I am having an argument with my dm on whether adding autosuccess and autofailure to skill rolls will change the game mechanics to a breaking point.
Please go crazy and mathematically prove this change good or horrible, in your opinion.
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It doesnt break the rule but it does break the world. Einstein on his worst day is still better at knowledge physics then a 3 year old child. A 3 year old child should never have been able to come up with relativity, certainly not in an average of 20 tries.
Same goes for crafts. I cannot try 20 times and eventually paint the mona lisa. Picasso (when alive) was never going to replicate my chickenscratch drawings.
There is also one obvious break. Acrobatics to Jump. The DC for jumping is based on the distance to be jumped. If you have autosuccess, that means I have a 1 in 20 chance in jumping over the empire state building. I also have a 1 in 20 chance while i am up there to spot a pea on the floor 15 miles away so long as I have line of sight.
thanks, this is perfect =)
Taking 20 breaks it.
Just strains credulity:
If your doctor killed 5% of his patients (failed heal check), he would soon be unlicensed.
Except that your doctor probably does fail 5% of his "checks".
The thing is, your doctor probably makes very few checks; most situations allowing your doctor to take 10 (or 20). If the DC is low enough or his skills are high enough, there no need for a roll and therefore no chance of auto-failure on a "1".
So the only time auto-failure comes into account is when you are rushed or threatened and therefore cannot take 10. Everyone fails sometimes when rushed or threatened; even doctors. Put a gun to my head and I *might* miss tying my shoes in 1 round out of nervousness. Hell, I sometimes fumble getting out the door when I'm late for work. You probably fail on trivial task too; everyone does, except that the consequences of failing are usually irrelevant in your life (so I dropped my keys, big deal, I lost "1 round" in my day).
If a doctor doesn't loose 5% of his patient, that's because not all failed check have a catastrophic consequence. Most of times, you try again 6 seconds later and voila. Saving a patient is more than one check, made by different professionals and throughout different stages of the remission of the patient, with a system insuring that a failed check will not go unnoticed and will be fixed by medications or another professional.
Unfortunately, not all patients in critical conditions of dying after a single failed check are saved in real life. How many are lost due to an "auto-failure" is hard to tell, but I'm convinced there are, especially in rushed or threatening conditions.
'findel
I have people confirm auto-failures with skills check as they do with attacks in my games. It equates to having a bad stroke of luck, but you're able to get past it if you're smart enough.
A trained acrobat may still slip on a patch of loose dirt when trying to jump 5 feet, and Einstein might get a very distracting headache, but their training and skill might prevent it from being really bad. A Doctor rolls a 1 on his heal check but doesn't confirm the crit fail, so he doesn't stop the patient from loosing blood, but doesn't kill them either.
That's of course assuming this is a situation where he cannot take 10, such as performing a medical procedure in a battle zone. In my experience it hasn't broken the game at all.
I don't use auto-success on skill checks simply because most of the time, the player will only even attempt something with a DC of 10-25 if they have 0 ranks in the skill, and if they roll a 20 that IS enough to be a success. When they do I just describe it as being incredibly easy for them because they got lucky, and as far as they're concerned it isn't any different.
Just strains credulity:
If your doctor killed 5% of his patients (failed heal check), he would soon be unlicensed.
Except that your doctor probably does fail 5% of his "checks".
The thing is, your doctor probably makes very few checks; most situations allowing your doctor to take 10 (or 20). If the DC is low enough or his skills are high enough, there no need for a roll and therefore no chance of auto-failure on a "1".
So the only time auto-failure comes into account is when you are rushed or threatened and therefore cannot take 10. Everyone fails sometimes when rushed or threatened; even doctors. Put a gun to my head and I *might* miss tying my shoes in 1 round out of nervousness. Hell, I sometimes fumble getting out the door when I'm late for work. You probably fail on trivial task too; everyone does, except that the consequences of failing are usually irrelevant in your life (so I dropped my keys, big deal, I lost "1 round" in my day).
If a doctor doesn't loose 5% of his patient, that's because not all failed check have a catastrophic consequence. Most of times, you try again 6 seconds later and voila. Saving a patient is more than one check, made by different professionals and throughout different stages of the remission of the patient, with a system insuring that a failed check will not go unnoticed and will be fixed by medications or another professional.
Unfortunately, not all patients in critical conditions of dying after a single failed check are saved in real life. How many are lost due to an "auto-failure" is hard to tell, but I'm convinced there are, especially in rushed or threatening conditions.
'findel
The point is that a sufficiently skilled doctor DOESNT fail 5% of his checks. The worlds best surgen does not miss 5% of his cuts. Usually its one in 1000's not 1 in 20. The game system doesnt have the capacity to simulate that kind of granularity, nor should it.
The trouble comes when the players dictate the terms of success.
Everybody will by jumping their speed vertically by taking 20 if that's an auto success.
Secret passages will be impossible. One in 20 people WILL see them. Equally it becomes next to impossible for an invisible stalker to float over a street undetected, let along infiltrate a keep.
If you get enough people together, any task can be accomplished fast. Gather any information with diplomacy? Check. Know any piece of information outright? Check. Hell, get together 20 experts with ranks in all the knowledge skills and you'll never need to do research again! If they fail their checks, you can always have them make diplomacy checks to find another expert who knows.
The point is that a sufficiently skilled doctor DOESNT fail 5% of his checks. The worlds best surgen does not miss 5% of his cuts. Usually its one in 1000's not 1 in 20. The game system doesnt have the capacity to simulate that kind of granularity, nor should it.
