Yeah, I was under the impression that 5% chances to be screwed were being removed from the game when they were talking about it in previews. However, considering the current state of the forums (backlash city) I get the feeling there was some chickening out and pulling punches.
Granted, I wasn't paying a lot of forum attention here in the days coming up to release. I was keeping up with the blog and spending my time in the Starfinder camp as that's the game my table are currently playing.
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Yeah, I was under the impression that 5% chances to be screwed were being removed from the game when they were talking about it in previews. However, considering the current state of the forums (backlash city) I get the feeling there was some chickening out and pulling punches.
Granted, I wasn't paying a lot of forum attention here in the days coming up to release. I was keeping up with the blog and spending my time in the Starfinder camp as that's the game my table are currently playing.
No, Nat 1s and 20s were stated to be in the Playtest from the get go.
Looking back you're right, it is slipped in there subtly.
If you exceeded the target DC by 10 or more, or if you rolled a natural 20 and met or exceeded the target DC, then you critically succeeded. If your result was 10 or more lower than the target DC, or if you rolled a natural 1 and didn't meet the target DC, then you critically failed.
So I suppose I was wrong. Ish, because what we got according to page 178 as the OP points out.
When you make an attack and roll a natural 20 (the number on the die is 20), or if the result of your attack exceeds the target’s AC by 10, this is called a critical success (also known as a critical hit).
And page 8.
• Rolling high is good. You want your roll’s total to meet or exceed the threshold for success, which is called the Difficulty Class (or DC). The DC is a number chosen by the GM if you’re going up against a challenge in the environment. If you’re rolling against a creature, you’ll instead use a DC based on one of its statistics. More about Difficulty Classes is on page 291.
• Rolling 20 is better! Rolling a 20 on the die means you critically succeed, which often has a greater effect than normal. You also gain a critical success if your total meets or exceeds the Difficulty Class by 10 or more. More about critical successes is on page 292.
• Rolling 1 is bad. When you do, you critically fail your check. This is even worse than a regular failure. You also critically fail if your total is lower than the Difficulty Class by 10 or more. More about critical failures is on page 292.
That caviat of "and succeed/fail" is gone. Rolling a 1, even if somehow it was still a success, it is automatically a full no holds barred critical failure. In the case of the Performance skill, that's a literally destroyed reputation 5% of the time you walk on stage.
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Apparently, according to page 292, characters always suffer at least a 5% chance of failure regardless of their roll modifier.
So 292 doesn't actually say that.
If you fail and roll a 1 on the d20 (also called a “natural 1”), or you fail and your result is equal to or less than the
DC minus 10, you critically fail instead of just failing.
Bold mine.
So you have to roll and 1 and fail (or fail by 10) to critically fail, according to 292. This contradicts page 8, where they do call it out as a critical fail, though pg 8 seems more like a rule of thumb then the specific rulings 292 is going into, but a contradiction is a contradiction.
Same with Critical success. On 292 you need the 20 and success, while on 8 you just need the 20.
I really hope they don't have it set up so that the legendary crafter ruins 5% of the bog standard longswords she makes. That would be dumb.
Edit
Oh dear lord the plot thickens. So pg 177 agrees with pg 8, a 20 on a strike is a critical hit. Who the heck wrote 292? And I don't see anything aside from pg 8 saying 1 is auto fail. The rulebook can't agree on the core mechanics of critical success and failures.
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Page 292 actually says:
"It might be possible in some situations to meet the DC even on a 1. If your roll would equal or exceed the DC even on a 1, you don’t critically fail, but you still fail instead of succeeding. You can’t succeed when you roll a 1 no matter what your modifier is."
And that is really rather disheartening. Did your 20th level, legendarily-skilled rogue roll a natural 1 on that skill check against a low-level creature? The rogue fails.
Ugh. What a terrible way to have written the earlier text, then. And I agree, that's a terrible rule. I'll use it for the playtest, but if it's in the final release (assuming I play) I'm using the rule as it's written on 292 (where a 1 isn't an auto fail). Because it's actually sensible.
Ugh. What a terrible way to have written the earlier text, then. And I agree, that's a terrible rule. I'll use it for the playtest, but if it's in the final release (assuming I play) I'm using the rule as it's written on 292 (where a 1 isn't an auto fail). Because it's actually sensible.Page 292 actually says:
"It might be possible in some situations to meet the DC even on a 1. If your roll would equal or exceed the DC even on a 1, you don’t critically fail, but you still fail instead of succeeding. You can’t succeed when you roll a 1 no matter what your modifier is."
And that is really rather disheartening. Did your 20th level, legendarily-skilled rogue roll a natural 1 on that skill check against a low-level creature? The rogue fails.
