The best part is no more bullet proof concentration saves. It was a bad design to have saves that the PC couldn't fail or pass. I'd rather they just fix the scale rather than use auto 1/20 but it's a patch.
That is no issue with bullet proof concentration saves. The main balancing aspect (as in 99.9 repeating % of it) of concentration is that you can only concentrate on one spell at a time. Furthermore, concentration can still be lost through incapacitation effects such as stun or paralysis.
It is not bad design to have saves that the PC can't fail as PC's have to invest into their saves to get to that point. Being able to succeed automatically through having a high enough bonus is not a flaw or a bug in the game's design nor does it negatively affect the game. PC's can't auto succeed on every save as you can't invest into every save, so they will always have a targetable weakness.
If a natural 20 ALWAYS succeeds then there is a ALWAYS a chance of success for any check. How can you say a check is impossible if a natural 20 always succeeds? Same for a 1, if it is always a failure then you can't say that a player shouldn't roll if there is no chance of failure, because there is always a 5% chance.
This right here is why this rule should stay a house rule rather than an official one.
Because if it is official, you can't tell your players 'you can't roll, because you can't succeed'. Because there's always the chance that they'll roll a 20 and get that automatic success.
It'll lead to things like where if there is a door the players can't force or pick the lock, you have to tell your group 'no you can't roll, because the rules technically allow you to succeed if I allow you to roll and I don't want you to succeed', that makes players feel like they're being railroaded... And they are.
The rule as written literally says the DM can not allow a roll. Whether or not to allow a roll is at the DMs discretion. If the DM thinks the declared action's DC is above 30 or below 5, there's no need for a roll. It's baked into the language of the rule to block exactly this concern.
"The term d20 Test encompasses the three main d20 rolls of the game: ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws. If something in the game affects d20 Tests, it affects all three of those rolls.
The DM determines whether a d20 Test is warranted in any given circumstance. To be warranted, a d20 Test must have a target number no less than 5 and no greater than 30.
ROLLING A 1 If you roll a 1 on the d20, the d20 Test automatically fails, regardless of any modifiers to the roll.
ROLLING A 20 If you roll a 20 on the d20, the d20 Test automatically succeeds, regardless of any modifiers to the roll. A player character also gains Inspiration when rolling the 20, thanks to the remarkable success. Rolling a 20 doesn’t bypass limitations on the test, such as range and line of sight. The 20 bypasses only bonuses and penalties to the roll."
As far as how a rule makes people feel, the DM and players have to set expectations for each other. If a table can't come to an understanding on how rolls will work, there are going to be way bigger problems at the table than rules interpretation.
If a natural 20 ALWAYS succeeds then there is a ALWAYS a chance of success for any check. How can you say a check is impossible if a natural 20 always succeeds? Same for a 1, if it is always a failure then you can't say that a player shouldn't roll if there is no chance of failure, because there is always a 5% chance.
This right here is why this rule should stay a house rule rather than an official one.
Because if it is official, you can't tell your players 'you can't roll, because you can't succeed'. Because there's always the chance that they'll roll a 20 and get that automatic success.
It'll lead to things like where if there is a door the players can't force or pick the lock, you have to tell your group 'no you can't roll, because the rules technically allow you to succeed if I allow you to roll and I don't want you to succeed', that makes players feel like they're being railroaded... And they are.
The rule as written literally says the DM can not allow a roll. Whether or not to allow a roll is at the DMs discretion. If the DM thinks the declared action's DC is above 30 or below 5, there's no need for a roll. It's baked into the language of the rule to block exactly this concern.
"The term d20 Test encompasses the three main d20 rolls of the game: ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws. If something in the game affects d20 Tests, it affects all three of those rolls.
The DM determines whether a d20 Test is warranted in any given circumstance. To be warranted, a d20 Test must have a target number no less than 5 and no greater than 30.
ROLLING A 1 If you roll a 1 on the d20, the d20 Test automatically fails, regardless of any modifiers to the roll.
ROLLING A 20 If you roll a 20 on the d20, the d20 Test automatically succeeds, regardless of any modifiers to the roll. A player character also gains Inspiration when rolling the 20, thanks to the remarkable success. Rolling a 20 doesn’t bypass limitations on the test, such as range and line of sight. The 20 bypasses only bonuses and penalties to the roll."
As far as how a rule makes people feel, the DM and players have to set expectations for each other. If a table can't come to an understanding on how rolls will work, there are going to be way bigger problems at the table than rules interpretation.
The only reason this rule is being suggested in the first place is because people didn't seem to understand current RAW (at least that is what Crawford said in the video) so WotC wanted to test to see if people actually wanted peoples misunderstanding of the rules to become the new RAW.
I don't
I know there are several people on both sides of this issue, on Friday we all get to tell WotC whether we like it or not.
If a natural 20 ALWAYS succeeds then there is a ALWAYS a chance of success for any check. How can you say a check is impossible if a natural 20 always succeeds? Same for a 1, if it is always a failure then you can't say that a player shouldn't roll if there is no chance of failure, because there is always a 5% chance.
This right here is why this rule should stay a house rule rather than an official one.
Because if it is official, you can't tell your players 'you can't roll, because you can't succeed'. Because there's always the chance that they'll roll a 20 and get that automatic success.
It'll lead to things like where if there is a door the players can't force or pick the lock, you have to tell your group 'no you can't roll, because the rules technically allow you to succeed if I allow you to roll and I don't want you to succeed', that makes players feel like they're being railroaded... And they are.
The rule as written literally says the DM can not allow a roll. Whether or not to allow a roll is at the DMs discretion. If the DM thinks the declared action's DC is above 30 or below 5, there's no need for a roll. It's baked into the language of the rule to block exactly this concern.
