I would argue that these aren't combat situations, so taking ten would apply, but using your later argument regarding automatic success - - how would you explain lougainis cracking his skull during his diving attempt or accidents at nascar? I don't doubt that these are all highly skilled people in tense situations, but by your argument, tha would be the big DM in the sky just fiating the hell out of the situation. Things go wrong in life sometimes, even for experts. How do you adjucate that happening in game without accusations of railroading?
These are two separate situations. For Lougainis, that has happened once in major competition. If we were using a "roll a natural 1, get a critical failure" then we'd see a couple dozen situations like that in every competition. THAT is the part that people don't like.
For NASCAR, that's going to be a much higher DC. Yeah, NASCAR drivers are incredibly skilled but racing isn't something that's completely routine - it requires intense concentration and effort to complete.
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To be fair, from a statistics standpoint, the idea that you will fail once in every 20 attempts is inaccurate. The mechanics of probability only work out to the 1/20 failure rate after thousands of attempts. Probability tells us each individual roll has a 5% of being a specific number, not that you're going to roll one of each number on 20 rolls. If you've rolled a d20 19 times without rolling a 1, you are no more likely to roll a 1 than you were on the first, third, tenth, or eighteenth roll.
Don't believe that? Record all of your d20 rolls for an entire campaign, segregated by groups of 20 consecutive rolls. Then check groups of 20 rolls randomly. It is extremely improbable that you will have both a 1 and a 20 in each of those groups. It is unlikely you will have a 1 OR a 20 in every group. However, taken as a whole (assuming several thousand rolls for the entire campaign), you will likely be close to 1/20 of the total being 1s and 1/20 being 20s.
So, this is an even MORE convincing argument for not treating 1s and 20s as autofails or autosuccesses on skill checks. Because the highly trained adventurer wouldn't fail to climb a ladder once out of every twenty attempts; they'd succeed 150 times in a row, then fail several times in a short period.
IMO, if you want to houserule it to allow greater variability for the 1s and 20s, treat it like the old West End Games d6 system wild die. If you roll a 20, add it to the total then roll again and add the total, continuing to add 20 until you don't roll a 20. If you roll a 1, roll the d20 again and subtract that number from the total (treat another 1 as a -20) and continue to reroll until you don't roll a 1. This will allow you to have the occasional wild success or failure, but rarely. So, when Michael Phelps has a Swim skill modifier of +45 and he rolls a 1, then rolls a 10, he still scores a 35 on his check, handily swimming better with his worst effort than most of us will ever hope to swim on our best effort. Once in a very great while, he'll jump in the pool, clip his toe on the edge of the deck and flounder for the first few seconds he's in the water (rolled a 1, then a 1, then a 1, then a 5 for -45 and a 0 on his first swim check).
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Such a common house rule that I've always hated. Obviously the GM can specify that any auto-success on a Nat 20 must be within the realm of physical possibility and that auto failures on a Nat 1 are due to exceptionally malevolent forces of probability. There are plenty of ways to house rule it the make it less dumb, but you may end up with a long list of exceptions and clarifications for various skills and possible outcomes.
But the bare auto failure or success on a nat 20 or nat 1 isn't great. A 5% chance to fail on something simple, or something my character is so good at they should automatically succeed is a little too high for my taste. And speaking as a GM a 5% chance for any of my players to succeed on something they aren't actually capable of doing is also way too high. A character with heavy armor and a -5 to Acrobatics due to ACP shouldn't be able to leap across a 20 foot gap on a Nat 20, even if they get freakishly lucky (and a 5% chance to get that lucky outcome is too high anyways, 5% doesn't reflect "one in a million" luck, it reflects a 1 in 20 chance.).
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I would argue that these aren't combat situations, so taking ten would apply, but using your later argument regarding automatic success - - how would you explain lougainis cracking his skull during his diving attempt or accidents at nascar? I don't doubt that these are all highly skilled people in tense situations, but by your argument, tha would be the big DM in the sky just fiating the hell out of the situation. Things go wrong in life sometimes, even for experts. How do you adjucate that happening in game without accusations of railroading?These are two separate situations. For Lougainis, that has happened once in major competition. If we were using a "roll a natural 1, get a critical failure" then we'd see a couple dozen situations like that in every competition. THAT is the part that people don't like.
For NASCAR, that's going to be a much higher DC. Yeah, NASCAR drivers are incredibly skilled but racing isn't something that's completely routine - it requires intense concentration and effort to complete.
we do, actually.
Olympic games have been moving the camera away during major accidents...well almost always since that major skull cracking.
