Lots of folks having strong opinions about these tips in the comments! Honestly, as long as you're THINKING about why you're calling for rolls, I'm not too worried about which calls you actually make. Being thoughtful about when you introduce chance into your game is gonna make your games better, whether you like my specific suggestions or not!
Thank you. This is the reason why I believe you were the best candidate to be a product ambassador for D&D. For us old-timers that were playing before skills existed, we had to take the character abilities and experience into account and make rulings. Sometimes I still roll, but only for actions that have an impact on the game. Thank you.
@@seankenny174 I think it's a pretty small but crucial skill to learn! I've been in so many situations as a player being asked for an unecessary rol or one of my party members failing at something basic. (We'd even have instances of the GM only half paying attention and just call "ROLL!" randomly without any idea ofwhat we're actually trying to do. "Roll what??" Having a better sense of when to ask for a roll, how to enact it in the world, and when to just let narrative take over will make you feel like a much more cohesive GM. Also as a personal tip I don't think she covered in _this_ video (but believe she's mentioned before probably), natural 1 doesn't need to be abslutely catastrophic and natural 20 doesn't need to let you move mountains. In her example if the players got a natural 20 persuading the king, it doesn't have to mean his highness is about to throw them a parade. It just means, against impossible odds, they somehow made good progress edging him to their way of thinking. Good luck with DMing and I hope you and your players have loads of fun!!
@@Moltenink Are you trying to say that the things she explains are not 'adanced' knowledge to you but things you consider to be basic? I'm glad you have a good set of knowledge already then if that's the case. Though not everyone has that level of experience and I see (and have often been in) so many cases where sloppy or unpolished GMing has made games less fun, that would benefit _tremendously_ from videos much like this one. As such I always love watching GM/Player tip videos. Ginny Di's videos do oftentimes reitterate beliefs I've had for years, and are not new ideas to me, but explain them in a very succinct way that I enjoy sharing with my group.
With the king and the bard thing, I ask them to roll in that scenario. However, a success doesn't get them what they want, it softens the blow of consequences. If the bard runs up and demands the king give them his crown, they make a roll to see if they get thrown in prison for treason or the king thinks it's a joke made in poor taste and the bard gets a scolding about respect.
Pretty much this. I'd also lead in with a Are You Sure You Want To Do This, especially if it looks like the player may be inexperienced or not be realising precisely what they're actually doing. I'd possible even take it one step further and determine the difficulty of that check, or the outcomes, depending on the players character or background as well as the king's own demeanour. A gentle monarch may well be more inclined to think positively of a noble, but an insecure power hungry one may see it as even more of an insult from someone of station attempting to challenge their rule. Either way, beheading a noble scion is likely to cause far more fuss than banishing them from court whereas a lowly peasant would not have that level of protection. An entertainer may have an easy time selling it as a poor attempt at foolery that fell flat. An ignorant foreign barbarian may get a pass - once - because how could we expect their simple kind to understand the ways of true society?
I like to subvert the expectations as best I can. The King *can* be convinced to give up the throne, but... This isn't a father giving his son a blacksmith shop. There are rules that must be followed. With a grave face, the King confirms the intention of the Bard to be King. If they don't... prison. If they do, "Very well then. Select one of your companions to accompany you to the royal quarters. You will fed and bathed while we prepare." The Bard must demonstrate that the Gods have abandoned the King in their favor in singular combat with the chosen companion serving as their second. Then it's either physical combat against a very beefy foe or an exciting midnight escape from a gilded prison with a "And that's why I can never go back to Narthia" story. The King might have been convinced that the Bard should be King, but they love their Kingdom and they are honor bound to do it correctly. They may pursue the Bard because they are so convinced it's the right thing to do.
The Fate Core rulebook has a fantastic way of putting this: "Roll the dice when succeeding or failing at the action could each contribute something interesting to the game."
Was watching the latest episode of Critical Roll this morning, and couldn't help but notice that, in that episode, Matt Mercer was allowing his cast to determine much of the story's direction through discussion, rather than rolls. It was a lot more fun because the players were essentially unraveling a mystery through a couple of interviews with NPC's. This seems like good advice to me. And, yes, I do often have to fight the urge to pop my dice into my mouth. Seriously.
One thing I was hoping to hear about was the concept of “failing forward”. It can bring an unexpected consequence to an otherwise mundane task. (Hopping a fence and you tear your clothes leaving an incriminating piece of clothing behind…) “Failure” can be a non-ideal outcome rather than a flat out failure. Also a mechanic that I think many DMs probably already use is the idea of “close success” or “near failure”.
I often call for dex/cha rolls to determine how clumsy or graceful the action is gonna be, just for the laughs because it won't actually affect the results anyways.
Ahh, wish I read your comment before writing mine. Basically this. Never heard it called "failing forward" but that's a great term for it and I'll be referring to it as such in the future. Thank you!
"Non-ideal" is one way you could play failing forward. Another could be having failed rolls create interesting and engaging complications to the current situation or putting the failing character in a new situation altogether. You can treat fails as prompts to create more or less drastic "shifts" for the current scene, depending on how important the roll is or how bad they've failed. Treat them as narrative prompts for increased drama and higher stakes.
Yes. Like trying to find something/someone that reasonably should be in the area somewhere. Rolling low might just mean it takes a long time to follow the trail or scrounge things up. Losing time is still a consequence, but more realistic than "grocers and innkeepers suddenly don't exist in this town anymore for some reason," essentially 😅
Bard: I try to persuade the King to abdicate and give me their crown. DM: Okay the DC is 22 Bard: Its a 22 DC for him to give me the kingdom? Sweet! DM: No, its a 22 to convince him that you were joking and not have you executed for treason. Good luck.
HA! I thought about mentioning that you can use the "degrees of failure" mechanic if you want to have players roll for an "impossible" ask, but this was already a long video 😅
Okay, you succeed. You're the king now. Give me a moment and I'll get you the king's backlog of requests and meeting agendas. You have excel on your computer, right? We're going to start talking about taxes and crop yields and army sizes and...
"If it adds to the story, let it happen." From an article I red long ago when they made D&D magazines. When to Roll and When Not to. The example was a Rogue was on a rooftop and was going to add flare to the story using a pole near the rooftop to dramatically descend. The DM then "punishes" people for trying to add to the game by trying make them fail their roll and thus taking damage or perhaps some table talk hacking for being an idiot if they fail. And thus players stop adding to the story. NOW IF the rogue was doing this to get an advantage on an attack or GAIN something rewarding from it. Then yes, roll.
There's also something to be said about preserving the meaning of choices. If there's an acrobatics skill, and the rogue doesn't have any training in it, he's rolling that stunt in my games lol.
id argue that its fun to roll for that, because the prospect of a confident acrobatic rogue failing their heroic entrance is straight up hilarious. just dont makw thw repurcussion for failing the roll to be damage.
@@jayjaygolden5123 I had a similar experience my first time playing dnd. I was a rouge the dm pre built for me that was primarily a Dex build and we were fighting in a tunnel. When I went to attack I said “he jumps off the wall and attacks the creature”. The dm had me roll acrobatics and I had a nat 1 - so he said my character slipped off the wall and fell on his own blade, and then I rolled damage and took almost max possible damage from my own dagger. All because I tried to spice it up and “jump off the wall” when I could have just walked forwards and attacked without risking a failing roll.
@@QueerAndHere The scheduling beast is CR30 and will slay us all; I face it as well 🙂 But I'm glad you found this hobby and I wish you many more years playing in it!
In the book for Vincent Baker's game "Dogs in the Vineyard", he has the advice "Say Yes or Roll Dice". The rule of thumb I use is, can I think of an interesting consequence for failure? If not, don't roll. Too often DM's treat failure as a dead end rather than treating each roll as a fork in a branching story. Failure should result in progression just as much as success, but in a way that alters the story in unforseen ways or makes life more difficult for the players. The other way I see this go wrong is, a DM will soften the impact of a failure by allowing multiple attempts or simply allowing a different approach to the problem without altering the situation. Every time the dice drop, something should happen. Fail to pick the lock? Great.... You fiddle with it for too long, and a guard rounds the corner...
Vincent Baker could just distill all of his GM (and player) advice from his game into a system agnostic book about running games and I'd but it. The advice in Apocalypse World improved the way I run every game, regardless of system.
I agree with you, the problem is that as a pure manual, failure in d&d simply means you have failed the test, not that there has to be a consequence, and the fact that we have to adjust it I find to be quite a flaw (to my personal taste). I hope they will improve this
This sounds like an AWESOME way to generate a campaign backstory. The orcs invaded the kingdom. Did they succeed? YES! It's now an orkiarchy. The king wants your bones!
@@benvoliothefirst Actually not a bad idea. Especially for running a war campaign. Rolling for the outcome for a battle across the country could be interesting in some cases.
A player, last night: "I love that you didn't make me roll to tell that this was racoon blood when I tasted it." Me: "sir, your character is feral enough, I think he would know what raccoon blood tastes like."
My key rule is unless you're prepared for the consequences of failure, don't have players roll. If you allow your players to just succeed anyways because you don't have anything, than the rolls feel empty. However, if the consequence is too drastic, then the rolls feel annoying. It's the middle ground that makes it good. Roll when you think it truly matters and when you're prepared for reasonable consequences for the players. EDIT: Also the lighting looks much better in this video. Whatever you did, it's great!
It's been an unwritten house rule in my DND group that when someone fails a roll on something that should have been easy it becomes a sort of pyrrhic success. Basically, they complete the task but have trouble doing it. Maybe they take some damage when breaking through a door or falling off the fence a couple of times. Or they stumble and embarrass themselves on the stairs. We've never talked about it, and I didn't even actually realize it until I saw this video. But there are three of us who regularly DM and we all do it. And our friend who we've played with for a while and who's DMing for the first time has picked it up as well and done it in her campaign a few times already.
I really like using the phrase “describe to me what you do” when players say “I search the room” or similar. It allows me to decide if a roll is needed, what the doc should be and whether or not that roll should be at advantage. It also encourages role playing. It has worked pretty well so far
I go for a parallel response: "are you looking for anything in particular?" I sometimes fantasize about one of them saying "nothing" so I can proudly announce "congratulations, you've found what you were looking for."
Back in 3rd Edition, we used to have "taking 10" and "taking 20" on skill checks. Taking 10 is assuming the average roll on a d20 -- 10.5. You don't have to roll, you can just take 10. You can only do this when you are in a routine, non-taxing situation (with some exceptions). Taking 20 assumes you have unlimited time to complete a task, and there is no consequence for failure, so you can "repeat" the task as often as you need until you get the best possible result. It's basically the same thing as the DM not calling for a roll, but codified into the rules, and it gives some direction as to what happens in certain situations, since you actually get a result even without rolling dice -- different characters with different skill levels get different results even on routine tasks, showing off how well they succeed. So it may be helpful to use this as a guideline: If it's a mundane task that they should be able to accomplish easy enough, and it's a routine, everyday situation -- look at what the result would be if they rolled a 10 and use that to determine how well they succeeded at it. If they say they spend as much time on a task as they can until they get it right, see what the result would be if they'd rolled a 20 and determine the reward based on that. The closest the 5E rules comes to this is passive skills. On the topic of those "ludicrous" results... If the 20 Str Fighter tries to break open a 15 DC door but fails due to poor rolls, and the 10 Str Rogue says he'll try to break it open, you can simply not give him the chance to roll. Basically, it is determined that the door is too tough for the Fighter to break open because of his failed roll. Unless the situation changes drastically, you just do not let the players roll again. Only letting one player try to succeed at a skill check is a way to avoid the situation where they just keep trying to succeed at a task when you want there to be consequences for failure. This isn't something you should just spring on your players, though, and you should be consistent about it. Presumably, there is an alternate path for the players to take after they failed at breaking through the door -- otherwise the door could just have been open instead. Now, if the Rogue tries picking the lock instead, then that is a different situation. It's a different skill, a different way to succeed or fail at the task. The door may not be locked; maybe it's barred, and the Rogue is clever enough to slip his dagger into the gap between the doorframe and the door and try to lift the bar off, so you call for a Dexterity check instead of the Fighter's Str check. There's no reason not to reward the players for trying different things -- they can still fail, and as long as the tries are for different ways to get through the door (and they don't just repeat the same thing over and over until they succeed), that's perfectly acceptable.
Can we just take a moment to appreciate the amount of pre and post production work Ginny puts into these? Great lighting and comfortable “speaking to the camera” but the edits and graphic elements demonstrate a lot practice, study, and growth!
I did this with a session yesterday, I was really proud of the session as I’m a new DM and was patting myself on the back for keeping the rolls to a minimum and based most on how well the roleplaying and reasoning was done. At the end of the session, I always ask for a little feedback just to get a feel for how they enjoyed it. My Paladin very quickly and sincerely replied, “Hey maybe you could let us roll more.”
I like to run levels 1-3 as pretty average in the world personally. As they level I start to use more description in their attacks and magic to make them seem like they’re become more and more skilled
I always err on the side of "so it takes you longer than expected" when someone rolls low for something that could grind the game to a halt. I call for rolls to determine success, and time. If success is guaranteed then we roll for time.
They have something in the rule book called "taking 20" which is basically a rule stating that if there is enough time, you can take longer to guarantee success on the roll. Essentially, if your group wants to search a room and is in no particular hurry, they can just "take 20", you determine how long it took, and they found everything that there is to find.
I don't really know anything about how to do your job, but as a former teacher I know a lot about presenting information and wow. You're excellent at this. introduce a video with a potentially controversial premise and BAM an example that illustrates why calling for too many rolls isn't good.
I'd have to say the biggest culprit is perception. Failing perception checks can lead to missed information that the players SHOULD just...have If something is hidden, you should have to do something to seek it, uncover it etc to find it. Otherwise, it is apparent
I went through that in my solo table. My friend is a first time DM and was a bit desperate to give me a hint on some obtuse puzzles, so he just asked for a bunch os randon perception checks all the time XD. Now that I'm writing this, I think he may not know about Passive Perception/Insight.
My Owlin Wizard has failed 5 different checks to gauge the capability of new allies. I wanted to do it so he could be impressed by fellow party members right after meeting them, but I haven't rolled above a five.
One suggestion someone made, and it might have been Ginny. Have a secret item be where the party searches. For example, DM puts the secret map behind the portrait. Party: We search the desk, the bookcase, under the rug. DM sighs as they never searched behind the painting and thus find the map. Instead, the map is simply where they searched. DM: Ah, you search the bookshelf, you find a map. Or, Ah, you search the desk, you find a map. etc.
Agreed - I always use the Gumshoe principle --- it's more fun to have the information (not the solution) and information vital to the progress of a scenario should not be gated behind a roll that could fail. Look at detective fiction for instance - the detective ALWAYS finds the clue ("A footprint in red clay") but it's still up to them (the player in the case of an RPG) to figure out what that means and what to do with the information. Making the characters try a Perception roll to see the red-clay footprint and they may all fail... in which case the GM typically faffs around for half an hour to try to get the information to them some other way.
Regarding the "Is it even possible?" question, I think in that case, a successful persuasion roll would just make the king view them favorably, and see the "hand over your crown" thing as a joke. A nat 20 would make the king see them as new friends, but he still wouldn't hand over his crown. This was really helpful. It isn't too far off from how I do things now, but I will definitely be more conscious of rolling too much in the future.
