Brennan Lee Mulligan's New "Emphasis" D&D Rule Explained 

Shout out to u/RAINING_DAYS on Reddit for compiling all this information into a handy document to use in your games! www.reddit.com/r/UnearthedArcana/comments/11yiatw/brennen_lee_mulligans_new_rolling_with_emphasis/

Wait so if they're the same distance from 10 you take a... Mulligan of some kind? 😮✨

Fun fact: Emphasis rolls are more likely to go well than not because 20 is further from 10 than 1 is.

Id love to also homebrew this into wild magic sorcerers somehow; they’ve always been a little underpowered IMO and giving them the ability to occasionally force an emphasis roll could be cool!

One tip I learned from Brennan is to always have the players' current character sheets in hand, to avoid constant "does x hit your ac?"

This absolutely fits with the guy who I know most well for those “box of doom” rolls.

i think my favourite thing about this roll is a nat20 becomes an auto success regardless of what is in the other die

Best part is that this is from a podcast that he and a couple of other people started recently. Only 3 episodes and it is called WorldsBeyondNumber

Emphasising the chaos feels very on brand for Brennan LM

Oh I love this idea. There are moments where nothing, not even spectacular failure, feels worse than a middling roll.

hahaha, it's like it's a roll with advantage and disadvantage at the same time! Very interesting idea~

This is what I ended up using my high variance dice from a Wyrmwood kickstarter for. It’s a D20 with 3 20s, 3 1s, 2 19s, 2 2s, etc. can be a lot of fun but they hardly get used unfortunately.

This rule is dope! I’m so gonna use this in any future games! Thanks be to our DnD content creators!!!

A nice alternative to it is consistently. Roll 3 dice and take the middle one. Perfect for any task done carefully and risk adverse and the better you are at a thing the more powerful it is

I first heard him ask for this role in the kids campaign for World Without Numbers and thought it was brilliant! Glad to see it get more traction.

Really cool concept, it seems like a coin flip with more steps, but I guess there’s a change you don’t get tails or heads on some rolls

I will ABSOLUTEly add this rule to my game

Or the GM could just come up with a target number and any applicable stat bonuses would apply on a single D20 roll. There were numerous occasions either I or another GM did this. One example was an elf character I was playing had nothing that could harm a troll we encountered. During the fight I climbed its back and covered the trolls head with a bag blinding it. This helped change the battle heavily in our favor. But to succeed I had to make a dex check to climb its back and every round to keep riding it while holding on to the bag. Eventually the troll tore the bag off.

I like the secret built in feature that if you happen to roll a 20 and a 1, the 20 always wins since its further from 10 than a 1

The Emphasis role could make for a very fun feature for a subclass or group of subclasses.

This reminds me of something I did for my homebrewed rules (not D&D). You could *raise the stakes*, but so could the referee. While the stakes are raised, all successes were critical successes, but all failures were miserable failures! Some abilities (like feats) gave you special cool stuff that you could only do when the stakes were raised.

These situations already fit into D&D's 4 result system. D&D doesn't have mixed success baked into the rules, so all this does us mildly increase crit hit and crit miss chances.

Damn. I've done something similar for years, but not nearly this neat. Love it.

This only matters if the DM's interpretation of what happens is based purely on the number rolled and how far it is from the DC - you could just interpret a success/failure differently based on how spectacular you think the result would be. Like, in rules terms the only results are "success" and "failure", so this doesn't actually do anything rules-wise.

Omg thank you ao much! I have been brain storming how to make my sessions more epic and exciting

Shame I haven't figured out a way to translate what our groups used to refer to as the "luck roll" for 5e. It used to occur on a natural 2 and was rolled to confirm for 3.X/PF 1.0 like a crit. However, a luck roll is simultaneously a critical hit and a critical fumble. You deal critical damage with a sword, but it shatters in the process, or perhaps you swing so hard you fall off the balcony you are standing on. I once got it unarmed at level 2 vs an ogre and my fist was embedded in him as he fell over dead and there were still more enemies to fight.

totally going to do this! this could help so much in adding some mutch neeeded fun chaos in my games.

So I used this last night with my DnD Group. An NPC that accidentally took some drugs got a nat 20 for his con save and it hyped him up like he was on cocaine. He then later went into a tournament brawl against another NPC and won, however the drugs soon wore off before his next match against the Goliath Champion. My group went searching for another drug to help him get back on that high but when they gave it to him I asked one of the four to roll the emphasis roll. It came out both dices were 3 out of 2d20s. The dwarf snorted the drug and passed out due to the amount he was given and then one of the PCs had to replace the NPC. It was great.