"The term d20 Test encompasses the three main d20 rolls of the game: ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws. If something in the game affects d20 Tests, it affects all three of those rolls.
The DM determines whether a d20 Test is warranted in any given circumstance. To be warranted, a d20 Test must have a target number no less than 5 and no greater than 30.
ROLLING A 1 If you roll a 1 on the d20, the d20 Test automatically fails, regardless of any modifiers to the roll.
ROLLING A 20 If you roll a 20 on the d20, the d20 Test automatically succeeds, regardless of any modifiers to the roll. A player character also gains Inspiration when rolling the 20, thanks to the remarkable success. Rolling a 20 doesn’t bypass limitations on the test, such as range and line of sight. The 20 bypasses only bonuses and penalties to the roll."
As far as how a rule makes people feel, the DM and players have to set expectations for each other. If a table can't come to an understanding on how rolls will work, there are going to be way bigger problems at the table than rules interpretation.
The only reason this rule is being suggested in the first place is because people didn't seem to understand current RAW (at least that is what Crawford said in the video) so WotC wanted to test to see if people actually wanted peoples misunderstanding of the rules to become the new RAW.
I don't
I know there are several people on both sides of this issue, on Friday we all get to tell WotC whether we like it or not.
Yeah that's totally fair. The only thing I was trying to say at first is that this rule isn't that different than they rules as written now if the DM and players are all on the same page and OK with slightly fewer rolls. The DM's just telling people they succeed for fail without the need for a roll a few times every session. It's fine either way. This way probably is clearer and gives the illusion of a bit more power for the players, because they know if they get to roll, they always at least have a chance at success.
The best part is no more bullet proof concentration saves. It was a bad design to have saves that the PC couldn't fail or pass. I'd rather they just fix the scale rather than use auto 1/20 but it's a patch.
That is no issue with bullet proof concentration saves. The main balancing aspect (as in 99.9 repeating % of it) of concentration is that you can only concentrate on one spell at a time. Furthermore, concentration can still be lost through incapacitation effects such as stun or paralysis.
It is not bad design to have saves that the PC can't fail as PC's have to invest into their saves to get to that point. Being able to succeed automatically through having a high enough bonus is not a flaw or a bug in the game's design nor does it negatively affect the game. PC's can't auto succeed on every save as you can't invest into every save, so they will always have a targetable weakness.
It a horrible design if you can only maintain a chance to pass saves if optional rules are in play (feats). If you want a certain NPC to have an effect that is guaranteed just do that and have a lower save/check on following turns.
Well feats are no longer going to be optional; they shouldn't have been optional to begin with. Also, magic items and spells like bless are other ways for PC's to pass saves that their modifier alone would not be able to pass. However, the question here is not that the only chance to pass saves is if you use feats; it is whether PC's being able to pass saves on a nat 1, which I don't think is bad design at all since it requires investment on the PC's part to be able to do that.
Having played most of my DnD career (40+ years) with a Nat 1 being not only a fail but a critical fail and a Nat 20 being a critical success I don’t have a problem with the rule. Not having DM crits is going to make party survival much more likely much of the time but I know several ways to deal with that. What having crit fails and hits does is indeed remove the “ you can’t make the roll needed so don’t bother trying”. That can slow play somewhat but typically doesn’t and when you get a chain of crits it makes the result truly memorable and game/character changing. The longest one I ever saw was a crit hit followed by 10 crit fails in a row.
The best part is no more bullet proof concentration saves. It was a bad design to have saves that the PC couldn't fail or pass. I'd rather they just fix the scale rather than use auto 1/20 but it's a patch.
That is no issue with bullet proof concentration saves. The main balancing aspect (as in 99.9 repeating % of it) of concentration is that you can only concentrate on one spell at a time. Furthermore, concentration can still be lost through incapacitation effects such as stun or paralysis.
It is not bad design to have saves that the PC can't fail as PC's have to invest into their saves to get to that point. Being able to succeed automatically through having a high enough bonus is not a flaw or a bug in the game's design nor does it negatively affect the game. PC's can't auto succeed on every save as you can't invest into every save, so they will always have a targetable weakness.
It a horrible design if you can only maintain a chance to pass saves if optional rules are in play (feats). If you want a certain NPC to have an effect that is guaranteed just do that and have a lower save/check on following turns.
Well feats are no longer going to be optional; they shouldn't have been optional to begin with. Also, magic items and spells like bless are other ways for PC's to pass saves that their modifier alone would not be able to pass. However, the question here is not that the only chance to pass saves is if you use feats; it is whether PC's being able to pass saves on a nat 1, which I don't think is bad design at all since it requires investment on the PC's part to be able to do that.
Except it is objectively bad design. The point of a die roll, like many other elements of the game, is to showcase risk versus reward. An ability check isn't rolled until the DM says so. If the DM decides a task is routine enough that your character cannot fail, then that's it. They just pass, no die roll necessary.
But saving throws are forced. The die must be cast. If the result on the die is ever irrelevant, then there's no point to the roll. And whatever forced the saving throw was utterly wasted. And that cuts both ways across the table. Anything the players can do, the DM can do. And if you can automatically pass some saving throws, so can the DM.
The best part is no more bullet proof concentration saves. It was a bad design to have saves that the PC couldn't fail or pass. I'd rather they just fix the scale rather than use auto 1/20 but it's a patch.
That is no issue with bullet proof concentration saves. The main balancing aspect (as in 99.9 repeating % of it) of concentration is that you can only concentrate on one spell at a time. Furthermore, concentration can still be lost through incapacitation effects such as stun or paralysis.
