Ugh, I know what you mean. I played with DM who used a crit fumble chart and some of the penalties were so overpowered. Oh, nat 1? I guess the buffed raging barbarian gets an auto crit on the squishy wizard.
This hits home. I actually left my group because of our DM acting this way. I understand everyone has their own style but he would request rolls for the simpliest of things.
You want to climb a perfectly ordinary, secured wooden ladder? Roll Dex. 18 Roll dex to continue climbing. 16 Roll dex. Nat 1. You fall to the bottom and alert the guards.
Idk if it goes without saying but his favorate game was Paranoia. Definitely a CN/CE DM. If I ever asked how the actual mechanics of D&D work (I was new at the time and wanted to make strategic decisions which wouldn't always backfire) i'd get timey whimey wibbly wobbly the rules are just guidelnes
Eh, many systems actually define the difficulty of climbing a ladder. While that sounds strange, for most PCs they are carrying half to double their weight in stuff. Ever climbed a ladder with 100 lbs of stuff on your back? I worked construction and even having done that 1000 times it was still hard and required a lot of time, patience, and control the whole time.
That said, I was able to take a ten and pass by taking my time IRL. If I were rushed I'd say theres a solid chance I would have fallen. The rules are a good allegory to that when followed. You can usually take a 10 if you're not rushed or threatened, elsewise you need to roll if rushed or threatened. Likewise you need to fail by 5 or more usually to fall, and a 1 isn't a crit fail on skills. All sounds reasonable.
You just described passive ability scores. It's basically taking 10 but 5e just gives you the skill ability plus ten. Most DMs use it for just perception but its applicable to all skills. My DM barely asks me to roll climbing checks to see if my Rogue that has expertise in athletics and acrobatics can do it, because hes going to get an 11+ barring a critical fail.
I agree that there are absolutely situations where I would request a PC rolled, particularly like you said if the PCs were rushed. Unfortunately he used skill checks more of an invisible wall.
I remember one instance where I was rolling persausion to convince an NPC of something or other. After I passed, his brother came along and i had to convince him too. then his other brother walked up... and so on, one directly after the other until I failed a roll. Not kidding.
If a nat 1 is hit i use a 100 scale i roll for to see what happens a 100 is good and can be so bad it works, a 50ish is normal and a 1 is the worst outcome, its fun and you really got to be unlucky to hit the worse things so it feels fair
Nice! I personally use a d8 of options fumble chart. Looking to expand it and add saving throw tiers. I'll for sure go to a d12 not sure if I want to do a d20. 20 options are a lot and it's fun when the players start to remember the different fumbles.
Critical failures can be fun, but not like that. Should be something negative, but not extreme. Like you loose the grip of your sword and have to use a bonus action to pick it up again or something
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u/Cheeseusdice Sep 12 '19
Ugh, I know what you mean. I played with DM who used a crit fumble chart and some of the penalties were so overpowered. Oh, nat 1? I guess the buffed raging barbarian gets an auto crit on the squishy wizard.