| RazarTuk |
This is actually three related complaints.
First, there's a corner case not covered by the rules. Currently, natural 20s improve a failure to a success or a success to a critical success. And similarly, natural 1s reduce a success to a failure or a failure to a critical failure. However, there's no direct mention of what happens if I exceed the DC by 10 on a natural 1, or the analogous case with natural 20s. Do I fail because a critical success is a success, or does it just degrade to a success?
Second, especially if the former interpretation is meant, where a natural 1 can do no better than failure and a natural 20 can do no worse than success, why do they apply to skill checks? I can understand trained fighters missing 5% of the time, because HP and AC are so abstract. But it seems weird that a level 20 wizard would always have a 5% chance of misreading a cantrip, or that a level 20 rogue who's legendary at stealth and doesn't need to be invisible to be invisible always has a 5% chance of being found by an untrained commoner with 1 Wis.
And third, I can tell what they're trying to do by listing then Success, Crit Success, Failure, Crit Failure. But I think that only works if you always have something for normal successes and failures. If any of the four can be missing, I would just order it from best to worst.
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With regard to point 1, ideally I think it should be the former interpretation with attack rolls and saving throws, but the latter with skill checks. The main problem is that combat maneuvers are part of skill checks now. At least with that ruling, I would simplify the language to:
There are four degrees of success- critical failure, failure, success, and critical success. You get a critical failure if the d20 roll plus modifiers is less than or equal to DC-10. You get a normal failure if the result is still less than the DC, but is still above DC-10. You get a critical success if the result is greater than or equal to DC+10. And you get a normal success if you at least meet the DC, but don't exceed it by 10.
If the d20 comes up as a 20 (called a natural 20), you do one degree of success better. That is, a critical failure would become a normal failure, a failure would become a success, and a success would become a critical success.
If the d20 comes up as a 1 (called a natural 1), you do one degree of success worse. That is, a critical success would become a normal success, a success would become a failure, and a failure would become a critical failure.
If you are taking the Strike action or making a saving throw, a natural 1 can be no better than a failure, and a natural 20 can be no worse than a success. That is if you roll a 20 and would succeed, it is always a critical success. If you roll a 20 and would fail, it is always a normal success. If you roll a 1 and would succeed, it is always a normal failure. And if you roll a 1 and would fail, it is always a critical failure.