Magic Number
Poor Cleric. Dude just wants to play properly. If only the rest of the Heroes understood the beauty of RULES-AS-WRITTEN.
Of course, today’s comic goes a little beyond the rule of cool moments that make for memorable gaming. Deciding to allow a cool stunt even though it’s physically impossible is every GM’s right. I mean… did you guys ever seen the flying tank scene in the A-Team movie? Yes it’s stupid. And yes, I want to play in that game.
I’m sure we can come up with any number of examples. We’re talking about jumping with Fighter across the Grand Canyon or (even more absurdly) to the moon. We’re talking about seducing the dragon or going full Bearinton. This sort of absurdity can be found in negotiating for magic items at a copper each, or using your acrobatics to phase through a solid wall, or telling such a compelling lie that the other PCs forget you ever existed. You may scoff, but I don’t think these are necessarily “bad actions” just because they’re silly. I’m an Exalted player, so I know that any of these goofy situations can and should be possible in the right kind of campaign. What’s more insidious is the belief that, because of XYZ result on the die, a chosen version of reality ought to spring into existence.
These games we play are a constant negotiation. Players propose, dice inform, and GMs decide. When you stray too far from that formula, you risk a return to the little kid realm of cops and robbers.
“I shot you!”
“No you didn’t!”
“Yes I did!”
When you mistake a natural 20 for “I do the thing,” you’re not just messing with the rules. You’re not just messing with the integrity of the fiction. You’re messing with the fundamental premise of cooperative RPG play. In effect you’re saying that, “My version of the game world is the only one that matters.”
So sure, if your group wants to put a little extra stank on Nat 20s and give them special results, that’s fine by me. I even think it can be fun if you handle it with finesse. Just don’t expect a die roll to be the last word on what really happens in-game. As Fighter is about to find out, that’s how you wind up boarding the d10 hit die express elevator.
Question of the day then! Have you ever encountered the phenomenon of “I rolled a 20 so [insert goofy thing here] happens?” What was the situation? Did the player ultimately succeed, or were they in for a reality check? Tell us your tale down in the comments!
ADD SOME NSFW TO YOUR FANTASY! If you’ve ever been curious about that Handbook of Erotic Fantasy banner down at the bottom of the page, then you should check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. Twice a month you’ll get to see what the Handbook cast get up to when the lights go out. Adults only, 18+ years of age, etc. etc.
I think I have a little bit of Cleric inside of me, because I swear to gods every time I see people get excited over a natural 20 where it isn’t appropriate a small part of my soul dies.
Them: “A natural 20!!* screams of joy
Me, internally: “There is no nat 20 on a skill check in this game !” screams of anguish
That’s impossible! His is a celibate order. (sorry. couldn’t resist)
At the very least, I think the big two-zero is worth a little excitement. You just did as well as you possible could at the thing! You character is competent!
Whether or not there’s some extra special hotsauce on the effect is another matter. Like I said, these games are subject to interpretation.
Technically, a twenty doesn’t mean the character is competent. It means they did the best they could with their competence. An only-just-readjusting-to-society druid with horrible persuasion skills just had a stroke of genius, found a really good argument, but his awkward phrasing and lack of tact means his best will never ever be as good as the party face’s skilled and over years honed expertise at negotiation.
To give numbers (in 5e and to the best of my knowledge): Two level one chars.
One has 8 CHA and no proficiency, but no additional penalties. His best possible result will still be just one point short of a DC20.
The other is a rogue, perhaps a nobleman with a love for a discreet diversion, or retainer of a noble, a modest 12 CHA (Let’s not go overboard, he’s not a Bard and needs his points for other stats) and expertise in persuasion. His best not just cracks the DC20, it’s a proud 25 (20+1 CHA + 4 expertise (+2 proficiency, doubled)).
That’s quite a difference. And the competence makes it. So “You character is competent!” is a bit of a misnomer, you(r*) character just managed to give everything they had, and maybe hit a bit of luck too with it.
You push up your glasses when you’re well actuallying me!
Natural 20 not being a thing on skill checks has basically become my mantra at my table… though so has natural 1 not being a thing on skill checks. Oft forgotten and oft panicked over until pointed out.
What kinds of rolls have you seen people panic over for the Nat 1? I mean… what do you think they think is going to happen? “You failed to persuade the king” becomes “you’re put on the king’s hit list” or something?
