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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • It’s actually not that hard! There’s only a handful of core rules to know for every session and the rest you can learn as you go.

    Attacks and spell attacks: 1d20+prof (proficiency bonus)+ability+special bonuses (items, buffs, etc)
    Ability checks: 1d20+ability. If it’s a skill check you have proficiency in, add +prof.
    Saving throws: 1d20+ability, +prof if you’re proficient in that saving throw.
    Note: all of these bonuses are summed up on your character sheet under your spellcasting page, your weapons, skill lists and saving throw lists.

    In encounters you can do the following: Action (extra attack included in 1 action), Bonus Action, Reaction, Movement, Item Interaction, and any number of Free Actions.

    DCs for figuring out how hard something easy:
    5: very easy, most people can do this most of the time
    10: easy, people trained can reliably do this
    15: medium, decent odds if skilled
    20: hard, rare success unless very skilled
    25: very hard, rare success even with highly skilled
    30: nearly impossible, heroic aptitude still fails most of the time
    35: godly, the highest DC likely to see. impossible without epic amounts of skill and even then very unlikely. even demigods may fail








  • It’s more that it’s just more work for the DM in this case. Every time a skill check is called or considered, the DM has to reconsider if the character considers this a routine or trivial task. You can see this in the stats: if the character’s modifier is 5 or less than the DC, it’s trivial. But you also must consider even without a high mod vs DC, is this a task the character has performed hundreds of times before? I try not to come up with solutions, or utilize WOTC solutions that make a lot more work for the DM. Especially if there’s already a rule or slight tweak that makes sense and prevents this work: in this case, no crits for skill checks.


  • Yes. Pathfinder 2e has a good one.

    Rolling a nat 1 or 20 doesn’t mean Critical success/failure. It means it moves the success status up or down one: Critical success, success, failure, critical failure. In addition, that game also specifies that a critical is also achieved by your result being +/- 10 of the result.

    So if you’re attempting a DC 35 check (arguing with a god, let’s say) with a +2 mod, a nat 20 would get you a result of 22, a critical failure. But a nat 20 bumps it up one success, so you get a regular failure. Whereas if the DC was 25, a 22 is still a failure but your crit means it’s a regular success.

    This has middling applications in D&D 5e, though. PF2e’s DCs and skill bonuses are not constrained by 5e’s Bounded Accuracy. So they can vary a lot more. In D&D’s case I had to pull pretty much the highest possible DC the game suggests so there’s not a lot of use cases for this. But it’s still a better system for including criticals on skill checks. And this is why 5e doesn’t have them normally.