D&D 5E You Roll Low, Nothing Happens. Can this/should this be changed?

[billd91]

Getting a minor bonus (ex: a bonus the next time you attack, a bonus to defenses, etc) on miss could be interesting.

Something like a +1 on each miss until you manage to hit, at which point it resets? In the fiction, it could indicate gaining the measure of your opponent or leading him into increasing his vulnerability.

 

[Umbran]

In combat, it's probably best if a low roll is indeed just a 'null' event. You're making lots of rolls in quick succession, so probably just as well to move on to the next event.

I think this is an important point. D&D (and many other games) have a lot of die-rolling. Having to actually resolve further variables on *every* *single* *roll* adds to the time a combat takes. 'Null' events are fast.

I am not sure D&D and similar games really needs a "fail forward" on individual combat rolls. "Fail forward" is originally defined specifically in contrast to "fail means I have nowhere to go" - like failing to find the secret door, or the clue, or failing to get the needed information from a contact so that the adventure is stalled by failure. The adventure is not stalled by a failed to-hit roll, except perhaps in the case of ,"I cannot hit this beastie in theory, or only with a natural 20".

 

[Rune]

Something like a +1 on each miss until you manage to hit, at which point it resets? In the fiction, it could indicate gaining the measure of your opponent or leading him into increasing his vulnerability.

I think I did this at some point to speed up 4e combats (among other things). As I recall, it worked out alright, but you should probably hand out physical tokens (poker chips are great).

 

[Bayonet]

In combat a low roll is a miss. You shot wide of your mark, your sword whiffed throw empty air where the goblin once stood, your magical whatever fizzled out. You were ineffective, and as a result, nothing happens. I don't see how that's a problem.

 

[kermel]

In combat a low roll is a miss. You shot wide of your mark, your sword whiffed throw empty air where the goblin once stood, your magical whatever fizzled out. You were ineffective, and as a result, nothing happens. I don't see how that's a problem.

The problem is when your character is supposed to be a competent fighter. When a kobold shoots wide of swings the sword innefectively it's funny, but for Conan or Legolas or Robin Hood? It's anticlimactic and opposed to the fiction. Now, you should, of course, play the game the way you enjoy it the most, and for some people it can be ROFLing whenever the other player rolls low, or 1, and the GM describes that in a ridiculous fashion that makes your character stand there and feel stupid. But for many others, it is more appropiate to describe a miss more like a near-hit, that didn't connect because your opponent barely parried at the last moment, or perhaps because of an earthquake or gust of wind that threw you out of balance.

Still, even with a more "heroic" description of misses, the combat can be frustrating if "nothing happens" repeatedly, because of a streak of bad rolls. The following house-rule could help at that:

One Must Fall rule:
Whenever a melee attack misses, the target creature gets to inmediately make a melee attack back at the attacker. If that attack misses the attacker gets to attack again and so on, until one of both hits.

Be aware that this rule will unbalance melee combat in favor of the more powerful fighters or creatures (which shouldn't be a great problem in 5th edition, with bonded accuracy). A bunch of peasants attacking a dragon could well kill them all in their own round, just like a band of orcs assaulting a bridge guarded by a high level paladin. It could have unintended consequences I cannot see, but if anyone cares to try, good luck and remember to report back.

 

[Rune]

In combat a low roll is a miss. You shot wide of your mark, your sword whiffed throw empty air where the goblin once stood, your magical whatever fizzled out. You were ineffective, and as a result, nothing happens. I don't see how that's a problem.

It's not a problem; that kind of binary "yes/no" resolution works (and is what the system assumes). The OP was simply looking for a system of interpretation that is not binary. Not because the former is problematic, but because of preference. Or curiosity. Or just plain ol' "why not?"

Basically, the reason doesn't matter. Saying, "the original way works; just do that" isn't helpful to someone who is looking for alternatives.

 

[Rhenny]

My group and I have been playing Fantasy Flight Edge of the Empire recently (we just started - played 2 games). Their system is really interesting. The attacks and checks all use a dice pool that can give you results as follows:

Positive results: success, advantage and triumph
Negative results: failure, threat and despair

Success cancels a failure, advantage cancels a threat.

