D&D 5E Raw d20 rolls?

[Warmaster Horus]

Not a system I'd want to play in as a player.

 

[iserith]

I don't make an overt effort to track my players bonuses. I don't track what they are or are not proficient in. I don't track when they do or do not get advantage on a roll. Since I don't know every player's proficiency, I've started setting "raw rolls" as the minimum barrier for success.

You lose me here. I don't think the DM needs to know the characters' proficiencies. He or she just needs to be clear on the player's stated goal and approach then assign a DC and ability check if what the player wants to have the character do has an uncertain outcome. Unless I'm basing a DC on some element of a monster's stat block, I just go with 10, 15, 20, or 25. Player can then add an appropriate skill bonus if the DM agrees.

Why do you suppose the DM needs know the characters' proficiencies? Or am I reading you wrong here?

 

[psimon85]

This seems like it is designed to make players skills and proficiencies redundant opening up a dice roll of "raw" system.

I get the degrees of success thing as other systems have this in place, but the 5th ed rules are ready streamlined and take out a lot of the issues previous editions did have.

It is the players responsibility to track their bonuses to rolls. As a player if you ran this system for me I would feel cheated of the skills and proficiencies I had invested in to make a fun and functional character.

There is no reason you cannot add degrees of success to exceptional rolls upon the standard ruleset. This allows for players to shine that manage to pull off fun things with their trained skills and give a sense of fulfillment.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I don't think that you should be taking your PCs skill scores into consideration when setting DCs in the first place. Changing the DC based on the character's skills either negates or doubles the effect of having skills.

If PC A has a skill bonus of +5 and attempts to perform the same task as unskilled PC B:
You set the DC easier for the person who is trained --> PC A has effectively doubled their bonus.
You set the DC harder for the person who is trained --> Their training is nullified and their character building decisions haven't meant a thing.

I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to double the effect of having skills in certain situations. Personally, though, I wouldn't do it by messing with the DC; I'd just come out and double the bonus.

Or roll a d10 instead of a d20. Hmmm...

 

[Sunseeker]

What isn't clear is what you do if they don't roll at least that number. Do you call it a failure? That's a pretty steep departure from the rules. Or, do you have them add up their bonuses and compare the result to a target number, as usual? That's the way I would do it. If the number on the die is at least X, keep the game moving. If it's not, take a sec to add & check.

Yes usually. I't all up here *points to head* so I don't have say, a rules chart I can look at to remind myself what I do. But yes that's usually what happens, there's a rare exception, but isn't there always? You hit the number, you win. If you don't hit the number, see if your bonus makes you hit the number, if not, failure.

I don't think that you should be taking your PCs skill scores into consideration when setting DCs in the first place. Changing the DC based on the character's skills either negates or doubles the effect of having skills.

Maybe, but by the time players hit level 10, they've got +/-8 to their rolls in their good stats and some classes will have more (18 Dex rogue +2x proficiency in steath at level 10 will give you a +12) with the standard DCs in the book, the players have something like <25% chance of failure. And I don't find that to create enough of a challenge.

Why do you suppose the DM needs know the characters' proficiencies? Or am I reading you wrong here?

To ensure that challenges remain challenging. To have an idea of where I can challenge the players and where I can't. Sometimes when I have a highly dexterous player, I don't even have them roll. I know how challenging the jump is, so unless they want to do it in some screwball way, there's no chance of failure. I don't like not being able to fail. If I'm going to present a challenge, I want the risk of failure to be real. If the challenge isn't going to challenge my players, I'm not going to bother with the challenge.

 

[iserith]

To ensure that challenges remain challenging. To have an idea of where I can challenge the players and where I can't. Sometimes when I have a highly dexterous player, I don't even have them roll. I know how challenging the jump is, so unless they want to do it in some screwball way, there's no chance of failure. I don't like not being able to fail. If I'm going to present a challenge, I want the risk of failure to be real. If the challenge isn't going to challenge my players, I'm not going to bother with the challenge.

