Critically Succeeding at Failing.


Prerelease Discussion

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32

So, this is a couple of days after the blog post, as I was caught up in real life, and that's got to take precedence, but it's now time to break down my thoughts about the "Four Degrees of Success".

First, I have to say that adding the opportunity to critically succeed or fail (fumble) by exceeding the DC by 10 (or failing it by 10 or more) adds a new layer to the game, one that I really approve of. It means that the highly-trained and specialized individuals are much more likely to succeed in their area of expertise while avoiding failure in the same field. Conversely, it also means that there's a greater chance of it going horribly wrong if you're attempting something foolhardy. It also takes a little bit of the hit away from the "Autohit on 20, auto fail on 1" as you still fail/succeed depending on the DC in question.
It does mean that there's a bit less chance of something trying something utterly foolhardy or courageous, which I'm a little more dubious about, but it does mean that the specialized individuals will benefit from this in their areas.

What I really like though, is that it is a new twist on the "Yes, and..." and "No, but..." approaches seen in games like FFG's Star Wars and Genesys systems, adding a new level of twist to your story, i.e. when it goes well, it goes really well, but when it goes bad, it goes really bad. The example used in the blog post is Fireball, and I could totally see the idea of someone managing to duck down so quickly and completely that they avoid damage altogether (as seen in many films). Conversely, the critical failure is the person utterly misjudging the situation and sticking his head right in the path of the Fireball, and getting it full in the face.

The samples given are also quite enticing and seems to indicate that all spells will come with a description of each instance of Critical Failure / Critical Success results, a bit like the randomized results for a spell that you might get from OSR games like Dungeon Crawl Classics. It's a good twist on an old formula in my opinion.

Unfortunately digging deeper into this topic is not easy without a bit more information, but this is something that I could see many designers having a lot of fun with when creating new spells, so I'm looking forward to seeing where this leads.

Until next time (which is today, since I'm looking at the Goblins post next ;-)).


Hey, cant you see we are trying to talk about Gobos here!?

J/K I like the idea of degrees of success. Though I think the implementation will need some hardy playtesting. I dont want/need every roll to be a degree of success. Sometimes you are just trying to do something that isn't going to require that level of detail. I am also not terribly fond of save but fail or miss but hit type of conditions. Though on occasion they can allow for some great story narration.

Grand Lodge

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

They actually said that not every single thing will utilize all four levels of success.

Case i point was attack rolls, which had nothing for a critical failure.

I imagine most things will be you do or you don't, which cases like crits, certain skills/spells, and special abilities taking advantage of the rule.

Grand Archive

Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

That's something I've seen since 2002 in the new World of Darkness Storytelling System. They have Dramatic Failures and Exceptional Successes. As Bonus and malus add and remove dices, if you remove enough to get to 0 dice, you still roll one "chance" die, but a 1 on that dice is a dramatic failure (sometimes a very unlucky success, like a DF while jumping from rooftop to rooftop wouldn't necessarily end with falling. You could succeed and be unlucky enough that a cabal of evil mages where summoning a great demon on that rooftop at that exact moment). An Exceptional success was when you either had 5 success (a success is 8 to 10 on a d10) or went 5 above the required number of success.
So every description of results are always:
Dramatic Failure: Effect.
Failure: Effect.
Success: Effect.
Exceptional Success: Effect.
This feels really good, and I'm really happy to see it in pathfinder. :3

[EDIT] Thinking about it again, the system was also in the original World of Darkness Storyteller System. In a less refined way, but still. :P

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 32

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Planpanther wrote:

Hey, cant you see we are trying to talk about Gobos here!?

J/K I like the idea of degrees of success. Though I think the implementation will need some hardy playtesting. I dont want/need every roll to be a degree of success. Sometimes you are just trying to do something that isn't going to require that level of detail. I am also not terribly fond of save but fail or miss but hit type of conditions. Though on occasion they can allow for some great story narration.

Don't worry. I'm about to post about Gobbos too. :P

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