D&D 5E Rolling Without a Chance of Failure (I love it)

[Charlaquin]

I think the intent behind the advice “don’t call for a roll if failure doesn’t have a meaningful consequence” is not to say you should call for rolls less often, but to say you should make sure failure is consequential more often. Using progress combined with a setback is a good technique for this, as is putting time pressure on the PCs. Rolling dice is fun… when the outcome of the dice roll matters. When the outcome doesn’t matter, it’s a neutral action that doesn’t add anything to the game.

I would also add that “you have a high History score so you don’t have to roll” isn’t really following the advice not to call for rolls when failure doesn’t have a meaningful consequence. The implication of “you have a high score so you don’t have to roll” is that there would have been a consequence for failure, but you got to skip the roll and avoid the possibility of that consequence because of your awesome stats. Which I agree is boring. I want to avoid or incur consequences by my actions; I only want my stats to affect how likely I am to succeed when the outcome is in question.

 

[Charlaquin]

I've no problem either as player or DM with rolling when the only consequence of failure is nothing changes, as long as success is meaningful. (ditto in those rare situations where the only consequence of success is that nothing changes but failure is meaningful)

As long as at least one of success or failure is meaningful, then roll away!

Failure is always meaningful in your game because you go by the one roll represents your best attempt rule. Failure in your games means success becomes unattainable without a change of circumstances, which is de facto meaningful as long as success is meaningful.

 

[soviet]

Failure is always meaningful in your game because you go by the one roll represents your best attempt rule. Failure in your games means success becomes unattainable without a change of circumstances, which is de facto meaningful as long as success is meaningful.

I'd say it might be meaningful but it generally isn't very interesting.

 

[Charlaquin]

I'd say it might be meaningful but it generally isn't very interesting.

Sure, that’s one of the reasons I don’t like that rule and don’t use it myself.

 

[Laurefindel]

I prefer when the rolls are meaningful. Perhaps the degree of success is meaningful. Perhaps the consequence of failure is meaningful. Or perhaps it's the first darn skill check of the night and we itch to throw a d20. That too is meaningful...

 

[Shiroiken]

The best solution to wanting die rolls for things that shouldn't fail is to have DCs to determine level of success. While some things won't have any reasonable tiered benefits (such as climbing a rope) unless there's a time element, but others can, especially the mental traits. If a character should know something historical (e.g. a local legend), then by rolling you can provide extra information if they roll well. They'll still get the basic information, no matter how badly they roll, but the extra information might give them hints or ideas on what to do next (or sometime in the future). A social check might give an increased level of friendship, or an insight check might give clues about something unrelated to the issue at hand. I'd set the DCs to 10/15/20/25, and if they want to use anything that's "on a failed roll," they can choose to attempt to reach the next tier with it if they want, but they know it's not a "true" failure.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

In many tasks success and failure is not binary, and even though the task is such that the character cannot utterly fail at it, it is often relevant to know how well they will do or how fast they can do it etc.

 

[iserith]

Under the rules, if players want to roll more, all they have to do is not do a very good job at trying to remove uncertainty as to the outcome and/or the meaningful consequence for failure. So the DM need not do anything here. The players can just make this happen on their own.

 

[Hussar]

I've noticed that my players will roll without me asking - for example, "I'm going to make an arcana check to know something about X" rolls - tells me the result. Which I have no problems with. It's active on the players part, doesn't really take any time and, even if the roll doesn't really matter (success was guaranteed, or there was no consequence of failure) everyone comes out happy.

My advice would be to encourage your players to roll without asking. They know their characters, they know the rules of the game. Let them do it. I try to climb this wall, 15, do I climb it - is to me a perfectly fine way of doing things.

Then again, I always encourage DM's to dump as much workload as possible off onto the players.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Do you ever do this? Rolling even without a chance of failure?

Absolutely. If there are multiple plausible outcomes, and the players will enjoy rolling, I establish the possible outcomes and ask for a roll.