Honestly, this feels very balanced, and a good way for me as a DM to decide to allow an action that I might otherwise just say is impossible. You want to cut of the evil wizard's hand before he can cast the big spell? Go ahead and try, but if you fail your character is going to be the one in serious danger

Gwaptiva's Rule for D&D: GMs only roll dice for the sound that it makes. Collorary: GMs require dice that do not make noise when rolled

There's a similar rule in Bunkers and badasses. They have a badass die/roll and if it's an 18,19, or 20 it's a Crit success and if it's a 1,2 or 3 it's a Crit fail.

They call this... a coin toss.

Or you could just use a dice system like FFG's Star Wars or Genesys system, where you are rolling multiple dice, and it's not a binary pass/fail result. There are flavorings of the result based on the dice rolls. You have the basic binary pass/fail equation, but the other dice add flare to it. For example, Luke Skywalker makes an attack role to quickly shut the door behind him and Leia via a blaster shot, so that the Stormtroopers don't get them. He succeeds! But he rolls a few points worth of threat (the negative flavor term), and this means that the entire mechanism shorts out, and this also disables the walkway controls. Or an example from a game I ran with some friends. A friend was playing a Wookiee, and wanted to intimidate a group of thugs that were bothering them. He didn't want to fight, so he thought he'd growl at them. He succeeded at the intimidate check, but also rolled a Dispair (the worst kind of negative flavoring term, this will make for a serious problem the party has to deal with now). So I had it that his intimidate was SO good, that it basically scared that entire market square they were in, making bystanders scream "RUN! RABID WOOKIIEE! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!" which made everyone leave them alone....but also called down the local authorities on them. xD It's a way more dynamic and fun system

Someone already makes a coin with a 20 on one side and a 1 on the other...

The golden rule of D&D is that the word of the DM is the final say on any matter when it comes to rules. Even if it directly goes against what it says in the Player's Handbook or Dungeon Master's Guide. This means that the dice rolls the DM makes has always been suggestions. So if you roll a crit that will wipe the party you can just pretend that it was 16 or what ever you want. This is way the DM hide his rolls from the players.

That is a perfectly executed tweak of gameplay mechanics - simple, flexible, slots into core rules neatly and non-destructively. Love it.

Reminds me of a game where the DM made a feat called "Hold My Beer" where instead of a d20, you flipped a coin.

I’ve actually had this rule implemented in my home games for about a year now, we always called them Chaos rolls.

You could accomplish the same thing with one roll. It is a trivial complication for a system where the DM is the decider in the first place. Just like DMs get to set DCs, if the DM wants an action to have a bigger chance of a dramatic result or failure, they canadjust the numerical standards before the roll. Instead of a nat 20 being a big success, 16 or higher is. Instead of a nat 1 being a big flop, 5 or lower is.

The middle is 10½, btw, but the DM should be able to choose any number depending on which scenario they deem more likely.

If you role a nat 1 and a nat 20 your character takes a screenshot.

... Might as well toss a coin 🙄

Something I was already doing I now just have a name for it!

At my latest DND club meeting(last Thursday), my DM has introduced what he refers to as “doom rolls” which I thought was an interesting idea. Two days later, I see this video. He even mentioned the whole “axe in the dragon’s mouth” thing.

Love the clip from Neverafter near the end. Really fits the mechanic in discussion and just emphasizes the purpose with Brennan’s DMing style

This would work even better if D&D made consistent use of degrees of success and failure, like Pathfinder 2e does.

I’m definitely bringing this up with my DM (he actively avoids Critical Role and Dimension 20 so they don’t “taint” his style)

A bit ago I was playing a homebrew race called split souls (one person splits into 2 entities and hold opposite traits). I was playing a necromancer rogue and my friend was playing a necromancer barbarian. I was vulnerable to fire, meanwhile my friend was immune to it. I bolted behind a dragon, cast fireball into its ass and then just as quickly used a feature called "Swap" where I can swap places on my opposite so long as they are on the same plane.

I still prefer the Rule of Reasoning- If an action is well thought out and detailed why the character should reasonably be able to succeed, no roll is necessary, the action succeeds. If no amount of good reasoning can convince the GM or other members of the table that it should ever work, no roll is necessary, the action fails A dragon's bite is powerful enough to instantly kill living creatures, an axe handle would likely snap, and the dragon would still likely attack with other parts of its body in the same turn rather than it somehow stopping the creature from attacking- instant fail. BUT, if their axe has points on the top and a butt spike, and the player reasons the purpose is not to stop the bite attack but to have the attack itself drive the spikes into the soft flesh of the dragon's mouth- instant success and the dragon may now have disadvantage to continue using that bite attack. The example I really always use for this concept is: If you're playing a fighter and you just say "I swing my weapon", I don't care what you roll, you're going to miss because just wildly swinging a weapon is rarely going to be effective. If that player says "I swing at the arm they exposed while attacking me" I will not make them roll to hit, only for damage and if the damage is high it may result in a dismemberment. Let creatively and good ideas be rewarded, laziness and bad ideas be punished- but try to have those punishments be more on the fun side than the make your players angry side.