Tbf, the crown is heavy. Some kings would be happy to find a successor they feel is worthy and retire to a comfortable life as a wealthy noble with far less responsibility.
Another really important thing a lot of DMs miss with skill checks: always give the players SOMETHING. Even if they fail. Say a player is being stalked through the forest by an assassin and you ask them for a Perception check, then say "nope, nevermind, that wasn't good enough". That's boring, and now they have FOMO. They know they missed something, and have no clue what it may have been. Was it treasure? That would suck. It's not fun, it just feels bad. Instead say _"You think you hear a rustle in the bushes nearby, but you look around for a moment and see nothing. Must have been the wind."_ or at LEAST something like _"Your barbarian companion's boasting is so loud you can hardly hear yourself think!"_ . This does three things. 1) The player still knows they failed the check, but to what degree is uncertain. 2) Instead of being shut down and feeling like they lost something, the player gets an idea of what they missed and are presented with a MYSTERY. And finally, 3) You're roleplaying. You've given the player a narrative piece of information. It maintains the flow of the game and helps facilitate _additional_ roleplay. Maybe they want to play their character as a little on-edge now (which makes them feel in control). Or maybe they tell the barbarian to stop screaming before they get a migraine, and antics ensue. ANYTHING is better than "Nope". It's immersion breaking, it's lame, and it feels like the gods peed in your cornflakes.
Or you could just not roll until it matters. Like an assassin is stalking them. They roll Perception. They fail. Next thing out of your mouth is “As you are rounding the river bend, an arrow comes shooting out of the trees and… *roll* hits you. You take 22 points of damage. Roll initiative. “. If they succeed then the catch the assassin (or a hint of it) before you get to that point. As stated in the video, don’t roll if there isn’t a consequence of failure. Then you never have to just say nope, you can just drop the consequence on them. While I agree the description is a nice touch instead of a nope, it’s still an indicator of an unnecessary roll. The description doesn’t change the way the PLAYER sees the situation even if it changes the way the character does. But what if the player is actively looking for something? Here I think this advice shines the most. Since this is the one time it may make sense to call for a roll even if there is nothing to find. Assuming they are being vague about what they are looking for. Then I agree that not just noping it would be helpful to keep things moving and immersive.
One point here. NEVER ever tell your players they did not roll high enough to do something that they didn't even know for sure was possible. If they look for a Secret Door and there is one but they fail... don't tell them they rolled too low. And for Heaven's sake don't tell them later that the Dungeon they just exited had a treasure they missed out on. One: It just upsets them, and TWO, Now they will likely Metagame , go back in and keep looking until they find it (Unless you forbid it for some reason and that winds up upsetting them even more) And avoid asking them to roll for such things only in rooms where they can find something. If you don;t ask in every room and tunnel, don't ask at all, or they will learn what you're doing and exploit it.
@@johnevans5782 YES! Asking in every room and tunnel does have to also have a purpose and be rewarding for them, though, too, or they won't enjoy rolling at all. I'd say it's like -- give them something small if they fail, and don't tell them they could have gotten a lot more if they succeeded ;) Then set up a new situation full of possibilities!
This is the way. I'm glad to hear people discussing some of these "old school" sensibilities in context with 5e. This is an easily implemented change that requires no real mechanical alteration and leads to more competent adventurers who are actually good at the stuff they are supposed to be good at.
Great video again, Ginny! Thanks for the thoughtfulness and time you put into this. I recall the Dungeon Dudes have a house rule/rule of thumb for this sort of situation as well: if the PCs use up resources to accomplish a task, in general let them succeed. Like if there's a giant-sized door that's tough to open and one of the stronger PCs slugs back a potion of growth to try and get through it, just say, "yeah, that'll work."
Our GM does a variant of your recommendations: when a bard tries to convince the monarch to hand over their crown, they're still going to roll persuasion, and if they roll low there will probably be some social consequences for offending the monarch/court, but if they roll high they might be seen as hilarious and witty. We'll also sometimes do opt-in rolls for things where just succeeding wouldn't take a roll but you want to add flavor. Like, maybe the strong person just wants to break the door down and keep going and that's fine, but if there's someone you want to intimidate on the other side of the door you could roll to do it in a terrifying or impressive way, or if you roll a 1 then, the door still comes down, you still proceed, but you fumble a bit so the people are confused, rather than surprised or frightened. Basically, if you want to roll for things where either failure or success isn't an option, you can, you're just rolling for how well you succeed or in what ways you fail.
Fantastic video and I see DMs fail to go through this thought process all too often. I wanted to add two more pieces of advice (straight from the DMG!) that will enhance this even further: *1) Automatic success given time:* A rule found on *DMG pg. 237* suggests letting a task with no real consequences for failure other than wasted time, succeed if the player takes 10x as long at the task. This is similar to the old "Take 20" rule from D&D 3.5, and gives you a guideline for how much longer a task with no rolls might take the party in case time pressure matters. *2) Success at a Cost / Degrees of Failure:* My favorite underused tool for ability resolution is found on *DMG pg. 242* - failing a roll does not have to mean the action stops, or that a failure (or even success!) for one character needs to have the exact same consequences as a failure or success for another. Where a wizard failing an athletics check to climb might fail and need to burn a feather fall to save themselves from a splat, the olympic barbarian failing the same check due to bad luck might simply lose some of their javelins or some potions as their backpack slips open, but have no risk of actually falling in the first place. Nothing forces you to default to the most drastic consequence of failing a roll, or apply it uniformly to everyone in the party.
Really interesting bit of feedback for DMs. Having ran a few games myself I'd like to respond to some points: 1) Even if you call for a roll on something inconsequential like 'getting over the fence', success and failure can just indicate the amount of time consumed by the activity. This is REALLY handy for those pesky 'mystery' adventures. One botched 'investigation' roll can waste hours of valuable game time. Instead, just let the characters succeed, despite their poor roll, but the consequence is that it took the characters HOURS to track down the clues. Just a way that I've seen that handled. 2) Always, always, always enforce the consequences of actions. Always. Even if it derails the game. Even if it ruins things. Even if it leads nowhere. The key reason for this is: This is D&D, not a video game. Players are autonomous and should be free to have their characters do ANYTHING they think is reasonable for their characters. They should never, never, never be shielded from the consequences of their actions; that is what makes D&D such a great game! If someone fucks up and does something dumb, they should absolutely suffer the consequences, even if it derails everything. The only way players will EVER feel like they achieved something satisfying is if you do NOT shield them from the consequences of their actions. Players EARN their fates; they should never have them handed to them. 3) A TON of these dice-rolling problems are related to the game of D&D specifically. It's an 'all or nothing' mechanical system where you either succeed or fail. Other systems might not have this mechanic and I'd encourage young DMs to explore their options. Sometimes failure can be more interesting than success. Sometimes rolling for ANYTHING can be completely irrelevant. D&D puts for this system of using dice to answer questions involving chance, but it's not the only way to resolve those situations, the same way success and failure aren't the only two possibilities. Okay, I'm rambling now. Great video. Thanks for sharing. And that was a really great flow-chart. Agreed with mostly everything!
Tip 1 is something I use all the time and, honestly, is perfect. Especially when it comes to mysteries or investigations. Even a natural 1 on, lets say, a room check will give my party a single vague clue. Lets say there is a cold trap at the other end of the room and someone investigates. On a 1 or above, they would get "The room is a little bit colder than the previous".
I use what I call "degrees of success" on most skill checks. A nat 1, that is a 7 with modifiers might be a loud or clumsy success, but they will still succeed the basic goal. A nat 20 might succeed an additional goal beyond what was asked, or additional significant details instead of a basic description.
@@theravenousrabbit3671 This is a really good point. A perception or investigation roll is a great example for this, too. If the players need to notice something in order to keep the game flowing, always give them SOMETHING. In real life, even if you're not paying close attention you always notice SOMETHING about a room when you step into it. Didn't see anything? What did you hear? What do you smell? Is there a draft? Where does it feel like it's coming from? Etc, etc.
@@grammarmaid I've also done the thing were on a bad roll I give a detailed description of something that is completely unimportant like a lamp. One of my players, who also DMs, is pretty good about having his character fixate on the insignificant details as the way to "fail" the investigation.
It's worth noting that a natural 1 is only an automatic failure for attacks, not skill checks. I do agree that unless the stairs are coated in oil or otherwise trapped no check should be made...
Sometimes depending on the DM and the type of game the players are playing pointless rolls can be made fun. Our barbarian failed an attack on a door multiple times, which we explained in game as the barbarian upsetting Ol' Bessy his cow god who then would sap his strength when it would be most embarrassing until he made up for his reckless slaughter of a bunch of cows a couple of days earlier. As long as you can have those kind of rolls make narrative sense and make it fun feel free to have your players do them. That being said most of the time our dm just has us succeed on most relatively easy tasks without rolling, so for our game in particular these kind of things don't generally result in us being taken out of the game, and our DM and the weird world/rules of the world we've made together often results in us now having another ridiculous side quest.
Our DM once made us roll strength checks to open a door and all of us failed bc our characters were weak casters lol. It was hilarious and I think of it fondly (the door was heavy enough to warrant the roll) Especially because we ended up solving the problem by having our druid turn into a gorilla
I remember 3.5 encouraged the idea of taking 10, where if you're not threatened and failure wouldn't do things like damage you, set you back, etc., just let the player act as though they rolled a 10 on the die. For any DC that's less than 10 that's almost always an automatic success unless the character's shackled with penalties. They even had rules for taking 20, but that's a tad messier. For Ginny's example about a DC 5 to climb stairs, amongst the few times I'd call for a roll is if, say, the character is being pelted by arrows, or, they're trying to carry a heavy, poorly-balanced load AND they're not taking the steps slowly, or I'd already told them that the stairs looked like they're in really bad condition (and again they're trying to take them at full speed instead of taking their time).
Great video! One thing I do to combat the problems described at 8:35 and 9:38 is let my players know the roll in those cases is not to determine how well their character does at the task, but rather to determine how difficult the task was in the first place. Is your rogue able to climb this fence? If you roll low, then no. The fence is too high, and the rogue can't climb it. I won't let them reroll to try again because the initial roll wasn't indicative of the rogues effort, it was determining the difficulty of the task itself. This can also help prevent skill dogpiling. If the strongest character in your party fails to bash down a door, you can just tell the rest of your players 'that door is too difficult for the fighter to knock down, and since he is the strongest, none of you can knock it down.'
Great points about enacting consequences of PC’s choices and rolls! My “fail forward” approaches might involve the PCs rolling low to accomplish a task - they do it, but it takes extra time (when time is of the essence). Or somebody sustains damage (if it’s a physical matter and hurt is plausible). Or a belonging is damaged/lost. Or they made a ruckus and somebody is coming to investigate. When you are outside of combat initiative, I find it more useful to have an ability check represent the character’s best attempt over a period of time, instead of each individual time they tried it, so as to not big down with “roll until you succeed” type play. Or dogpiling if one PC rolls low and three others go “can I try?” simply because they know one person failed.
I have heard one idea that might justify the rolling to go up a ladder thing: that far from determining your players' ability to overcome fixed obstacles, dice rolls actually change the shape of the world. Let's say your elven ranger dashes up a ladder to a castle turret for a better vantage point, you determine they aren't stressing the ladder, and don't call for a roll. Then your half-orc barbarian decides to charge up the ladder as well, you may decide that the 250 lb brute is stressing the ladder and either call for athletics or secretly roll a d20, taking any number but 1 as an automatic success. But when you roll a 1, you declare that this particular ladder wasn't strong enough to hold the barbarian's weight and it snaps. This could even become a running joke among the party and add to the fun. On a related note, perhaps a crappy roll to climb a fence means that the fence is actually really high, and/or lined with barbs, which turns getting over the fence from a simple roll into a mini adventure where the whole party has to work together to get past it. But in both cases, I agree that you have to be prepared to deal with the consequences. Maybe the barbarian has to catch the ranger as she jumps back down after the fight, or maybe the druid has to mend the ladder so the rest of the party can get up and then they have to use ropes to haul the barbarian. That said, ton of great tips here and I love your flow chart.
I have heard this argument, and always hate it. How do you describe a door, if that door may be a solid slab of metal, or a flimsy piece of driftwood based on how your players subsequently roll to break it down? If you're gonna roll for the world, roll for it yourself during worldbuilding prep, before the game starts. Because your players' proficiency in athletics shouldn't impact how likely that door is to be poorly constructed. Because if you're calling for an "athletics check" then those things matter, if it's just "roll a d20, and 5% of the time the world warps" that's not a check, that's just boring. And makes checks meaningless for the future.
@@NessOnett8 I wasn't suggesting that this should always be the case. In my example, I wouldn't roll for the elven ranger going up the ladder, only the heavy barbarian. And I did mention a secret roll, which is faster, but lacks the tension of an open roll, so both methods have their place. By all means, if a door is important, you should be specific and tell them up front that it's reinforced oak with an ornate lock that will be hard to pick, and then failures can be attributed to skill. But there are many places where being overly specific drags down the action, so we use shortcuts, and it's in these places where this can work out. If you haven't been specific in the description of the door, and the rogue fails hard at his lockpicking check, you can say that the lock is surprisingly complex. You seem to be under the impression that I'm going to be rolling for and recording how strong all 100 doors in a maze dungeon will be ahead of time. Which is ridiculous. There's plenty of info to be keeping track of without adding something like that. My suggestion is meant to add a little minor comedy or difficulty without bogging down the game.
@@NessOnett8 And here's another thing. Things can look really tough but be flimsy and vice versa in the real world. Your stone door may be six feet thick and completely impervious to anything short of a battering ram, or it could be 2 inches and shatter easily under a mace. You don't have to change the description of what the players see for this roll to make sense, just add to it.
I think these conditions would be obvious. When the elf climbs the ladder, they would notice how wobbly it is, and the half orc would definitely know as soon as they set foot on it. The players are blind and deaf to anything that you don't tell them. You would need to tell the players that the ladder was wobbly before they climbed it.
@@douglasphillips5870 You telling me you've never gone up an old ladder, climbed a tree branch, or taken a step in an attic before realizing it wasn't strong enough to hold you? Sometimes you don't get any warning, and even when you do, you have to be moving slowly and cautiously to even be paying attention to that, and in a tense time-sensitive moment, that's not how you would be moving. I never said the ladder was "wobbly," which would be something that affects everyone who goes up it; I said that the bulky half-orc might be too heavy and break it.
This, a thousand times this. It's wild how much more smoothly things can go while keeping this in mind. I have such a hard time keeping on this rail when players keep *asking* to roll, though. It's an entirely different problem - players rolling before i can make the call, asking for specific checks, even asking their fellow players for rolls - but its a direct impact on my ability to DM this way. I keep telling them if they let me do my job, they may not even have to roll at all to succeed ×_× I'd love your advice on when rolls to "recall information" not previously discovered *in game* (rather, insinuated through backstory or some other association) become a bad thing. I have a hard time saying "no" to my people, but I often end up feeling robbed or being asked too much of. I prefer to give players to the information they need, particularly when it's extremely relevant.