It is not bad design to have saves that the PC can't fail as PC's have to invest into their saves to get to that point. Being able to succeed automatically through having a high enough bonus is not a flaw or a bug in the game's design nor does it negatively affect the game. PC's can't auto succeed on every save as you can't invest into every save, so they will always have a targetable weakness.
It a horrible design if you can only maintain a chance to pass saves if optional rules are in play (feats). If you want a certain NPC to have an effect that is guaranteed just do that and have a lower save/check on following turns.
Well feats are no longer going to be optional; they shouldn't have been optional to begin with. Also, magic items and spells like bless are other ways for PC's to pass saves that their modifier alone would not be able to pass. However, the question here is not that the only chance to pass saves is if you use feats; it is whether PC's being able to pass saves on a nat 1, which I don't think is bad design at all since it requires investment on the PC's part to be able to do that.
Except it is objectively bad design. The point of a die roll, like many other elements of the game, is to showcase risk versus reward. An ability check isn't rolled until the DM says so. If the DM decides a task is routine enough that your character cannot fail, then that's it. They just pass, no die roll necessary.
But saving throws are forced. The die must be cast. If the result on the die is ever irrelevant, then there's no point to the roll. And whatever forced the saving throw was utterly wasted. And that cuts both ways across the table. Anything the players can do, the DM can do. And if you can automatically pass some saving throws, so can the DM.
Sorry, not sorry, but no.
It is not objectively bad design. It would be objectively bad design if a character could start out with it. However because a character has to build for it, it is a perfectly valid design. There is nothing wrong with being able to put in the investment to guarantee something.
There is nothing wrong with the DM not calling for a saving throw if your character has the modifier to succeed on a nat 1. It gives a sense of satisfaction of how strong the character has come and can make their enemies have an oh crap moment. That said, they have other saves that can be targetted and are not invincible.
In a campaign I am currently in, despite having a +14 int save and thus am immune to a mind flayer's mind blast, my artificer still had several close calls when going into a mind flayer hive to kill an Elder Brain. Me being immune to mind blast did not detract any fun from the rest of the party, in fact they cheered that I was able to pull it off. If it was objectively bad design then it would have ruined the encounters, but it didn't.
Just because a DM can do it doesn't mean they should. Enemy stat blocks rarely if ever can succeed on a nat 1. Besides, the DM already has legendary Resistances for guaranteeing successes. It is more of something a player can do if they build for it.
Sorry, not sorry, but just because you don't like it does not make it objectively bad, especially when it has been working well for the past few years. You are wrong on it being objectively bad design. It sounds more like you don't like players being able to optimize than anything despite saying you had no issue with optimization.
It is not objectively bad design. It would be objectively bad design if a character could start out with it. However because a character has to build for it, it is a perfectly valid design. There is nothing wrong with being able to put in the investment to guarantee something.
Saves always failing on a 1 is the same situation as attacks always hitting on a 20. Immunity should be achieved by a feature that says you're immune, not by bonus stacking.
It is not objectively bad design. It would be objectively bad design if a character could start out with it. However because a character has to build for it, it is a perfectly valid design. There is nothing wrong with being able to put in the investment to guarantee something.
Saves always failing on a 1 is the same situation as attacks always hitting on a 20. Immunity should be achieved by a feature that says you're immune, not by bonus stacking.
It's not. Missing an attack often has a lesser consequence than failing a save. For example, failing against a disinitigrate spell can spell instant death if it brings you to 0; missing an attack just means you don't deal any damage from an attack you just dealt. Or failing against a Hold Person means you are paralyzed and will lose your next turn and any attacks that hit you are criticals and you can lose subsequent turns.
Only reason why I can tolerate nat 1 automiss is because the consequence is rather minor and because the math works out with you generally missing on nat 1's even if auto miss was not a thing, even if you had a magic weapon boosting your attack bonus.
Players should be able to succeed on a nat 1 if they have the modifier to do so. Plus, it doesn't always mean you are immune; if there is an effect on success such as half damage, you still suffer that. My artificer was immune to mind blasts because it had no effect on a successful save, but if there was something like half damage on save she would have suffered that.
Failing a save is not the same as missing an attack; they should not be compared like that.
The rule isn't even being changed for balancing reasons. It is just because some people didn't read the actual rule and thought that nat 1's were autofails and nat 20's are autosuccess.
It is not objectively bad design. It would be objectively bad design if a character could start out with it. However because a character has to build for it, it is a perfectly valid design. There is nothing wrong with being able to put in the investment to guarantee something.
Saves always failing on a 1 is the same situation as attacks always hitting on a 20. Immunity should be achieved by a feature that says you're immune, not by bonus stacking.
To be honest, both are bad imo. And auto hitting on a 20 is already functionally useless since if you roll a 20 you're already going to hit the AC of everything below CR30 on die anyways with nothing but your proficiency bonus.
I'm going to offer some perspective from a different game:
Anyone who recognises my avatar probably already knows which one, but for the rest: Vampire the Masquerade.
Now... Rolling dice in VtM works very differently from D&D. Instead of rolling a single d20 and adding a modifier, the Storyteller System works with dice pools where you roll a pool of d10s determined by one's stats and any relevant bonuses and try to beat a difficulty set by the gamemaster (Storyteller or ST in the system's parlance). Various version of the game had different ways for determining said difficulty. Early on it was the number you had to roll on the die to make it count as a success (an easy task might require a 4 on a d10 for a success, an almost impossible task might require an 8) with any success on a single die meaning the action succeeded and the number of successes determining the magnitude of that success. Later on it moved to making the number required for a success static (a 6 or above) and making the difficulty determined by a minimum number of successes required.