I often have persuasion/deception checks that nat 1 result in heavily offending the NPC, my party has missed out on items and beneficial sidequests for it. Also, I have nat 20s and nat 1s matter on skill checks. Never let 20 be a guaranteed pass, but it is rarely gamebreaking to let someone jump a little extra (not a canyon, obviously). But I also play with a group that JUST learned the rules, so they aren’t abusing any mechanics yet.
Out of curiosity, are you basing the practice of “passing the DC by more is better” on any rule in particular, or does it just feel like the natural thing to do?
This is why when I’m skilling it I try to get my UMD to +19 asap, so I can always activate wands without fail.
What are you trying to activate in combat? Healing wands?
Actually the tank scene from A-Team is entirely possible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZIzreiseMk
Sure. It’s also silly.
I rolled a 20 so i convine the emperor i am actually him?
I rolled a 20 so my sword can cut the flow of time?
I rolled a 20 so my spell conjures a rain of hot cocoa?
I rolled a 20 so i seduces Doresian and Orcus into a threesome?
I rolled a 20 so i manage to abolish slavery on Cheliax?
I rolled a 20 so my raccoon kills Bahamut?
I rolled a 20 so i can use Gate to conjure the Ebon Dragon to fight Elminster?
Yeah, we have got some moments, very good moments 🙂
I’m confused. Did you actually allow these things to happen, or did you just propose them in jest?
I didn’t allowed them, it was our DM, we are pretty serious about this, they are not jokes, and yes that things HAPPENED. We are the worst kind of players, the ones with too much imagination and creativity 🙂
I am clutching my pearls SO HARD at the very thought of you!
I didn’t do all that things, is just the list of the horrors my friends have inflicted on our DM 🙁
In fact i wasn’t during the Doresian and Orcus threesome thing, i only knew of it for the notes 🙁
Notes? Why in the world would you document that sort of thing!?
Mainly morbidity 🙂
But all that things are something my companions have done:
I rolled a 20 so i convine the emperor i am actually him?
That was during a game in which a rogue with a natural 20 provoke a identity crisis on the head of state.
I rolled a 20 so my sword can cut the flow of time?
The fighter of the group wanted to take some extra turns. So what he does? Cut time itself with a sword to get some extra time.
I rolled a 20 so my spell conjures a rain of hot cocoa?
The village cannibals got diabetes, so that was the day hot cocoa rain over Sylvania.
I rolled a 20 so i seduces Doresian and Orcus into a threesome?
I wont explain this one, children can’t read about it, adults shouldn’t 🙁
I rolled a 20 so i manage to abolish slavery on Cheliax?
Abolishing the slavery on Cheliax doesn’t sound like something i would do, this is the doing of another pc 🙁
I rolled a 20 so my raccoon kills Bahamut?
Bahamut eat our group druid’s parents, he earn it.
I rolled a 20 so i can use Gate to conjure the Ebon Dragon to fight Elminster?
I was nothing personal, but the Prince Sebastian LaCroix wanted him dead to avenge Napoleon. As good Witchers we take the contract 🙂
Sometime we get creative on our campaigns, a little demonic threesome is not that big deal. They have done worst, take my word and don’t ask 🙁
This sounds like the time my players summoned zombie Jesus to fight Chuck Norris. Now that I think of it, I believe ZJ only got summoned on account of a nat 20.
There you have another good Nat-20 story for another THboH comic and if you want to use the DoresianxOrcusxPC threesome, use it for the Handbook of Heroic Fantasy. Surely you will think of something 😉
There are not enough Patreon dollars in the world.
Rule 34 🙂
We try to stay grounded in what a nat-20 can do on skill checks. Or as our DMs have put it, “There is no critical success on a skill check… but there is also no critical failure either.”
I do like the idea of a middle ground here though. Something like exploding d20 on a nat-20…
But yeah, I think most players who want a critical success on a skill check, would also NOT want a critical failure.
I mean, who would like the following?:
Player “I jump the gap between the buildings!” rolls a 1
DM: “Aw you would have made it on a 2-up, but you trip on yourself at the edge and fall off, taking 4d6 damage and fall prone.”
RAW actually helped me in a similar situation though. I was flying up a building to chase a killer cyborg thing, and it jumped on me, succeeding the grapple. My turn. I stop flying. We fall. Land prone. He stands up. EVERYONE stabs the fool out of him. I stand up and heal.
