Coz when you roll and succeed, that was YOUR roll. Not someone else's, yours, and you take ownership of it. Rolling is half the fun for me, and I suspect most TRPG gamers. Yeah, I know, it's dumb luck, but when you cast the die by your hand, it somehow becomes your dumb luck. You know what I mean.
Yeah, the die rolling isn't that important to us. I get what you're saying, that 20 (or 1) has an immediate effect on folks. But for skills we usually rely on rolls if the role-playing has failed to determine whether there's a success or not. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that I've been DMing for 35+ years, when you didn't have skills or skill checks. If you wanted to find a secret door or a trap, then you'd explain how you were looking for it and I'd determine based on that. You didn't have to describe the exact thing that I was thinking. But something that would give you a clue, and lead to another clue, etc.
It's the
role-playing that you own. That's a unique contribution to the game that nobody else can make. You don't have to do it in character, describing what you do, what you're trying to accomplish, etc. is fine. But it's all of this type of input that makes the game interesting and unique.
Anybody can roll the die. And there are times where I'm rolling the dice for you. I'm guessing you're one of those folks that doesn't like the DM rolling in secret, in particular rolling
your check in secret. We like that, because there's a certain type of uncertainty that you can't get if you know you just rolled a 6 instead of a 16. Another part of that mystery is the question of how long it will take for success.
My goal is to be able to model whatever scene I want within the ruleset. We tweak things a bit for that purpose. Do the rules support scenes like James Bond climbing the cliff in
For Your Eyes Only? If you can't retry, then no. On the other hand, if you have to keep checking every 10', then it gets tedious. Much of the climb is within his climbing skill set. You could require a skill check for each piton he places, but unless there's a real reason to do so (he's climbing sandstone for example), there isn't much point. It's within his Passive skill, you go with it. If he falls, you can make a check to see if it holds, or you can assume it does, and worry about the skill, time, discovery, and exhaustion of climbing back up.
There are a few difficult portions, and of course it becomes more difficult when the guard is trying to make him fall. So skill checks can be called for at key times, but the rest of the time the passive skill applies.
I'd split it up into chunks, with a difficult section, requiring a skill check, but success is more likely than failure. That is, unless you failed by at least 5, I'd just go with the time penalty, which would increase your chance of being detected. Failure by 5 to 10 would probably mean you are stuck, and can't move forward. Again I'd assign a time penalty, and you'd need to make another check to move forward, or go back and try to find another route. Failure by more than 10 would be a fall, or other major setback. Of course, with the rope you would most likely not fall to your death, but then you'd be in a situation that would be harder to get out of. Again, I'd stick with one check, and only significant failure (by 10 or more) would be a major problem. Otherwise it would just be a time thing.
I might add in some saving throws to avoid suffering a level of exhaustion.
But the entire climb would be a combination of passive skill checks, active skill checks (with various degrees of failure, usually focused on things becoming more difficult), greater chances of discovery, and things like that. There could be a lot of other potential challenges, consequences by failures, and things like that. But this is a good example of something that's within their skill set, not to mention that the consequences are very severe (likely death) if they actually fall when they fail. I won't remove that possibility entirely, but it would have to be a very significant failure. If it came to that, they'd probably get a Dexterity saving throw to catch themselves as well.
So the individual die rolls would have some importance, but the reality is that there are a lot of other things, particularly descriptions from me, and decisions by the players, that would ramp up the suspense as much, if not more, than the actual skill checks. To me it's easy to get tied up in the details (in this case the die rolls) when having a conversation like this. But it's the big picture, the event as a whole that has the biggest impact.
I've tried a number of times (as has WotC and others) to come up with a skill system that has the same concept of incremental success and failure as combat. But they tend to be overcomplicated, and more importantly, too intrusive on the game. That's our preference of course, but if we're going to stop the action for a die roll, we'd like it to be worth it. Passive abilities help avoid too many die rolls.
Using a Passive Skill is not hand-waving the scene. It's still the character's skill, and the amount of effort the character has put into training combined with natural ability, that's put them into a place with a likelihood of success. They should be rewarded for that. They will still have times where a check is required, it just means that they will be overcoming more difficult obstacles, and likely obstacles that they couldn't handle at a lower level. But while Bond is climbing those areas that he's able to using his Passive ability doesn't mean that there isn't a risk. Your description is a big part of the action, and just because he's able to climb it, doesn't mean he'll do so undetected. The time itself is a big risk, and the scene is still exciting.
Ilbranteloth
