Automatic Success and Failure on a natural 20 and 1

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 2:18 am

zugschef wrote:
Kaelik wrote:
zugschef wrote: you'd think so and you'd be wrong.^^
Or you know, literally the first person posting afterword said that changed their answer, and so will probably half the fucking people in the beginning who just answered yes.

LuciaMariangela wrote:*Edit: Oops, I interpreted OP's original question completely differently. In the correct interpretation, my answer becomes a simple yes, because with that kind of autosuccess you're still rolling, chance has already been dealt with. Depending on the damages your system has your characters set up to deal, autosuccess on a 20 (or whatever) can work just fine.

Yes. Literally the first person to post after your clarification changed their mind.

Therefore, I presume other people were thinking you meant the opposite as well.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 2:24 am

fectin wrote:
hyzmarca wrote:If you always succeed on a Natural 20, then there is a 100% chance that your game world is destroyed, because. Because all it really takes is someone attempting to eat the sun about 20 times on average and there is no limit to the number of times a character can attempt to eat the sun.
Actually, there's a hard limit on how many times most characters can try, and that limit is zero. You only roll when there's a chance of success and of failure.

Yes, and explicitly under this proposed system, there is always a chance of success (5% mimimum) and there is always a chance of failure (5% minimum), no matter what.

So you say "Okay, no auto-success, just auto-failure, because I like fucking the players over". The player then says "Fine, I attempt to not blow the world up." until they fail to not blow the world up.

Incidentally, is it technically easier to eat the moon than to eat the Sun? Or is "Impossible" a flat state that doesn't allow for degrees of difficulty?

zugschef · Post by **zugschef** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 2:37 am

Kaelik wrote:Yes. Literally the first person to post after your clarification changed their mind.

Therefore, I presume other people were thinking you meant the opposite as well.

but her answer is "a simple yes" and the question was "Is there any room for this mechanic under any circumstance?"

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 2:43 am

Uh, how often are you called on to make breathing checks? You autosucceed on all sorts of tasks and autofail plenty of others, because you don't even get to roll. The question was about when you DO roll.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 2:49 am

So what you're saying is "If you are never required or allowed to roll for anything that requires a magical auto-success/failure rule, then it's not a problem because it never becomes relevant!"

In which case you are not actually playing a game where a 1 automatically fails and a 20 automatically fails. You're playing a game where you never roll on tasks where you are not on the RNG (in either direction).

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 2:53 am

Koumei wrote: Incidentally, is it technically easier to eat the moon than to eat the Sun? Or is "Impossible" a flat state that doesn't allow for degrees of difficulty?

Logically, "Impossible" is a flat state. It's equivalent to rolling a natural 21 on 1d20.

Impossible does come with caveats about the nature of the thing making the attempt. A human can't eat the sun or the moon, but a black hole can consume them both with equal ease. It is, however, impossible for the black hole to win the Nobel Prize.

Therefore, though there are no degrees of impossible there is a distinction between that which is relatively impossible and that which is absolutely impossible.

That which is relatively impossible can't be done by you no matter how hard you try. A human can't fly by flapping their arms, that's just the laws of physics. On the other hand, a bird can fly by flapping its wings.
The absolutely impossible cannot be done by anything except perhaps a true omnipotent. This includes things like beating impossible mode on Pen & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors without cheating and making a rock so heavy that you can't lift it and then lifting it anyway.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 2:54 am

Kind of, yes. It's more, "At what point should you round up to 5% success and failure?"

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 3:03 am

zugschef wrote:
Kaelik wrote:Yes. Literally the first person to post after your clarification changed their mind.

Therefore, I presume other people were thinking you meant the opposite as well.
but her answer is "a simple yes" and the question was "Is there any room for this mechanic under any circumstance?"

Are you retarded?

You asked a question, to which there are two possible meanings. When asked to clarify, it turned out that the first person to post after you clarified thought you meant the opposite of what you mean when they posted. At least one other person posted above an explanation that only makes sense if they thought your question was the opposite of what it was, leading to the question. I thought your question was the opposite of what it was.

Who the fuck cares what the changed answer of the person who changed their answer is? It still means that lots of people were probably thinking you meant the opposite regardless of what they changed their answer to.

Seriously, why the fuck do you keep posting a frank admission that someone completely misunderstood the question as proof that no one misunderstood the question?

Stubbazubba · Post by **Stubbazubba** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 3:06 am

I think it's OK to have an auto-success possibility once you roll, so long as it is clear when you are indeed permitted to roll. The problem often comes down to what characters can attempt in the first place. Once that question is settled, then auto-success/failure should be a relatively easy decision to make. IOW, there are two steps to automatically succeeding in eating the sun: Can I roll for this? If so, is there a chance of auto-success? Whether the first question is answered by rules or DM fiat, that is what makes the world not end. And frankly that's fine.

A more interesting question would be is it preferable to have Auto-Success and Auto-Failure, one or the other, or neither?

codeGlaze · Post by **codeGlaze** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 3:30 am

You could always confirm the crit to a lower percentage. Then you'd have to different ways to resolve a 20.

Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp · Tue Mar 05, 2013 3:52 am

I'd be ok with auto success on a 100 and autofailure on a 1. 1% auto is more palpatable to me than 5% auto

zugschef · Post by **zugschef** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 4:13 am

Kaelik wrote:Seriously, why the fuck do you keep posting a frank admission that someone completely misunderstood the question as proof that no one misunderstood the question?

that wasn't even the point. but whatever. you'd beat me with experience.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 4:21 am

zugschef wrote:
Kaelik wrote:Seriously, why the fuck do you keep posting a frank admission that someone completely misunderstood the question as proof that no one misunderstood the question?
that wasn't even the point. but whatever. you'd beat me with experience.

Yes, it was. I was the one who posted the point, you were the one who responded with "tee hee, you are wrong, no one could possibly want to change their answers after I clarified which question I was asking."

zugschef · Post by **zugschef** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 6:23 am

Kaelik wrote:Yes, it was. I was the one who posted the point, you were the one who responded with "tee hee, you are wrong, no one could possibly want to change their answers after I clarified which question I was asking."

i'm sorry, i misread your posting. i should go to bed earlier. *sigh*

John Magnum · Post by **John Magnum** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 6:44 am

This topic seems like as good a place as any to post a random thought I had.

What if you had a twenty-sided die and each side was labelled 5, 10, 15, ..., 100? The point of this is that I really like percentile systems where your skill rating is your %age chance of success, because it's really easy to grasp. And I really do think that 65% chance of success is easier to understand intuitively than succeed on 8+. But actual d100s, both spheres and 2d10s, are kind of unwieldy. And making probability increments more gradual than 5% is rarely done any way. So why not just use a d20, but with everything multiplied by five so that the numbers and probabilities look like percentages?

Hicks · Post by **Hicks** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 6:53 am

Yeah, I've been doing it for years. When I roll % dice, I roll a d20 and multiply by 5. When I play 2e rogue classes I always make the default skill roll in armor a multiple of 5; saves time.

It would be cool and save time (using it, not finding it) to have a d20% die.

Korgan0 · Post by **Korgan0** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 6:56 am

If we had to stick with a d20-based system, what would the consequences be of natural 20's counting as say, 25 or 30, and natural 1's counting as -5 or -10? You don't get the really weird edge cases that happen with automagical success, but you still get a much swingier RNG that can allow for those kinds of memorable against-the-odds moments.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 10:47 am

AD&D had just that Korgan. The tables work out that a 20 on an attack counts as a 25 in effect, and a 1 counts as -4. They couldn't figure out how to write that into the THAC0 system for 2nd edition, so we got the auto-success and auto-fail rules.

Which is basically correct. Pretty much everything you ever saw was comfortably on the RNG, and so the rule only ever applied in game to masses of mook archers against high level PCs at long range, which simply should not work anyway. If you have magical full plate, fuck getting hurt by mook archers, real medieval knights where immune, that's good enough.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 1:10 pm

I'm not sure what failure on a 1 and automatic success actually adds to the game.
I have never really seen any memorable against the odds moments where you could only succeed on a 20.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 3:49 pm

Well, it stops people from going totally off the RNG. I guess that's an advantage.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 3:51 pm

name_here wrote:Well, it stops people from going totally off the RNG. I guess that's an advantage.

No, it just changes what the meaning of going off the RNG is. Adding more AC or To-hit doesn't change anything, because you're off the RNG. The fact that you still have a 5% chance of hitting or a 5% chance of missing doesn't change that fact at all.

-Username17

codeGlaze · Post by **codeGlaze** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 4:04 pm

Tussock, medieval knights were vulnerable to both crossbow and longbow fire. They were effectively armor piercing.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Tue Mar 05, 2013 4:36 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:
name_here wrote:Well, it stops people from going totally off the RNG. I guess that's an advantage.
No, it just changes what the meaning of going off the RNG is. Adding more AC or To-hit doesn't change anything, because you're off the RNG. The fact that you still have a 5% chance of hitting or a 5% chance of missing doesn't change that fact at all.

-Username17

It does change the consequences of being off the RNG, however, and this should not be completely dismissed. If you can get to a safe spot while the real boys deal with the threat, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain from crit-fishing it under a system with auto-success on a 20. Conversely, you'll inevitably be less reckless if you know a 1 auto-fails even though a 2 succeeds.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Wed Mar 06, 2013 2:20 am

When we used natural 20 was an auto-hit/success and 1 was a fail it represented that even someone without skill in the task could get lucky, and the best master of something could screw up. it lets the dice function more as they should rather than allow people to try to bypass the need for dice.

ignoring for a minute any magical needs for weapon damage, hitting something beyond the normal scope of your ability is always a memorable thing due to a lucky dice roll. likewise sucking to get the miss, but the rollercoaster is what keeps things from getting stagnant such as the slow grind of HP to win a combat or something else.

it also goes well with called shots, etc.

Stubbazubba · Post by **Stubbazubba** » Wed Mar 06, 2013 2:31 am

I've seen it help in a game (The One Ring) where the entire party had to do a roll (almost Skill Challenge-y), and the PC in question didn't have the skill to actually meet the TN, but rolled anyway, hoping for a Rune of Gandalf (nat 12 on a d12). It took away the sting of being under-trained in that area. And yes, every now and again it worked, to the player's delight.