F that, I’m bringing the emphasis role into my real life.

Trust Brennan to make a new rule that actually adds to the fun of the game lol

One of my DMs had a homebrew rule that if you rolled a natural one or a natural twenty you had to add to it by rolling again. So you could for example end up with a double nat 20 or a double nat 1, or more. Best score? 57. Vampire turned to dust on the spot.

its a built-in high variance d20 idea. that's absolutely awesome!

this sounds just like advantage and disadvantage at the same time but the player never know which, kinda too heavy in the gm side of decision making for me

It’s basically rolling with both advantage and disadvantage at once. It’s potential cool, but can dramatically increase the death ratio

I would just go 'oh, you failed to lodge your axe into a dragon's mouth? roll to not lose your hand'

Fun fact: A Mulligan is a soup made from the odd or ends of food. This means that the further from 10 on either end could be described as a Mulligan. Dude pulled a powermove and made a genuinely good rule that also includee him in a vague way, no matter how far it spreads.

I appreciate that it slightly leans positive.

It feels like a way to get a good cinematic story moment that you tell stories about later in life

How the fuck does Sam and his team keep coming up with these excitingly fresh ideas for game shows?!?!?! I love this! I can’t remember an episode where it felt derivative!!!!! Even the sequel episodes feel fresh!!!!!!

This reminds of the homebrew feat “prophetic screwup” that the podcast JRWI has, where a player can choose to crit success any roll but it lets the DM crit fail another of their rolls later on

I do love how frequently the "I put my axe in the creatures mouth to hold it open" is. And I've never seen it go horribly.

I came up with a version of this years ago, but I was never able to figure out the statistical variance to it: 3d20, take all 3 results and line them up in order from lowest to highest. If the middle number is 11 or more, you take the highest, and if it's 10 or lower, you take the lower number. Normally you'd think it wouldn't be much different, but it's like rolling with both double advantage and double disadvantage, and then flipping a coin to see which you use, except that if your low roll is already 11, then you're guaranteed the highest number, which is in turn guaranteed to be higher, while if your highest roll is 10, then you're guaranteed to take the lowest, which is in turn guaranteed to be lower. BUT since all 3 rolls are used to determine what the middle number is, you don't know what the lowest/highest number is until you check them all.

Brennan coming in clutch to make DND more fun, as always.

I could see a lot of variants of this rule. Like, a safety roll which is the opposite - roll 2d20, keep the closest to 10. Or a proficient roll - roll 2d20, keep the better roll. Or an alternate version of the safety roll - just roll 2d10 or even 5d4 instead of the standard d20!

In the world of D&D, Brendan is a genius. With absolutely no irony I would love for him to DM for me.

In my games i brought in a "bond" roll. When ever you get a horse, donkey, or even famiar you roll a bond roll. This roll will see how well the animal likes you and will openly obey your commands. Even if you roll low you can increase it over time by actually interacting with it.

What a marvellous and sensible addition to advantage and disadvantage Marvellous!

I am SO keeping this to potentially implement at some point it looks like such a fun idea XD

I do love that Wennan Wee Wuligan. This sounds like a fun idea for sure.

My version of this is called 'Rolling for Style' and occurs when you want some drama/tension around an action that a PC should be able to pull off no problems. In these cases the PCs roll normal or with advantage if they are proficient against a DC of 5 or lower. Instead of pass/fail I use degrees of success with anything below 10 having a negative or embarrassing consequence (eg you smash though the door but slip over in the process falling prone) and a NAT20 getting a Epic moment (you smash the door off it's hinges so hard that it rams directly into the guard on the other side knocking him out). I use these rolls alongside RP in that if a player describes the PCs actions well they can lower the DC down to a style roll.

The Lancer RPG also does something like this with Difficult, Risky, and Heroic rolls. Essentially making each one harder to varying degrees, and they're used to display how much the odds are stacked against you by not rolling normally. Pretty interesting, fun game if you get the chance to try it.

makes me wish the DM of the one dnd campaign I ever got to play used Emphasis rolls... It would have made several moments where my character got to shine soooo badass, like how she crammed a necklace of fireballs (6 beads, so 6 fireballs) down a juvenile white dragon's throat and made it go boom. And that other time she turned a mimic into charcoal with her lightning breath. (she was a blue dragonborn sorceress)

The moment I heard Brennan Lee Mulligan you had my full attention

I did something like this but mine was: If it's a 20, you succeed. If it's a 1 you succeed but you will have to roll again for an horrific side effect. Any other roll is an immediate fail. You'd think people would hate this kind of roll... but my players always loved it. It was "Rolling without Thought".

Interesting to see this as an official rule, I've been using it but I make a slight adjustment, it's the roll furthest from 10.5 because of average and if it's a tie you take the lower roll.