In early versions of that system had a rule that regarded a '1' on a d10 to be a critical failure, which wouldn't simply not be a success on that die, but also negate one success on another die. The exception being a 10. A 10 was a guaranteed success that couldn't be negated by a 1 (so if you roll four dice and the results are 9,9, 1,1 you fail, because the two 1s cancel out the two 9s, but if you roll 10, 1, 1, 1 you succeed, because the three 1s can't cancel the automatic success of the 10).
So why does this matter?
That system was changed intentionally, because it felt bad to play with. Initially people couldn't really put into words why it felt bad, just that it did. So White Wolf did a lot of playtesting and gathered a lot of feedback and ultimately they reached a conclusion: Having any result on a roll be an automatic failure was more frustrating than it was beneficial.
The main way that a character would get stronger was to increase stats in order to increase the dice pool and therefore increasing the chance of getting at least one success in the roll.... But increasing dice pools also increased the chance of getting at least one 1. As your dice pool increased, the chance of succeeding did statistically increase, of course. But the psychological effect of knowing that a fluke could still ruin everything meant that it didn't feel like your character was getting stronger. The system had another mechanic for generating automatic successes, the willpower stat, which would grant you a limited pool of points you could spend to get one automatic success on a test that couldn't be negated by rolling a 1. And in playtesting they found that despite being far more expensive to raise than the stats that determine dice pools, most players would prefer to save up their xp points (VtM works on a system where instead of getting stat increases across the board when reaching a certain xp threshold, xp points can be spent directly to raise one's statistics) to buy more willpower.
Because with the looming spectre of your dice screwing you and causing you to automatically fail at something your character was supposed to be really, really good at, most players would prefer increasing their ability to enjoy the safety of that single, unspectacular success rather than making their character actually good at things.
Ultimately it was discovered that having the possibility of rolling 1s and negating their successes has a psychological effect far beyond the likelihood of it actually happening... Because when it did happen it felt so bad, because people felt cheated out of a success, that it outweighed the numerous instances where it didn't in the minds of the players. It made players afraid to roll their dice, because the mere chance that a straight roll could result in a complete failure even on a maximum dice pool felt so off puting that many players would just default to 'I spend a willpower, I'm not even going to bother rolling, tell me what my one success gets me'... And VtM already had far less emphasis on rolling than D&D does.
So they changed it. They still wanted to have the possibility of critical failures, because VtM is a drama game and nothing generates drama like an unmitigated failure. And when I say 'they' I don't just mean the designers. I mean the players as well. The players wanted a possibility of critical failure, just not the one they had. So they made it so that instead of subtracting successes from the rest of the roll, a 1 didn't matter if you rolled any successes, but triggered a critical failure if you didn't get at least one success.
And that felt a lot better. Because, sure, rolling a 1 could still be bad, but it would only be bad if the roll was a failure anyway. You were no longer 'cheated' out of a success by randomly rolling a 1. So rolling a 1 on a failure became almost as exciting as rolling six successes (VtM's version of a critical success).
Because the problem was never that a 1 could cause you to fail in and of itself, it was that rolling a 1 could turn what would otherwise have been a success into a failure.
The same is true for D&D. If you have a high enough modifier to succeed on a check regardless of what you roll then getting 'cheated' out of that success by rolling a 1 feels far worse than if you fail the check when you only had a middling chance to succeed in the first place.
Beyond that, though, there's another reason to keep '1 is critical miss, 20 is a critical success' only on attack rolls:
Failing a save is often far, far more devastating than failing an attack roll. With the exception of a desperate, hail-Mary attack on a creature that is close to death, but also about to wreck the party's sh... erhm poop, failing on an attack roll doesn't often have direct character ending consequences. You just... Miss one attack and did a little less damage a little less quickly this combat than if you'd succeeded. You'll make another next turn... Or if you have more than one attack per turn, you'll make another one right after (or made one already before on this turn).
But a save? Failing a save can be the difference between taking a lot of damage and taking an instantly lethal amount of damage. It can lead to a character suffering a debilitating condition that effectively takes them out of the running for the rest of the fight. A single failed save can result in widespread consequences that lead to a TPK in a way that a single failed attack almost never will.
At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, suffering a TPK because one player failed a save due to getting an automatic failure by rolling a 1 on a roll that they would have succeeded at had they rolled any other number... including a 1 if that hadn't been an automatic failure... is the kind of utterly demoralising situation that can lead to the entire group just straight up giving up on the game.
Sure, objectively speaking it's just a fluke. It's not very likely to happen. But the fact that it can happen? That it does happen? That knowledge alone is enough to lead to people having anxiety attacks about a game that is, ultimately, supposed to be about telling a fun story with your friends (or, sometimes, people that you somewhat tolerate because they're the only people around you can play with).
So would people feel the same if it was on a percentile die and you only have a 1% chance of failure? What percentage failure is Ok with you? It can't be zero. If you are rolling a die to determine an outcome at something then there should be a fear of failure. I don't understand the feel bad argument. If that is the case then just let everyone succeed at everything. Can't have anyone feel bad.
Instead of thinking how bad it is your big high level perfect character should never fail think of it as a role-playing opportunity. Let's say your character has a +19 to fear roles and the DC is 20. You're going to suceed 95% of the time. Willing to bet it comes up so rarely that you're going to succeed the more than that (meaning you are rolling fear roles so rarely that you're going to succeed). You roll a 1. So now this character who rarely feels fear suddenly is afraid. What do they do?
It is simple. If you are bringing an element of chance into the game there needs to be a chance of failure.
