DnD Replay DnD Resources and more
A Natural 20 on a dice roll is not an auto success on anything other than an attack roll. There are plenty of reasons to still call for a roll, even if by stats alone the player cannot succeed. Removing the chance for players to work as a team by using features and turn that failure into a success means you’re a s*** DM 🤷♂️
Imagine how targeted the specific player at the table feels when the Dragon breathes fire on the whole party, and you tell them not to bother rolling since they can’t succeed, yet everyone else rolls.
Pick up the rest of this and more from the source:
all around the web
Mitigating the degree of failure.
As a DM I like to have a copy of each players sheet and will try to keep it updated alongside them. Sometimes I even keep it better updated than the player and will be like “don’t worry you have x” lol
I also always have them roll, partly so they won’t catch on to what I’m up to, and also because a nat20 can still be worth something.
Maybe they don’t fully succeed but they can still take that extra step forward
Rolling dice is fun
Just saying, most those things are pre-roll abilities. Flash of Genius is about the only thing that comes after the roll, afaik.
Sounds like a boring table! Good thing im not at it
Bard: I tell the Devil that I am his father and he should give me money.
DM: Roll to bluff
*Nat 20*
DM: The Devil doesn’t believe you in the slightest, but you have greatly amused him, so he’ll lend you some money at a reasonable interest rate of 25% compounded monthly.
I think itâs more an issue of problem players insist they want to do a impossible feat then when they get the natural 20 they expect it to happen. Impossible isnât DC 20, itâs 30. They have 30 sided dice. They could be used for that exact situation. If they get a natural 30. Then they can get their impossible feat. Until then thatâs what your bonuses are for. A natural 20 with a +6 proficiency plus a +4 ability score modifier will get them to 30. If it doesnât total above 30 donât expect to hit that impossible DC just because you rolled the 20.
Just ask the players for their modifiers before asking them to roll.
I dont expect the DM to memorize all the characters stuff, but it would be an easy fix to ask the player first and then just tell them they aren’t making it even on a 20.
Funny how it’s only new players that ever seem to debate this
Okay to everyone saying you should know your players stat block.
I am a dm for 8 players
I have to run 15 monsters
I am keeping track of every debuff and stat change going on in the fight. I have walls of notes.
I cannot, MENTALLY CANNOT, keep track of every little ability my players have. Much less half the time they don’t even remember their own.
Not every dm is a hyper polymath who can track hundreds of things in their heads.
Maybe we can just agree that each table is its own and stop calling other dms bad or worse because it doesn’t fit your perfect mindset
80% of players roll without provocation or allowance anyways⊠âI donât care if you rolled a 20, you can NOT seduce a rhinoceros!â âThen why did you let me roll?â âI DIDNâT!â
Word of advice for any DMs make sure you have COPIES of each players character sheets so they don’t have to rattle off their modifiers all the time
Don’t forget, the players are also often the ones to ask if they can roll and many people subscribe to the belief that a good DM should never say no.
Edit: jesus fucking Christ the sheer number of people that can’t understand shit here. Y’all need to grow up
I make them roll for common sense
Keep in mind players ask to do things the DM doesn’t expect and they may need to set a DC. The task may be possible if they have the right stats, but it’s faster to ask for a roll and tell them if they pass or fail.
If I have 5 different stat blocks, character passive scores, HP, ac, etc in front of me, story notes, session notes, etc, in front of me, I don’t need their entire skill sheet or all their saves added.
If I think they could pass, I’ll ask for a roll. If it’s entirely impossible, I’ll just tell them they try and fail.
As a player, I’ve never expected a nat-20 to be an auto-success. But really, the argument can be easily-avoided with a session 0 where expectations are established. And I strongly believe that every game master has a responsibility to run a session 0 for their players where everyone’s level-set on the game and how things will run at the table.
Any Pathfinder 1e friends, saves also crit on 20s and 1s. Just making sure we don’t get things mixed up.
Boom!
most people DO use the “nat 20 is an automatic success” rule, and if you choose not to you need to TELL YOUR PLAYERS THAT AHEAD OF TIME instead of blindsiding them with it in the moment and being a crybaby on the internet about them reasonably being unhappy with it after the fact
Lazy cop-outs and strawmen still abound, I see.
