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

[FrogReaver]

Sure, but mechanically all a miss means is that you didn't reach the target number on the die - you can absolutely shuffle who rolls and what bonuses apply to what target to make the 3e+ save system into an attack vs defence system that has misses in it. At which point, save for half becomes exactly damage on a miss (as I hope I've established, this reshuffling doesn't impact the input or resulting fiction at all, just purely the administration). I fully accept it might affect immersion (as I say, rolling may make you feel like more of an active participant) though if so I wonder how people who feel that way would respond to active defence rolls vs static attack values for AC based attacks (essentially converting AC into another save)

Well no. Not hitting the target number on the DC can mean whatever the game says. Calling that a miss when it’s really a glancing blow is the problem here in my estimation. It’s part of my general problem with narrativists ignoring the clear meaning of words and treating them like game terms that can mean whatever.

 

[Enrahim]

If the dice come up "encounter" then there's an encounter; the party's stealth then has a lot to say about the course that encounter takes and-or whether it is completely bypassed.

DM: <on rolling a random encounter> "On your quiet way through the forest you notice a Dire Wolf not far ahead, on a low ridge. It clearly hasn't noticed you yet."
Player(s): "We back off a bit then sneak around it on the downwind side."
DM: <does a bit of rolling> "Looks good - you're past the wolf and it still hasn't noticed you. Carry on."

How do you handle the survival expert trying to avoid crossing paths with creatures trough avoiding recent tracks, known waterholes etc tough?

 

[Gradine]

 

[Gimby]

I don't see roll under systems that way. It's not so much different DCs based on who is attempting it, but more like on PC having more skill than another. So if someone had a 10 in a stat and had to roll under it on 2d6, he would be more skilled than the guy with 7 in that same stat and had to roll under it on 2d6. It's just a different way to represent skill.

I think the idea here is that in some implementations of this (I want to say some early CoC, but that might not be right, or possibly some 2e NWPs) do not take the difficulty of the task into account - this might not even be text, just culture of play (So for CoC all the example checks in a module might all be "roll Biology" or "roll Library Use"). This would be identical to making all checks on a roll-over system the same DC rather than depending on the fictional position.

 

[The Firebird]

All the comments I keep seeing are about the cook’s presence in the kitchen. That she’s “be there either way” and the like.

Her existence is implied by the kitchen, no?

Respectfully, there have been maybe a dozen comments clarifying that the issue is not the cook's presence in the kitchen in the abstract but the cook specifically being there on a failed roll but not a successful one. If the cook is always present, fine. If the cook is in the next room and comes because of the failed check, fine.

But if the cook comes to check things out on a failure and does not exist on a success, not fine.

 

[Maxperson]

Okay. I’m not ready to commit but let’s explore this. Skill with thieves tools means both skill at picking locks and skill at being silent with them. Then we need some way to differentiate the possible outcomes of pick the lock only but make noise, stay silent while attempting to pick but don’t make noise, both stay silent and pick the lock, don’t stay silent or pick the lock. If that’s what the skill represents then rolling the skill should resolve which of those possible outcomes we end up in. In the proposed example it doesn’t. There was 1 successful thieves tools roll which only has 2 possible outcomes when we need 4.

I would use stealth for being quiet while picking the lock.

 

[Maxperson]

In that case, are you sure there are no genres characterised by the protagonist being chased around by screaming household members every time they mess something up?

I think they call that marriage.

 

[Maxperson]

Bad things happening more often to the unskilled?!?! What kind of insanity is that?!?!

Ask the guy who messed up his history roll and was eaten by a lion.

 

[Maxperson]

I don’t have a problem with the dm changing dc based on who is doing the action though.

I do that, but only very rarely. Like when two characters have similar proficient skill numbers, but one of them grew up in a location where the information was more prevalent. That one will have a lower DC.

As a general rule, though, I don't use different DC numbers for the same task. If I want to show one character to be more likely to succeed, I'll gate the roll behind proficiency. The proficient character with only +2 will get a roll, and the smart, but untrained character with +5 because of his stat, will not.

 

[Gimby]

Well no. Not hitting the target number on the DC can mean whatever the game says. Calling that a miss when it’s really a glancing blow is the problem here in my estimation. It’s part of my general problem with narrativists ignoring the clear meaning of words and treating them like game terms that can mean whatever.

Perhaps I'm not being clear here. I'm not even talking about a narrativist case here, just purely 3/5e D&D. In basic operation of the game, if I make a normal physical attack, I miss if I do not beat the AC of my target with the sum of my attack bonus and die roll. If I convert saves to defences as per the 3e UA, if I attack a target's Reflex defence and do not beat the defence value, I have missed, but I still might do damage (with a fireball, for example).

And if we are concerned about the clear meaning of words, in 3e a miss that lands between the Touch AC and full AC has struck the target, just not effectively. In 5e we know that some results on attack will be a glancing blow of some sort, but the rules don't tell us how to determine this. I get that was your point, but in all D&D ever a "miss" doesn't mean "miss" in the clear meaning of the word, it's always been game jargon.