I would add the concept of... Failing Forward. Never hinge your campaign on a dice roll. If something is needed for the story to go forward consider the roll is going to work anyway, but a good roll adds something more or failure adds some manner of setback. The players might learn some extra information, or succeeding quickly rather than slowly permitting them to advance before reinforcements arrive or save someone in danger before its too late. For example, the rogue's going to pick this lock eventually. Let them take 10 if they fail rather than spam rolling until they succeed. Or perhaps they succeed but ring a bell that will alert the guards nearby who can no longer be surprised.
I like this idea. Maybe if everyone rolls too low on their investigation check to find the hidden trapdoor, the person who rolled lowest falls through a weak spot in the floor. Same eventual outcome, but it moves the story forward without making the investigation seem pointless. Should be used sparingly though!
So about 5:10 with the bard asking the King to hand over the crown example, the roll should be made, not for whether the goal is achieved but rather to see whether the reaction is imprisonment to await execution or if the king will let it slide as a bad joke.
Hey. I had this problem and I really disliked the outcomes or feel of it. If my players wanted to do something that I wasn't expecting but don't think it requires a dice roll. I'll ask them to sell it to me. You can OOC ask the player what they are thinking and what they are trying to achieve and why would their character be capable. I find this to be a great tool to help players think about the people they are playing and it also helps you understand what are the kind of things they want to achieve in sessions.
Great video. I came here from Dungeon Craft and I look forward to watching more. I think one consideration to add, that maybe would make a nice accompanying video, is that the players and the way they describe things can 'force' the GM to call for a roll at times. Being a thoughtful player and thinking about how you want to approach a task can go a long way towards showing your DM if you thought there was risk involved or not. For those who watch Critical Role, when Dorian was trying to remove the ring from the noble at the ball, Robbie (the player) described Dorian's actions in such a grand series of events that it practically demanded that Matt (the GM) call for multiple rolls to see if things worked out. If Robbie had described the outcome he was trying for, rather than every minute detail of his motions, Matt could have wrapped up the whole thing in a single roll. Anyway, great video and I can't wait to see what else this channel has to offer!
I just wanna say that Ginny Di is definitely my favorite UA-camr, seriously every time a new vídeo pops up I smile, thank you for the great made and edited videos. Love your content ❤️❤️
I'm new to DMing and this has been SO helpful. It's something I wasn't happy with entirely...I feel much assisted in determining when rolls are appropriate or not. Everything you said made sense and helped so much. Thank you for taking the time to say it!
For the bard thing you have them role to determine the kings response. High roll means he laughs it off low roll results in being escorted from the castle by gaurds, loss of the group patron or mabey even a trial or just an indefinite prison sentence.
From my understanding jesters were allowed to make fun of their king or queen but they did have to be careful to not take things too far. I imagine this Bard simply took a joke too far and had to pay the price.
The closest to that we could in real life is when Thomas Blood was caught stealing the crown jewels and somehow convinced the king to give him a title and a massive estate.
But then you are faced with another point on the list: are you ready to carry out the consequences? In this case, do you really want to play jail breaking session or sessionS? And then have your jail breaker be wanted in that kingdom like forever? If yes, then go on, if not, maybe just roleplay the king's advisor reprimanding the bard and have them expelled from the courtroom
1: Often, a die roll for something unexpected can enhance a later scene. For example, in the "climbing the fence" example you used... Supposing the party had to climb the fence to sneak into a formal event that they weren't invited to. Have one random character roll dexterity during the climb, but don't tell them what it's for. In the event of a failure, the character walking directly behind might be called on for a perception check (at a critical moment after it's too late to back out) with success meaning that they notice that the other character ripped his/her clothing on the fence. Anyone with torn clothing at a formal event is going to attract attention that obviously the PCs don't want. 2: You don't always have to use a d20. Often more sensible results can be obtained with a smaller die. For example, the common case of opening a stuck door. Instead of a d20 with strength modifier, just a simple d6 + strength score. Thus, if it's a dc15, then no-one with a strength of less than 9 can possibly succeed, whereas anyone with a strength of 14+ need not roll. I once had to deal with a character who seemed obsessed with challenging NPCs to arm-wrestling matches. I just used d4+strength. 3: To avoid the absurd situation you give with the weaker character opening the stuck door after the stronger but unlucky character failed, my personal house rules include one that I use wherever raw strength is all that matters. In such cases, a success cannot be achieved after a stronger character has already failed. Thus, if the 17-strength fighter fails to move a heavy object, the task becomes impossible for anyone with less than 17 strength. In such a situation, the party must come up with a way to gain an advantage (find a lever, team-lift, etc).
Gary Gygax and TSR taught me everything I needed to know about D&D back in the old days (take the old ideas and improvise), but... it's interesting listening to this kid's videos - even if I don't play 5e - I homebrew with 1e and that works just fine for me but I'm glad to see kids today are more into D&D.
Regarding the last point, "adding to the experience" doesn't always have to be direct influence on their progress. It can just be to add some humour, lighten the mood, or make things more interesting. This can be a good reason to have players roll when otherwise unnecessary. I'll use two examples from the video. An impossible feat and one so simple its pointless to roll for. If the bard wants to try persuading the king to just hand over his crown and title, without the help of some external influence like magic, blackmail, or other trickery, then obviously he'll never succeed. But maybe have him roll to determine how the king reacts. A high roll, the king takes it as a joke, maybe plays along a bit ("oh, yeah, sure. Here, take the crown. I'll go play music and sleep with all the women I want, you can figure out how to keep this other kingdom from wiping us out, handle the assassins trying to take my crown, and deal with my gold digger wife" for example, but not actually handing him the crown), maybe as a result giving a bit better of a reward than originally offered, depending on the situation. With a bad roll, they get on his bad side, maybe become banished from the kingdom if they're done there or get ripped off for the reward, or the king just says something rude as he dismisses the bard and talks to the rest of the party ("I'd sooner hand my crown to those cultists" or something). As for opening a heavy door, one that reasonably the fighter should be able to handle, the roll could be to determine if he shows off his strength, making it look easy, or if he shows how heavy it was by struggling, even if he manages in the end. Similar for a door they have to go through anyway. This is especially helpful if your players try forcing rolls for these. "I'm gonna persuade the king to hand me his kingdom. Natural 20!", even without you asking for a check, just to punish or humour them.
Player: "Is there an elephant in the room?" DM: "Roll a Perception check." (Almost a quote from an actual game, except the elephant was an ogre and the room was the deck of a ship in broad daylight... 😅) Thanks for bringing this up and putting it out there. I totally agree that having the players roll for anything and everything has become like a disease (I call it kubophilia---from κύβος/κυβάω=dice/to throw dice, in Ancient Greek 🤓). I played D&D for many years, from first edition through 3.5, and then Pathfinder, lost my group about a decade ago after several international moves, and now trying to get back into it with the success of 5e and all the online options. Oddly, even though the old rules gave us way more reasons to roll (will a much longer list of skills, feats and the variety of rules and modifiers for each situation), I don't remember it being as bad as I see in the 5e games I've been watching online... Is this a recent trend with 5e?? Thinking that---perhaps _precisely_ because the rules were so detailed---DMs were maybe less likely to ask for a roll when they couldn't justify it...? 🤔 Or it was just too complicated to figure out off-hand which one would apply 😆
This video was super awesome! Thanks again, Ginny D! But, with my DM it’s the opposite “I’m gonna see if I remember what the book was about.” “You don’t.” “But it’s written by the sage school that I am a part of and you literally stated that all students must read this book.” “Well you don’t remember.” “If it’s that hard can I at least roll?” “Fine.” *cue nat 20 from lucky dice “Fine you remember.” “WOOOOOO!” I like rolling
I'm learning to DM my first game and had a discussion about this that was interesting. I fully agree with all your points, and that unnecessary dice rolls can add to the game under specific circumstances I refer to as the proverbial "picket fence". The key here that if it's appropriate for the mood at the table, or the situation in game, something is doable, stepping or jumping over a short picket fence might lead to a failed die roll, which can just make the character stumble in a slapstick humor kind of way, or even affects immediate events that may allow for a surprise attacks, stuns, and other mechanics. I'm doing a zombie themed one, so a failed climb over the picket fence might also unknowingly spawn a zombie in the adjacent bush who was prone.
Great advice! As a DM I particularly struggle with whether to make a rogue roll for a locked door when they have plenty of time. I also find it hard to keep the pressure on and have meaningful consequences for failed rolls. One approach I really love is what Murph of NADDPOD does - the players have an extended skill challenge in initiative but it’s to scale the wall in time before the guards catch them, or to sneak past monsters, etc. he does really cool non combat encounters but in initiative / bullet time and it helps to raise the stakes.
If they have plenty of time, just don't roll. They're a thief, they have thieve's tools, they know what they're doing. Although personally I use TheAngryGM's tension dice or something similar to track time in dungeons and chuck encointers at them on a set interval.
For the door scenario at 8:38, I think it would actually make for a super funny scenario in a session if the super strong fighter wasn't able to break down the door, but the super weak rogue was able to. It would kinda be like the picklejar scenario where a super strong person can't open the jar for the life of them, but then a super weak person is able to instantly open the jar. I do like the idea of automatic success or failure depending on skills, but sometimes making them roll can be fun :)
My and my friends just started our campaign today (90% first time players with myself included in that) and im so happy you posted this :D As we first played as a group of 10 before splitting into 2 fives, it was chaotic at best. Within the first 15 minutes we had started a barfight due to low rolling so this will be really helpful to my groups dm as its their first time :)
I really like the idea of 'failing forward' introduced in some RPGs. When consequences for a true failure are uninteresting or unprepared, or there's no other path forward, you can turn a failure into a "success with complications" where some negative consequence occurs, but the action succeeds. Maybe the door breaks down but the noise draws unwanted attention, or the guards don't arrest you but bring your descriptions to their superiors who put a bounty on your heads to take you in alive so you can go to a trial, etc. This allows you to have consequences for failure, even when you don't want to deal with a 'true failure' right then.
9:36 this is where I see DM’s start using rolls for time taken. Success is guaranteed, but your roll determines how quickly your character does so, or how beyond the baseline your character performs.
I really like this. I remember the movie Ladyhawke where the thief and the Cleric have dug a hole and the Cleric is trying to climb out, and is having trouble doing so, and the Thief is grumbling while helping him climb out. The concept of making a character who fails a minor DC roll to do a physical task then roll to see how many rounds it will take for them to eventually do so sort of fits with the concept in the DMG of allowing failed checks succeed at a cost. I might use this if the group were pressed for time in some way.
This is a great way to do it. Often rolls just need a smaller range of possible outcomes. "failure" can just be taking too long, or only knowing the basic of a history check, or finding the tracks but not know how many there were,.
This is by far the best guide to this topic I've ever seen. Most game manuals and TTRPG commentators touch on this to some degree, but you cover the whole topic and even provide a simple flowchart! Well done, indeed! One addition: Be creative yet rational with consequences. Failure doesn't always mean critical failure, or spectacular failure, or complete and total failure. Think about how the character could reasonably fail--or *complicate*--their feat, given their abilities. The latter may be especially useful if you've called for a roll you shouldn't have, and can't take it back.
It is one aspect I hate about dnd (the “always roll” approach). An arm wrestle between a level 12 barbarian and a gnome child could legitimately go to the gnome child. It can break immersion sometimes
In the case of an arm wrestle I think an absurd victory would be fun. Maybe the child distracts the barbarian or maybe they stomp on the barbarians foot. If the loser of the arm wrestle gets executed or something, that’s where you start to run into problems
It depends on how they approach the wrestle. If the party helps with skills or magic, and the barbarian is cocky enough, it would be fun. Actually, some kind of absurd rolls would flip the campaign in a interesting manner.
If I was the barbarian I'd expect the child to win, because at 12th level I'm already a big damn hero and I don't need to bully a child for kicks. That child would have an awesome story to tell, and might become a heroic barbarian someday.
Although this is basically a strength check. The barbarian with their high str against the gnome child who is a gnome, is small, and is s child. They are looking at -6 to str. They're not a pc so their str is likely average before modifiers. After modifiers they have a str score of 4-5 that's a -3 modifier. Unless the barbarian let's them win its no contest.
@@declaniii6324 yeah, like it is obviously contextual. If it is just for a laugh , I think letting the dice decide can be fun. There are lots of situations where I think rolling creates epic/hilarious moments. It can also be immersion breaking when it is a serious moment and the character should win with ease. Arm wrestle was maybe a bad example, but I stand by my point.
I just stumbled on your videos as a new DM about and I love how you explain things. You make concepts more easy to understand. Thank you for making these videos.
That was my thought. The crown is broke, they're on the verge of war with a militarily superior neighbor known for liking assassination attempts, the people are starving and occasionally rioting, you are betrothed to a woman you don't love but must marry to keep her powerful father (and his army) on your side, and some yokel comes in and just...gives you an out. He'd need to roll a 22 for the king NOT to give him the crown.
haha I love this. The "critical success failure" or the "critical failure success." I had a player roll to be taken off the bench early in a combat tournament and he got a nat 1. The coach laughed and let him fight while his teammates watched in horror.
The ladder example reminds me of a lesson that is expressed in the GM rulebooks of several other systems: If a task is mundane enough that an average person can easily and reliably perform it, a roll should not be required. But it also reminds me of another lesson that often accompanies that line: *If there are no consequences for failure, a check should not be rolled* A.k.a., if their failure results in nothing but a mild bit of humour, it shouldn't be an option. If failure is not meant to be an option, the roll has no purpose. Similarly, if success shouldn't be availible, don't allow a roll. If a roll doesn't change the outcome in any noteworthy way, there shouldn't be one. If there isn't supposed to be any way for the characters to impact something, they shouldn't be allowed to, either through a failure or a success. Edit: After watching further through the video, I've come to notice that this point was, in fact, made. Maybe I should've watched through *before* commenting...
When I started DMing years ago, I had to break my players' instinct to roll for everything always. I hit a breaking point when a player said "I want to cross the room and look out the window," then rolled before I could say anything, rolled a 1, and was immediately like "aw shoot, I guess I can't do that," and I'm just thinking, "Why'd you even roll for it? You can just do it anyway." Or another time, a player (with 13 STR) announced they were going to force open a collapsed mineshaft and rolled a 20 before I could say anything, and was disappointed when I explained that no, a 20 doesn't mean you can suddenly pick up several tons of rock. Sometimes you don't just have to ask players to roll less, you have to tell them.
Just discovered your channel as someone shared this video on Twitter, and this flow chart + exemples your are providing help me a lot as a novice DM. I already knew that "rolling too much is a bad idea" stuff but you developped and bring good reasons as to why, and ideas on how to build my next games. Also : top notch work on the video, images, colors (and extra points for the subtitles, as a non native english speaker, even if could have done without them I think, they are a great plus !)