It might be helpful to look at things in terms of challenge and difficulty. Challenge is when the players have a legit chance of success or failure, based on their choices. Difficulty is how much it's going to take to overcome the challenge. The choices of the players should be able to increase or decrease the difficulty. If I come up with a clever way of approaching the challenge and result is still uncertain, the difficulty goes down - DC is lower, gain advantage, etc. If I do something "in some screwball way," as you say and the result is still uncertain, then the difficulty goes up - DC is higher, gain disadvantage, etc.

Rolling a die isn't a challenge - neither to the player nor character - in and of itself, but depending on the stakes, achieving the required DC might be difficult. It sounds like what you're trying to do is make the challenge difficult without accounting for player skill, then using the result of the die roll plus bonuses from character skill to inform your narration of the result of the adventurers' actions.

If that is correct, then I can't say this is anything I would do as DM or enjoy as a player.

 

[Valmarius]

I just don't like the idea that the skill of my character (stealth expert rogue) or skill as a player (create distraction, use cover) doesn't come into play until I succeed at something. As opposed to making success easier.

I'm quite sure that I don't have a complete grasp on how you're setting DCs or when you're calling for checks, so I'm not going to tell you to stop, or that your methods are wrong, or anything to that effect.
As long as I felt that my character building decisions and in-game actions had an effect on my chances at success then I would have no problem. I might think it's weird to roll raw d20s, but I wouldn't leave your table.

 

[Sunseeker]

I just don't like the idea that the skill of my character (stealth expert rogue) or skill as a player (create distraction, use cover) doesn't come into play until I succeed at something. As opposed to making success easier.

I'm quite sure that I don't have a complete grasp on how you're setting DCs or when you're calling for checks, so I'm not going to tell you to stop, or that your methods are wrong, or anything to that effect.
As long as I felt that my character building decisions and in-game actions had an effect on my chances at success then I would have no problem. I might think it's weird to roll raw d20s, but I wouldn't leave your table.

I do take into account how you describe what you're doing and what skills you're proposing to use while doing it to set the DC. It's fuzzy though. I don't have a hard-baked system for this or that, it's very heavily based on what the player wants to do, how they describe themselves doing that and the associated skills they want to use. So yes, your skills make the minimum roll harder or easier, depending.

I haven't done this in all the games I've run, just most recently I used it in the high-level game I'm running to keep things moving quickly.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

I just have all my players' modifiers written down in an excel file, I can see them all on one page for the whole group. Works like a charm.

 

[Edwin Suijkerbuijk]

I don't make an overt effort to track my players bonuses. I don't track what they are or are not proficient in. I don't track when they do or do not get advantage on a roll. Since I don't know every player's proficiency, I've started setting "raw rolls" as the minimum barrier for success. I may not know each of their specific bonuses, but I know that there are only 20 numbers on a die. So instead of saying "you need to break a 25!" I tell them "you need to roll at least a 17 raw to succeed". Then depending on how high their bonus is over that number will determine their level of success and how that success plays out.

I've found it works insomuch as to "grade" a challenge based on probability for success and then use whatever they get beyond the bare minimum affects how well they've succeeded. Easy challenges are a 10. Hard challenges are a 15. Very hard challenges are 19-20. Impossible challenges are a nat 20 only. I also find it saves a lot of "math time" of "did I make it?!" You know, right off the bat, if you made it or not, no time spend fuddling with +X and +y until the cows come home. It also keeps me from having to remember who's most likely to do well in any given challenge. They tell me what they're doing, I tell them what roll that will use and how hard it will be and then they roll and tell me their bonus if they win.

Any thoughts?

Another way to do something like this would be to go with the no bonus guy aproach.

So you tell the player sombody with no bonus would need to roll a 10
If the player rolls a 10 or higer there is no need to look at any stats, if the player rolls less then 10 he can then look if his bonus is high enough to sucseed.