Grease and nat-ones

[Alloran]

First off I'd like to say Hey to all of you. I joined a while ago, and I've been lurking a bit to see what there was to see, and most all of you seem on the level (unlike many gaming boards out there :\ ). I'm a second generation gamer, and I've literally been playing on and off since I was four. But to my question.
I'm starting up a campaign with players at my university. Now, I'm comfortable with my home group simply to sit down without preperation and ask 'what do you want to do' and end up with a really good game. But sine I don't know these people as well I'm actually sitting down and writing it out session-by-session. We start on Friday, and I need some advice.

1) A home rule that I always had with my home group is 'magically conjured grease isn't flammable'... this comes from a campaign in which the evil PCs continually burned places in a manner like that. That will probably be kept, if for no other reason than tradition (I don't see that becoming a problem in a good party anyway )

2) This is the one I have questions about. I really want to make it that a natural twenty doesn't necessairly mean a success. Yes, you should still be able to try the action, but if you simply don't have the skills (or the attack bonus) you fail. To balence that, I'm not making natural ones automatic failures. If you're skill check or attack bonus or whatnot is high enough, then by all means. The reason I'm thinking about this rule is that I never liked there being a 5% chance that you could fail at any action you had to roll for.

Suggestions are appriciated, and thanks in advance!

~Alloran

 

[Tatsukun]

Well, keep in mind that the "20 is a sucess and 1 is a failure" rule does not apply to skills, only attacks and saves.

Personally, I like it, because it means that the game will still have a littel drama out at the edges of probability. There is no such thing as an automatic hit or an automatic save. There is always a chance for your first level rogue to hit the golem and there is a chance the golem will miss said rogue.

WIthout this rule, the game can get a lot more automatic. I can immagine a fighter's player just telling you how many of the goblins he kills, because he can't miss and his damage min is more than the HP they have. That doesn't have as much drama to me.

But, that said, it's your game. If you want to make a 13 an automatic hit, go ahead. YOu might not get too many players, but that's a different question...

-Tatsu

 

[FireLance]

Hi Alloran, welcome to the boards!

My answers assume you are using 3.5e rules.

1) Are you talking about the 1st-level spell grease? If so, there is nothing in the rules to indicate that it is flammable (compare the web spell, which is). The slipperiness effect seems to me to be enough of an effect for a 1st-level spell.

2) Skill checks, level checks and ability checks already do not automatically fail on a 1 or automatically succeed on a 20. Attack rolls and saving throws still do, but from personal experience, if the PCs are facing a challenge appropriate for their level, a roll of 20 would be a success and a roll of 1 would be a failure even without the automatic success or failure rule. I suspect this rule only crops up at higher levels when bonuses and penalties vary more greatly. At that point, the question becomes one of what style of game you want to play - one in which the PCs always have a chance to succeed or fail, no matter what, or one in which is more deterministic.

 

[Tessarael]

Another option is to make a roll of 20 count as 30, and a roll of 1 count as -10. If your score is good enough, -10 will still succeed. If your score is bad enough, 30 will still fail.

 

[DanMcS]

I have also seen a rule that if you roll a 20, you keep it and roll again, summing, potentially several times in a row.

If you roll a 1, count it as -20 and roll again. This can give a similar effect to 20=success, 1=failure, but doesn't guarantee the outcome (your wizard fighting Orcus probably won't hit him, even if you roll a 20).

 

[Pielorinho]

As for flammable grease, any player who claims grease is always flammable gets handed a stick of butter and a lighter. If they can get the butter to catch on fire, I'll concede the point. (If they want to smear it on something, they've got to smear it on asphalt and then light it).

Daniel

 

[Alloran]

Thanks for your responses. As for the grease thing, I've personally always pictured it as some sort of 'WD-40' type stuff. I'm _pretty_ sure WD-40 is flammible, but I'm not entirely certain.

As for the 20/1 rule, I'm thinking I like Tessarael's idea. Though it's ultimately up to the DM (In this case, me, ) I still really don't like that idea. :\ I guess this's gonna need a bit more thought.

~Alloran

 

[Fieari]

My group has, from day one, house ruled away Nat 20s/Nat 1s being automatic success/failure. We've had no problems with this system, because the GM at the time (we rotate) always makes certain that the challenge is appropriate to the characters. If the armor is too large to be hit physically, at all, then obviously some other solution is required. We might swing at it for a while in order to figure this out, but that's how things go.

An interesting effect that this will provide, and one of the main reasons that my group LOVES this house rule, is that dexterity suddenly becomes an important stat. If you compare two fighters, one who is focusing everything on DEX and one focusing everything on STR, the strength fighter won't even be able to HIT the dex fighter. This well matches the cinematic feel of the little spry guy running circles around the big hulking brute and winning. If the STR fighter actually managed to hit the little guy, it's more or less be a 1-hit KO... but that doesn't matter, since the hit will never land.

That doesn't make STR fighters obsolete either, since there will still be plenty of AC ranges he CAN hit, and then there are ways to magically augment the attack bonus, and when they do get to hit things, they get to hit them plenty hard.

Power attack is nerfed too by this method, and APAATT (All Power Attack, All The Time) is no longer even statistically viable as it used to be.