D&D 5E Do you use the Success w/ Complication Module in the DMG or Fail Forward in the Basic PDF

[Maxperson]

If you can’t see the obvious contradiction between “the roll represents the best your character can do,” “the roll could have been higher,” and “the best your character can do could not have been better,” I don’t know how to carry on this conversation. It’s self-evident that something here isn’t adding up.

There is no contradiction. Like at all. Once again, "the best you can do" has nothing to do with the roll. It's independent of the roll and occurs no matter what the roll is. The roll can only determine if the best you can do is good enough. And since you get one roll, there's no opportunity to have done any better than you rolled, regardless of what other numbers were possible prior to rolling.

Sure. The fact that you could have rolled higher doesn’t matter for the narrative or mechanics under the “one roll represents your best attempt” model. And that is specifically what bothers me about it.

Which is fine. The thing about methods and playstyles is that they aren't for everyone.

 

[Maxperson]

Agreed! I suspect those folks folks simply consider avoiding giving anything up to the players “for free” a higher priority, and are willing to rationalize the incongruity with the fiction rather than let players succeed at anything without having to roll for it.

There's a reason that I said that a mix the two up and don't use one and done for everything.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I don’t get the impression that you’re someone who is overly “concerned about keeping things in the fiction, not ‘metagaming,’ and ‘immersion” as Iserith put it, so I figured it went without saying that I was not referring to you. It’s pretty clear to me that your reasons for using this “one and done” resolution method are quite different than the reasons folks like Lanefan use it.

Fair enough. Apologies.

Lol damn yeah that was dumb of me. I have even said I don’t always use single attempt resolution...