I actually prefer a sort of Star Wars: Edge of the Empire effect on 1s and 20s. You don’t succeed or fail based on that effect, but something interesting happens in addition to the raw success or failure.
Oooo
That could be fun!
Time to read up. Thanks!
Easiest way to avoid this is to avoid d20 systems that have a historical president of a 5% guaranteed success.
It’s astounding how historical system adherence shapes behaviour. I prefer a system where the player doesn’t even know what dice they would be rolling until the GM suggests a specific check, it completely preempts “preemptive rolls” that are the main cause of these sort of success assertions.
I think it’s a problem across any system once your players gain expertise. It’s a problem of familiarity.
I’ve always thought it’s a magical time in a system when no one knows what they’re doing and everything is surprising and new. If you happen to stumble on a power combo you feel like a genius. If you realize you built incorrectly it’s not a big deal. It’s just par for the course. Play long enough, gain an intuitive understanding for mechanics, and you lose that feeling of discovery. You acquire a sense of how things “are supposed” to go. That’s when the dice begin to gain too much authority.
More silliness happens at my table when a natural 1 is rolled than a nat 20. For example, my table went through a phase where “nat 1” meant “a squirrel interferes with your action somehow”. Another one was “It explodes in your face. Yes, I know you were making a Tumble check. It still explodes.”
One alternate rule I’ve seen suggests having nat 1s subtract 10 from the result and having nat 20s add 10. This allows them to be used for almost all d20 rolls, not just attack rolls and saves, while not allowing “nat 20! I jump to the moon from a standing start!” shenanigans. None of my tables have ever used it, though, so I can’t say how well it works in practice.
Fortunately, none of my groups use fumble tables anymore, which seemed like a good idea at the time, but once the novelty wore off, just made the poor Fighter worse, and if you played 3e or its derivatives you know that they didn’t need any help in that department.
Don’t have to tell me twice. You remember Clown Shoes the monk, right?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/fearsome-foe
I don’t have any ‘go too far on nat 20’ stories just yet. In my current group, the GM just has a regular success on a nat 20 and regular fail on a nat one. In some cases, a nat one is the absolutely only way a player would fail a check. Ex the goblin druid with a +70 to his Stealth I mentioned before. If rolling a 2 ends with a total of 62 on a skill, then a nat one is the only way to ever fail it. It’s not like the GM can just up the DCs for Stealth rolls, that wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the party. Our Fighter has a -2 to his Stealth.
Yeah… At those numbers I prefer a “stealth won’t work here” approach. Lack of cover, tremor sense, etc. If you invest that much in stealth it OUGHT to be pretty foolproof, you know?
A couple of times when Rogue or Goblin roll a Nat 20 on Stealth, we joke that they’ve disappeared so thoroughly that we’ve forgotten they even exist.
You ever look at the 3.5 epic level skill DCs? You might adopt the “hide another” use of the Hide skill, along with its -30 modifier:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/epic/skills.htm
While yes, a nat 1 or 20 only matters for attacks and death saves, in a sense they do. If it can’t be accomplished the GM shouldn’t let you roll. (I find this is less an issue with physical acts and more an issue with Charisma being treated as mind control, but still)
Since 20 is the highest the d20 goes, if you couldn’t get it with 20 then the DM shouldn’t have let you roll. If it is something that is achievable then rolling a 20 means your result will be high enough. Similarly, if your skill bonus is high enough that you could get what you wanted on a nat 1 the GM shouldn’t bother having you roll and just move on.
It’s a style choice, but I like to let the die roll inform the fiction, even if success or failure are impossible. Exceptional rolls allow for interesting “no, but” situations. The go-to example is, “You don’t convince the king that he’s a chicken, but he does think your ‘little jest’ is hilarious. You’ve endeared yourself to the court rather than getting cut down by the guards for your insolence.”
In that case though it’s still a check with a pass/fail range. Pass and you come off as charming enough that you’re not flogged/executed for your lack of decorum. Fail and you are. A nat 20 passes because if it was possible for you to pass with a check a 20 will be high enough.
I rule that, on anything that doesn’t normally do anything on a nat 20/nat 1, you get a +3 or a -3. So there is some benefit to getting a nat 20, but it certainly isn’t auto success. It actually does make for some interesting moments at the table where someone doesn’t normally have the ability to succeed, but they can just barely make it with a nat 20.