Oh as the above poster brought of White Wolf, we played Vampire when it first came out. We had no problem with the die rolls. Sure even the most powerful may, on occasion, fail. We just went with it.
When you optimize, you must exclude suboptimal choices.
Any time you build a character, you have to exclude a lot of choices, because there's a limit to how many you can put on your character. Excluding an option because it's inefficient is not different in kind from excluding an option because it doesn't fit your backstory or you just want another option more.
Here is the problem and how it limits. Wizard doesn't have lockpicking skill some think they can never try. Of course they can. It will be harder but of course they can try. Don't have tavern brawler? You can still pick up a chair and hit someone over the head with it. Anyone can pick up a sword and swing it. Anyone can lie List goes on. DC may change though. People specialize and see it on their character sheet and then only see the things they are good at. That limits options. Then of course there is the problem of some people thinking the Wizard hanging out with a Rogue can't learn how to pick a lock without multiclassing
So would people feel the same if it was on a percentile die and you only have a 1% chance of failure? What percentage failure is Ok with you? It can't be zero. If you are rolling a die to determine an outcome at something then there should be a fear of failure. I don't understand the feel bad argument. If that is the case then just let everyone succeed at everything. Can't have anyone feel bad.
Instead of thinking how bad it is your big high level perfect character should never fail think of it as a role-playing opportunity. Let's say your character has a +19 to fear roles and the DC is 20. You're going to suceed 95% of the time. Willing to bet it comes up so rarely that you're going to succeed the more than that (meaning you are rolling fear roles so rarely that you're going to succeed). You roll a 1. So now this character who rarely feels fear suddenly is afraid. What do they do?
It is simple. If you are bringing an element of chance into the game there needs to be a chance of failure.
Oh as the above poster brought of White Wolf, we played Vampire when it first came out. We had no problem with the die rolls. Sure even the most powerful may, on occasion, fail. We just went with it.
I disagree when you say it can't be 0. Part of the point of raising mod to +19 is so you don't have to roll when the DC is 20 or lower. Not everyone is looking for that role playing opportunity on a nat 1. When you are raising your mod so you can succeed on a nat 1, you are optimizing it so you are removing that element of chance for that specific type of roll. Reliable Talent does this for Rogues already, so it isn't a foreign concept to the game; even with the nat 1 auto fail, Reliable Talent supersedes that as it alters the die roll itself. So already in the game there is a mechanic that removes chance.
When you say it can't be 0, that is how you feel the game should be. However, current 5E allows people to guarantee certain rolls, and plenty of people have no issue and see it as a good thing. The fact that there are people who enjoy it and that this is actually heavily debated shows that there is merit in not having nat 1 autofails and there not always needing a chance of failure.
D&D has exploded in popularity and has gained an incredibly diverse group of players with all sorts of play styles and 5E has supported those variety of play styles very well. In those varying playstyles are those who optimize to reduce the element of randomness, to make their character more and more consistent, even reaching 100% for certain rolls if they invest enough. That kind of play style is not wrong or lesser than a player style that embraces the randomness. It is all preference. Just because they want to reduce the element of chance with their character doesn't mean D&D is not the game for them. Telling someone that D&D is not the game for them (as I have been told before in this very thread) is just rude, disingenuous, and goes against inclusivity of the game.
When you optimize, you must exclude suboptimal choices.
Any time you build a character, you have to exclude a lot of choices, because there's a limit to how many you can put on your character. Excluding an option because it's inefficient is not different in kind from excluding an option because it doesn't fit your backstory or you just want another option more.
Here is the problem and how it limits. Wizard doesn't have lockpicking skill some think they can never try. Of course they can. It will be harder but of course they can try. Don't have tavern brawler? You can still pick up a chair and hit someone over the head with it. Anyone can pick up a sword and swing it. Anyone can lie List goes on. DC may change though. People specialize and see it on their character sheet and then only see the things they are good at. That limits options. Then of course there is the problem of some people thinking the Wizard hanging out with a Rogue can't learn how to pick a lock without multiclassing
Optimization isn't limiting anything. It is simply the a thinking process and is based on parameters you set yourself and can adjust at any time. Just because they optimize doesn't mean they can't roll for things their characters is not good at. There is nothing in optimization that will forcibly limit someone.
Having played most of my DnD career (40+ years) with a Nat 1 being not only a fail but a critical fail and a Nat 20 being a critical success I don’t have a problem with the rule. Not having DM crits is going to make party survival much more likely much of the time but I know several ways to deal with that. What having crit fails and hits does is indeed remove the “ you can’t make the roll needed so don’t bother trying”. That can slow play somewhat but typically doesn’t and when you get a chain of crits it makes the result truly memorable and game/character changing. The longest one I ever saw was a crit hit followed by 10 crit fails in a row.
Worth highlighting this post because, amid the rampant speculation folks have been engaging in on this thread, posts of this nature have been ignored. Go back through this thread and one would see a fair number of posts exactly like this - “I have actually played with critical successes and failures on skill checks and they actually improve gameplay by [assorted reasons listed].”
Yet, despite the consensus among folks who have actually used a rule like this, their posts are almost universally ignored by folks who want to snipe back and forth with their speculation - evidently actual data from players already doing this for years is not flashy enough for people who would prefer to rant about how they assume it might “destroy the game” of some such nonsense.
As everyone who actually plays with these rules know, the added element of randomness removes the fait accompli element of high-level gameplay; the feeling that players become near indestructible at high levels (amusingly, some of the folks complaining about this are the same folks who complain about how OP characters feel at high levels - it is almost like a lot of D&D players value complaining more than consistency in their own opinions!). Knowing there is a slight chance of failure on a roll adds meaning to rolls when players have stacked their stats super high, turning a check from something that’s already a given outcome into something that actually might result in something unexpected. As everyone who already played with this rule noted, that unexpected outcome almost always leads to laughter at the table, interesting story moments, and a general improvement of the game itself.