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IMO, if you want to houserule it to allow greater variability for the 1s and 20s, treat it like the old West End Games d6 system wild die. If you roll a 20, add it to the total then roll again and add the total, continuing to add 20 until you don't roll a 20. If you roll a 1, roll the d20 again and subtract that number from the total (treat another 1 as a -20) and continue to reroll until you don't roll a 1. This will allow you to have the occasional wild success or failure, but rarely. So, when Michael Phelps has a Swim skill modifier of +45 and he rolls a 1, then rolls a 10, he still scores a 35 on his check, handily swimming better with his worst effort than most of us will ever hope to swim on our best effort. Once in a very great while, he'll jump in the pool, clip his toe on the edge of the deck and flounder for the first few seconds he's in the water (rolled a 1, then a 1, then a 1, then a 5 for -45 and a 0 on his first swim check).
For a Nat 20 I'm not fond of the idea of instantly gaining a 20. I could still with a -5 to acrobatics leap across a 20 foot gap by rolling a 20 then a 5 or higher. That's still 4% chance to leap across a 20 foot gap with -5 Acrobatics.
I'd suggest if you roll a 20 you get to choice to roll 2 dice and add them together or not (allowing the choice to the possibility of a worse outcome). That way the aforementioned heavily armored fella has to roll a 20 and then a 15 AND a 10 or higher (or anything adding up to 25) to succeed, this yanks the probability down (though I'm not good enough at math to figure out the exact probability, but overall its less than 1% but greater than 0.5% in this case).
And for Nat 1s, dealing with calm water you would normally auto succeed with at least a +9 to swim. But lets assume a +15 to swim for good measure. That means with a Nat 1, you'd then have to roll a only a 6 or higher after the 1 to fail. That's still a 3.75% chance to fail miserably at something you're supposed to be pretty good at, not much better than 5%. So I'd suggest doing something like my previous Nat 20 suggestion. Roll a 1, then roll 2 d20s and subtract the lower from the higher, that becomes your negative roll. So if you have a +15 to Swim, roll a 1 then 10 and a 15, you subtract the 10 from 15 to get 5, and your final result is a 10. That's still enough to succeed. You end up having to roll any two numbers that are at least 6 apart after the nat 1.
Somebody better at math might be able to figure out the exact probabilities of the 2 ideas I proposed. What's good about this is your chances of failure or success aren't still close to 5%, and it goes down even faster than your idea with higher DC/lower bonus for success, and higher bonus/lower DC for failure.
Such a common house rule that I've always hated. Obviously the GM can specify that any auto-success on a Nat 20 must be within the realm of physical possibility and that auto failures on a Nat 1 are due to exceptionally malevolent forces of probability.
The "realm of physical possibility" is something I don't want in my fantasy games, even for martial characters. I want my non-magical characters to be Batman, Heracles, Samson, Conan, etc. I want guys who can do flip 20 feet in the air, hold the world on their shoulders, leap from ship to ship with a giant spear fighting off an entire army.
Also - the rules support characters without magic doing some pretty spectacular things. A first level barbarian with the Run feat can run 200 feet in 6 seconds, not far off the world record pace for the 100 m dash. With a 20 Con, that 1st level barbarian can at that world-record sprint speed for 20 rounds - 120 seconds. In 20 rounds, they can cover 4,000 feet or roughly 0.75 miles before they have to start rolling Con checks. With a good bit of luck, they could complete a mile in about 2 minutes, 40 seconds. Note that this is a 1st level character.
Jump rules get even more ridiculous.
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What I do is succeeding on a natural 1 means you "succeed with a problem." For example, yes, you Bluff the guard into thinking you are a fellow guard, but then he launches into a loud and annoying tirade about how you are out of uniform and late for your shift.
Rolling a natural 20 and still failing means you failed but got some kind of lucky break. For example, you fail the Acrobatics check to jump to the other rooftop but fortunately land on top of a passing wagon full of hay that just so happens to be headed to where you wanted to go anyway.
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What I do is succeeding on a natural 1 means you "succeed with a problem." For example, yes, you Bluff the guard into thinking you are a fellow guard, but then he launches into a loud and annoying tirade about how you are out of uniform and late for your shift.
Rolling a natural 20 and still failing means you failed but got some kind of lucky break. For example, you fail the Acrobatics check to jump to the other rooftop but fortunately land on top of a passing wagon full of hay that just so happens to be headed to where you wanted to go anyway.
That's actually brilliant and I wish I'd thought of that. Like if you leap across the pit, but it turns out the pit was just an illusion, so you don't fall to your death but you're dazed for a round.
@darth_borehd:
That sounds like a great idea! I think I'm gonna steal this for my campaigns.
What I do is succeeding on a natural 1 means you "succeed with a problem." For example, yes, you Bluff the guard into thinking you are a fellow guard, but then he launches into a loud and annoying tirade about how you are out of uniform and late for your shift.
Rolling a natural 20 and still failing means you failed but got some kind of lucky break. For example, you fail the Acrobatics check to jump to the other rooftop but fortunately land on top of a passing wagon full of hay that just so happens to be headed to where you wanted to go anyway.
interesting!