Any especially dramatic moments when this rule has come into play?
Well I played in a MLP FiM system where rolling a 20 was generally accepted as “yeah, you do some absolutely crazy thing”. But that’s because it fit the setting to allow you to do crazy things like sonic rainbooms or hiding underneath your own shadow or step off camera and suddenly appear somewhere else.
I have seen people try to do that in games where that makes a lot less sense and I or someone else has pretty much always shut that kind of behavior down hard.
That said, I’ve still seen and done some pretty absurd things doing it the way you’re supposed to. So I hardly see the need for the bad behavior. If you really want your character to tokyo drift on a low flying cloud from a running jump, it’s almost pointless to try and force that then try and convince everyone it should happen because it’s fun for it to.
Or you could just play Exalted where the bar for “what’s TOO crazy?” is somewhere between “I hurl the pinecone so hard it burst into flames and makes a new crater in the moon” and actually summoning Cthulhu irl to explain what your character did. =P
Right on! Cartoon physics are cool in the right setting. The trick is getting everyone on the same page. Speaking for myself, I don’t want to play in a superhero game where I can’t get punted to the moon:
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/055/362/98c.jpg
It’s not D&D, but Rulemaster counts too, yes? Kinda soerat? There are two incidents that are still stuck in my mind, almost 25 years later…
In Rolemaster you roll a d100, add your mods and consult the tables. But both rolling or achieving a result of 66 or 100 have special results, bad and good respectively.
One time we had successfully infiltrated the mansion of a notorious Zentharim lord and … pacified him and most of the guards. The survivors were besieging the party in the lord’s office. So we searched for a way to get out, certain that the guy would have a secret passage for escape purposes. Turns out he had one leading to a vault instead. And in there, the world’s first safe with a combination lock…
Ooookay. My roguish fencer has lock picking skills, but not safe cracking. But maybe he can roll on Lock Lore to get a positive modifier for his safe cracking attempt? GM says yes, proceed to roll a nat. 100 on the roll. Looking up the result we find out that not only does this give a +20 on the safe cracking roll, my guy even gets 2 free skill ranks in the skill. Together this was just enough to open the damn thing on the next roll…
One other time the party were the ‘guests’ of some sort of deposed goddess, and to try and affect our release, Rogue makes like a Bard and engages the goddess in some philosophical discussion. The roll itself is a success as far as the total goes, but since the dice came up 66… our GM grinned and informed my hapless Rogue that not only did his roll succeed, he also managed to seduce the (evil) goddess… The poor woman was heartbroken when we finally took our leave.
A lot of this comic draws on my specific gaming experiences, which tend to be 5e, Pathfinder, and Exalted 2e. I’ve always tried to keep the Handbook neutral though, and to talk about TTRPGs in a general sort of way. All of which is to say that yes, Rulemaster definitely counts. 🙂
That said, I think we’re talking about slightly different phenomena. Rulemaster has baked-in botch/crit mechanics, right? The meme underlying today’s comic comes from gamers complaining when their fellow players assume that crits and botches are a thing on skill checks (e.g. you can’t crit/botch on jumping checks 5e D&D).
Like I talked about in this one though…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/fearsome-foe
…I happen to like botch mechanics. I just think they should be a bit more rare than 1/20. d100 systems have an advantage in that regard.
Well, the results are written in the tables Rolemaster is so (in)famous for. But since it happens rarely enough and (almost) nobody has all the entries memorized, it does lead to some hilarity.
Let us just say, the GM sometimes has to get quite creative to make the results work, and that can get screwy. Like my Rogue becoming the campaigns first ever safe cracker, just by thinking about the mechanism real hard.
Or coming up with a sensible ‘bad’ result on what was effectively a diplomacy roll.
As for D20, my group and I just treat a 1 on a fail as ‘insult to injury’ and a 20 on a success as a ‘succeeding with style’. So no mechanical bonus or penalty, just spectacle.
In a game where feeling like a big damn hero is half the point, spectacle is a big deal. 😛
Did #41 survive via d10HD express elevator, or is it time to meet #42?
If so, #41 had a lifespan of 3 comics. Is that the shortest-lived of the Fighters?