Yeah I mean Matt Mercer has let nat20s fail on skill checks multiple times through out the campaigns.
Because it simply didn’t make sense.
Mighty nines trip through stormy nights eiselcross and their perception checks is a great example of that.
Nat20 being 5% should always succeed though some DMs rely on the strawman fallacy to not have it that way. I’d say the DM should know the stats for PCs. Otherwise players can just cheat and not be caught, be it accidental or on purpose. If the group is online then there’s literally no excuse other than laziness.
Personally when I DM and a player nat 20 for something that is unreasonable I don’t make them succeed in what they were trying to do but I give them something to circle around the problem at hand, or at least something beneficial to them.
On another note.. weather failure is gaurenteed or not, the grandeur of that failure still needs to be decided! Lol
A roll makes sense if any one of the following are true:
1. The DM knows the DC is highly difficult but the players have a chance to reach it with enough spells and preparation (DC 30 with any number of modifiers available), by hiring someone with more skill, or by leveling up.
2. The DM knows the task is impossible but the players believe is possible (picking a locked chest that is actually a mimic).
3. Extreme failure is an option (a trap with a DC of 30, and when failed by 10 or more points are set off).
A check isn’t needed if it’s common knowledge that the player is just wasting time trying to do something impossible.
A check may also not be needed if the player is just going to whine and mope about not succeeding on the check. Let the baby “win” so the game can move forward.
Do the have the slightest chance to succeed? No? Then I say no. No roll. You just can’t do that. Does the question leading to the attempt rouse my curiosity? Yes? Fuck it. Roll it, let’s find out….because it’s fun.
thereâs the fact that while not getting what you want a 20 (or other high roll) will still be okay or even good, but a low roll might turn out terribly.
I will say it as many times as I need to, as a player, I would rather roll to see how badly I failed at something I could have never succeeded at in the first place than to simply be told not to bother rolling. In real life, you don’t have a magical voice of God to tell you that the thing you are trying to do is impossible and so you shouldn’t bother trying, most of the time you discover that something is impossible by trying and failing. Let me discover that something is impossible through trial and error instead of telling me not to try.
How about we all play what we like and you stop calling people “shitty GMs” for the way they have fun?
What if DMs each session just randomly selected one number from each from the 1-10 and 11-20 range to be auto/critical sucess and fail. I mean, any number is just as likely to happen as 1 or 20. Keeps your players on their toes
I disagree, the DM is the arbiter of the game world. They should know all the abilities of their players. Or at least the ones that can alter the dice.
And the problem is easily solved with a “Can you hit an X on your roll?”
You know, anyone who includes a line â if you donât do x ( because thatâs what I do) you are a shit Dm, isnât worth the time to argue with and probably believes that if players donât play a certain way they are shit players too.
This particular argument is one of the reasons my group plays pathfinder now. 4 degrees of success makes this a non- issue.
It’s fine for a DC to exist a PC can’t make but could make with buffs from party members. However, a player doesn’t know that such a DC exists for a given task, so it’s bad form for the DM to make the PC roll without such buffs then blame the player for not knowing the Dc beforehand to ask for player help. Tell the player he can’t make it but maybe with some help from party members he can.
Well, my players have a great time and I’ve been doing it for thirty years almost, so maybe you don’t know what you’re talking about. If a player can’t succeed at something, tell them that unless it’s a good point for the comic relief of watching them try. If you don’t know your player’s basic stat blocks, you aren’t doing your due diligence as a DM. Sounds to me like you’re just lazy.
“Imagine how targeted a specific player feels… [if you don’t let them roll]”
Probably less bad than if they Nat 20, still fail, and start a fight at the table.
I personally single out characters all the time to skip a roll – both because they’ll automatically fail AND because they’ll automatically succeed. My players are made well aware that it is purely about the numbers, not them personally, and I make a genuine effort to make sure this kind of thing happens close to the same amount of time to each of them (though I also try to minimize the number of times this happens in the negative).
It isn’t an automatic success on attack rolls either if the enemy has an AC higher than 20.