What happens when you STOP rolling dice in DnD...

Comments · 321

• QU

  @QuestingBeast · 1 year ago (edited) · pinned

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• AB

  @about15zebras · 1 year ago

  These days, I ask for rolls more often to see “how hard did the world push back?” I’m less concerned with “did you succeed at doing something?” and more with “how did it go when you did it?” I feel this more captures what randomness represents - the things in the world you have no control over.

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• JE

  @jesperwallin · 1 year ago (edited)

  In ”Drakar &amp; Demoner”, the basic roleplaying version dominating the Swedish rpg world since the 80’s, you have A and B skills. A skills are basically percentages for stuff like jumping, hiding or hitting with a weapon. B skills are skills you don’t roll for, and which also go from 1 to 5, with examples such as crafting or swimming. You either can swim or you can’t. The number represents how good a swimmer you are. B1 is Fezzik and B5 is an Olympic level swimmer. <br><br>It was an elegant solution for reducing the number of skill rolls.

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• RE

  @red_wullf · 1 year ago

  If there’s risk involved, or time pressure, a roll makes sense. If there’s no consequence for failure or time pressure, and it makes sense that the character is good at that task and would succeed given enough time, you should just let them do it. I’d add that players usually <b>like</b> rolling dice. Getting to use the shiny math rocks, for better or worse, is part of the excitement and fun. Where that starts to suck is when chances are low and wiffing is common (I’m looking at you Warcraft FRP 1e). Finally, if progress depends on a check succeeding (which should never be the case, but let’s be realistic), then skip the roll and rely on clever thinking and role play (or a montage).

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• LL

  @LlamasInc49 · 1 year ago (edited)

  I can&apos;t claim it as my own idea, but I recall some advice that I generally use that makes determining whether or not a roll is needed work well in OSR games: if the players have 2/3 of either time, expertise, or tools, they succeed without needing to roll. If they only have one of these things, they would still need to perform some kind of check.<br><br>It&apos;s important to strike a balance between the gamified aspects of roleplaying and the &quot;diegetic&quot; parts of the game. A lot of solutions that require a high degree of player skill precludes some people who would otherwise be interested in participating from sharing in the collective fantasy. Dice allow people who aren&apos;t, for example, naturally charismatic or good at crafting dialogue roleplay a charming person, or perhaps an IT neophyte roleplay a skilled hacker. The probability aspect is the neutral arbiter of success in circumstances where players have a hard time narrating their imagined solutions.

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• GM

  @GMandJudge · 1 year ago

  I like Delta Green&apos;s approach. You can do the things that make sense for your pc, sometimes you need a certain value in a skill to just do it. You need to roll when something is very difficult, unpredictable or you pc is under pressure.

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• LO

  @lordbiscuitthetossable5352 · 1 year ago

  I have been heavily pushing for my group to give me descriptions on <b>how</b> they accomplish their actions rather then immediately passing it over to the dice. Which actually sorts out a lot of issues and results in some incredible moments. Though it boils down to this; &quot;I&apos;m assuming you guys are trying the best of your abilities within your description.&quot;<br><br>Two party members had spilt off to investigate a frozen room, and to navigate there they had to cross some rotten floorboards that had perished entirely in places. The mage enfusaistically described a process of bashing the floor with a quarter staff, based on real life training he did have as an archologist to determine where the floor is still solid and so I granted him the ability to move across the floor steadily to get to the door, but warned him that if either of them had to move hastily, they would need to roll an agility check in order to not fall. I trusted their process, but warned them that navigation was only easy because they were describing their actions and taking their time.<br><br>Of course when they opened that door carefully after 20 minute in game of careful navigation, a brown mould, attracted by the immense amount of heat swarmed toward the door and after a failed check to recover an item through subtle manipulation (mage hand) they stepped in personally to retrieve the item. The immediately collapsed after trying to enter the room and the thief, grabbing the Mage, attempted to navigate back across the floor with disadvantage. They failed and plummeted two stories down, but by rolling the absolute minimum the thief barely survived and was able to get help to barely save the formers life (5 Torches deep, so 0hp isn&apos;t necessarily death.). That is how the intelligence 17, wisdom 18 Mage learned two valuable lessons. By describing their actions they were able to get where they needed to be, but under stress I will be asking for rolls and will be merciless. The Mage lost a leg to frostbite and now has a permanent reminder of this particular adventure on the virtue of thoughtfulness, and the foolishness of reckless greed.

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• LO

  @loup1262 · 1 year ago

  Take 10/20 is not in minutes but on the dice. <br><br>if you are not distracted or threatened, you can take 10. 10 on the dice + modifiers to calculate if you succeeds<br>if you are not distracted, &nbsp;threatened, and have plenty of time , you can take 20. 20 on the dice + modifiers.

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• KO

  @Kozmo3789 · 1 year ago

  In general I follow the rule of &apos;If failure would be less interesting than a success, no roll is necessary.&quot; This has avoided nearly every situation of someone failing to do any particular mundane task, and it adds some stakes when rolling does occur. Because that means that if there&apos;s a failure on that roll, something interesting or dramatic will happen as a result.

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• IS

  @Ishpeck · 1 year ago

  I&apos;ve noticed folks trying to use dice to force something to happen. &nbsp;&quot;Can I do X? &nbsp;<b>Rolls</b> &nbsp;NAT TWENTY!&quot; &nbsp;<br><br><br>By training my players to assume that failure on the dice has negative consequences, they tend to avoid tossing dice around because even if I grant them success on unexpectedly good rolls, the consequences of a bad roll just aren&apos;t worth it.

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• DA

  @daxterwous · 1 year ago

  I like the mechanic in kids on bikes system where you can half your dice type to auto succeed. In DnD terms, that would be something like &quot;If your modifier is 1/3 of the DC, you auto succeed&apos;.<br>Just allowing people to succeed but at the cost of time is a great way to not bog down the game.<br>There is also the &quot;devils bargain&quot; like in blades in the dark, where you can give players a choice to auto succeed at a predetermined cost (like the jump over the ravine but sprain an ankle example).<br><br>Love the &quot;no lore checks, you know it or you don&apos;t based on background and studies&quot;.

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• ST

  @stephengilbert8166 · 1 year ago

  Totally agree. I`ve been playing this way for years (its how we all did it from the very start, way back in 1974 and ever after). Rolling for everything is a habbit I`ve seen creeping into the game &nbsp;more and more and more as the years go by. One person tries to do something, fails his roll, so the next player rolls to do exactly the same thing, fails, and so the next player has a go.. and so on.. silly really isnt it? As you say, most things don``t even need a roll, and such things should be reserved for the big moments when it really matters, not simply used as a tool to test against success/failure. Having everyone roll for literally everything they want to do, takes away from the game and makes it mundane and rather dull.

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