But, hey, why listen to all those folks when speculation based exclusively on rules text with either only cursory experimentation (but going into the experiment biased against the change) or (more likely) no in-game experience is so much easier than acknowledging others with experience might actually have valid insights!
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Relying on a fail on one wont balance concentration checks if that is your concern.
That is no issue with bullet proof concentration saves. The main balancing aspect (as in 99.9 repeating % of it) of concentration is that you can only concentrate on one spell at a time. Furthermore, concentration can still be lost through incapacitation effects such as stun or paralysis.
It is not bad design to have saves that the PC can't fail as PC's have to invest into their saves to get to that point. Being able to succeed automatically through having a high enough bonus is not a flaw or a bug in the game's design nor does it negatively affect the game. PC's can't auto succeed on every save as you can't invest into every save, so they will always have a targetable weakness.
The rule as written literally says the DM can not allow a roll. Whether or not to allow a roll is at the DMs discretion. If the DM thinks the declared action's DC is above 30 or below 5, there's no need for a roll. It's baked into the language of the rule to block exactly this concern.
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"The term d20 Test encompasses the three main d20 rolls of the game: ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws. If something in the game affects d20 Tests, it affects all three of those rolls.
The DM determines whether a d20 Test is warranted in any given circumstance. To be warranted, a d20 Test must have a target number no less than 5 and no greater than 30.
ROLLING A 1
If you roll a 1 on the d20, the d20 Test automatically fails, regardless of any modifiers to the roll.
ROLLING A 20
If you roll a 20 on the d20, the d20 Test automatically succeeds, regardless of any modifiers to the roll. A player character also gains Inspiration when rolling the 20, thanks to the remarkable success. Rolling a 20 doesn’t bypass limitations on the test, such as range and line of sight. The 20 bypasses only bonuses and penalties to the roll."
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As far as how a rule makes people feel, the DM and players have to set expectations for each other. If a table can't come to an understanding on how rolls will work, there are going to be way bigger problems at the table than rules interpretation.
The only reason this rule is being suggested in the first place is because people didn't seem to understand current RAW (at least that is what Crawford said in the video) so WotC wanted to test to see if people actually wanted peoples misunderstanding of the rules to become the new RAW.
I don't
I know there are several people on both sides of this issue, on Friday we all get to tell WotC whether we like it or not.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Yeah that's totally fair. The only thing I was trying to say at first is that this rule isn't that different than they rules as written now if the DM and players are all on the same page and OK with slightly fewer rolls. The DM's just telling people they succeed for fail without the need for a roll a few times every session. It's fine either way. This way probably is clearer and gives the illusion of a bit more power for the players, because they know if they get to roll, they always at least have a chance at success.
Well feats are no longer going to be optional; they shouldn't have been optional to begin with. Also, magic items and spells like bless are other ways for PC's to pass saves that their modifier alone would not be able to pass. However, the question here is not that the only chance to pass saves is if you use feats; it is whether PC's being able to pass saves on a nat 1, which I don't think is bad design at all since it requires investment on the PC's part to be able to do that.
Having played most of my DnD career (40+ years) with a Nat 1 being not only a fail but a critical fail and a Nat 20 being a critical success I don’t have a problem with the rule. Not having DM crits is going to make party survival much more likely much of the time but I know several ways to deal with that. What having crit fails and hits does is indeed remove the “ you can’t make the roll needed so don’t bother trying”. That can slow play somewhat but typically doesn’t and when you get a chain of crits it makes the result truly memorable and game/character changing. The longest one I ever saw was a crit hit followed by 10 crit fails in a row.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Except it is objectively bad design. The point of a die roll, like many other elements of the game, is to showcase risk versus reward. An ability check isn't rolled until the DM says so. If the DM decides a task is routine enough that your character cannot fail, then that's it. They just pass, no die roll necessary.
But saving throws are forced. The die must be cast. If the result on the die is ever irrelevant, then there's no point to the roll. And whatever forced the saving throw was utterly wasted. And that cuts both ways across the table. Anything the players can do, the DM can do. And if you can automatically pass some saving throws, so can the DM.
Sorry, not sorry, but no.
It is not objectively bad design. It would be objectively bad design if a character could start out with it. However because a character has to build for it, it is a perfectly valid design. There is nothing wrong with being able to put in the investment to guarantee something.
There is nothing wrong with the DM not calling for a saving throw if your character has the modifier to succeed on a nat 1. It gives a sense of satisfaction of how strong the character has come and can make their enemies have an oh crap moment. That said, they have other saves that can be targetted and are not invincible.
In a campaign I am currently in, despite having a +14 int save and thus am immune to a mind flayer's mind blast, my artificer still had several close calls when going into a mind flayer hive to kill an Elder Brain. Me being immune to mind blast did not detract any fun from the rest of the party, in fact they cheered that I was able to pull it off. If it was objectively bad design then it would have ruined the encounters, but it didn't.
Just because a DM can do it doesn't mean they should. Enemy stat blocks rarely if ever can succeed on a nat 1. Besides, the DM already has legendary Resistances for guaranteeing successes. It is more of something a player can do if they build for it.
Sorry, not sorry, but just because you don't like it does not make it objectively bad, especially when it has been working well for the past few years. You are wrong on it being objectively bad design. It sounds more like you don't like players being able to optimize than anything despite saying you had no issue with optimization.
Saves always failing on a 1 is the same situation as attacks always hitting on a 20. Immunity should be achieved by a feature that says you're immune, not by bonus stacking.
