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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 6786547" data-attributes="member: 29398">It's not in 1e either that I know of.  Can't speak for 2e.Interesting point, and quite right I think.  That said, a DM always has or had the ability to narrate the failure in myriad different ways, not all of which involve bad things happening to the PC but none of which involve actually succeeding...which is what I'm trying to preserve here.To me the only "binary" bit is that a fail means you don't get to the top.  Everything else that may have happened as a result of the fail can be determined either by DM narration, dice rolls, player narration, or some combination of all those things and others.Let's use another example, one where something like 4e's skill challenge mechanic would seem to work quite well: finding your way through a trackless forest.  Here, a binary pass-fail would give two possible results: you get where you're going, or you're lost.  A more flexible pass-fail (where "pass" still means you get where you're going) could have a fail mean one or more of: - you find something else of interest instead which diverts your attention - you don't reach your intended destination but have found a hilltop with a view and can see which way you need to go - you encounter someone or something in the forest that you maybe didn't want to - you encounter someone or something in the forest that you ultimately did want to - your party somehow got split up and now can't find each other, never mind the destination - you're going the right way but you took too long and darkness fellAll of these except the last one provide either more story options or a new challenge for the party, or both; and advising DMs to keep this sort of thing in mind is very worthwhile.  That said, none of them sees you get where you were originally going...which is my point.Another way of looking at it is that in the Mt Pudding example the DM moves the goalposts when narrating the failure: the roll is to succeed at the goal of climbing the mountain but the narration says you failed at holding on to your gear; and these ain't the same thing. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Lanefan</blockquote>

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