I've had great success using Emphasis rolls in my newest campaign. We're still early enough in that we can mess around with new rules like this without disrupting an established flow. I also like using Emphasis rolls for moments when I know a roll is going to result in a success, but I want to know how much of a success it'll be. Like when I have a player with expertise in medicine examine a body, an emphasis roll is called. On a high, they'll find the clue they need and also some extra details about how they were killed that could lead to the players discovering who did it or where it was done quicker. On a low roll, they'll only find the clue they need, and need to find out the rest through more investigation routes

This is a great rule to add excitement to players actions when they lazily just do a basic attack or attempt, suddenly there’s a way to get your players excited even if they’re stumped or out of creative ideas. However; there’s a risk of players becoming lazy-ER! Expecting the DM to do all the work of fancying up there moves.

My DM hit us with the emphasis out of nowhere and we've never had as many laughs and cheers at the table as when it comes up.

glad to see variance dice getting some attention

Prime example of a rule that didn't need to exist. As GM you already have the say on what goes, so if you decide that an action is going to have a dire consequence, just make the ruling. Adding a separate roll like this just bogs down an already roll-heavy game.

High variance dice exist for this exact purpose. Like a normal D20, but multiple 1s, 2s, 19s, 20s, etc.

Brennan is a genius and I think I like his dm style slightly better than Mercer’s. I know I said and I’m sticking to it.

Ooh that's a cool one. One thing that I've considered is allowing players to flip a coin instead of rolling a D20 three times per session (a pool shared by the entire party). Heads is a Nat20 and tails is a Nat1. These coin flips would be completely unaffected by advantage or disadvantage so you only get one roll of the D2 regardless of circumstances. What can I say? Some of us at the table just like to gamble.

Legend has it that they’re still rolling 5 to 15

"I jam the mace in the dragon's mouth" _rolls_ *SNAKE EYES* 👁️👄👁️

Brennan is a genius once again

We called this a hi/low drama roll back in the day. Same effect different wording. We rolled 2d20, the closest to 20 or 1 ruled the role. It could be used to determine success or failure, but the purpose was for dramatic tension. So, you roll the normal d20 for success or failure, and a drama role to determine if the failure had an ultimate unintended positive outcome. Kind of a complicated advantage system. There were more nuances, but you get the idea.

Seems like a pretty insane buff tbf. A roll of a 10 is very likely not enough to perform the action that the player wants to do, even with bonuses. AC, for example, is usually at least 14. This rule basically allows for an advantage roll that nearly always helps the player. I'll give a couple of examples: Roll 1: 14 Roll 2: 7 Helps the player by boosting the roll to the higher value and avoids the low roll Roll 1: 5 Roll 2: 15 Roll 3: 9 Roll 4: 13 Prevents the low roll of 5 and while 15 is preferable to 13, still has a good outcome Roll 1: 12 Roll 2: 17 Boosts the roll directly Roll 1: 5 Roll 2: 3 You were almost definitely going to fail regardless on a 5. No additional harm Roll 1: 11 Roll 2: 6 This is the only situation where you can lose a potentially good roll and even then, the bonus needed to boost such a mid roll might still mean that you would have failed.

Any homebrew class/subclass, with this feature as it's main ability would be awesome. Bring out the chaos of the dicy part of the game

I like splitting things into two rolls, One roll to successfully jam the axe into the mouth, another for it to actually hold the mouth open.

I've been trying to play with something like this so that epic moments can happen. We all know that time when a characters best friend has just dropped to the ground and now the fighter is enraged and wants blood curdling vengeance. I want to allow the mechanics of the game to make that moment amazing. But usually they just roleplay saying something and then take some swings with the sword and let the next player have their turn. A bit deflating.

Similar idea... idk if this already exists but I had that idea in a dream A cursed roll... where the modifiers you have are all negative... so +3, -1, +4, +0, -1, +2 becomes -3, -1, -4, -0, -1, -2 And opposite for a blessed roll +3, +1, +4, +0, +1, +2 And for a reversed roll, all modifiers are switched. + - -3, +1, -4, -0, +1, -2

I wonder how it would work to use this instead of having advantage and disadvantage just cancel out.

Thats awesome! I usually just cut off their arms if they fail.

The DM has just to do that a +/-5 from the chosen DC changes the outcome, and then at +/-10 from the DC, +/- 15 from the DC and so on. More easy than an "emphasy check".

This was how i used to do lucky feat, and basically the point would make the roll happen again and the farther from ten gets used, since there is both good and bad luck.

I think a coin flip would be more economical if it's just critical success or critical failure to avoid rerolls.

Theres also flipping a coin or rolling a d4 if you want a bit of softness to the roll.

I would further adjust it to whichever roll is further from the D20 midpoint, so a 10 and 11 would clash and so forth.