It's not. Missing an attack often has a lesser consequence than failing a save. For example, failing against a disinitigrate spell can spell instant death if it brings you to 0; missing an attack just means you don't deal any damage from an attack you just dealt. Or failing against a Hold Person means you are paralyzed and will lose your next turn and any attacks that hit you are criticals and you can lose subsequent turns.
Only reason why I can tolerate nat 1 automiss is because the consequence is rather minor and because the math works out with you generally missing on nat 1's even if auto miss was not a thing, even if you had a magic weapon boosting your attack bonus.
Players should be able to succeed on a nat 1 if they have the modifier to do so. Plus, it doesn't always mean you are immune; if there is an effect on success such as half damage, you still suffer that. My artificer was immune to mind blasts because it had no effect on a successful save, but if there was something like half damage on save she would have suffered that.
Failing a save is not the same as missing an attack; they should not be compared like that.
The rule isn't even being changed for balancing reasons. It is just because some people didn't read the actual rule and thought that nat 1's were autofails and nat 20's are autosuccess.
To be honest, both are bad imo. And auto hitting on a 20 is already functionally useless since if you roll a 20 you're already going to hit the AC of everything below CR30 on die anyways with nothing but your proficiency bonus.
I'm going to offer some perspective from a different game:
Anyone who recognises my avatar probably already knows which one, but for the rest: Vampire the Masquerade.
Now... Rolling dice in VtM works very differently from D&D. Instead of rolling a single d20 and adding a modifier, the Storyteller System works with dice pools where you roll a pool of d10s determined by one's stats and any relevant bonuses and try to beat a difficulty set by the gamemaster (Storyteller or ST in the system's parlance). Various version of the game had different ways for determining said difficulty. Early on it was the number you had to roll on the die to make it count as a success (an easy task might require a 4 on a d10 for a success, an almost impossible task might require an 8) with any success on a single die meaning the action succeeded and the number of successes determining the magnitude of that success. Later on it moved to making the number required for a success static (a 6 or above) and making the difficulty determined by a minimum number of successes required.
In early versions of that system had a rule that regarded a '1' on a d10 to be a critical failure, which wouldn't simply not be a success on that die, but also negate one success on another die. The exception being a 10. A 10 was a guaranteed success that couldn't be negated by a 1 (so if you roll four dice and the results are 9,9, 1,1 you fail, because the two 1s cancel out the two 9s, but if you roll 10, 1, 1, 1 you succeed, because the three 1s can't cancel the automatic success of the 10).
So why does this matter?
That system was changed intentionally, because it felt bad to play with. Initially people couldn't really put into words why it felt bad, just that it did. So White Wolf did a lot of playtesting and gathered a lot of feedback and ultimately they reached a conclusion: Having any result on a roll be an automatic failure was more frustrating than it was beneficial.
The main way that a character would get stronger was to increase stats in order to increase the dice pool and therefore increasing the chance of getting at least one success in the roll.... But increasing dice pools also increased the chance of getting at least one 1. As your dice pool increased, the chance of succeeding did statistically increase, of course. But the psychological effect of knowing that a fluke could still ruin everything meant that it didn't feel like your character was getting stronger.
The system had another mechanic for generating automatic successes, the willpower stat, which would grant you a limited pool of points you could spend to get one automatic success on a test that couldn't be negated by rolling a 1. And in playtesting they found that despite being far more expensive to raise than the stats that determine dice pools, most players would prefer to save up their xp points (VtM works on a system where instead of getting stat increases across the board when reaching a certain xp threshold, xp points can be spent directly to raise one's statistics) to buy more willpower.
Because with the looming spectre of your dice screwing you and causing you to automatically fail at something your character was supposed to be really, really good at, most players would prefer increasing their ability to enjoy the safety of that single, unspectacular success rather than making their character actually good at things.
Ultimately it was discovered that having the possibility of rolling 1s and negating their successes has a psychological effect far beyond the likelihood of it actually happening... Because when it did happen it felt so bad, because people felt cheated out of a success, that it outweighed the numerous instances where it didn't in the minds of the players. It made players afraid to roll their dice, because the mere chance that a straight roll could result in a complete failure even on a maximum dice pool felt so off puting that many players would just default to 'I spend a willpower, I'm not even going to bother rolling, tell me what my one success gets me'... And VtM already had far less emphasis on rolling than D&D does.
So they changed it. They still wanted to have the possibility of critical failures, because VtM is a drama game and nothing generates drama like an unmitigated failure. And when I say 'they' I don't just mean the designers. I mean the players as well. The players wanted a possibility of critical failure, just not the one they had. So they made it so that instead of subtracting successes from the rest of the roll, a 1 didn't matter if you rolled any successes, but triggered a critical failure if you didn't get at least one success.
And that felt a lot better. Because, sure, rolling a 1 could still be bad, but it would only be bad if the roll was a failure anyway. You were no longer 'cheated' out of a success by randomly rolling a 1. So rolling a 1 on a failure became almost as exciting as rolling six successes (VtM's version of a critical success).
Because the problem was never that a 1 could cause you to fail in and of itself, it was that rolling a 1 could turn what would otherwise have been a success into a failure.
The same is true for D&D. If you have a high enough modifier to succeed on a check regardless of what you roll then getting 'cheated' out of that success by rolling a 1 feels far worse than if you fail the check when you only had a middling chance to succeed in the first place.
