Saves - and other 5% failure effects.


Combat


This has bothered me for some time now. Ever sense the paladin discussion where it was basically settled upon that the paladin should be the king of saves (boring).

But then it also got me thinking, with the current system even if you had a +100,000 to your save you still have a 5% chance of failure every time. I would propose this.

On any save that you could succeed on without rolling the dice, then you only fail on a roll of double 1. For instance, a character has a +15 fort save and his DC is 15. He is passing that Fort save without even rolling but of course he is forced to roll. With such a good save he should have a much smaller chance to fail than 5%. Thus if he rolls a 1, he should have to roll again with a score of another 1, to fail.

This of course could also be applied to any check the person has to roll (cant take a 10) and would ONLY fail on a 1.


1/20 X 1/20 = 1/400 chance. I'd almost rather just say 1's DON'T automatically fail.

Sovereign Court

You know, I honestly just disagree with the idea of eliminating auto success/failure. It's not something that happens enough to be problematic, I'm just of the school of it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Paizo Employee Director of Brand Strategy

lastknightleft wrote:
You know, I honestly just disagree with the idea of eliminating auto success/failure. It's not something that happens enough to be problematic, I'm just of the school of it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Yeah, it's a pretty easy house rule to implement if it's not to your liking. It doesn't even require recalculation of statblocks like changing skill points or something like that would.


lastknightleft wrote:
You know, I honestly just disagree with the idea of eliminating auto success/failure. It's not something that happens enough to be problematic, I'm just of the school of it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Except... it already happens too often, and it is problematic. It was problematic enough for the Pathfinder designers to go after save-or-dies. It's problematic enough for my PCs to pack as many rerolls as possible. Just ask anybody who's had a PC lose initiative then roll 1 on Flesh to Stone.

But on the other hand, rolling 1 shouldn't be just 1 less than rolling 2. Maybe having a natural 1 count as -5 would be the healthy middle.

-Matt


Mattastrophic wrote:


Except... it already happens too often, and it is problematic. It was problematic enough for the Pathfinder designers to go after save-or-dies. It's problematic enough for my PCs to pack as many rerolls as possible. Just ask anybody who's had a PC lose initiative then roll 1 on Flesh to Stone.

Bah. Boring!

I once rolled a natural one on a save against horrid wilting. Massive damage, DC15 save - and my fort bonus was +17 or so. BAM! Another natural one!

Even worse: Maximised Fireball for 60 damage - natural one on the save, which even with resistance subtracted puts me on exactly 50 points of damage. Massive damage's an easy roll, only one fails. BAM! another one.

My character being dead, I decided to look how bad my luck is today and rolled the die again. MULTIBAM! Another frickin natural one!

I chose not to resurrect that character. Let the bad luck die with him!

But it doesn't happen too often to be no problem, and it wasn't the reason they went for save-or-die effects, because they're usually failed on other rolls, too.

Anyway, I say keep the rule in. Maybe get rid of massive damage rules, but natural 1 and 20 need to stay. It's easy enough to rule out, anyway. In fact, few house rules are easier to implement.


Well, unfortunately some of us are stuck with a DM that will not house rule anything in favor the the characters.

This is an issue, I am sorry but it just is. When someone is REALLY good at something, they should not fail 5% of the time, which coincidentally seems to happen more often than that. Seems like so many times we fail when we REALLY need to succeed.


Vult Wrathblades wrote:

Well, unfortunately some of us are stuck with a DM that will not house rule anything in favor the the characters.

This is an issue, I am sorry but it just is. When someone is REALLY good at something, they should not fail 5% of the time, which coincidentally seems to happen more often than that. Seems like so many times we fail when we REALLY need to succeed.

Automatic failure does not apply to skills, nor to most non-combat rolls. This represents a character "being good enough" not to fail.

Combat represents an incredibly chaotic event in which there are no guarantees and anything can happen. Saving throws and attack rolls are an extension of this. The abstraction of "no matter how good a swordsman you are, you may still miss" is represented by the Automatic Failure rule. The abstraction of "One Crazy Chance" is represented by the Automatic Success rule. It helps simulate the chaos and add some chance to combat.

If you take away this abstraction, a very concrete thing happens: Combat loses some of its edge. Many times our characters have been in situations where "if they don't roll a one, everything will be fine." There is more tension in those die rolls than any other. There have also been many times where a character has had to go out, guns blazing, to try something crazy. Hoping for a natural 20 is a powerful thing. Without this, you encounter "Enemies you cannot miss" and "Enemies you cannot hit."

The same is true of villains too. There are many opponents with high enough attacks to never miss a PC. If they didn't have to roll, combat would be reduced to "take your round of damage and repeat." Monks would become immune to most spells, and casters would be powerless to do anything against them.

Without "Critical Failures and Successes" the game loses its edge of chance, uncertainty, and tension. Even if not perfectly realistic, those rules make it more interesting.


Mattastrophic wrote:

Except... it already happens too often, and it is problematic. It was problematic enough for the Pathfinder designers to go after save-or-dies. It's problematic enough for my PCs to pack as many rerolls as possible. Just ask anybody who's had a PC lose initiative then roll 1 on Flesh to Stone.