P. 292 says that if you roll 1 and such a roll would fail, then you critically fail. It also says that if you roll a 1 and such a roll would succeed, you merely fail and do not critically fail.
Maybe Nat 1 and Nat 20, should just just give you an automatic 1 degree shift. Any Nat 20 thats a hit would be a critical success, as normal.
If your performing something so Trivial that you Critically Succeed on a Nat 1, then the worst that will happen is you simply just succeed.
A Nat 1 in which you still fail, results in a Critical Failure, but at least enough skill can possibly out weight it.
The two systems (Nat 1 always a failure/Nat 20 always a success) and (nat 1/nat 20 shift the degree of success one step) are functionally identical in 99% of the places you're rolling dice. They only diverge in places where you need to roll a 0 to succeed ot a 21 to fail. In which case why are you rolling dice? If you're crit-fishing there should be a negative. (ie on a 1-5 I succeed, on a 6-20 I critically succeed.)
Ugh. What a terrible way to have written the earlier text, then. And I agree, that's a terrible rule. I'll use it for the playtest, but if it's in the final release (assuming I play) I'm using the rule as it's written on 292 (where a 1 isn't an auto fail). Because it's actually sensible.Page 292 actually says:
"It might be possible in some situations to meet the DC even on a 1. If your roll would equal or exceed the DC even on a 1, you don’t critically fail, but you still fail instead of succeeding. You can’t succeed when you roll a 1 no matter what your modifier is."
And that is really rather disheartening. Did your 20th level, legendarily-skilled rogue roll a natural 1 on that skill check against a low-level creature? The rogue fails.
The entire point of the d20 RNG generation is to help resolve those parts of the story where either the GM is unsure of whether the intended action would be successful or unsuccessful or where chance would play at least a small part in the resolution. Every roll adds drama to the story. Rolling for trivial tasks in which even 5% chance of failure would be questionable shouldn’t be happening in D&D (why waste the time; what were you trying to resolve or determine with the roll; it’s pointless). When I GM and I ask for a roll, you can guarantee that it matters to the outcome.
I also question a world in which PCs are 100% immune to other creatures. Even if that were the case (where the goblin couldn’t hit on a 20), as I said before, I wouldn’t be rolling any attacks for the goblin. Assuming I cared to do initiative at all, I would narrate, “Ok, goblins turn. He swings ineffectually at you three times. Back to you.” The “combat” would be lightening fast at any rate.
I guess the real question I have is why any one would make pointless rolls?
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The two systems (Nat 1 always a failure/Nat 20 always a success) and (nat 1/nat 20 shift the degree of success one step) are functionally identical in 99% of the places you're rolling dice. They only diverge in places where you need to roll a 0 to succeed ot a 21 to fail. In which case why are you rolling dice? If you're crit-fishing there should be a negative. (ie on a 1-5 I succeed, on a 6-20 I critically succeed.)Maybe Nat 1 and Nat 20, should just just give you an automatic 1 degree shift. Any Nat 20 thats a hit would be a critical success, as normal.
If your performing something so Trivial that you Critically Succeed on a Nat 1, then the worst that will happen is you simply just succeed.
A Nat 1 in which you still fail, results in a Critical Failure, but at least enough skill can possibly out weight it.
I made a thread regarding a very important case which is tying people up. The possibility of success even if only on nat 20 means that a level 1 character can escape from being tied up by a level 20 rogue in 40 seconds.
I made a thread regarding a very important case which is tying people up. The possibility of success even if only on nat 20 means that a level 1 character can escape from being tied up by a level 20 rogue in 40 seconds.The two systems (Nat 1 always a failure/Nat 20 always a success) and (nat 1/nat 20 shift the degree of success one step) are functionally identical in 99% of the places you're rolling dice. They only diverge in places where you need to roll a 0 to succeed ot a 21 to fail. In which case why are you rolling dice? If you're crit-fishing there should be a negative. (ie on a 1-5 I succeed, on a 6-20 I critically succeed.)Maybe Nat 1 and Nat 20, should just just give you an automatic 1 degree shift. Any Nat 20 thats a hit would be a critical success, as normal.
If your performing something so Trivial that you Critically Succeed on a Nat 1, then the worst that will happen is you simply just succeed.
A Nat 1 in which you still fail, results in a Critical Failure, but at least enough skill can possibly out weight it.
I don’t think so. Per my reading of the rules, either the level 1 character can’t even attempt it, or after a couple of failed attempts, it becomes “fruitless” (see the Difficulty Classes section of the Gamemastery Chapter).