My players love it when they come up with a smart idea and it just works. So i highly encourage anyone to reward good ideas or roleplaying with bonus to a roll, advantage or straight up success! So i love that kind of advice ^^
There are a few factors that I tend to think gets overlooked. 1) D&D's mechanics suit a high frequency of rolls. The swingy nature of 1d20+[small bonus] means that fewer rolls make individual extreme outcomes stand out more, while they average out more over many rolls. Games where rolls are less frequent are well-suited to systems where the odds are a bell curve or where the dice produce more complex outcomes than binary pass/fail. 2) Framing rolls and framing outcomes have a lot more possibilities than absolute success or absolute failure. To expand on the examples you mentioned in the video: 2a) Attempting to pick a lock, a player rolls to fail. The simplest approach is "they don't get through the door"... but if that outcome stalls the game, maybe failure has a different consequence. Maybe the failure reveals a problem that someone else in the group can solve (it's not locked, it's nailed shut, maybe the Barbarian can force it). Maybe the roll is "can you pick the lock _in time_ to avoid the patrolling guard"? Maybe there's a cost, where failure means you succeeded but broke your tools or left a sign of your presence? 2b) sneaking around, a failed stealth check meaning "you're found immediately" is the biggest hindrance to uses of stealth in games. Maybe a failed Stealth check means "a guard comes to investigate the unexpected noise, what do you do before they get here?", creating back and forth tension to sneaking around, that even less-sneaky characters can dabble in. 3) framing failure in general is an art too. Learning how to describe a failure in such a way to not discourage the players is a handy trick, but I tend to boil it down to "the PCs never fail out of incompetence, but out of the intervention of outside forces". To borrow from another genre, Hawkeye in the Avengers will never miss a shot... so when he fails, it's because something else got in the way. Maybe the enemy has a forcefield, or is super-fast and catches the arrow, or is simply too tough to be hurt by that arrow, or someone disrupted Hawkeye before he could make the attack. Same with RPGs: assume the PCs would have succeeded unless something got in the way.
I would suggest: have the players already had to sucseed a roll to do get there? For example: the rogue has tricked a guard into taking him through the gate into a city by making a successful Deception check. You don't need to have the rogue roll to then trick the person who keeps the keys/ pulls the rope to lower the draw bridge. This just makes gameplay frustrating when you have done something successfully but then you fail on a second roll that you only got to because of the first because it makes the initial success feel pointless
Yes. This. And besides, at some point, if you ask for too many rolls to effectively accomplish one thing, the player is just naturally going to eventually roll low and negate all the good 'uns. That said, consider using skill challenges. You can fail, say, twice without blowing your scheme, so long as you don't fail thrice before getting, maybe, five successes. Adjust numbers based on difficulty and risk involved but let the player come up with ideas for what to do and what checks are employed.
I feel like this topic has been something most of us had to learn by experience (or by reading the DMG), but now it's even clearer. Thank you for your guides, they have been really helpful and entertaining é.é
yeah, taking 10 is nice for tasks with no real failure consequences (taking 20 when you have tons of time) and it provides the threshold where rolling isn't relevant (20 strength barbarian vs a DC 15 strength check can take 10, the 10 strength rogue can't).
Yeah its a great mechanic, that I wish stayed from D&D 3.5 but its also great to know that Pathfinder still uses it. Whenever, I DM a version 5e game I try to make sure to bring up the "taking 10 or 20" rules as homebrew rules. It's also a good idea to remember that passive skills are a thing too. Passive perception is just what player should be able to do if their is no reason for them to be distracted, disadvantage, ect.
@@algi1 I see what you're talking about but I remember playing with taking 10 well before Pathfinder came out. I also only played 3.5 and 5e Dungeons & Dragons. Also many people don't play 3.5 D&D anymore so it's likely that it just gets over flooded with Pathfinder or 5e.
I've seen countless forum threads melt down over this issue and honestly if I could magically ctrl+v this video into all of them I think they'd all be better for it. I try to explain so much of this, especially those exact sections of the PHB and DMG (so often in fact that I basically recited them from memory along with Rulebook Ginny), but you've captured it in such a fantastically comprehensive, direct, and clear way that it should be required viewing for every DM, new and veteran. Frigging well done.
Great podcast, but I would like to make the following counter-consideration. Rolls can add flavor. Using the example of the fence, the fighter should be able to climb the fence. Let's say she rolls a 4, technically failing the attempt. I would allow her to still climb the fence, but her cloak would rip on a nail or she would kick a board out place letting others walking by that something may be wrong.
This is a great video. Even as a long time DM, I still struggle sometimes with when I should and shouldn't call for rolls in my games to keep things interesting and dynamic. This is a great topic that doesn't get enough attention in the DND / tabletop space.
I would point out to also not go too far in the opposite direction: Determining everything through roleplay (and thus the DM's whims about whether it was good enough) when a roll would 100% make sense. I've been in games that get to the point where it's like "Why did I buy dice and write up a character sheet if the DM's going to decide everything just based on if they like what I said enough?" Had a DM decide I got shot in the head and dogpiled to the ground with zero rolls because it "made sense" to him based on how he had roleplayed the scenario, and I'm like "Why do I have these skills and abilities then if we're not going to use them?" Like many things, it's a balance you have to learn to maintain.
Great video! This matches my experiences and I have concluded similarly. Perception and Investigation checks are big culprits of requiring too many rolls instead of asking the players what they do and how. Also I don't like individual initiative because it slows the game down right when the action is rising. Group initiative or other systems with no or just one roll are so much faster and you can get straight to the action!
Wow, hearing all of this articulated is super helpful. I had an old DM that I grew to resent for the way he ran his games, and this is almost all of what his issues were: making us roll for stuff we really didn’t need to roll for, and giving us outlandish, character-breaking consequences if we failed. It stopped being fun to have luck determine whether or not the character I was playing would actually do something I would roleplay them doing, and have potentially irreversible consequences for failure attached
I wish I had watched your video before I do exactly that. Hard to open door, rogue with bad luck and important items to solve the mission on the other side. "Roll less" is really a very nice tip. Congrats for the material and thank you!
Honest, personal, quirky, relatable, funny, well-made, and the thing I find the most rare in the "content world" - it's cited. I'm not even saying that this game neeeeeds the rule books for every little detail (aka the reason people homebrew). Still, it's just a great practice to have, elevating the value of your content. This is a perfectly crafted video. Thanks for a fun and informative experience :)
Remember a success can still end up with something bad. For instance a defense attorney would consider it a success to get a three year sentence down to 6 month plus probation. Sometimes the best result is just the least bad outcome.
5:30 “Do you believe that I could kill you? Right here, right now, without using a sword or the Power? Do you believe that if I simply willed it, the Pattern would bend around me and stop your heart? By . . . coincidence?”
For the re-rolling failed attempts thing for stuff like climbing fences, opening doors etc, I say to players that the roll they got represented all their attempts while the conditions are still the same, so just saying "I try again" will leave them with the same roll. This means players have to figure out how to approach it slightly differently. For example, if they tried to hop a fence and failed, then they just can't get a grip on it while they keep trying in the same way, but if the players change the conditions by putting down some of their equipment to be more agile, or by searching along the fence for a foothold, or using rope to try to hoist themselves etc, then they can re-roll. Also repeated failures will take more time, and increase the chances of being caught or having a random encounter, and making this chance clear to them from the beginning raises the stakes even if it's something they will eventually succeed at. This was a really helpful video and it got me thinking, thank you!
Usually when things are challenging but there's no consequence for failure, I let my players roll to see how quickly and stylishly they pull off the task. It can be fun to describe the low dex wizard scrambling up a dense while the rouge's cloak gets stuck as they try to follow.
In your example of the bard demanding the king abdicate and give up his crown to him, i actually use this exact same example all the time to explain how a nat 20 persuasion isn't mind control. I would still call for a roll, but the outcome determines if the king is amused by your demands, assumes your a good actor and offers you a job as a jester or if he is offended and calls for your arrest and/or execution.
Something I want to add: if you have a situation that requires multiple rolls to resolve, one failed roll should not ruin the entire attempt and void the previous successful rolls. If you have a multi-roll situation, the outcome should be determined by the net total of successful rolls and failures (combat in D&D already follows this principle).
Another quality tip video. Thank you!! I’m definitely in the camp of: skill/ability rolls should be done to make the adventure more interesting/harder/easier, not something that requires a pass/fail to be able to move forward! I’ve looked at a few premade adventures and campaigns, and there always seems like they’re riddled with these “you have to pass to move forward”
Oh yeah, I stopped rolling for a while lol 😂 Use a lot of passive checks :) love this video! Ty Ginny!!! Edit: the hilarious thing is that virtually this exact flowchart is used by angry GM! After being introduced to it, I've implemented it in my games, and it's been really useful. I do have my players roll if their passive is too low to pass, and then if they fail, they fail :) it took a while to recognize a lot of the stuff discussed in this vid, and it is excellent!!!
Great video! As for the king granting his crown because the bard was that charismatic, I'd still roll. The bard's attempt will lead to a failure, but consequences can differ: say, low roll will get him executed, and natural 20 will make it look like a good joke, the king will laugh and so on. I mean, rolling for the actions that will always fail still makes sense sometimes.
There are a lot of ways to introduce consequences for failed rolls without breaking the story. Time is the one I see the most, which is great when it gives disadvantage to later scenarios. The guards can fine the players instead of arresting them for small offences; this can also open quest lines and restrict them to the town until their debt is paid. Maybe the party ruins their relationship with an NPC and is now denied goods or services. Temporary injuries or curses can work if the players are okay with having their abilities altered for the sake of story.
Something else that I've encountered a number of times is when a DM has locked the outcome of a scenario into their plans, and doesn't have any alternative available to offer players. For example, my DM set up a scenario in which our party comes across a magical grove in the middle of a forest. Everyone rolled Con saves. Those who failed were lured towards the tree, only to promptly fall asleep at the roots. One by one, every player had to watch as we all fell prey to the mysterious tree- except...for my character. Who is resistant to being charmed, and cannot be magically put to sleep. For **45 out of game minutes** I was stuck trying to roleplay myself out of this scenario. No amount of dice rolls or problem-solving helped me out. After the game, DM told me that he had no idea what to do either, and said it would be easier if I had just fallen asleep like everyone else.
I had a very frustrating period for some months as a dm and I could never pin point why. And this was exactly it. When I started dming years ago I learned to go with the flow but on the way I started to forget and make very specific plans I wanted to play out. My creativity was restricted that way and players had the feeling I wasn't cheering for them anymore, but for the outcome. So I finally switched back and followed the way of "whatever happens happens, lets make it cool and fun". And yeah it works. Your story just reminded me of that.
I want to add in something here that I do personally as a DM to remove what I personally think are bad rolls from the game - reward characters for the character they play including their class, background, backstory and skills they've chosen proficiency in by not making them roll for things their character would definitely know in this setting, and let their character be a source of information in game for the other characters by giving them free information instead of always calling for knowledge checks for what would be basic knowledge for someone of their station in this setting. If someone has chosen to play a noble son of a great house who is intricately tied to the nobles in the city your campaign is set in, don't make them roll for basic history of the nobles of the city. Just say, "Because of your background, you would recognise this House Sigil," and tell them what they would know. If someone has chosen to play a wizard with proficiency arcana, don't make them roll for basic arcane knowledge, just tell them, "Because of your background, you would know about this Wizard Academy." If a character has chosen to play a member of the guard in your setting, they don't need to roll for information about the guard, tell them, "Because of your background, you would be well aware of where the Watch Towers are located in this city." Give them this information for free and have this character be the source of information for the other characters rather than that information coming from the sourceless voice of the DM based on whether they rolled well. I replace a lot of DC10/DC12 type checks like this and treat them like instant success expertise checks depending on what that character would know based on their personal combination of characteristics and background. I feel like this not only eliminates unnecessary rolls, but it helps my players feel like they're getting to play the characters they've chosen, makes them feel more tied to the world and their character because the noble son of a great house is getting to act like the noble son of a great house and the super smart wizard is getting to act like a super smart wizard and the guard is getting to act like a guard. It improves their roleplaying and characterisation and avoids stupid situations like, say, a guard who has served the city for ten years not being able to call upon that information to tell his friends how many guards are typically stationed in a Watch Tower, or how often they usually change shifts. Unless things have changed recently, he would know that!
Lots of folks having strong opinions about these tips in the comments! Honestly, as long as you're THINKING about why you're calling for rolls, I'm not too worried about which calls you actually make. Being thoughtful about when you introduce chance into your game is gonna make your games better, whether you like my specific suggestions or not!
Thank you. This is the reason why I believe you were the best candidate to be a product ambassador for D&D.
For us old-timers that were playing before skills existed, we had to take the character abilities and experience into account and make rulings. Sometimes I still roll, but only for actions that have an impact on the game.
Thank you.
This is really helpful for someone about to first-time dm, thank you
So true bestie
@@seankenny174 I think it's a pretty small but crucial skill to learn! I've been in so many situations as a player being asked for an unecessary rol or one of my party members failing at something basic.
(We'd even have instances of the GM only half paying attention and just call "ROLL!" randomly without any idea ofwhat we're actually trying to do. "Roll what??"
Having a better sense of when to ask for a roll, how to enact it in the world, and when to just let narrative take over will make you feel like a much more cohesive GM.
Also as a personal tip I don't think she covered in _this_ video (but believe she's mentioned before probably), natural 1 doesn't need to be abslutely catastrophic and natural 20 doesn't need to let you move mountains. In her example if the players got a natural 20 persuading the king, it doesn't have to mean his highness is about to throw them a parade. It just means, against impossible odds, they somehow made good progress edging him to their way of thinking.
Good luck with DMing and I hope you and your players have loads of fun!!
@@Moltenink Are you trying to say that the things she explains are not 'adanced' knowledge to you but things you consider to be basic?
I'm glad you have a good set of knowledge already then if that's the case. Though not everyone has that level of experience and I see (and have often been in) so many cases where sloppy or unpolished GMing has made games less fun, that would benefit _tremendously_ from videos much like this one.
As such I always love watching GM/Player tip videos.
Ginny Di's videos do oftentimes reitterate beliefs I've had for years, and are not new ideas to me, but explain them in a very succinct way that I enjoy sharing with my group.
With the king and the bard thing, I ask them to roll in that scenario. However, a success doesn't get them what they want, it softens the blow of consequences. If the bard runs up and demands the king give them his crown, they make a roll to see if they get thrown in prison for treason or the king thinks it's a joke made in poor taste and the bard gets a scolding about respect.
Commented basically the same thing before noticing it was already mentioned.
Glad to see I'm not alone in this.
yes this i mentioned this before
Pretty much this.
I'd also lead in with a Are You Sure You Want To Do This, especially if it looks like the player may be inexperienced or not be realising precisely what they're actually doing.
I'd possible even take it one step further and determine the difficulty of that check, or the outcomes, depending on the players character or background as well as the king's own demeanour. A gentle monarch may well be more inclined to think positively of a noble, but an insecure power hungry one may see it as even more of an insult from someone of station attempting to challenge their rule. Either way, beheading a noble scion is likely to cause far more fuss than banishing them from court whereas a lowly peasant would not have that level of protection. An entertainer may have an easy time selling it as a poor attempt at foolery that fell flat. An ignorant foreign barbarian may get a pass - once - because how could we expect their simple kind to understand the ways of true society?
I like to subvert the expectations as best I can. The King *can* be convinced to give up the throne, but... This isn't a father giving his son a blacksmith shop. There are rules that must be followed.
With a grave face, the King confirms the intention of the Bard to be King. If they don't... prison. If they do, "Very well then. Select one of your companions to accompany you to the royal quarters. You will fed and bathed while we prepare."
The Bard must demonstrate that the Gods have abandoned the King in their favor in singular combat with the chosen companion serving as their second. Then it's either physical combat against a very beefy foe or an exciting midnight escape from a gilded prison with a "And that's why I can never go back to Narthia" story.
