Poisoned die idea

So there was a room in my campaign that was full of splotches of acid. I didn’t want to just make a same old check and I came up with the idea that some sides of the directed in failure eg 1 5 12 17 all made you take the damage. You didn’t add the bonus. I want to do the same type of thing for another room but can’t think what. What are your suggestions?

I’m confused on what you’re trying to say. What do you mean directed in failure, can you specify?

Quote from ClassicCharismaCaster >>

I’m confused on what you’re trying to say. What do you mean directed in failure, can you specify?

I think 'directed' is an autocorrect from 'die resulted' -- i.e. if you roll a specific number on a d20, you take damage regardless of how good your bonus is on the check or whether you met the DC

That doesn't seem like a great idea, though. Better to just do half damage on a successful check, or something like that. Players are gonna feel some kind of way if they roll a 17 and get a 25 on the check or whatever, and the DM says "Too bad, you get hit anyway". The d20 roll is already taking care of the randomness of the situation, so... let it do its job

Is the other room also full of acid?

So, this is something that has been tried in other games. If I'm understanding right, instead of having the party make an athletics check to jump over or an acrobatics check to nimbly tiptoe around the acid, everyone rolls a die and on certain numbers they take acid damage?

What you'll often find especially among more modern GMs is that this tends to get seen as unfriendly to players and doesn't get done a lot. It's similar to how some monsters in prior editions of D&D could cause you to lose entire levels as they sapped life force from your character. 

This though seems more like a 'luck' check than anything else to me, so what I'd do is have the acid dripping indiscriminately from the ceiling no matter how fast or strong a player character is they're going to take acid damage unless they are unnaturally lucky. So, give the players a new stat and come up with a bunch of scenarios in which luck will play a factor. That's what I'd do anyhow. You can then take seemingly ordinary traps and puzzles and have them influenced by luck. The gears and mechanism of the trapped chest seem very rusted, the spring looks to be seized - there's no way to know if the trap can be sprung or not. If the players choose to open the chest and take the risk, have them roll for their luck and see if the ancient trap mechanism activates.

Similarly, this allows the players access to new ways of solving puzzles. They try to guess a password or 4 digit numbercode, a good luck roll gives them than.

Again I will say this is a style of play that D&D kinda both is and isn't built for. It can certainly be fun, and most D&D is built on luck and statistics anyway, but that luck is often for the players not the characters. So having something be a 'real' luck test for the characters can take the game in a different direction. As I say other TTRPG systems do this. Sadly, the loudest of the D&D playerbase on the internet often aren't big fans of the heavy luck aspects. So if you do go down this road ask yourself if it suits your players' styles and interests first.

Quote from martintheactor >>

You can then take seemingly ordinary traps and puzzles and have them influenced by luck. The gears and mechanism of the trapped chest seem very rusted, the spring looks to be seized - there's no way to know if the trap can be sprung or not. If the players choose to open the chest and take the risk, have them roll for their luck and see if the ancient trap mechanism activates.

That's literally what the usual d20 roll is supposed to represent, though -- the element of luck and things outside the player's control

If they roll poorly on a check, the DM can simply narrate it as the old mechanism appeared to be rusted shut and inoperative, but it creaked to life anyway unexpectedly

Quote from AntonSirius >>

 

That's literally what the usual d20 roll is supposed to represent, though -- the element of luck and things outside the player's control

If they roll poorly on a check, the DM can simply narrate it as the old mechanism appeared to be rusted shut and inoperative, but it creaked to life anyway unexpectedly

 Yes and no at the same time. If you'd ever played a truly wide assortment of TTRPGs you'd know that many do in fact have a distinct and separate 'luck' or 'fortune' stat and mechanic. What the d20 in D&D specifically is replicating is one's aptitude on the day to day and under a specific pressure. Which is distinctly different from one's luck.

Let's take a football player, they have a base level of skills which we would emulate in stat and proficiency bonuses right? On any given day your stand out players are going to fluctuate in their abilities. They might miss a pass, fumble, or just be feeling particular pressure from the opposing team or even just weather. That's not luck, that's the complication and hurdle that they must overcome. No football player is going to score 100% of the shots on the goal that they take, nor is every basketball player given an opposing team going to achieve a 100% accuracy rate. Maybe you could call these external factors luck, but for most people it really isn't.

Similarly then, in say disarming a trapped chest in a dungeon the d20 isn't actually emulating luck per-se. If the chest isn't in the dungeon and it's at the player character's home they've got all the time in the world to disarm it and the reasonable GM assumes they'll succeed. Its why a good GM doesn't ask for a check if there aren't obstacles or elements that make the achieving of the thing difficult in the moment. In the dungeon the player character may be stumbled upon by a wandering monster, the inhabitants might return from their hunts, the water level might rise and flood the dungeon. So the character is pressured to perform and perform well. At base, the assumption is that on any given day the player character is going to succeed said checks more than they fail. The whole point of the DC or any ability check is that our player characters are doing something that even an expert might find difficult and they're doing it under a time pressure. In short then the Ability Check in particular is not emulating luck but rather representing the opposing force that the player character must overcome. Is the character's ability to disarm better than the trap maker's ability to design a trap?

Let's look at Call of Cthulhu's Luck. An example is that game is a GM asking for a luck roll to determine if the flashlight found has a functioning battery (or more specifically what capacity that battery might be at). It goes further with an example of finding a Taxi. You don't need luck to find the taxi, but you do need luck to find one in time to chase the cultist whose getting away in their own vehicle. D&D 5e and 5.5e doesn't really do that terribly well. And frankly if you're using ability checks for that you're likely using checks other than how they were intended. Now many GMs I know do tend to just roll a die or flip coins to determine the likelihood of things happening that other games would consider luck, but that take a lot out of the player's hands. Incidentally, it's noteable that Kobold Press replaced Inspiration with 'Luck' in their spin of 5e - Tales of the Valiant. Their game systems somewhat sees luck as a balancing force where for every fail or miss you build up those luck points and are able to use them in future to influence other dice rolls. In short, no run of bad luck lasts forever in that game system.

In context the point here is then that no, the standard d20 ability check doesn't emulate luck as most would colloquially define it.

Quote from martintheactor>>

Quote from AntonSirius>>

That's literally what the usual d20 roll is supposed to represent, though -- the element of luck and things outside the player's control

If they roll poorly on a check, the DM can simply narrate it as the old mechanism appeared to be rusted shut and inoperative, but it creaked to life anyway unexpectedly

 If you'd ever played a truly wide assortment of TTRPGs you'd know

I have, my dude. Probably more than you

What the d20 in D&D specifically is replicating is one's aptitude on the day to day and under a specific pressure

Incorrect. The PHB goes out of its way to not define what a d20 roll represents, but when it comes to ability checks the things you just described can all covered by various mechanics in the game (Proficiency Bonus, Exhaustion, the DC set by the DM, etc.). Which leaves it pretty clear what the roll does represent

You'll also notice that better DMs go out of their way to attribute bad results on tasks that a character by all rights should have aced to luck and environmental factors outside their control, not the character's "aptitude". When the rogue with +11 and guidance still blows a DC 15 Stealth check, it's not because they cracked "under a specific pressure", it's because they had no way of knowing that particular step on the staircase was super-creaky