I'm a new DM and I've been watching your content for a few months now. I'm running my family through a LMoP/DoIP composite and I ran into an unexpected event last night that made me think of your advice here. My son's barbarian decided to chase fleeing goblins into Neverwinter Wood after the goblins attempted a midnight ambush on the party while they were traveling back to Phandalin. He had no darkvision, no torches, and rolled nat 1 on his first survival check to attempt to navigate the forest at night. Many failed survival checks later, he found a hunting trail that led to Falcon's Hunting Lodge. The rest of the party was able to follow his trail to the lodge once daylight broke. Instead of getting back to Phandalin as planned, the party is about to fight the half-orcs at Woodland Manse.
I frequently combine a sense check and a knowledge check. For instance, I might have everyone roll both Survival and Nature at the same time. The guy with the high Survival check might spot the tracks, but not know what they're from. The guy with the high Nature check didn't see them on his own, but was able to identify them when shown. If someone else rolls well also, the party can get more in-depth information. Basically, I try to demonstrate to the players that what their character knows about the world matters, and that knowing more will provide them with a strategic advantage to every situation.
I'm a new DM and your books and content have honestly helped so much. I needed to be reminded that I don't have to call a check anytime a player wants to do something. It's better storytelling not to.
This is great advice. There's nothing worse (as a player) than failing miserably with a skill you should be good at. But if that failure has consequences, your thieves tools break, the dragon you failed to romance focuses it's attacks solely on you now etc. then that failure becomes a memorable moment. "Remember that time you tried to flirt with the gold dragon and he ate you? Good times!"
Speaking of thieves, as I started to say in another comment, how do you determine the ease or difficulty of using thieves tools or picking pockets (or for bards, singing in key) when the ease of doing them depends really on the person? When a player who is not proficient in picking pockets roles a 20, that seems unrealistic in the real world. For a non-thief the DC of picking pockets should be higher than the DC for a seasoned thief. I’d still consider myself a new DM so I might not totally grasp these concepts.
@@GeneBrodeJr I would set the difficulty based on the subject (NPC/lock) not the PC. As Sly mentioned in the video stealing from an old woman will be easy (DC 10) Vs stealing from a bank vault, or wealthy lord's lockbox (DC 18). It should be hard because that's more believable, and if someone flukes a nat20, then that's a narrative moment. "The nobleman stumbles as you walk past and his coin purse drops into your waiting hand. More focused on regaining his composure the nobleman doesn't even notice that he's now missing his money and walks on." And only people proficient in Thieves Tools can try pick a lock, otherwise they bash the lock.
For those with the time to play a solo RPG, I recommend Ironsworn. With each move in that game you can either have a strong hit, a weak hit or a failure, failing forward and success with a cost is already part of its game design. After playing a few solo campaigns in Ironsworn improvising failing forward when I DM has been a lot easier.
Regarding setting a DC, even though I've been a DM for decades, I found it quite freeing to read this sentence from p. 238 of the 5E DMG: "If the only DCs you ever use are 10, 15, or 20, your game will run just fine." It's nice to not sweat the small stuff and still be playing RAW.
Hi. Personnaly I use 10 (normal), 12 difficult, 15 very difficult, 20 heroic, 25 Legendary. That's all. I just tell my players : "roll a DEX check, very difficult ".
tracking time is an important part of failing forward. the consequence of making forced march checks after 8 active hours. Or perhaps a deadline exists, such as "this dungeon sinks into the ocean at midnight." perhaps there is an ideal resting place they want to reach to rest safely, but bad rolls place them behind schedule, forcing con saves vs exhaustion, or risking a long rest in a dangerous area. one thing I do is subtract roll from 20 to equal minutes it takes, rounded up to the nearest 5. if more difficult, there will be a multiplier. Example: lvl4 lock? rolled a 5 on theievs tools? 20 minus 5 = 15 minutes, multiplied by lvl4 equals 60 minutes to picklock.
I really like this: the point about not having a DC resembles what I have rather awkwardly called "retrospective difficulty", i.e., if you would have succeeded at an easy task, then you succeed to that extent and get all of the 'easy' parts of the task done. I also notice your discussion of skill challenges gets at exactly at why I have problems with a bunch of recent game design that tries to mechanise social "combat". I sometimes feel stupid for not being able to implement what other people seem to enthuse about, but I find these mechanics more of a straitjacket than a help. Thanks for making me aware of notion, btw. I'm using it to organise my L5R campaign now, and it's really helpful. So thank-you for that.
I like the concept of the skill challenges and was surprised to see how you discouraged it Also the concept of failing forward is nice but needs more in depth discussion for us to better grasp the concept
I think he's thinking about it form the 4th ed. frame work. I like how Matt Colville does them: basically you need x out of y successes and the players choose how and what skills, no repeat skill use. note: you can still fail forward with this format.
Skill challenges as built in 4e were far too rigid and ended up falling apart the minute the players have a creative idea. Being flexible with a series of connected skill checks works out far better.