The King might have been convinced that the Bard should be King, but they love their Kingdom and they are honor bound to do it correctly. They may pursue the Bard because they are so convinced it's the right thing to do.
I might even tell them to make a Charisma saving throw which accentuates the difference.
The Fate Core rulebook has a fantastic way of putting this: "Roll the dice when succeeding or failing at the action could each contribute something interesting to the game."
A-friggin-men
I steal a number of rules from FATE for my 5e games. And really, Inspiration (rewarding good RP) is really similar to using a Fate Point for a re-roll
Was watching the latest episode of Critical Roll this morning, and couldn't help but notice that, in that episode, Matt Mercer was allowing his cast to determine much of the story's direction through discussion, rather than rolls. It was a lot more fun because the players were essentially unraveling a mystery through a couple of interviews with NPC's. This seems like good advice to me.
And, yes, I do often have to fight the urge to pop my dice into my mouth. Seriously.
Mood
I'm wondering now if it'll be a good idea or bad to sell die gummies.
@@kairon156 they do make candy dice, I think some people buy them (a few UA-cam DMs have received some), but it's not the same as the forbidden gems.
@@kairon156 They're just so pretty! Who can resist?
@@kairon156 Do it. If you roll a Nat 20 you get to eat it.
One thing I was hoping to hear about was the concept of “failing forward”. It can bring an unexpected consequence to an otherwise mundane task. (Hopping a fence and you tear your clothes leaving an incriminating piece of clothing behind…)
“Failure” can be a non-ideal outcome rather than a flat out failure.
Also a mechanic that I think many DMs probably already use is the idea of “close success” or “near failure”.
I often call for dex/cha rolls to determine how clumsy or graceful the action is gonna be, just for the laughs because it won't actually affect the results anyways.
Ahh, wish I read your comment before writing mine. Basically this. Never heard it called "failing forward" but that's a great term for it and I'll be referring to it as such in the future. Thank you!
"Non-ideal" is one way you could play failing forward. Another could be having failed rolls create interesting and engaging complications to the current situation or putting the failing character in a new situation altogether. You can treat fails as prompts to create more or less drastic "shifts" for the current scene, depending on how important the roll is or how bad they've failed. Treat them as narrative prompts for increased drama and higher stakes.
Yes. Like trying to find something/someone that reasonably should be in the area somewhere. Rolling low might just mean it takes a long time to follow the trail or scrounge things up. Losing time is still a consequence, but more realistic than "grocers and innkeepers suddenly don't exist in this town anymore for some reason," essentially 😅
Bard: I try to persuade the King to abdicate and give me their crown.
DM: Okay the DC is 22
Bard: Its a 22 DC for him to give me the kingdom? Sweet!
DM: No, its a 22 to convince him that you were joking and not have you executed for treason. Good luck.
HA! I thought about mentioning that you can use the "degrees of failure" mechanic if you want to have players roll for an "impossible" ask, but this was already a long video 😅
I'm glad I wasn't the only one thinking this.
@@GinnyDi Oooh, "degrees of failure" could be a future video. (or part of one made of smaller ideas)
Okay, you succeed.
You're the king now. Give me a moment and I'll get you the king's backlog of requests and meeting agendas. You have excel on your computer, right? We're going to start talking about taxes and crop yields and army sizes and...
@@DannyboyO1 “degrees of failure” could also be a great band name
"If it adds to the story, let it happen." From an article I red long ago when they made D&D magazines. When to Roll and When Not to. The example was a Rogue was on a rooftop and was going to add flare to the story using a pole near the rooftop to dramatically descend. The DM then "punishes" people for trying to add to the game by trying make them fail their roll and thus taking damage or perhaps some table talk hacking for being an idiot if they fail. And thus players stop adding to the story. NOW IF the rogue was doing this to get an advantage on an attack or GAIN something rewarding from it. Then yes, roll.
There's also something to be said about preserving the meaning of choices.
If there's an acrobatics skill, and the rogue doesn't have any training in it, he's rolling that stunt in my games lol.
id argue that its fun to roll for that, because the prospect of a confident acrobatic rogue failing their heroic entrance is straight up hilarious. just dont makw thw repurcussion for failing the roll to be damage.
Basically if there's reward in it add the risk, if not just go with it. With exceptions of course.
In my opinion a poor example, showmanship is always risky, even if the only "punishment" is being embarrassed by your failure.
@@jayjaygolden5123 I had a similar experience my first time playing dnd. I was a rouge the dm pre built for me that was primarily a Dex build and we were fighting in a tunnel. When I went to attack I said “he jumps off the wall and attacks the creature”. The dm had me roll acrobatics and I had a nat 1 - so he said my character slipped off the wall and fell on his own blade, and then I rolled damage and took almost max possible damage from my own dagger. All because I tried to spice it up and “jump off the wall” when I could have just walked forwards and attacked without risking a failing roll.
I've been DMing for 20 years and this articulated some things in a way I hadn't thought about all that time. A++ content, Ginny.
Imagine playing d&d for 20 beautiful years 😭 I’m glad if I get to play once a month and only have been playing for two years
@@QueerAndHere The scheduling beast is CR30 and will slay us all; I face it as well 🙂 But I'm glad you found this hobby and I wish you many more years playing in it!
Are you an US American by chance?
I've only been DMing for a couple months but I'm so glad I was subscribed to watch this video! Great content
Yeah I wish this content existed when I was a kid and trying and failing to play the game
In the book for Vincent Baker's game "Dogs in the Vineyard", he has the advice "Say Yes or Roll Dice". The rule of thumb I use is, can I think of an interesting consequence for failure? If not, don't roll. Too often DM's treat failure as a dead end rather than treating each roll as a fork in a branching story. Failure should result in progression just as much as success, but in a way that alters the story in unforseen ways or makes life more difficult for the players.
The other way I see this go wrong is, a DM will soften the impact of a failure by allowing multiple attempts or simply allowing a different approach to the problem without altering the situation. Every time the dice drop, something should happen.
Fail to pick the lock? Great.... You fiddle with it for too long, and a guard rounds the corner...
Vincent Baker could just distill all of his GM (and player) advice from his game into a system agnostic book about running games and I'd but it. The advice in Apocalypse World improved the way I run every game, regardless of system.
Is this a book? Also would books or resources to recommend for a newbie GM?
I agree with you, the problem is that as a pure manual, failure in d&d simply means you have failed the test, not that there has to be a consequence, and the fact that we have to adjust it I find to be quite a flaw (to my personal taste).
I hope they will improve this
@skwerel So, don't roll unless you (the DM) can think of an interesting consequence of failure? So, you just let checks succeed without rolls?
“You can’t eat dice” says Ginny not knowing I make chocolate dice and have that pleasure hahaha
How do you make the numbers?
@@miserablepumpkin9453Trust me... drawing numbers on chocolate is not hard
Candy shaped like dice?😋
there are hard candy molds i think, just use a d20 mold instead
GIMME
Lol. A “Do you complete the quest” check. Roll! Yay! Let’s go home
This sounds like an AWESOME way to generate a campaign backstory. The orcs invaded the kingdom. Did they succeed? YES! It's now an orkiarchy. The king wants your bones!
@@benvoliothefirst Actually not a bad idea. Especially for running a war campaign. Rolling for the outcome for a battle across the country could be interesting in some cases.
@@flameofmage1099 That's when I play a speed-round of Battle Masters!
A player, last night: "I love that you didn't make me roll to tell that this was racoon blood when I tasted it."
Me: "sir, your character is feral enough, I think he would know what raccoon blood tastes like."
"Your character has sampled the flesh of vermin"
@@deffdefying4803 but presumably there is a meaningful difference in the taste of Racoons, Rats, Politicians...
Every vermin group is different lol
My key rule is unless you're prepared for the consequences of failure, don't have players roll.
If you allow your players to just succeed anyways because you don't have anything, than the rolls feel empty. However, if the consequence is too drastic, then the rolls feel annoying.
It's the middle ground that makes it good. Roll when you think it truly matters and when you're prepared for reasonable consequences for the players.
EDIT: Also the lighting looks much better in this video. Whatever you did, it's great!
I like ur vids!
Was just watching a video of yours!
I remember having a rogue with 16+ dex fail a few average jumps and die as a result. There wasn't even any combat or traps as far as I remember.
The same applies to success. You have to be prepared for both. (ie. convincing the king to abdicate, seducing the dragon, etc)
A wild Crispy appeared!
It's been an unwritten house rule in my DND group that when someone fails a roll on something that should have been easy it becomes a sort of pyrrhic success. Basically, they complete the task but have trouble doing it. Maybe they take some damage when breaking through a door or falling off the fence a couple of times. Or they stumble and embarrass themselves on the stairs. We've never talked about it, and I didn't even actually realize it until I saw this video. But there are three of us who regularly DM and we all do it. And our friend who we've played with for a while and who's DMing for the first time has picked it up as well and done it in her campaign a few times already.
"You clear the fence. However, on the way down you sprain your ankle. Your movement speed is reduced by 10ft for the next minute."
I really like using the phrase “describe to me what you do” when players say “I search the room” or similar. It allows me to decide if a roll is needed, what the doc should be and whether or not that roll should be at advantage. It also encourages role playing. It has worked pretty well so far
I go for a parallel response: "are you looking for anything in particular?" I sometimes fantasize about one of them saying "nothing" so I can proudly announce "congratulations, you've found what you were looking for."
I like to use it, because I insist a party should be able to identify and disarm a trap without a rogue.
My go-to is "what is your intent here?"
@@lightningpastry2153 Or the standby "Explain yourself!".
@@commandercaptain4664 "Splain dat"
Back in 3rd Edition, we used to have "taking 10" and "taking 20" on skill checks. Taking 10 is assuming the average roll on a d20 -- 10.5. You don't have to roll, you can just take 10. You can only do this when you are in a routine, non-taxing situation (with some exceptions). Taking 20 assumes you have unlimited time to complete a task, and there is no consequence for failure, so you can "repeat" the task as often as you need until you get the best possible result. It's basically the same thing as the DM not calling for a roll, but codified into the rules, and it gives some direction as to what happens in certain situations, since you actually get a result even without rolling dice -- different characters with different skill levels get different results even on routine tasks, showing off how well they succeed.
So it may be helpful to use this as a guideline: If it's a mundane task that they should be able to accomplish easy enough, and it's a routine, everyday situation -- look at what the result would be if they rolled a 10 and use that to determine how well they succeeded at it. If they say they spend as much time on a task as they can until they get it right, see what the result would be if they'd rolled a 20 and determine the reward based on that.
The closest the 5E rules comes to this is passive skills.
On the topic of those "ludicrous" results... If the 20 Str Fighter tries to break open a 15 DC door but fails due to poor rolls, and the 10 Str Rogue says he'll try to break it open, you can simply not give him the chance to roll. Basically, it is determined that the door is too tough for the Fighter to break open because of his failed roll. Unless the situation changes drastically, you just do not let the players roll again. Only letting one player try to succeed at a skill check is a way to avoid the situation where they just keep trying to succeed at a task when you want there to be consequences for failure. This isn't something you should just spring on your players, though, and you should be consistent about it. Presumably, there is an alternate path for the players to take after they failed at breaking through the door -- otherwise the door could just have been open instead.
Now, if the Rogue tries picking the lock instead, then that is a different situation. It's a different skill, a different way to succeed or fail at the task. The door may not be locked; maybe it's barred, and the Rogue is clever enough to slip his dagger into the gap between the doorframe and the door and try to lift the bar off, so you call for a Dexterity check instead of the Fighter's Str check. There's no reason not to reward the players for trying different things -- they can still fail, and as long as the tries are for different ways to get through the door (and they don't just repeat the same thing over and over until they succeed), that's perfectly acceptable.
Can we just take a moment to appreciate the amount of pre and post production work Ginny puts into these? Great lighting and comfortable “speaking to the camera” but the edits and graphic elements demonstrate a lot practice, study, and growth!
Agreed, Ginny has very high production values.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
I'm also going to miss this backdrop and lighting when it's gone.
I just installed it, it's not going anywhere anytime soon 😅
I did this with a session yesterday, I was really proud of the session as I’m a new DM and was patting myself on the back for keeping the rolls to a minimum and based most on how well the roleplaying and reasoning was done. At the end of the session, I always ask for a little feedback just to get a feel for how they enjoyed it. My Paladin very quickly and sincerely replied, “Hey maybe you could let us roll more.”
Ginny: "Adventures are not average people on the street."
Me: "Yeah. They're far more likely to 'be totally sure' that fireball won't hit the party."
They're capable of great heroics, and great idiocy, I suppose XD
In a session last week a member of the party basically goaded our DM into fireballing us smh
I like to run levels 1-3 as pretty average in the world personally. As they level I start to use more description in their attacks and magic to make them seem like they’re become more and more skilled
I always err on the side of "so it takes you longer than expected" when someone rolls low for something that could grind the game to a halt. I call for rolls to determine success, and time. If success is guaranteed then we roll for time.
They have something in the rule book called "taking 20" which is basically a rule stating that if there is enough time, you can take longer to guarantee success on the roll. Essentially, if your group wants to search a room and is in no particular hurry, they can just "take 20", you determine how long it took, and they found everything that there is to find.
I don't really know anything about how to do your job, but as a former teacher I know a lot about presenting information and wow. You're excellent at this. introduce a video with a potentially controversial premise and BAM an example that illustrates why calling for too many rolls isn't good.
I love how so much of your content is aimed at new DMs. I've never dmd before, so I get so much value from these videos
I'd have to say the biggest culprit is perception. Failing perception checks can lead to missed information that the players SHOULD just...have
If something is hidden, you should have to do something to seek it, uncover it etc to find it. Otherwise, it is apparent
I went through that in my solo table. My friend is a first time DM and was a bit desperate to give me a hint on some obtuse puzzles, so he just asked for a bunch os randon perception checks all the time XD.
Now that I'm writing this, I think he may not know about Passive Perception/Insight.
Perception definitely gets the most abuse. Especially since perception and insight checks have become memes.
My Owlin Wizard has failed 5 different checks to gauge the capability of new allies. I wanted to do it so he could be impressed by fellow party members right after meeting them, but I haven't rolled above a five.
One suggestion someone made, and it might have been Ginny. Have a secret item be where the party searches. For example, DM puts the secret map behind the portrait. Party: We search the desk, the bookcase, under the rug. DM sighs as they never searched behind the painting and thus find the map. Instead, the map is simply where they searched. DM: Ah, you search the bookshelf, you find a map. Or, Ah, you search the desk, you find a map. etc.
Agreed - I always use the Gumshoe principle --- it's more fun to have the information (not the solution) and information vital to the progress of a scenario should not be gated behind a roll that could fail.
Look at detective fiction for instance - the detective ALWAYS finds the clue ("A footprint in red clay") but it's still up to them (the player in the case of an RPG) to figure out what that means and what to do with the information. Making the characters try a Perception roll to see the red-clay footprint and they may all fail... in which case the GM typically faffs around for half an hour to try to get the information to them some other way.
Regarding the "Is it even possible?" question, I think in that case, a successful persuasion roll would just make the king view them favorably, and see the "hand over your crown" thing as a joke. A nat 20 would make the king see them as new friends, but he still wouldn't hand over his crown.
