). You can't take 10 or 20.

You can take 10 on a Jump check to leap a 40' wide bottomless pit. There's a penalty for failure (falling to a horrible death at the centre of the earth), so you can't take 20, but nothing's stopping you taking 10.

You can't take 10 on that check if you're jumping the pit while being chased by a bulette, or racing to save the princess from the lava, or being shot at by orcish snipers - rushed, threatened or distracted.

-Hyp.

 

[StGabriel]

oh, got it

Got it now.

So I was off on some rules bits and pieces. My statements still stand for any check that is not trivial enough to be Take 10'ed. Yes, there are certain domains where take 10 is a nice facility for allowing someone to easily do something that should be easy to them. There's still a wide domain of things that are very random. Jumping 10 feet no matter how threatened you are, is just really easy. Heck, the average stride is 7ft. A good swordfighter doesn't miss an open target when he's a bit stressed. Being able to hit that target again and again is exactly what he has been training for.

This is all particularly noticeable in low-level games. In the campaign I'm in now, the wizard has had lots of good rolls and has been outfighting our ranger who seems to consistently roll 3's and 7's. The wizard's backstory and character represent one who has spent his life reading dusty tomes. The ranger's backstory and character represent one who has trained in the military for a good while. The net result is that he has a whopping +1 advantage over the wizard. This nearly disappears against the roll of a d20. I'm not saying that he should be amazing, just that the nature of D&D make it very easy for his skill (i.e. his ability to do something well most of the time) to become a farce in the face of repeated clumsiness and slapstick style incompetence caused by rolling low.

I'm not even saying it should be changed. Heck I enjoy D&D as it is. It's just not terribly representative of real life. Rules on 1's make it even worse, imo. 10 level 1 clerics know that they have a pretty good shot at getting off at least one spell if they all cast at a level 30 cleric. He should be beyond that tomfoolery in my opinion.

But anyhow, enough long posts. You're right to some extent take 10 is a good rule and does help alleviate some of this stuff. I just can't count the number of times I've had to cringe because some character rolls low and somehow loses all of his wits and fails to do something that common sense cries out to say should be stupedifyingly easy for one with their advanced skills.

---
StGabriel, the Taoist saint.

 

[hong]

Re: oh, got it

This is all particularly noticeable in low-level games. In the campaign I'm in now, the wizard has had lots of good rolls and has been outfighting our ranger who seems to consistently roll 3's and 7's. The wizard's backstory and character represent one who has spent his life reading dusty tomes. The ranger's backstory and character represent one who has trained in the military for a good while. The net result is that he has a whopping +1 advantage over the wizard.

If you're talking about melee combat, I suggest giving your ranger a decent Str score next time. If you're talking about ranged combat, your ranger will do more damage with a bow than the wizard will with their sling.

I'm not even saying it should be changed. Heck I enjoy D&D as it is. It's just not terribly representative of real life. Rules on 1's make it even worse, imo. 10 level 1 clerics know that they have a pretty good shot at getting off at least one spell if they all cast at a level 30 cleric. He should be beyond that tomfoolery in my opinion.

And how likely is this situation to arise...? The point of a ruleset is to cover situations that will turn up in the course of a game. It's an abstract representation of reality, not reality itself, so of course it's going to have holes. The important thing is to make sure these holes aren't in places where they're going to bite you.