D&D 5E Should you always fail on a 1 and always succeed on a 20 for every d20 roll?

[dropbear8mybaby]

With expertise and bonuses to saving throws from class features, many skill checks and saving throws become almost impossible to fail even on a 1. On the opposite end, there are also checks and saves that can be nearly impossible to succeed at even after rolling a 20. I'm wondering what consequences there would be for extending the crit fail/success to all d20 rolls. Would there be any disastrous effects or could this actually be a decent balancing factor?

 

[schnee]

If characters that roll more 20-sided dice fail more often, then they'll be affected more often. You'd make Rogues and Fighters fail/crit all the time, Battlemasters would swing between being absolute idiots or monsters, and spellcasters that cast save-or-suck or area effect spells would be even more reliable.

You'd in effect make skill and martial characters much more failure-prone, and that is far more harmful and memorable than getting the same number of critical successes on skill checks.

I played RoleMaster, a game basically built on hilarious critical and fumble charts, and that game was awful. Not worth going back to.

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

If characters that roll more 20-sided dice fail more often, then they'll be affected more often. You'd make Rogues and Fighters fail/crit all the time, Battlemasters would swing between being absolute idiots or monsters, and spellcasters that cast save-or-suck or area effect spells would be even more reliable.

You'd in effect make skill and martial characters much more failure-prone, and that is far more harmful and memorable than getting the same number of critical successes on skill checks.

I played RoleMaster, a game basically built on hilarious critical and fumble charts, and that game was awful. Not worth going back to.

I think you're confused. I never mentioned fumble charts. I'm talking about making a natural 1 always be a fail and a natural 20 always being a success.

 

[schnee]

Oh, sorry - misunderstood.

IMO it still gimps skill characters. At a level that Wizards are teleporting all over the world, let the damn Rogue climb a wall without rolling.

 

[ccs]

Oh, sorry - misunderstood.

IMO it still gimps skill characters. At a level that Wizards are teleporting all over the world, let the damn Rogue climb a wall without rolling.

If your rolling dice for something that means the outcomes in question.
So what's the question?
Is it wether or not you succeed? Or is it just how much you succeed by?

Personally I prefer the former. I can live with a %5 chance of failure.

Now for combat? I think it's just stupid that rolling a 20 nets you nor only an auto-hit but additional damage - while rolling a 1 is merely a miss.
Why the lack of parity? 1 or 20, either has a 5% chance of occurring....
And yet opponents of crit misses will always point out -quickly & loudly - that those who roll more attacks will be punished more often than others if thier 1s have some extra negative effect attached. My response is " So what?" Those same people making all these rolls benifit more often as well.

My own preference for combat would be:
1) No crits, good or bad. Just auto-hit/auto-miss.
Failing that,
2) Auto-hit/miss + either a positive & negative rider depending on wether you rolled a 1 or 20.
The negative doesn't HAVE to be Roll Master chart stupid....

 

[Fanaelialae]

Oh, sorry - misunderstood.

IMO it still gimps skill characters. At a level that Wizards are teleporting all over the world, let the damn Rogue climb a wall without rolling.

You can still do that. In my group we've ruled for years that a Nat 20 is always success and a Nat 1 is always a failure. However, there are plenty of times when the DM might not require a skilled character to roll at all.

Mind you, when I say failure, it includes the concept of a complication. So perhaps if you are climbing the mountain face and roll a Nat 1, you still climb to the top. However, you knocked some rocks loose which woke up a hibernating monster. Admittedly though, it can also mean that you fall and break your leg.

 

[Fanaelialae]

If your rolling dice for something that means the outcomes in question.
So what's the question?
Is it wether or not you succeed? Or is it just how much you succeed by?

Personally I prefer the former. I can live with a %5 chance of failure.

Now for combat? I think it's just stupid that rolling a 20 nets you nor only an auto-hit but additional damage - while rolling a 1 is merely a miss.
Why the lack of parity? 1 or 20, either has a 5% chance of occurring....
And yet opponents of crit misses will always point out -quickly & loudly - that those who roll more attacks will be punished more often than others if thier 1s have some extra negative effect attached. My response is " So what?" Those same people making all these rolls benifit more often as well.

My own preference for combat would be:
1) No crits, good or bad. Just auto-hit/auto-miss.
Failing that,
2) Auto-hit/miss + either a positive & negative rider depending on wether you rolled a 1 or 20.
The negative doesn't HAVE to be Roll Master chart stupid....

In fairness, in my experience the complaint isn't that the multi attacker is punished more often per se, it's that linear fumbles make the most skilled warriors in the party look like bumbling fools (because they will fumble more often than single attackers). Rather than the master swordsman, which is likely what many envision the fighter to be, you end up with this strange idiot savant swordsman (in this case, the sword is both what he's an idiot and a savant with). It's rather jarring for sense of immersion.

My group uses several decks of cards. If you fumble on an attack, you can either draw a fumble card or let the DM draw a bad luck card that he can use against the party at a later time. Mechanically, the penalty is still there, but suddenly each player has the ability to throttle their character's foolishness in combat.

 

[Horwath]

With expertise and bonuses to saving throws from class features, many skill checks and saving throws become almost impossible to fail even on a 1. On the opposite end, there are also checks and saves that can be nearly impossible to succeed at even after rolling a 20. I'm wondering what consequences there would be for extending the crit fail/success to all d20 rolls. Would there be any disastrous effects or could this actually be a decent balancing factor?

you do not fail to tie your shoes 1 time in 20, and you cannot pick a lock 1 time in 20 if you do not know how the lock works or you do not climb a climbing wall without any training.

 

[Ristamar]

It won't break the game, but it seems needlessly random.

 

[GMMichael]

With expertise and bonuses to saving throws from class features, many skill checks and saving throws become almost impossible to fail even on a 1. On the opposite end, there are also checks and saves that can be nearly impossible to succeed at even after rolling a 20. I'm wondering what consequences there would be for extending the crit fail/success to all d20 rolls. Would there be any disastrous effects or could this actually be a decent balancing factor?

Succeed/fail is a very unforgiving system. You'll eliminate a lot of problems by moving over to something fuzzier.

Next, I wouldn't use crits on anything but attack rolls. I'm not sure D&D explicitly does, either.

You wouldn't break your game by extending the crit ranges, but you'd probably multiply the disappointment of players who hate rolling misses when they start rolling twice as many critical misses.