This was really helpful. It isn't too far off from how I do things now, but I will definitely be more conscious of rolling too much in the future.
Tbf, the crown is heavy.
Some kings would be happy to find a successor they feel is worthy and retire to a comfortable life as a wealthy noble with far less responsibility.
@@priestesslucy that could be, but in a lot of cases (the UK, for example) monarchs don't always get to choose their successors.
@@priestesslucy and that, my friend, is a quest
Another really important thing a lot of DMs miss with skill checks: always give the players SOMETHING. Even if they fail.
Say a player is being stalked through the forest by an assassin and you ask them for a Perception check, then say "nope, nevermind, that wasn't good enough". That's boring, and now they have FOMO. They know they missed something, and have no clue what it may have been. Was it treasure? That would suck. It's not fun, it just feels bad.
Instead say _"You think you hear a rustle in the bushes nearby, but you look around for a moment and see nothing. Must have been the wind."_ or at LEAST something like _"Your barbarian companion's boasting is so loud you can hardly hear yourself think!"_ . This does three things. 1) The player still knows they failed the check, but to what degree is uncertain. 2) Instead of being shut down and feeling like they lost something, the player gets an idea of what they missed and are presented with a MYSTERY. And finally, 3) You're roleplaying. You've given the player a narrative piece of information. It maintains the flow of the game and helps facilitate _additional_ roleplay. Maybe they want to play their character as a little on-edge now (which makes them feel in control). Or maybe they tell the barbarian to stop screaming before they get a migraine, and antics ensue.
ANYTHING is better than "Nope". It's immersion breaking, it's lame, and it feels like the gods peed in your cornflakes.
Or you could just not roll until it matters. Like an assassin is stalking them. They roll Perception. They fail. Next thing out of your mouth is “As you are rounding the river bend, an arrow comes shooting out of the trees and… *roll* hits you. You take 22 points of damage. Roll initiative. “. If they succeed then the catch the assassin (or a hint of it) before you get to that point. As stated in the video, don’t roll if there isn’t a consequence of failure. Then you never have to just say nope, you can just drop the consequence on them. While I agree the description is a nice touch instead of a nope, it’s still an indicator of an unnecessary roll. The description doesn’t change the way the PLAYER sees the situation even if it changes the way the character does.
But what if the player is actively looking for something? Here I think this advice shines the most. Since this is the one time it may make sense to call for a roll even if there is nothing to find. Assuming they are being vague about what they are looking for. Then I agree that not just noping it would be helpful to keep things moving and immersive.
"*shrug*. It looks clear" always gets a smile from my players.
One point here. NEVER ever tell your players they did not roll high enough to do something that they didn't even know for sure was possible. If they look for a Secret Door and there is one but they fail... don't tell them they rolled too low. And for Heaven's sake don't tell them later that the Dungeon they just exited had a treasure they missed out on. One: It just upsets them, and TWO, Now they will likely Metagame , go back in and keep looking until they find it (Unless you forbid it for some reason and that winds up upsetting them even more) And avoid asking them to roll for such things only in rooms where they can find something. If you don;t ask in every room and tunnel, don't ask at all, or they will learn what you're doing and exploit it.
@@johnevans5782 YES! Asking in every room and tunnel does have to also have a purpose and be rewarding for them, though, too, or they won't enjoy rolling at all. I'd say it's like -- give them something small if they fail, and don't tell them they could have gotten a lot more if they succeeded ;) Then set up a new situation full of possibilities!
You should be using their Passive Perception if they haven't actively made the decision to find something.
This is the way. I'm glad to hear people discussing some of these "old school" sensibilities in context with 5e. This is an easily implemented change that requires no real mechanical alteration and leads to more competent adventurers who are actually good at the stuff they are supposed to be good at.
I feel like Ginny needs a dice mold for jelly dice...
Or for making hard candy dice. Makes the crunch feel more like the real thing... Or so I'm told...
@@RaptorsVevo Yup, purely hypothetical
Jello shots!
I imagine this would lead to her accidently eating real dice after mistaking them for jelly dice
Great video again, Ginny! Thanks for the thoughtfulness and time you put into this.
I recall the Dungeon Dudes have a house rule/rule of thumb for this sort of situation as well: if the PCs use up resources to accomplish a task, in general let them succeed. Like if there's a giant-sized door that's tough to open and one of the stronger PCs slugs back a potion of growth to try and get through it, just say, "yeah, that'll work."
Our GM does a variant of your recommendations: when a bard tries to convince the monarch to hand over their crown, they're still going to roll persuasion, and if they roll low there will probably be some social consequences for offending the monarch/court, but if they roll high they might be seen as hilarious and witty.
We'll also sometimes do opt-in rolls for things where just succeeding wouldn't take a roll but you want to add flavor. Like, maybe the strong person just wants to break the door down and keep going and that's fine, but if there's someone you want to intimidate on the other side of the door you could roll to do it in a terrifying or impressive way, or if you roll a 1 then, the door still comes down, you still proceed, but you fumble a bit so the people are confused, rather than surprised or frightened.
Basically, if you want to roll for things where either failure or success isn't an option, you can, you're just rolling for how well you succeed or in what ways you fail.
Fantastic video and I see DMs fail to go through this thought process all too often.
I wanted to add two more pieces of advice (straight from the DMG!) that will enhance this even further:
*1) Automatic success given time:* A rule found on *DMG pg. 237* suggests letting a task with no real consequences for failure other than wasted time, succeed if the player takes 10x as long at the task. This is similar to the old "Take 20" rule from D&D 3.5, and gives you a guideline for how much longer a task with no rolls might take the party in case time pressure matters.
*2) Success at a Cost / Degrees of Failure:* My favorite underused tool for ability resolution is found on *DMG pg. 242* - failing a roll does not have to mean the action stops, or that a failure (or even success!) for one character needs to have the exact same consequences as a failure or success for another. Where a wizard failing an athletics check to climb might fail and need to burn a feather fall to save themselves from a splat, the olympic barbarian failing the same check due to bad luck might simply lose some of their javelins or some potions as their backpack slips open, but have no risk of actually falling in the first place. Nothing forces you to default to the most drastic consequence of failing a roll, or apply it uniformly to everyone in the party.
Really interesting bit of feedback for DMs. Having ran a few games myself I'd like to respond to some points:
1) Even if you call for a roll on something inconsequential like 'getting over the fence', success and failure can just indicate the amount of time consumed by the activity. This is REALLY handy for those pesky 'mystery' adventures. One botched 'investigation' roll can waste hours of valuable game time. Instead, just let the characters succeed, despite their poor roll, but the consequence is that it took the characters HOURS to track down the clues. Just a way that I've seen that handled.
2) Always, always, always enforce the consequences of actions. Always. Even if it derails the game. Even if it ruins things. Even if it leads nowhere. The key reason for this is: This is D&D, not a video game. Players are autonomous and should be free to have their characters do ANYTHING they think is reasonable for their characters. They should never, never, never be shielded from the consequences of their actions; that is what makes D&D such a great game! If someone fucks up and does something dumb, they should absolutely suffer the consequences, even if it derails everything. The only way players will EVER feel like they achieved something satisfying is if you do NOT shield them from the consequences of their actions. Players EARN their fates; they should never have them handed to them.
3) A TON of these dice-rolling problems are related to the game of D&D specifically. It's an 'all or nothing' mechanical system where you either succeed or fail. Other systems might not have this mechanic and I'd encourage young DMs to explore their options. Sometimes failure can be more interesting than success. Sometimes rolling for ANYTHING can be completely irrelevant. D&D puts for this system of using dice to answer questions involving chance, but it's not the only way to resolve those situations, the same way success and failure aren't the only two possibilities. Okay, I'm rambling now.
Great video. Thanks for sharing. And that was a really great flow-chart. Agreed with mostly everything!
Tip 1 is something I use all the time and, honestly, is perfect. Especially when it comes to mysteries or investigations. Even a natural 1 on, lets say, a room check will give my party a single vague clue.
Lets say there is a cold trap at the other end of the room and someone investigates. On a 1 or above, they would get "The room is a little bit colder than the previous".
I use what I call "degrees of success" on most skill checks. A nat 1, that is a 7 with modifiers might be a loud or clumsy success, but they will still succeed the basic goal. A nat 20 might succeed an additional goal beyond what was asked, or additional significant details instead of a basic description.
@@theravenousrabbit3671 This is a really good point. A perception or investigation roll is a great example for this, too. If the players need to notice something in order to keep the game flowing, always give them SOMETHING. In real life, even if you're not paying close attention you always notice SOMETHING about a room when you step into it. Didn't see anything? What did you hear? What do you smell? Is there a draft? Where does it feel like it's coming from? Etc, etc.
@@grammarmaid I've also done the thing were on a bad roll I give a detailed description of something that is completely unimportant like a lamp. One of my players, who also DMs, is pretty good about having his character fixate on the insignificant details as the way to "fail" the investigation.
@@stevegruber4724 I like this idea too! I may use this for my upcoming game.
It's worth noting that a natural 1 is only an automatic failure for attacks, not skill checks. I do agree that unless the stairs are coated in oil or otherwise trapped no check should be made...
Sometimes depending on the DM and the type of game the players are playing pointless rolls can be made fun. Our barbarian failed an attack on a door multiple times, which we explained in game as the barbarian upsetting Ol' Bessy his cow god who then would sap his strength when it would be most embarrassing until he made up for his reckless slaughter of a bunch of cows a couple of days earlier. As long as you can have those kind of rolls make narrative sense and make it fun feel free to have your players do them. That being said most of the time our dm just has us succeed on most relatively easy tasks without rolling, so for our game in particular these kind of things don't generally result in us being taken out of the game, and our DM and the weird world/rules of the world we've made together often results in us now having another ridiculous side quest.
Our DM once made us roll strength checks to open a door and all of us failed bc our characters were weak casters lol. It was hilarious and I think of it fondly (the door was heavy enough to warrant the roll)
Especially because we ended up solving the problem by having our druid turn into a gorilla
As a new DM, your videos are so much more interesting and accessible than just reading through the DMG. Thank you!
I remember 3.5 encouraged the idea of taking 10, where if you're not threatened and failure wouldn't do things like damage you, set you back, etc., just let the player act as though they rolled a 10 on the die. For any DC that's less than 10 that's almost always an automatic success unless the character's shackled with penalties. They even had rules for taking 20, but that's a tad messier.
For Ginny's example about a DC 5 to climb stairs, amongst the few times I'd call for a roll is if, say, the character is being pelted by arrows, or, they're trying to carry a heavy, poorly-balanced load AND they're not taking the steps slowly, or I'd already told them that the stairs looked like they're in really bad condition (and again they're trying to take them at full speed instead of taking their time).
Yes! This was one of the best rules in 3rd edition, I don't why they didn't keep it for 5th.
Great video! One thing I do to combat the problems described at 8:35 and 9:38 is let my players know the roll in those cases is not to determine how well their character does at the task, but rather to determine how difficult the task was in the first place. Is your rogue able to climb this fence? If you roll low, then no. The fence is too high, and the rogue can't climb it. I won't let them reroll to try again because the initial roll wasn't indicative of the rogues effort, it was determining the difficulty of the task itself. This can also help prevent skill dogpiling. If the strongest character in your party fails to bash down a door, you can just tell the rest of your players 'that door is too difficult for the fighter to knock down, and since he is the strongest, none of you can knock it down.'
Great points about enacting consequences of PC’s choices and rolls! My “fail forward” approaches might involve the PCs rolling low to accomplish a task - they do it, but it takes extra time (when time is of the essence). Or somebody sustains damage (if it’s a physical matter and hurt is plausible). Or a belonging is damaged/lost. Or they made a ruckus and somebody is coming to investigate. When you are outside of combat initiative, I find it more useful to have an ability check represent the character’s best attempt over a period of time, instead of each individual time they tried it, so as to not big down with “roll until you succeed” type play. Or dogpiling if one PC rolls low and three others go “can I try?” simply because they know one person failed.
I like that idea, might try it out
Really love to see Ginny Di getting into deeper DMing topics, we need more voices in this space :)
I have heard one idea that might justify the rolling to go up a ladder thing: that far from determining your players' ability to overcome fixed obstacles, dice rolls actually change the shape of the world. Let's say your elven ranger dashes up a ladder to a castle turret for a better vantage point, you determine they aren't stressing the ladder, and don't call for a roll. Then your half-orc barbarian decides to charge up the ladder as well, you may decide that the 250 lb brute is stressing the ladder and either call for athletics or secretly roll a d20, taking any number but 1 as an automatic success. But when you roll a 1, you declare that this particular ladder wasn't strong enough to hold the barbarian's weight and it snaps. This could even become a running joke among the party and add to the fun. On a related note, perhaps a crappy roll to climb a fence means that the fence is actually really high, and/or lined with barbs, which turns getting over the fence from a simple roll into a mini adventure where the whole party has to work together to get past it. But in both cases, I agree that you have to be prepared to deal with the consequences. Maybe the barbarian has to catch the ranger as she jumps back down after the fight, or maybe the druid has to mend the ladder so the rest of the party can get up and then they have to use ropes to haul the barbarian.
That said, ton of great tips here and I love your flow chart.
I have heard this argument, and always hate it. How do you describe a door, if that door may be a solid slab of metal, or a flimsy piece of driftwood based on how your players subsequently roll to break it down? If you're gonna roll for the world, roll for it yourself during worldbuilding prep, before the game starts. Because your players' proficiency in athletics shouldn't impact how likely that door is to be poorly constructed. Because if you're calling for an "athletics check" then those things matter, if it's just "roll a d20, and 5% of the time the world warps" that's not a check, that's just boring. And makes checks meaningless for the future.
@@NessOnett8 I wasn't suggesting that this should always be the case. In my example, I wouldn't roll for the elven ranger going up the ladder, only the heavy barbarian. And I did mention a secret roll, which is faster, but lacks the tension of an open roll, so both methods have their place.
By all means, if a door is important, you should be specific and tell them up front that it's reinforced oak with an ornate lock that will be hard to pick, and then failures can be attributed to skill. But there are many places where being overly specific drags down the action, so we use shortcuts, and it's in these places where this can work out. If you haven't been specific in the description of the door, and the rogue fails hard at his lockpicking check, you can say that the lock is surprisingly complex.
You seem to be under the impression that I'm going to be rolling for and recording how strong all 100 doors in a maze dungeon will be ahead of time. Which is ridiculous. There's plenty of info to be keeping track of without adding something like that. My suggestion is meant to add a little minor comedy or difficulty without bogging down the game.
@@NessOnett8 And here's another thing. Things can look really tough but be flimsy and vice versa in the real world. Your stone door may be six feet thick and completely impervious to anything short of a battering ram, or it could be 2 inches and shatter easily under a mace. You don't have to change the description of what the players see for this roll to make sense, just add to it.
I think these conditions would be obvious. When the elf climbs the ladder, they would notice how wobbly it is, and the half orc would definitely know as soon as they set foot on it. The players are blind and deaf to anything that you don't tell them. You would need to tell the players that the ladder was wobbly before they climbed it.