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I don’t think so. Per my reading of the rules, either the level 1 character can’t even attempt it, or after a couple of failed attempts, it becomes “fruitless” (see the Difficulty Classes section of the Gamemastery Chapter).I made a thread regarding a very important case which is tying people up. The possibility of success even if only on nat 20 means that a level 1 character can escape from being tied up by a level 20 rogue in 40 seconds.The two systems (Nat 1 always a failure/Nat 20 always a success) and (nat 1/nat 20 shift the degree of success one step) are functionally identical in 99% of the places you're rolling dice. They only diverge in places where you need to roll a 0 to succeed ot a 21 to fail. In which case why are you rolling dice? If you're crit-fishing there should be a negative. (ie on a 1-5 I succeed, on a 6-20 I critically succeed.)Maybe Nat 1 and Nat 20, should just just give you an automatic 1 degree shift. Any Nat 20 thats a hit would be a critical success, as normal.
If your performing something so Trivial that you Critically Succeed on a Nat 1, then the worst that will happen is you simply just succeed.
A Nat 1 in which you still fail, results in a Critical Failure, but at least enough skill can possibly out weight it.
Got a quote on that because I'm not seeing anything stopping the character from trying in the section you cited? As long as they can try, they can get a nat 20 and succeed. Since escaping from bindings is an untrained skill use anyone can do it.
I’d probably allow them to try (thus a single 5% chance of success, which is good enough for genre/drama protection for me in this specific scenario unless you literally want to say that there are no conditions or circumstances and no story that could be told in which our level one hero escapes against all odds). However, it’s hard to quote any one thing since retries seemed to be addressed within the entire context of the chapter. One interesting quote (admittedly related to recall knowledge) on page 338 is, “Once a character has attempted an extreme-difficulty check or failed a check, further attempts are fruitless.“ The chapter also talks about auto successes and impossible tasks (“Use these DCs if you want success to be unlikely but not impossible” pg 336 and “Some tasks are always trivial and have no need to be rolled, like climbing a ladder in ordinary circumstances. You can allow automatic successes at lower levels than listed if that makes your game run more smoothly“ pg 337). Combined with direction from pg 292 (“If you lack the proficiency for a task in the first place, or it’s impossible, you might still fail on a natural 20“), it seems that if the GM has already determined that the task is impossible (rather than just extreme difficulty), even a natural 20 fails.
However, as I indicated, I dispute the notion that this task would be impossible.
Recall knowledge has that clause because of how it works.
After a success, further uses of Recall Knowledge can yield more information, but you should increase the difficulty each time. Once a character has attempted an extreme-difficulty check or failed a check, further attempts are fruitless.
Recall knowledge has a mechanic where the difficulty scales with each successive attempt in order to stop players from repeatedly attempting the action until they succeed because it doesn't make sense. It makes sense for a person to repeatedly attempt to climb a wall, pick a lock, or search for food even if they fail. But it does not make sense for a person to repeatedly try to remember something. Either they know it or they do not. It makes sense for someone to repeatedly try to escape bonds.
Now escaping from being tied up by a level 20 rogue is possible. If it were impossible, then it would not matter how good you are at escaping bonds. A level 20 fighter can escape from a level 20 rogue tying them up if they roll well. The difference between a level 20 fighter and a level 1 fighter is that a level 20 fighter is better at it, but being good at something does not change a task from impossible to possible. Therefore, since it is possible for a level 20 fighter to escape and the 19 levels merely are a reflection of skill, the task is merely extremely difficult.
Edit: Also I don't need to invoke a level 20 man vs a level 1 man. A level 5 party wants to capture a level 5 bad guy. The bad guy can always escape in 40 seconds or less depending on precise stats.
Well presumably, that is where the clause about trivial checks come into play. I’d say it would be trivial for a level 20 person to tie up a level 1 person. Thus they wouldn’t even need to attempt a check to tie up the level 1 person, assuming the specific task I am allowing is to restrain the person in such a way that they can’t get more than one attempt to escape. I might give the level 1 person 1 attempt *per day* as a courtesy, though. That’s how I’d rule in Pathfinder Society as well.
If you are suggesting it shouldn’t work that, you are of course free to run it however you like.
“If your enemy is far more powerful than you or a task beyond your abilities, you might roll a natural 20 and still get a result lower than the DC. In this case, you succeed instead of critically succeed or fail. If you lack the proficiency for a task in the first place, or it’s impossible, you might still fail on a natural 20.” -still on page 292
Escaping from bonds is untrained so everyone always has proficiency and the fact that it does have a DC that some people can reach means it's not impossible but merely very hard.
That being said. How does a party take an on level prisoner? Assuming said stat generation (no dice), lowest stat is an 8 and highest possible is a 24. Let's assume that the creature is wearing full plate and is untrained in acrobatics while the binder is legendary. Even in this most extreme scenario for on level characters, there's only a +19 difference which makes the grapple still in range of success without nat 20 rules. So once again, they escape in 40 seconds.