Sufficiently skilled doctors don't fail 5% of their cuts because if they're sufficiently skilled, they take 10 and don't even take the roll...
But if they make 1 cut out of 20 in conditions that don't allow taking 10, and that 1 in 20 of these cuts are missed due to auto-fail, and that 1 out of 20 of these failures lead to a lost patients, we're far from doctors loosing 5% of all their patients from auto failures.
Is it realistic? Probably not; I trust doctors that doctors are better than that. But in the frame of a RPG like Pathfinder where success and failure are more granular than in reality, I find that acceptable as an abstraction of reality.
The trouble comes when the players dictate the terms of success.
Everybody will by jumping their speed vertically by taking 20 if that's an auto success.
Taking 20 and rolling a natural 20 do not have to be the same thing, even if the modifier on the check is identical. Similarly, a roll of "20" is a treat and a potential critical. A true strike is just a modifier on the attack roll.
So it looks like I missed that reply. I figures I might as well answer it anyway.
Taking 20 in fact DOES have to be the same. Otherwise people will just just roll an annoying number of times and eventually auto-succeed. With auto-successes, everybody can still jump their speed straight up after a succession of 1' hops.
The only thin to be gained from making taking 20 any different is pointless rolls.
Taking 20 in fact DOES have to be the same. Otherwise people will just just roll an annoying number of times and eventually auto-succeed.
Good point.
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I am having an argument with my dm on whether adding autosuccess and autofailure to skill rolls will change the game mechanics to a breaking point.
Please go crazy and mathematically prove this change good or horrible, in your opinion.
It only breaks the game if you assume "take 10" or "take 20" are your control mechanics to facilitate all actions - walking and chewing bubblegum at the same time. But since 3rd ed/Pathfinder is one of the worst games to apply this simulationist approach I do not think putting in auto-success or fails will break the game - if you make skill check "EVENT APPLICABLE".
This is not a computer game - and if it was - the applied math used is garbage as a control for balance and function.
You and your GM are not mindless robots. The take 10 and 20 rule (very poorly designed and applied imo) could come into play for EVERYDAY NON CRITICAL/STORY ACTIONS. Those rules should have NO fixed impact on measurable actions (I need this particular amount of money in this time) or during critical/stress/dangerous times (disabling a trap or lock in a dungeon) unless the circumstances permit, and even then a roll of 1 should be an autofail. Your DM can make a call on when an actual roll needs to be made, what bonuses apply and if it's an open roll (fail on 1). Outside of critcial use (i.e. adventuring) you can dump the auto-success and failure and go back to the default rule as it exists.
The standard design philosophy is to create an action, and then a series of rules that govern that action and then forget about about any inconsistencies or stupidity associated with implementation of those rules. This is the 3rd edition mantra, poor rules as cover for actions vs. common sense.
SKR and acolytes will say that without auto success rules, brain surgeons and cement mixers will fail on every 20th attempt. What I am saying is that unless a SPECIFIC ACTION or TASK of brain surgery or cement mixing is called for (and important to the adventure) you don't need to roll - so the 1 in 20 fail rule doesn't come into play unless you are ACTIVELY playing the game and unless the SKILL CHECK is CRITICAL to the story.
Skill checks should be event based, Players and DMs can use a mean average to cover their non-critical use (say take 10 or 20) while playing, that way you can get the walking and chew bubble gum at the same time effect covered. But when the PC needs to make a roll in and ADVENTURE or STORY CRITICAL situation, there SHOULD ALWAYS BE A CHANCE OF FAILURE. During the adventure there should ALWAYS BE A ROLL WITH A CHANCE OF FAILURE.
Don't be hamstrung by a badly set of rules made by designers seeking to eliminate the need for the DM to step in. These rules were designed to remove a thought process of how skill use is applied, when is it critical use, etc - they did this to make things easier for players and to eliminate another area of DM adjudication (which they felt was a weakness of the game). So easier for DMs and Players but not better, keep that in mind.
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A few more points and an example to clarify -
Using an EVENT based skill check (during an adventure or critical to the ongoing story) system changes the 1 in 20 fail model. What happens now is your surgeon doesn't get a 1 in 20 fail out of 20 surgeries - he gets a 1 in 20 fail out of story relevant use of his skill, ex: saving a dying PC or NPC during an adventure. So the expert climber may or may not have an accident during downtime climbing (say as part of his job). The DM can rule on greater or lower chances of failure during downtime (1 in a 100, 1000, 10,000, etc) but that same expert climber has a chance of failure - a 1 in 20 chance - while climbing that is story relevant.
Let me make one last case for bringing in a 1 in 20 failure chances as it relates to EVENT based skill use and adventuring or facilitating engaging action sequences:
Let's say I am running a modern horror game using the PFRPG. Our hero in question is a Driver - that's his job, and he's being chased by a group of cultists in cars who are trying to kill or capture him. Now during the chase our hero encounters challenges and DC checks - but because his total driving score is so high, he has no real chance of failure. To me this is poor game design. I think in my example, he may not need to roll for certain checks (easy to moderate maneuvers - this can be a tiered auto-fail accommodating system variant) or if he does a 1 may not mean catastrophic failure for those checks - since they are graded as easy and moderate, but for the harder maneuvers a roll of 1 should be an auto fail (crash).
And at the same time I wouldn't require a roll for him to drive to work every day - the take 10 take 20 system + no fail on 1 is a poor system to explain why an accident does or does not happen. The logic doesn't hold and the math doesn't hold (as a justification) so IMO it should be abandoned as the governing force behind actions and assumed successes.