@@douglasphillips5870 You telling me you've never gone up an old ladder, climbed a tree branch, or taken a step in an attic before realizing it wasn't strong enough to hold you? Sometimes you don't get any warning, and even when you do, you have to be moving slowly and cautiously to even be paying attention to that, and in a tense time-sensitive moment, that's not how you would be moving. I never said the ladder was "wobbly," which would be something that affects everyone who goes up it; I said that the bulky half-orc might be too heavy and break it.
This, a thousand times this. It's wild how much more smoothly things can go while keeping this in mind.
I have such a hard time keeping on this rail when players keep *asking* to roll, though. It's an entirely different problem - players rolling before i can make the call, asking for specific checks, even asking their fellow players for rolls - but its a direct impact on my ability to DM this way. I keep telling them if they let me do my job, they may not even have to roll at all to succeed ×_×
I'd love your advice on when rolls to "recall information" not previously discovered *in game* (rather, insinuated through backstory or some other association) become a bad thing. I have a hard time saying "no" to my people, but I often end up feeling robbed or being asked too much of. I prefer to give players to the information they need, particularly when it's extremely relevant.
I would add the concept of... Failing Forward.
Never hinge your campaign on a dice roll. If something is needed for the story to go forward consider the roll is going to work anyway, but a good roll adds something more or failure adds some manner of setback. The players might learn some extra information, or succeeding quickly rather than slowly permitting them to advance before reinforcements arrive or save someone in danger before its too late. For example, the rogue's going to pick this lock eventually. Let them take 10 if they fail rather than spam rolling until they succeed. Or perhaps they succeed but ring a bell that will alert the guards nearby who can no longer be surprised.
I like this idea. Maybe if everyone rolls too low on their investigation check to find the hidden trapdoor, the person who rolled lowest falls through a weak spot in the floor. Same eventual outcome, but it moves the story forward without making the investigation seem pointless. Should be used sparingly though!
So using the improv trick of Yes and/No, but
So about 5:10 with the bard asking the King to hand over the crown example, the roll should be made, not for whether the goal is achieved but rather to see whether the reaction is imprisonment to await execution or if the king will let it slide as a bad joke.
I have to admit, I sometimes have the players make rolls just to give me a moment to organize my thoughts.
I realized this tactic recently and it has saved my butt a lot. Often I will ask for a check while I'm skimming through about 20 pages of notes.
Hey. I had this problem and I really disliked the outcomes or feel of it. If my players wanted to do something that I wasn't expecting but don't think it requires a dice roll. I'll ask them to sell it to me. You can OOC ask the player what they are thinking and what they are trying to achieve and why would their character be capable. I find this to be a great tool to help players think about the people they are playing and it also helps you understand what are the kind of things they want to achieve in sessions.
Great video. I came here from Dungeon Craft and I look forward to watching more. I think one consideration to add, that maybe would make a nice accompanying video, is that the players and the way they describe things can 'force' the GM to call for a roll at times. Being a thoughtful player and thinking about how you want to approach a task can go a long way towards showing your DM if you thought there was risk involved or not. For those who watch Critical Role, when Dorian was trying to remove the ring from the noble at the ball, Robbie (the player) described Dorian's actions in such a grand series of events that it practically demanded that Matt (the GM) call for multiple rolls to see if things worked out. If Robbie had described the outcome he was trying for, rather than every minute detail of his motions, Matt could have wrapped up the whole thing in a single roll. Anyway, great video and I can't wait to see what else this channel has to offer!
I just wanna say that Ginny Di is definitely my favorite UA-camr, seriously every time a new vídeo pops up I smile, thank you for the great made and edited videos. Love your content ❤️❤️
I thought myself lucky to see a Bob World Builder, a Ginny Di, and a Matt Colville video all on the same day.
This has to be the best and most well thought out DM advice I've seen from you. I really could not agree more. Thank you.
"Dice are neutral arbiters"
Not according to my players, they aren't! It's more like dice are just equally hostile to everyone. :p
Swiss style Neutrality, they shot down aircraft from all sides when they tried to fly over neutral Switzerland - Neutral does not mean nice
Your dice just flip you off as you walk into the room, rolling to a 1 when you look at them even without you touching them lmao
If their dice were people they would say "I don't hate you specifically, I hate everyone equally"
I'm new to DMing and this has been SO helpful. It's something I wasn't happy with entirely...I feel much assisted in determining when rolls are appropriate or not. Everything you said made sense and helped so much. Thank you for taking the time to say it!
For the bard thing you have them role to determine the kings response. High roll means he laughs it off low roll results in being escorted from the castle by gaurds, loss of the group patron or mabey even a trial or just an indefinite prison sentence.
From my understanding jesters were allowed to make fun of their king or queen but they did have to be careful to not take things too far.
I imagine this Bard simply took a joke too far and had to pay the price.
The closest to that we could in real life is when Thomas Blood was caught stealing the crown jewels and somehow convinced the king to give him a title and a massive estate.
But then you are faced with another point on the list: are you ready to carry out the consequences? In this case, do you really want to play jail breaking session or sessionS? And then have your jail breaker be wanted in that kingdom like forever? If yes, then go on, if not, maybe just roleplay the king's advisor reprimanding the bard and have them expelled from the courtroom
1: Often, a die roll for something unexpected can enhance a later scene. For example, in the "climbing the fence" example you used... Supposing the party had to climb the fence to sneak into a formal event that they weren't invited to. Have one random character roll dexterity during the climb, but don't tell them what it's for. In the event of a failure, the character walking directly behind might be called on for a perception check (at a critical moment after it's too late to back out) with success meaning that they notice that the other character ripped his/her clothing on the fence. Anyone with torn clothing at a formal event is going to attract attention that obviously the PCs don't want.
2: You don't always have to use a d20. Often more sensible results can be obtained with a smaller die. For example, the common case of opening a stuck door. Instead of a d20 with strength modifier, just a simple d6 + strength score. Thus, if it's a dc15, then no-one with a strength of less than 9 can possibly succeed, whereas anyone with a strength of 14+ need not roll. I once had to deal with a character who seemed obsessed with challenging NPCs to arm-wrestling matches. I just used d4+strength.
3: To avoid the absurd situation you give with the weaker character opening the stuck door after the stronger but unlucky character failed, my personal house rules include one that I use wherever raw strength is all that matters. In such cases, a success cannot be achieved after a stronger character has already failed. Thus, if the 17-strength fighter fails to move a heavy object, the task becomes impossible for anyone with less than 17 strength. In such a situation, the party must come up with a way to gain an advantage (find a lever, team-lift, etc).
I only have players roll when it's important, that way they know it's risky for them as well, especially since they are level 7 plus.
I love the idea that if you're very picky with when you call for rolls, the very act of calling for one heightens the drama!!
Gary Gygax and TSR taught me everything I needed to know about D&D back in the old days (take the old ideas and improvise), but... it's interesting listening to this kid's videos - even if I don't play 5e - I homebrew with 1e and that works just fine for me but I'm glad to see kids today are more into D&D.
Regarding the last point, "adding to the experience" doesn't always have to be direct influence on their progress. It can just be to add some humour, lighten the mood, or make things more interesting. This can be a good reason to have players roll when otherwise unnecessary.
I'll use two examples from the video. An impossible feat and one so simple its pointless to roll for. If the bard wants to try persuading the king to just hand over his crown and title, without the help of some external influence like magic, blackmail, or other trickery, then obviously he'll never succeed. But maybe have him roll to determine how the king reacts. A high roll, the king takes it as a joke, maybe plays along a bit ("oh, yeah, sure. Here, take the crown. I'll go play music and sleep with all the women I want, you can figure out how to keep this other kingdom from wiping us out, handle the assassins trying to take my crown, and deal with my gold digger wife" for example, but not actually handing him the crown), maybe as a result giving a bit better of a reward than originally offered, depending on the situation. With a bad roll, they get on his bad side, maybe become banished from the kingdom if they're done there or get ripped off for the reward, or the king just says something rude as he dismisses the bard and talks to the rest of the party ("I'd sooner hand my crown to those cultists" or something).
As for opening a heavy door, one that reasonably the fighter should be able to handle, the roll could be to determine if he shows off his strength, making it look easy, or if he shows how heavy it was by struggling, even if he manages in the end. Similar for a door they have to go through anyway.
This is especially helpful if your players try forcing rolls for these. "I'm gonna persuade the king to hand me his kingdom. Natural 20!", even without you asking for a check, just to punish or humour them.
Isn't adding humor adding to the experience, though? Humor is fun, so adding to the fun is good.
Player: "Is there an elephant in the room?"
DM: "Roll a Perception check."
(Almost a quote from an actual game, except the elephant was an ogre and the room was the deck of a ship in broad daylight... 😅)
Thanks for bringing this up and putting it out there. I totally agree that having the players roll for anything and everything has become like a disease (I call it kubophilia---from κύβος/κυβάω=dice/to throw dice, in Ancient Greek 🤓). I played D&D for many years, from first edition through 3.5, and then Pathfinder, lost my group about a decade ago after several international moves, and now trying to get back into it with the success of 5e and all the online options. Oddly, even though the old rules gave us way more reasons to roll (will a much longer list of skills, feats and the variety of rules and modifiers for each situation), I don't remember it being as bad as I see in the 5e games I've been watching online... Is this a recent trend with 5e?? Thinking that---perhaps _precisely_ because the rules were so detailed---DMs were maybe less likely to ask for a roll when they couldn't justify it...? 🤔 Or it was just too complicated to figure out off-hand which one would apply 😆
This video was super awesome! Thanks again, Ginny D! But, with my DM it’s the opposite
“I’m gonna see if I remember what the book was about.”
“You don’t.”
“But it’s written by the sage school that I am a part of and you literally stated that all students must read this book.”
“Well you don’t remember.”
“If it’s that hard can I at least roll?”
“Fine.”
*cue nat 20 from lucky dice
“Fine you remember.”
“WOOOOOO!”
I like rolling
I'm learning to DM my first game and had a discussion about this that was interesting. I fully agree with all your points, and that unnecessary dice rolls can add to the game under specific circumstances I refer to as the proverbial "picket fence". The key here that if it's appropriate for the mood at the table, or the situation in game, something is doable, stepping or jumping over a short picket fence might lead to a failed die roll, which can just make the character stumble in a slapstick humor kind of way, or even affects immediate events that may allow for a surprise attacks, stuns, and other mechanics.
I'm doing a zombie themed one, so a failed climb over the picket fence might also unknowingly spawn a zombie in the adjacent bush who was prone.
Great advice! As a DM I particularly struggle with whether to make a rogue roll for a locked door when they have plenty of time. I also find it hard to keep the pressure on and have meaningful consequences for failed rolls.
One approach I really love is what Murph of NADDPOD does - the players have an extended skill challenge in initiative but it’s to scale the wall in time before the guards catch them, or to sneak past monsters, etc. he does really cool non combat encounters but in initiative / bullet time and it helps to raise the stakes.
If they have plenty of time, just don't roll. They're a thief, they have thieve's tools, they know what they're doing.
Although personally I use TheAngryGM's tension dice or something similar to track time in dungeons and chuck encointers at them on a set interval.
For the door scenario at 8:38, I think it would actually make for a super funny scenario in a session if the super strong fighter wasn't able to break down the door, but the super weak rogue was able to. It would kinda be like the picklejar scenario where a super strong person can't open the jar for the life of them, but then a super weak person is able to instantly open the jar. I do like the idea of automatic success or failure depending on skills, but sometimes making them roll can be fun :)
My and my friends just started our campaign today (90% first time players with myself included in that) and im so happy you posted this :D As we first played as a group of 10 before splitting into 2 fives, it was chaotic at best. Within the first 15 minutes we had started a barfight due to low rolling so this will be really helpful to my groups dm as its their first time :)
I really like the idea of 'failing forward' introduced in some RPGs. When consequences for a true failure are uninteresting or unprepared, or there's no other path forward, you can turn a failure into a "success with complications" where some negative consequence occurs, but the action succeeds.
Maybe the door breaks down but the noise draws unwanted attention, or the guards don't arrest you but bring your descriptions to their superiors who put a bounty on your heads to take you in alive so you can go to a trial, etc.
This allows you to have consequences for failure, even when you don't want to deal with a 'true failure' right then.
9:36 this is where I see DM’s start using rolls for time taken. Success is guaranteed, but your roll determines how quickly your character does so, or how beyond the baseline your character performs.
I really like this. I remember the movie Ladyhawke where the thief and the Cleric have dug a hole and the Cleric is trying to climb out, and is having trouble doing so, and the Thief is grumbling while helping him climb out. The concept of making a character who fails a minor DC roll to do a physical task then roll to see how many rounds it will take for them to eventually do so sort of fits with the concept in the DMG of allowing failed checks succeed at a cost. I might use this if the group were pressed for time in some way.
This is a great way to do it. Often rolls just need a smaller range of possible outcomes. "failure" can just be taking too long, or only knowing the basic of a history check, or finding the tracks but not know how many there were,.
This is by far the best guide to this topic I've ever seen. Most game manuals and TTRPG commentators touch on this to some degree, but you cover the whole topic and even provide a simple flowchart! Well done, indeed!
One addition: Be creative yet rational with consequences. Failure doesn't always mean critical failure, or spectacular failure, or complete and total failure. Think about how the character could reasonably fail--or *complicate*--their feat, given their abilities. The latter may be especially useful if you've called for a roll you shouldn't have, and can't take it back.
It is one aspect I hate about dnd (the “always roll” approach). An arm wrestle between a level 12 barbarian and a gnome child could legitimately go to the gnome child. It can break immersion sometimes
In the case of an arm wrestle I think an absurd victory would be fun. Maybe the child distracts the barbarian or maybe they stomp on the barbarians foot. If the loser of the arm wrestle gets executed or something, that’s where you start to run into problems
It depends on how they approach the wrestle. If the party helps with skills or magic, and the barbarian is cocky enough, it would be fun. Actually, some kind of absurd rolls would flip the campaign in a interesting manner.
If I was the barbarian I'd expect the child to win, because at 12th level I'm already a big damn hero and I don't need to bully a child for kicks. That child would have an awesome story to tell, and might become a heroic barbarian someday.
Although this is basically a strength check. The barbarian with their high str against the gnome child who is a gnome, is small, and is s child. They are looking at -6 to str. They're not a pc so their str is likely average before modifiers. After modifiers they have a str score of 4-5 that's a -3 modifier. Unless the barbarian let's them win its no contest.
@@declaniii6324 yeah, like it is obviously contextual. If it is just for a laugh , I think letting the dice decide can be fun. There are lots of situations where I think rolling creates epic/hilarious moments. It can also be immersion breaking when it is a serious moment and the character should win with ease. Arm wrestle was maybe a bad example, but I stand by my point.
I just stumbled on your videos as a new DM about and I love how you explain things. You make concepts more easy to understand. Thank you for making these videos.
Imagine the king, now presented with an "out" in this moment, gives him the throne and all the _problems_ that come with it lmao
That was my thought. The crown is broke, they're on the verge of war with a militarily superior neighbor known for liking assassination attempts, the people are starving and occasionally rioting, you are betrothed to a woman you don't love but must marry to keep her powerful father (and his army) on your side, and some yokel comes in and just...gives you an out.
He'd need to roll a 22 for the king NOT to give him the crown.
@@lightningpastry2153 Like the Sword of Damocles!
haha I love this. The "critical success failure" or the "critical failure success." I had a player roll to be taken off the bench early in a combat tournament and he got a nat 1. The coach laughed and let him fight while his teammates watched in horror.