But on the other hand, rolling 1 shouldn't be just 1 less than rolling 2. Maybe having a natural 1 count as -5 would be the healthy middle.

-Matt

I think you're conflating two things. The save or die problem was viewed as problematic whatever your actual chances of saving or failing were, and as such they have been adjusted to be less suddenly unforgiving, again, whatever your chances of failing the save are.

I'd consider the issues of auto-succeed and auto-fail on saves and attacks as being fully distinct from save or die effects and their remedies.

And I'm in favor of not changing it. In fact, I was glad 3.5 brought the rule back in when 3.0 had ditched it (as I recall).

Scarab Sages

Mattastrophic wrote:
lastknightleft wrote:
You know, I honestly just disagree with the idea of eliminating auto success/failure. It's not something that happens enough to be problematic, I'm just of the school of it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Except... it already happens too often, and it is problematic.

Your bar for what qualifies as problematic appears to be far lower than mine. I would say removing that 1/20 chance of failure would ruin the tension of many situations in game. No matter how good a pc or npc is there should always be a chance of failure.

And if you want to remove one, you need to remove both. If auto-failure was nerfed you also need to nerf auto-success. I think you would find a lot more complaints about that.


The issue is not with failure, the issue is that 5% is a LOT. In a game where you make numerous die roles a session, 1 is going to come up quite frequently. This causes problems when a player has devoted time and effort to his character and gets boned because of a bad die role....yes this should happen....BUT.

If you have a save that should have been reducing this chance of failure (BEYOND 5%) then at some point you are getting no gain from these increased save bonuses (for example, does not have to be just saves).

And to say that the flipside is also true? that we should remove or reduce automatic success if we do anything to automatic failure? That is not the case. We are playing the "Heroes" I dont care if you are playing a Monte Haul type game or a low level "oh my god, i got a stick today" fantasy.....these characters are the heroes. They should not die when a bad guy sneezes wrong (hence the increased HP at lvl 1). They should not miraculously fail when they should succeed as often as they should miraculously succeed when they should fail. That is why there are stories told about them....they did it when the average guy couldnt.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

My group seems to enjoy the possibility of failure on saves, and few rolls in the game provoke more groans of amused sympathy or cackles of ironically mocking laughter than a 1 on an otherwise guaranteed saving throw. (And I count myself in this when I'm a player, including my dwarf cleric with high Fort and Will saves, who's failed literally half the poison saves he's ever had to make.)

I honestly find it a little baffling that anyone thinks a PC should be immune to anything the PC isn't actually immune to, but I never really understood the argument that PCs should have script immunity, either, and this seems like a lesser version of the same thing.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Vult Wrathblades wrote:
The issue is not with failure, the issue is that 5% is a LOT. In a game where you make numerous die roles a session, 1 is going to come up quite frequently.

Yes, but most of those natural 1 rolls don't matter. They're rolled, people groan, and the game goes on. The fact that you could roll a 1 when it really, really matters adds a lot of excitement to the game, IMO.

I guess what I don't get is why folks who complain about stuff like this don't just play diceless? If the dice can't really screw you over (or, of course, save your goose when it would otherwise be cooked), then what's the point of using dice?


I say leave it as is.

But, if you want to make it happen less often then add a second role to suit..

50% chance to confirm on any die roll

or

33% chance [1 or 2 on a d6]

or

make it 2 natural 1's as previously suggested.

But whatever you decide this extra roll should stay a house rule and not feature in the main book unless it's in an "alternative rule" shaded box like the one for starting hit dice.

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber

I like 1 = Fail mechanic as much as I like the 20 = Success mechanic.

Then again, I have no problem with the idea of a Feat that makes a 1 not an automatic failure...

I also like Action Points that let 1's get re-rolled...

To me, the threat of death and failure keep the game edgy.


Jeff Wilder wrote:
I guess what I don't get is why folks who complain about stuff like this don't just play diceless? If the dice can't really screw you over (or, of course, save your goose when it would otherwise be cooked), then what's the point of using dice?

Seconded. The reason why dice rolls exist is so that their is an chance of failure, no matter how small or large it may be. You don't need to buy a large 200+ page book to play a free-from, diceless game.


1s on saves and attack rolls need to remain automatic failures. How many times have you managed to kill something that only missed its saves on a 1, or how many times has a monster that would have gotten that extra bite in missed a character because it rolled a one on its attack. Rules like this cut both ways, unless you are argueing for a double standard between NPC/Monsters and PCs.

Silver Crusade

If you are concerned about it in your game, perhaps you could try one of the optional rules from the Epic Level Handbook. The situation you described was one of the problems they described for high level play. One of the solutions proposed was to treat a roll of natural 1 as a roll of -10, and a roll of a natural 20 as a roll of 30.

This was done to prevent the 50th level fighter with an AC of 50 and a +40 Fort save from dying of tetanus because he was attacked by 1,000 1st level commoners with rusty daggers. Crazy high level games...

I think another was to give each character three "get out of death free" cards usable when they roll a one. Don't remember the full mechanic off hand.

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