I believe that Fighter now has high enough max hp to survive orbital re-entry, so unless he was injured before taking that jump I think #41 is still alive.
^accurate
My group is fairly tame on what we allow a twenty to do, especially when I am running. The argument at the beginning of this that the twenty doesn’t represent competence, but everything being “right” for when you did what you did is in full force. Also, as you know from my stories, we shift systems a lot, and that 5% changes a lot in other systems.
Anima has an Exploding Roll system on D100s, where anything 90 or over is an “open” roll. You roll again and add that to your roll before your modifier. Given that Anima also has a level of difficulty called “Inhumanity” where you are literally doing impossible things like “Scoring 17 on 18 holes of golf.”, it can get crazy.
I’ve had a game go wonky because a player convinced the ancient dragon that he was the knight savior of the world and rolled an Intimidation to convince the dragon he was a worthy threat despite the 6 level difference. “You intimidating a dragon, that’d take Inhuman at least.” Two Open rolls later…”I hit a 380. That’s Inhuman.” blink, shrug The dragon backs down.
Doing the impossible? Like I said, there’s a certain kind of game where that works well:
https://sd.keepcalms.com/i/go-beyond-the-impossible-and-kick-reason-to-the-curb.png
We kinda had this today. Goblin had a bomb that he had been working on for years. We were going up against an Ancient Red Dragon that was ruling over a village with a dungeon beneath it, so Goblin gave the bomb to Fighter before going to cause chaos for a distraction. Fighter put the bomb into the dragon’s food, but Goblin forgot to tell him how to arm it. So it didn’t go off. But a bit later, Ranger cast a spell to teleport his adamantine giant golem into the air to drop on the dragon. The falling damage was 2238. Dragon was still alive. Then Rogue mention that if the golem had fallen onto the stomach, the bomb might have gone off. The GM rolled to see if it would happen. There is no longer a dragon. Or a village. Or a dungeon. Golem’s fine though.
Yo… What the crap rules are you using for falling damage? What ancient red dragon is still alive after four-digit damage? What checks do you even make to acquire a suitcase nuke? SO MANY QUESTIONS
He rolled 350 d12 for the falling damage. He said the dragon had just a few hundred HP left. Then the bomb went off. I don’t know where Goblin got the bomb. Apparently it was a ‘life’s work’ kind of project. I can only assume he built it before retraining into a druid.
I’ve been toying with the idea of exploding 1s/20s, but with appropriate odds attached to severity of success/failure:
ATTACK ROLLS:
1/20 – a regular D20 gets you the guaranteed hit + crit (double all damage dice)
1/400 – if you follow that up with another 20, then the crit becomes semimax damage (roll 1 set of damage dice, damage of 2nd set is automatically maxed)
1/8,000 – A 3rd 20 is max ALL damage
(brutal mode)
1/160,000 – A 4th is 100% of all HP of target (unless max damage was already above 100% HP of target, in which case this counts as rolling 5th nat20)
1/3,200,000 – A 5th is 200% HP of target (instakill ignoring buffs/deathwards/special abilities)
A single nat 1 just counts as the traditional automiss
2nd nat 1 is a minor inconvenience (drop weapon and/or lose remaining attacks for that round)
3rd nat 1 is major inconvenience (non-magic weapon breaks and/or does damage to nearby party member/self)
(brutal mode)
4th nat 1 is severe inconvenience (non-magic weapon breaks and damage to party member/self AND incapacitated for a round)
5th nat 1 is absolute failure (non-magic weapon breaks and damage to party member/self and self dropped to 0HP, but stable)
SAVING THROWS:
Nat 1/20 provide no inherent bonus as per RAW but they do let you aim for exploding.
2nd nat 1/20 applies autofail/pass respectively
3rd nat 1/20 applies crit/evasion to damage respectively
(brutal mode)
4th nat 1 applies maxed crit and autofails any further saving throws as long as concentration is maintained on that spell, 4th nat 20 reflects spell back on caster
SKILL CHECKS
Nat 1/20 rerolls with -5/+5 cumulative bonus respectively. Rolls above 6/below 15 are treated as 6/15 respectively. Continue rolling until a non-1/20 is rolled.
Still a rough draft. It might be a bit too complicated for 5e, but I would imagine that the unlikely nature of it would keep it from bogging down the game too much, and the excitement of getting something so unusual would offset the bog factor.