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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 8280816" data-attributes="member: 6779196">I want to address the bit I bolded at the bottom specifically. In my game there are things a character might never succeed at too. For those things, I don’t call for a roll either. I just narrate failure. To my mind, if something is near enough within a character’s skill set that a roll is worth making for it once, then it’s near enough that a roll is worth making again, provided the fictional positioning makes it possible to do so, and they’re willing to risk the consequences of failure again.Eh, as long as we understand each other, it serves its purpose.So, it’s the “taking all attempts in aggregate” part that doesn’t work for me. I’m fine with the reason a character’s performance was the less than the best they could have done being any of these things - distraction, stress, knowledge gap, whatever. But whatever time they just spent doing it, if the fictional positioning allows them to do that again, I believe they should be able to roll again. If I spent 10 minutes trying something and failed because I was too stressed, why can’t I take a few deep breaths, clear my mind, and spend another 10 minutes going at it again? If it’s because I don’t have another 10 minutes, fine, that makes sense to me. But if it’s just because the DM says I can’t, that’s where I have a problem.So I think this is a difference in our styles. One of my guiding principles is “don’t call for multiple checks to resolve something when one will do.” For me, a task’s complexity alone isn’t enough reason to break it up into multiple checks. No “this lock is so complex it requires three thieves’ tools checks to open,” but you might try and fail your first two checks to try and open it and succeed on your third. But each of those failed checks will have had some consequence - likely the time ticking closer to the next roll for complications. I don’t do the old 4e “X successes before Y failures” type of skill challenges, but I might set up challenges where there are multiple obstacles that need resolving at once, and each failure incurs a consequence.Maybe. I worry that a thread dedicated to this subject specifically would quickly break down into the same old arguments and get nowhere.</blockquote>

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