Currently all my on-the-spot DCs are either 1d6+9 (between 10 and 15 for medium-hard task) or 1d6+14 (15 to 20 for a hard/very hard task). I'll often tell the players too if they ask how difficult something seems - "climbing that cliff is going to be somewhere between hard and very hard (1d6+14)"
Wow, 2nd time in a couple of days that I feel like people are taking the best ideas of Dungeon World/PbtA and bringing them back to D&D. Makes me itch to run a D&D game!
A very clear explanation as always. However, do you have any advice for determining the cost when succeeding with cost? I find it's easier said than done sometimes. Sometimes my players have a bad roll, and I decided I want to let them succeed with cost, but I can't actually think of an appropriate cost that isn't either meaningless or too costly.
If I can't think of some creative cost I often go with time, meaning the skill check succeded but a definite amount time is needed. In a Dungeon time usage can lead to enemies change their position or tactic in the dungeon, villains can get closer to their goal, encounters can happen.
Time, money, npc relationships going down, using the boon from a friendly npc (rendering that npc unable to help later), nonlethal damage, status effects, the encounter can get harder by adding another required skill check; monster; or trap
I have found that too often failing with a cost just replaces one problem with a new problem that still needs to be resolved. It's like failing with extra steps. It slows the game down
I would like to see a video talking about Passive Perception vs. Perception. I have player's with 16 & 17 passive Perception's and we wonder when and why they would make a Perception check, knowing that it will take a 17, 18 or higher (not likely) to notice something unnoticed. I have stopped asking for them to make a Perception roll and instead I let them decide when they want to try one. Your thoughts?
There is a problem, I think, when you set equal dc regardless of who make this roll. For example two characters make medicine check. But one is a cleric wich spent a lot time curing people and another is just a barbarian. First has proficiency, but +2 doesn't describe abyss of knowledge in medicine between them.
The concept of failing forward, or succeed at a cost, isn't the hard part. It's deciding what the "cost" should be. Make it too much their success is moot, make it too little and it's like nerf warfare with no real consequences. As that line is like an ink line after a glass of water got dumped on it, yeah, I have problems sometimes.
I did have this problem when i wanted to give a player a negative trait as a punishment. I realized that that wasnt very fun for the player, so what i do now instead is i foreshadow these consequences. Basically the encounter now has an additional consequence for failure. By foreshadowing these consequences, the player learns that things can go from bad to worse, but they still have the fun of trying to solve those issues. Its not as fun to simply have big changes to a character forced on you. So my rule of thumb is i roll a d4 and that is how many rounds before those consequences need to be faced, typically with another small encounter. If this snowballs into a multi-encounter, that just means the pcs are going to have to actually work hard to avoid punishments.
I wasn't a fan of Skill Challenges due to the problems listed, especially the fact that they were too abstract and rigid. That was very much the way 4E seemed to work. It was very "user proofed" in a lot of ways. (Very much "your mileage may vary" on that score.) That said, I definitely feel that the 5E version was essentially "nah, we won't bother to come up with a system." 4E had some good ideas that the 5E team didn't retain. Removing Take 10 and Take 20 from the game did the game a disservice. Obviously these are easy enough to reintroduce but they really help provide guidance of when "you can just do it." I use "passive" checks for lots of skills all the time when there's no time pressure or risk of serious consequences. I also use passives (i.e., 10+proficiency+modifier) to set DCs quite often, with Advantage representing an additional +5 and Disadvantage a -5. I guess that would be a good way to handle characters on watch, with two getting Advantage because they're helping. But it works well for many other things, such as picking locks, finding basic tracks, etc. If there were consequences for rolling a natural 1 this might differ, but they removed that from the game, too.
I like to get my players to roll for the following: charisma checks (persuasion, deception , intimidation) and insight Also intelligence and wisdom checks like nature, arcana, and survival
What about ability checks for pickpocketing? How do you determine if that’s easy or hard in the real world, because it really is dependent upon the person’s skill isn’t it? The same could be said of juggling, carrying multiple plates as a waiter or waitress, balancing a spoon on your nose. Some of these are inherently difficult, but not so much for somebody who has practiced it. In DND, a thief might roll really lousy and not be able to pick pocket or somebody who is a klutz could roll really high.
The inherent difficulty of the task and the external circumstances of the situation set the DC. The character's skill determines the probability of meeting that DC. Juggling and carrying multiple plates, maybe DC 15 and 12 dexterity checks, respectively. If in your mind juggling requires weeks of practice, don't ask for a roll. Auto-fail. A roll implies there is a chance of failure and a chance of success. Otherwise, just narrate. I think you associate "hard" or "easy" with "chance of success", and when talking about ability checks, those are two very different things. For pickpocketing, we can factor in the ambient light, the target's condition/alertness, nearby distractions, weight and shape of the item, location of the pocket, etc. I could imagine a DC between 7 and 25 or even impossible depending on those factors. 7 is "easy" but it doesn't mean the chance of success is high for someone with really poor skill at that task. For setting DCs, I would recommend skimming several modules to see what DCs the designers set under which conditions.
How hard would it be to pickpocket *that* guy? That's independent of the one doing the pickpocketing. Each of the things you describe has an independent difficulty. Juggling three pins is easier than juggling five pins regardless of who's doing it.