The ladder example reminds me of a lesson that is expressed in the GM rulebooks of several other systems: If a task is mundane enough that an average person can easily and reliably perform it, a roll should not be required. But it also reminds me of another lesson that often accompanies that line:
*If there are no consequences for failure, a check should not be rolled*
A.k.a., if their failure results in nothing but a mild bit of humour, it shouldn't be an option. If failure is not meant to be an option, the roll has no purpose. Similarly, if success shouldn't be availible, don't allow a roll.
If a roll doesn't change the outcome in any noteworthy way, there shouldn't be one. If there isn't supposed to be any way for the characters to impact something, they shouldn't be allowed to, either through a failure or a success.
Edit: After watching further through the video, I've come to notice that this point was, in fact, made. Maybe I should've watched through *before* commenting...
When I started DMing years ago, I had to break my players' instinct to roll for everything always. I hit a breaking point when a player said "I want to cross the room and look out the window," then rolled before I could say anything, rolled a 1, and was immediately like "aw shoot, I guess I can't do that," and I'm just thinking, "Why'd you even roll for it? You can just do it anyway."
Or another time, a player (with 13 STR) announced they were going to force open a collapsed mineshaft and rolled a 20 before I could say anything, and was disappointed when I explained that no, a 20 doesn't mean you can suddenly pick up several tons of rock.
Sometimes you don't just have to ask players to roll less, you have to tell them.
"You managed to not hurt yourself foolishly attempting that which is not possible."
Just discovered your channel as someone shared this video on Twitter, and this flow chart + exemples your are providing help me a lot as a novice DM. I already knew that "rolling too much is a bad idea" stuff but you developped and bring good reasons as to why, and ideas on how to build my next games.
Also : top notch work on the video, images, colors (and extra points for the subtitles, as a non native english speaker, even if could have done without them I think, they are a great plus !)
My players love it when they come up with a smart idea and it just works. So i highly encourage anyone to reward good ideas or roleplaying with bonus to a roll, advantage or straight up success! So i love that kind of advice ^^
There are a few factors that I tend to think gets overlooked.
1) D&D's mechanics suit a high frequency of rolls. The swingy nature of 1d20+[small bonus] means that fewer rolls make individual extreme outcomes stand out more, while they average out more over many rolls. Games where rolls are less frequent are well-suited to systems where the odds are a bell curve or where the dice produce more complex outcomes than binary pass/fail.
2) Framing rolls and framing outcomes have a lot more possibilities than absolute success or absolute failure. To expand on the examples you mentioned in the video:
2a) Attempting to pick a lock, a player rolls to fail. The simplest approach is "they don't get through the door"... but if that outcome stalls the game, maybe failure has a different consequence. Maybe the failure reveals a problem that someone else in the group can solve (it's not locked, it's nailed shut, maybe the Barbarian can force it). Maybe the roll is "can you pick the lock _in time_ to avoid the patrolling guard"? Maybe there's a cost, where failure means you succeeded but broke your tools or left a sign of your presence?
2b) sneaking around, a failed stealth check meaning "you're found immediately" is the biggest hindrance to uses of stealth in games. Maybe a failed Stealth check means "a guard comes to investigate the unexpected noise, what do you do before they get here?", creating back and forth tension to sneaking around, that even less-sneaky characters can dabble in.
3) framing failure in general is an art too. Learning how to describe a failure in such a way to not discourage the players is a handy trick, but I tend to boil it down to "the PCs never fail out of incompetence, but out of the intervention of outside forces". To borrow from another genre, Hawkeye in the Avengers will never miss a shot... so when he fails, it's because something else got in the way. Maybe the enemy has a forcefield, or is super-fast and catches the arrow, or is simply too tough to be hurt by that arrow, or someone disrupted Hawkeye before he could make the attack. Same with RPGs: assume the PCs would have succeeded unless something got in the way.
I would suggest: have the players already had to sucseed a roll to do get there? For example: the rogue has tricked a guard into taking him through the gate into a city by making a successful Deception check. You don't need to have the rogue roll to then trick the person who keeps the keys/ pulls the rope to lower the draw bridge. This just makes gameplay frustrating when you have done something successfully but then you fail on a second roll that you only got to because of the first because it makes the initial success feel pointless
Yes. This. And besides, at some point, if you ask for too many rolls to effectively accomplish one thing, the player is just naturally going to eventually roll low and negate all the good 'uns.
That said, consider using skill challenges. You can fail, say, twice without blowing your scheme, so long as you don't fail thrice before getting, maybe, five successes. Adjust numbers based on difficulty and risk involved but let the player come up with ideas for what to do and what checks are employed.
I feel like this topic has been something most of us had to learn by experience (or by reading the DMG), but now it's even clearer.
Thank you for your guides, they have been really helpful and entertaining é.é
I really like the taking 10 and taking 20 options in Pathfinder. A good way for players to avoid rolls.
yeah, taking 10 is nice for tasks with no real failure consequences (taking 20 when you have tons of time) and it provides the threshold where rolling isn't relevant (20 strength barbarian vs a DC 15 strength check can take 10, the 10 strength rogue can't).
I definitely use those. My players never do though, lol
Yeah its a great mechanic, that I wish stayed from D&D 3.5 but its also great to know that Pathfinder still uses it. Whenever, I DM a version 5e game I try to make sure to bring up the "taking 10 or 20" rules as homebrew rules.
It's also a good idea to remember that passive skills are a thing too. Passive perception is just what player should be able to do if their is no reason for them to be distracted, disadvantage, ect.
@@Average-Joe851 I swore it was in D&D, but every time I googled it, I only got Pathfinder results.
@@algi1 I see what you're talking about but I remember playing with taking 10 well before Pathfinder came out. I also only played 3.5 and 5e Dungeons & Dragons. Also many people don't play 3.5 D&D anymore so it's likely that it just gets over flooded with Pathfinder or 5e.
I've seen countless forum threads melt down over this issue and honestly if I could magically ctrl+v this video into all of them I think they'd all be better for it. I try to explain so much of this, especially those exact sections of the PHB and DMG (so often in fact that I basically recited them from memory along with Rulebook Ginny), but you've captured it in such a fantastically comprehensive, direct, and clear way that it should be required viewing for every DM, new and veteran. Frigging well done.
Great podcast, but I would like to make the following counter-consideration. Rolls can add flavor. Using the example of the fence, the fighter should be able to climb the fence. Let's say she rolls a 4, technically failing the attempt. I would allow her to still climb the fence, but her cloak would rip on a nail or she would kick a board out place letting others walking by that something may be wrong.
This is a great video. Even as a long time DM, I still struggle sometimes with when I should and shouldn't call for rolls in my games to keep things interesting and dynamic. This is a great topic that doesn't get enough attention in the DND / tabletop space.
I would point out to also not go too far in the opposite direction: Determining everything through roleplay (and thus the DM's whims about whether it was good enough) when a roll would 100% make sense. I've been in games that get to the point where it's like "Why did I buy dice and write up a character sheet if the DM's going to decide everything just based on if they like what I said enough?" Had a DM decide I got shot in the head and dogpiled to the ground with zero rolls because it "made sense" to him based on how he had roleplayed the scenario, and I'm like "Why do I have these skills and abilities then if we're not going to use them?"
Like many things, it's a balance you have to learn to maintain.
Great video! This matches my experiences and I have concluded similarly. Perception and Investigation checks are big culprits of requiring too many rolls instead of asking the players what they do and how. Also I don't like individual initiative because it slows the game down right when the action is rising. Group initiative or other systems with no or just one roll are so much faster and you can get straight to the action!
Wow, hearing all of this articulated is super helpful. I had an old DM that I grew to resent for the way he ran his games, and this is almost all of what his issues were: making us roll for stuff we really didn’t need to roll for, and giving us outlandish, character-breaking consequences if we failed. It stopped being fun to have luck determine whether or not the character I was playing would actually do something I would roleplay them doing, and have potentially irreversible consequences for failure attached
I wish I had watched your video before I do exactly that. Hard to open door, rogue with bad luck and important items to solve the mission on the other side. "Roll less" is really a very nice tip. Congrats for the material and thank you!
I love THE BOOKS character! They appeal to the rules lawyer in me (that I try to keep under control, haha).
I want THE BOOKS character to meet THE COMMENT SECTION character.
@@johnclikeman5041 Seconded.
Honest, personal, quirky, relatable, funny, well-made, and the thing I find the most rare in the "content world" - it's cited. I'm not even saying that this game neeeeeds the rule books for every little detail (aka the reason people homebrew). Still, it's just a great practice to have, elevating the value of your content. This is a perfectly crafted video. Thanks for a fun and informative experience :)
Remember a success can still end up with something bad. For instance a defense attorney would consider it a success to get a three year sentence down to 6 month plus probation. Sometimes the best result is just the least bad outcome.
These videos are so helpful. I feel like it helps build a better game foundation.
Thanks for the video! Great content.
5:30 “Do you believe that I could kill you? Right here, right now, without using a sword or the Power? Do you believe that if I simply willed it, the Pattern would bend around me and stop your heart? By . . . coincidence?”
For the re-rolling failed attempts thing for stuff like climbing fences, opening doors etc, I say to players that the roll they got represented all their attempts while the conditions are still the same, so just saying "I try again" will leave them with the same roll. This means players have to figure out how to approach it slightly differently.
For example, if they tried to hop a fence and failed, then they just can't get a grip on it while they keep trying in the same way, but if the players change the conditions by putting down some of their equipment to be more agile, or by searching along the fence for a foothold, or using rope to try to hoist themselves etc, then they can re-roll.
Also repeated failures will take more time, and increase the chances of being caught or having a random encounter, and making this chance clear to them from the beginning raises the stakes even if it's something they will eventually succeed at.
This was a really helpful video and it got me thinking, thank you!
Usually when things are challenging but there's no consequence for failure, I let my players roll to see how quickly and stylishly they pull off the task. It can be fun to describe the low dex wizard scrambling up a dense while the rouge's cloak gets stuck as they try to follow.
that is really smart!
In your example of the bard demanding the king abdicate and give up his crown to him, i actually use this exact same example all the time to explain how a nat 20 persuasion isn't mind control. I would still call for a roll, but the outcome determines if the king is amused by your demands, assumes your a good actor and offers you a job as a jester or if he is offended and calls for your arrest and/or execution.
Something I want to add: if you have a situation that requires multiple rolls to resolve, one failed roll should not ruin the entire attempt and void the previous successful rolls.
If you have a multi-roll situation, the outcome should be determined by the net total of successful rolls and failures (combat in D&D already follows this principle).
Ooh, this is good too.
Another quality tip video. Thank you!!
I’m definitely in the camp of: skill/ability rolls should be done to make the adventure more interesting/harder/easier, not something that requires a pass/fail to be able to move forward! I’ve looked at a few premade adventures and campaigns, and there always seems like they’re riddled with these “you have to pass to move forward”
Ginny: “You can’t eat dice”
Me: “these dice made out of sugar I'll have you know” *chomp*
I got through your stream half way to the flowcharts DM guide part and moved your subscription to the top of my Favourites!
Oh yeah, I stopped rolling for a while lol 😂 Use a lot of passive checks :) love this video! Ty Ginny!!!
Edit: the hilarious thing is that virtually this exact flowchart is used by angry GM! After being introduced to it, I've implemented it in my games, and it's been really useful. I do have my players roll if their passive is too low to pass, and then if they fail, they fail :) it took a while to recognize a lot of the stuff discussed in this vid, and it is excellent!!!
Great video! As for the king granting his crown because the bard was that charismatic, I'd still roll. The bard's attempt will lead to a failure, but consequences can differ: say, low roll will get him executed, and natural 20 will make it look like a good joke, the king will laugh and so on.
I mean, rolling for the actions that will always fail still makes sense sometimes.
No roll! Only collect.
There are a lot of ways to introduce consequences for failed rolls without breaking the story. Time is the one I see the most, which is great when it gives disadvantage to later scenarios. The guards can fine the players instead of arresting them for small offences; this can also open quest lines and restrict them to the town until their debt is paid. Maybe the party ruins their relationship with an NPC and is now denied goods or services. Temporary injuries or curses can work if the players are okay with having their abilities altered for the sake of story.
Something else that I've encountered a number of times is when a DM has locked the outcome of a scenario into their plans, and doesn't have any alternative available to offer players.
For example, my DM set up a scenario in which our party comes across a magical grove in the middle of a forest. Everyone rolled Con saves. Those who failed were lured towards the tree, only to promptly fall asleep at the roots. One by one, every player had to watch as we all fell prey to the mysterious tree- except...for my character. Who is resistant to being charmed, and cannot be magically put to sleep.
For **45 out of game minutes** I was stuck trying to roleplay myself out of this scenario. No amount of dice rolls or problem-solving helped me out. After the game, DM told me that he had no idea what to do either, and said it would be easier if I had just fallen asleep like everyone else.
I had a very frustrating period for some months as a dm and I could never pin point why. And this was exactly it. When I started dming years ago I learned to go with the flow but on the way I started to forget and make very specific plans I wanted to play out. My creativity was restricted that way and players had the feeling I wasn't cheering for them anymore, but for the outcome. So I finally switched back and followed the way of "whatever happens happens, lets make it cool and fun". And yeah it works. Your story just reminded me of that.
Your presentation skills are incredible. The way you articulate every point is so rounded and nuanced. There's not enough of that these days. 🙂
I want to add in something here that I do personally as a DM to remove what I personally think are bad rolls from the game - reward characters for the character they play including their class, background, backstory and skills they've chosen proficiency in by not making them roll for things their character would definitely know in this setting, and let their character be a source of information in game for the other characters by giving them free information instead of always calling for knowledge checks for what would be basic knowledge for someone of their station in this setting.
If someone has chosen to play a noble son of a great house who is intricately tied to the nobles in the city your campaign is set in, don't make them roll for basic history of the nobles of the city. Just say, "Because of your background, you would recognise this House Sigil," and tell them what they would know. If someone has chosen to play a wizard with proficiency arcana, don't make them roll for basic arcane knowledge, just tell them, "Because of your background, you would know about this Wizard Academy." If a character has chosen to play a member of the guard in your setting, they don't need to roll for information about the guard, tell them, "Because of your background, you would be well aware of where the Watch Towers are located in this city." Give them this information for free and have this character be the source of information for the other characters rather than that information coming from the sourceless voice of the DM based on whether they rolled well.
I replace a lot of DC10/DC12 type checks like this and treat them like instant success expertise checks depending on what that character would know based on their personal combination of characteristics and background. I feel like this not only eliminates unnecessary rolls, but it helps my players feel like they're getting to play the characters they've chosen, makes them feel more tied to the world and their character because the noble son of a great house is getting to act like the noble son of a great house and the super smart wizard is getting to act like a super smart wizard and the guard is getting to act like a guard. It improves their roleplaying and characterisation and avoids stupid situations like, say, a guard who has served the city for ten years not being able to call upon that information to tell his friends how many guards are typically stationed in a Watch Tower, or how often they usually change shifts. Unless things have changed recently, he would know that!
Yes, this!!!
Keep up the great content. Thank you for giving us your time to help us out. Or at least getting us to think about how we play our games. 💙