Results vary widely and each result gets interpreted by the GM or the Player or both to decide the result.

For example, you could have two successes and a threat. That would mean that the task succeeds, but a complication is added. Or you could have a success with 2 or 3 advantages, or a success with a despair or a success with 2 threats and a triumph. There is a chart with common advantages or threats, triumphs and despairs, etc, and certain weapons or items do special things when a specific number of advantages are rolled (i.e., a light blaster pistol will crit on 3 advantages...a light saber crits on 1 advantage - and crits do nasty things not extra damage).

It is a very exciting game because of the craziness of the dice.

The old Star Wars d6 had a "wild die" that rolled with all attacks or checks. If it rolled a 1 there would be a complication. If it rolled a 6 there would be a special success. This also added to the excitement.

I wonder if D&D could do something like this...(although, at a certain point, it wouldn't be D&D any more - lol).

 

[Herr der Qual]

In the game I'm playing in the DM has a tidy system for this. It's actually pretty effective for adding some flavor to the combat too.

On just a standard below AC roll he narrates a nice little: "The Orc saw your blow coming and glanced your axe off of his shield, sneering he adjusts his stance to respond".

Rolling a 1 however is bad, he does a random roll, and ties it into the situation, lets say you advance 10 feet to attack a kobold and you roll a 1 on your attack, he rolls a D20 and it comes up as a stumble "You focus on the kobold as you press forward, not noticing the root sticking up from the ground, catching your toe, you swing wide to recover (roll a DC 8 Dex save, you roll a 9) you keep your feet but wind up 5 feet to left of your opponent."

I think his table is something like this:
1-5: Drop your weapon/loose your grip.
6-10: Stumble
11-15: Weapon gets caught on obstacle (like a tree branch)
16-20: You telegraph your attack and the creature handily side steps it and taunts you.

In reference to the "capable warriors" thought. Low level characters are little more than new recruits, no battle experience = mistakes, rolling a 1 at level 20 sucks, but by then you have tools to deal with misses because you have the experience to have developed strategies and feats to accomplish things like a Legolas, Gimli, etc, etc, etc... just a thought.

 

[Blue]

Other systems handle this

Really appreciate the responses guys and special thanks to Paraxis.

I think at this stage in my gaming career I'm starting to look for increased player agency, in which everything the player does at the table has some impact on the story (and not just on resource management). As D&D 5e is my favourite system, I will look to see if there's a few tweaks (as per suggestions in this thread) to help the game fit my table better, and if not I will look at other systems.

Any other suggestions for making "whiffing" a little more interesting at the table, please weigh in! Otherwise thanks again guys.

Many game systems have a concept like "fail forward", where a failure on a roll may be a success with consequence. Need to find the secret door in order for plot to move forward? A failed search roll may not be "you don't find anything", it may be "you find it by a patrol opening it from the other side".

This gets hard in combat though because we drop down to bullet time where instead of one roll or a few rolls total determining success, every little bit gets a roll. Putting interesting failure mechanics on this without slowing down combat is hard.

Besides D&D I'm running 13th Age, a d20 OGL from 3rd & 4e lead designers. It handles this multiple ways. First, if your competent with weapons your weapon attacks are "hit hard or just a glance" (miss damage), same for spells. But the classes that focus on melee like the fighter get "flexible attacks", where the raw number on the d20 give you something special. So you might have one effect on any odd roll, another on even misses, and one on a 16+, and depending on the roll you get to chose which will trigger. So you are doing things even when it's only a glancing blow.

Dungeon World is a great system with the right group, but 13th Age is much closer to 5e if that's the feel you are going for. It's kept both 20 year gaming vets and relative newcomers happy and might be worth a look.

 

[Authweight]

An easy idea you could steal from DW would be to give players XP for failure, a concept I love (we learn most from our mistakes). You get the benefit of a cool thing happening on a miss while keeping the simplicity of the "null result" in combat. This could lead to issues though, because people who spend less time attacking could fall behind.

If I was going to implement the idea of bonuses on later attacks for each miss, I would go deep on it and give people a d6 every time they miss. They roll all their extra d6s on every attack until they hit, at which point they reset to zero d6s.