D&D 5E What is your "Sweet Spot" of Success? (poll)

[Garthanos]

Because there's uncertainty and consequences, and that builds tension.

And math.

I mentioned this right above. Say five characters need to DC 5 athetics check to swim in turblent rapids. One can't fail. The others average around +0 - two have dump-stat'd strength with an 8, few characters with +0 or +1 STR bother with athletics. (I did with my last rogue, turned out very useful.) So of the five there are four chances of failure around 25% each. That's over 2/3 of the time there is going to be at least one failure.. And that's with a DC 5 Very Easy check.

Unless you are ok with letting allies drown it sounds like a situation which might call for a skill challenge or group check of some sort where everyones actions impact the group success

 

[Blue]

Unless you are ok with letting allies drown it sounds like a situation which might call for a skill challenge or group check of some sort where everyones actions impact the group success

Agreed - I use group checks checks often. It's not always possible in cases like where they can't work together - for example one that comes up in combat.

 

[Cadence]

Yes, exactly. If it's worse than a coin-flip, and you invested in it, and would be considered "good at it", then what are you even doing?

Even the best batters in the MLB, three point shooters in the NBA, and folks taking shots on goal in the premiere league must feel like chumps!

 

[James Gasik]

Even the best batters in the MLB, three point shooters in the NBA, and folks taking shots on goal in the premiere league must feel like chumps!

Poor Shaq and his 33% free throw chance.

 

[Cadence]

Poor Shaq and his 33% free throw chance.

Hey now, it was over 50%, wasn't it?

Granted it's not near his chance of making you be called for a foul when he rear-ended you out of the way...

 

[FrogReaver]

Here's the scenario:

• Your PC is "good" at a task (whatever "good" means to you), not great, but definitely above average.
• You are trying a "difficult" task (whatever "difficult" means to you).

What chance of success is perfect for you, the "sweet spot" if you will; where the enjoyment of success meets the risk of failure?

So, if you choose 50%, you are saying you want your PC to succeed at the task half the time and fail half the time, making success rewarding and failure a bit painful.

You have two votes for your response, in case you want a slightly wider range.

I think I need more information. What does failing the task entail? What does succeeding the task entail?

For example, say my task is to waltz into the keep with a disguise and deception and then persuade the Lord's adviser to persuade the Lord to take a particular course of action. Is that one task or many? Should the difficulty apply to each step or the whole scene?

 

[FrogReaver]

These are very vague terms, so everyone's going to have their own views. To me, a difficult task is something an unskilled person isn't going to succeed at often, say about 10% of the time. I figure a difficult task could be done successfully about a third of the time by someone descent at it. Even someone who's an expert should still fail about a third the time.

In the real world difficult tasks aren't ones that are failed by the general population - these are tasks they never even attempt. If they did attempt them they would likely fail but they don't. However, difficult tasks are also tasks the expert is just going to succeed at unless externally pressured.

Perhaps the take away is that in 5e it is too difficult to become an expert at something.

 

[the Jester]

I guess I'd consider "good but not great" to be +5 to the task: +3 from a stat and +2 from proficiency. And according to the PH, a "hard" task is DC 20. So I guess I would succeed about 25% of the time. But that ignores any tricks I might have to get advantage or other ways to improve my odds, so I'd say overall 35% to 40%.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Even the best batters in the MLB, three point shooters in the NBA, and folks taking shots on goal in the premiere league must feel like chumps!

That's an opposed check!

That's a very different situation, so don't give me that nonsense just because I'm a nerd and you think I don't know about sports lol!

All of those are opposed checks. Well, maybe three-pointers sometimes aren't (but often are) - and people are inexplicably terrible at them. Like, I'm sure someone who knows basketball better than me could explain it, but like in high school, I virtually never missed one (I get the impression this is fairly common). But super-pro athletes miss them all the damn time unless they're Steph Curry (and maybe he does these days - I dunno, I don't follow basketball, I just know of his existence)

So that's not "someone good trying to do something difficult". That's an opposed check.

 

[Hussar]

Umm, just a quick check shows that the top 30 NBA free throwers are all above 80%. The top 100 are all above 70%.

But, again, the percentages of success in an RPG have ZERO to do with the difficulty of the task. They are a means of making the game more interesting. A failure rate of 75% is boring. Just ask anyone who played a thief back in the day when your thief skills were all around 30% for most of the career of the character. It sucked.