D&D General [rant]The conservatism of D&D fans is exhausting.

[FrogReaver]

I’m reliably told that adversary rosters with interesting encounters off a randomized chance to appear are not quantum and make a dungeon feel “lived in.”

I posit that for those that it matters, there’s a distinction in quantum existence and quantum chance to appear.

 

[Lanefan]

I dislike it for weapons, but I'm curious how you feel about damage(take half) on a miss(successful save vs. your spell)? I think the majority of damage dealing spells are effectively damage on a miss.

I don't see a made save as being damage on a miss - you're still hit by the spell's effect, otherwise you'd not need to save and would take no damage - but more a mostly-sheer-luck thing as to whether you were, say, facing into the fireball rather than away from it or whether you happened to be slightly better grounded when the lightning hit you.

 

[TwoSix]

It's the same reason I don't like ANY mechanics (e.g. metacurrency, Hobbit luck, etc.) that allow a roll to be changed or re-rolled after its result is known. Once you commit to a roll its result should be completely binding on the players, the DM, and the fiction. Wanna change the odds? Go ahead, but only until the die hits the table. After that, it's too late.

Otherwise, why use dice?

Oh man, wait until you hear about Yahtzee.

 

[Lanefan]

I agree, assuming we're talking about a binary d20 sort of game. I don't think "partial success" or "success with complications" or whatever you want to call it works well there.

It can, if-when the binary is more like a sliding scale where, when possible and always highly malleable depending on specific situation, instead of Simple Success and Simple Failure the possible results can be more like

Major failure, with complications
Simple failure
Failure with benefits
--------- << this, in modern D&D, is the DC line
Success with complications
Simple success
Success with added benefits

The binary nature of the initial roll is still honoured - a success is a success and a fail's a fail - but now there's more nuance and possibility for each outcome.

The only ones of these where "nothing happens" can happen are "simple failure" (common) and "simple success" (unusual, where success means maintaining the status quo).

 

[Lanefan]

Oh man, wait until you hear about Yahtzee.

Last time I checked, Yahtzee ain't a role-playing game.

 

[zakael19]

A failed lockpick check.

I swear to god we talked about how a simple “pass/fail” lock pick isn’t a worthy example for “fail forward” techniques absent stakes, and I know for sure @hawkeyefan has belabored that point to death. If you want to keep grabbing a bad example and furthering it for digital ink, that’s on you.

If i was doing map & key or even @TwoSix ‘s suggestion of fairly no-prep 5e id have tossed some stakes on there; otherwise the character proficient in lock picks has all the time in the world to get in and we move on to the complications inside. Either way, whatever we need fails forward from the fiction and stakes as established.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Not the way I've seen it. There's a limit to how many of any given creature is available to run into on the move. Or at least IMO there should be.

Nobody says you can't ration the random kobolds, but heck the things breed fast! They live 14 days, and 3 new eggs hatch every hour!

 

[AlViking]

Why can’t the failed check just determine that the cook is there?

But wait isn’t that still quantum. A dice deciding whether the cook is there or somewhere else?

It can. I don't want to play a game where it does.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think that's true for some older mods, but it's not universal, and I prefer ones where it is not the case. That said, even if there is an endless supply, the existence or nonexistence is still fixed--occurring with a fixed probability--rather than depending on an unrelated skill roll.

Well, actually... here's a theory for you, they're actually created by failed checks during exploration. The dwarf decides their MUST be a shifting floor around here somewhere, and searches, failing. That's one turn expended, so he tries again, and the GM rolls a random encounter. More of those damned kobolds just hatched! (maybe a little trite, but effectively how it works).

 

[AlViking]

I swear to god we talked about how a simple “pass/fail” lock pick isn’t a worthy example for “fail forward” techniques absent stakes, and I know for sure @hawkeyefan has belabored that point to death. If you want to keep grabbing a bad example and furthering it for digital ink, that’s on you.

If i was doing map & key or even @TwoSix ‘s suggestion of fairly no-prep 5e id have tossed some stakes on there; otherwise the character proficient in lock picks has all the time in the world to get in and we move on to the complications inside. Either way, whatever we need fails forward from the fiction and stakes as established.

Different people have different definitions which causes confusion. The failed check and the screaming chef is one. You don't have to like it or agree with it, but other people have given examples similar to this for quite some time.