Beyond that, though, there's another reason to keep '1 is critical miss, 20 is a critical success' only on attack rolls:
Failing a save is often far, far more devastating than failing an attack roll. With the exception of a desperate, hail-Mary attack on a creature that is close to death, but also about to wreck the party's sh... erhm poop, failing on an attack roll doesn't often have direct character ending consequences. You just... Miss one attack and did a little less damage a little less quickly this combat than if you'd succeeded. You'll make another next turn... Or if you have more than one attack per turn, you'll make another one right after (or made one already before on this turn).
But a save? Failing a save can be the difference between taking a lot of damage and taking an instantly lethal amount of damage. It can lead to a character suffering a debilitating condition that effectively takes them out of the running for the rest of the fight. A single failed save can result in widespread consequences that lead to a TPK in a way that a single failed attack almost never will.
At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, suffering a TPK because one player failed a save due to getting an automatic failure by rolling a 1 on a roll that they would have succeeded at had they rolled any other number... including a 1 if that hadn't been an automatic failure... is the kind of utterly demoralising situation that can lead to the entire group just straight up giving up on the game.
Sure, objectively speaking it's just a fluke. It's not very likely to happen. But the fact that it can happen? That it does happen? That knowledge alone is enough to lead to people having anxiety attacks about a game that is, ultimately, supposed to be about telling a fun story with your friends (or, sometimes, people that you somewhat tolerate because they're the only people around you can play with).
So would people feel the same if it was on a percentile die and you only have a 1% chance of failure? What percentage failure is Ok with you?
It can't be zero.
If you are rolling a die to determine an outcome at something then there should be a fear of failure.
I don't understand the feel bad argument. If that is the case then just let everyone succeed at everything. Can't have anyone feel bad.
Instead of thinking how bad it is your big high level perfect character should never fail think of it as a role-playing opportunity.
Let's say your character has a +19 to fear roles and the DC is 20. You're going to suceed 95% of the time. Willing to bet it comes up so rarely that you're going to succeed the more than that (meaning you are rolling fear roles so rarely that you're going to succeed). You roll a 1. So now this character who rarely feels fear suddenly is afraid. What do they do?
It is simple. If you are bringing an element of chance into the game there needs to be a chance of failure.
Oh as the above poster brought of White Wolf, we played Vampire when it first came out. We had no problem with the die rolls. Sure even the most powerful may, on occasion, fail. We just went with it.
Here is the problem and how it limits.
Wizard doesn't have lockpicking skill some think they can never try. Of course they can. It will be harder but of course they can try.
Don't have tavern brawler? You can still pick up a chair and hit someone over the head with it.
Anyone can pick up a sword and swing it. Anyone can lie
List goes on.
DC may change though.
People specialize and see it on their character sheet and then only see the things they are good at. That limits options.
Then of course there is the problem of some people thinking the Wizard hanging out with a Rogue can't learn how to pick a lock without multiclassing
I disagree when you say it can't be 0. Part of the point of raising mod to +19 is so you don't have to roll when the DC is 20 or lower. Not everyone is looking for that role playing opportunity on a nat 1. When you are raising your mod so you can succeed on a nat 1, you are optimizing it so you are removing that element of chance for that specific type of roll. Reliable Talent does this for Rogues already, so it isn't a foreign concept to the game; even with the nat 1 auto fail, Reliable Talent supersedes that as it alters the die roll itself. So already in the game there is a mechanic that removes chance.
When you say it can't be 0, that is how you feel the game should be. However, current 5E allows people to guarantee certain rolls, and plenty of people have no issue and see it as a good thing. The fact that there are people who enjoy it and that this is actually heavily debated shows that there is merit in not having nat 1 autofails and there not always needing a chance of failure.
D&D has exploded in popularity and has gained an incredibly diverse group of players with all sorts of play styles and 5E has supported those variety of play styles very well. In those varying playstyles are those who optimize to reduce the element of randomness, to make their character more and more consistent, even reaching 100% for certain rolls if they invest enough. That kind of play style is not wrong or lesser than a player style that embraces the randomness. It is all preference. Just because they want to reduce the element of chance with their character doesn't mean D&D is not the game for them. Telling someone that D&D is not the game for them (as I have been told before in this very thread) is just rude, disingenuous, and goes against inclusivity of the game.
Optimization isn't limiting anything. It is simply the a thinking process and is based on parameters you set yourself and can adjust at any time. Just because they optimize doesn't mean they can't roll for things their characters is not good at. There is nothing in optimization that will forcibly limit someone.
Worth highlighting this post because, amid the rampant speculation folks have been engaging in on this thread, posts of this nature have been ignored. Go back through this thread and one would see a fair number of posts exactly like this - “I have actually played with critical successes and failures on skill checks and they actually improve gameplay by [assorted reasons listed].”
Yet, despite the consensus among folks who have actually used a rule like this, their posts are almost universally ignored by folks who want to snipe back and forth with their speculation - evidently actual data from players already doing this for years is not flashy enough for people who would prefer to rant about how they assume it might “destroy the game” of some such nonsense.
As everyone who actually plays with these rules know, the added element of randomness removes the fait accompli element of high-level gameplay; the feeling that players become near indestructible at high levels (amusingly, some of the folks complaining about this are the same folks who complain about how OP characters feel at high levels - it is almost like a lot of D&D players value complaining more than consistency in their own opinions!). Knowing there is a slight chance of failure on a roll adds meaning to rolls when players have stacked their stats super high, turning a check from something that’s already a given outcome into something that actually might result in something unexpected. As everyone who already played with this rule noted, that unexpected outcome almost always leads to laughter at the table, interesting story moments, and a general improvement of the game itself.
But, hey, why listen to all those folks when speculation based exclusively on rules text with either only cursory experimentation (but going into the experiment biased against the change) or (more likely) no in-game experience is so much easier than acknowledging others with experience might actually have valid insights!