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Martials don't even get anything from a 5th level multiclass into another martial class
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this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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I'm curious as to how quickly BG3 rule changes will start making their way into tabletop house rules and 3rd party supplements.
My guess is pretty quickly, if my own group is any worthwhile measurement.
Yeah. Larian made some really good changes to D&D, then they added crit fails to skill checks
Do you know how many times that has pissed me off? Especially on my rogue where even a 1 would have opened the damn lock.
DC 10. You roll a natural 1, it modifies to 15. CRITICAL FAILURE
I feel like it's a bit ridiculous. A professional with expertise doing the worst they possibly can shouldn't be the same as any random untrained person doing the worst they can.
That is why they ditched critical failures and success in tabletop D&D.
My guess is they kept it in bg3 so there would be a chance of failure on everything including the DC 2 rolls, but to be honest I don't think that chance of failure really adds anything to the game.
Yeah, as DM I've always house ruled that it didn't make sense for a character to fail at the thing they're the best at.
Though I have been known to interpret a natural 1 as a crazy external force - like an earthquake - and have them reroll at -10.
Makes it even more fun when they succeed anyway.
House Ruled? That's RAW. Crit Fails and successes only apply to attack rolls and death saves. And that's how it should be.
Are those actually "crit" fails or just auto fails?
Never bothered to check if a nat one fail is any different than a nat two fail
Just auto fail. A rogue lock picking a DC10 door still has a 1/20 chance of failing the check. That's the difference.
[nervous sweating] I've always run my game with crit fail skill checks. That's normal.
Isn't it?
Isn't it?
It’s the second shittiest common house rule, assuming you mean that if someone with a +15 bonus rolls a nat 1 on a DC 5 check, they automatically fail (possibly with a worse effect than if someone with a -1 rolled a 2).
On the other hand, there are other ways to have crit fails on skill checks that are much more palatable, like:
(The worst common house rule, btw, is crit miss tables for additional effects beyond an automatic miss when you roll a 1 on an attack roll.)
If a 1 is not a fail, why do you roll at all ? I mean if the DC is 5 and you have +15, your DM should just not make you roll (* you pass automatically). So a 1 should always be a fail.
In tabletop you shouldn't be rolling if there is no chance of failure, although some DMs roll to see how successful the outcome is instead of just treating it as pass/fail.
The DM doesn’t necessarily have your modifiers memorized and asking what they are every time slows down play. The DM also likely doesn’t want to share the DC. The easiest fair solution is to always ask for a roll (assuming it’s possible, generically, to succeed or fail) and to then consider passes to be passes. If you only avoid asking for a roll when you know the player will make it, then you’re likely to be biased toward the players whose characters you’re more familiar with.
RAW this is not the case. From the DMG:
My experience with having nat 1s being auto fails and is that this results in characters who are “erratically … tragically incompetent” as well as taking away player agency (Nick Brown on rpg.stackechange explained this well). Maybe you and your players like a game like that, but I certainly don’t.
Pen and paper or even a tablet exist for a reason. Having the key stats of your player characters stuck up to your GM screen or open on your second monitor is about the best use of space there is.
Besides, it doesn't take much brain power to put together that making the rogue who's been making short work of locks the past month roll for a simple lock under no time pressure is just silly. I get if an AL GM doesn't know the characters but for majority of weekly groups' GMs this is an absolute non-issue.
Need to do the Pathfinder crit fails. Crit fail whenever you get 10 less than the DC, or roll a nat 1 and get less than the DC.
https://paizo.com/community/blog/v5748dyo5lkod?Critical-Hits-and-Critical-Failures
Yep, that’s solid! If they got rid of the bit that the designer, Mark, clarified in the comments (“If your nat 20 isn't a critical success, it is still a success, and if your nat 1 isn't a critical failure, it is still a failure”) then I’d be a fan. Even with that I still appreciate the extra flexibility that it adds to the design space.
If you roll a Nat 20 or Nat 1 it raises or lowers the outcome from a crit success, success, fail, or crit fail. So Nat 20 on a roll that's still ten below the DC takes it from a crit fail to a fail. It stops a Nat 20 on an impossible task from being a success if your skill just isn't good enough in any way. We like playing it this way cause if our bonuses are so good (reflecting high training and skill) we can auto pass certain low level checks even on a Nat 1. It still means a Nat 1 is somewhat impactful as it stops an auto crit
[Edit]: Adding an example Rogue attempts to pick a 'complex' lock with a low DC. Complex locks require multiple successes to actually unlock, and a crit success on a pick lock check counts as 2 successes towards opening it. Rogue has +22 to picking locks, lock DC is 10. With a roll of 1, the result is 23, which is more than 10 above the DC meaning critical success. But since its a Nat 1 it drops to success. So 5% chance of only getting 1 success towards the multiple required to open the lock. Picking a lock requires an action in combat to do this, so can add a bit more intensity if the party desperately needs to open the lock quickly. If it was outside of combat, DM would just say we unlocked it since its impossible to fail meaningfully if given enough time.
On the other end, if the a different party members bonus is +4 because they are untrained and the DC is 35, a nat 20 gives a 24 as a result which is still 10 below a success, so a crit fail. Since it was a nat 20, the result goes up from a crit fail, to just a fail meaning it mitigates the worst part of the result. And FYI, a crit fail on picking a lock breaks your lockpicks so there's extra outcomes and narrative results gained by using the crit fail, fail, success, and crit success rules
Crit fails like that are referenced as an optional rule in the DMG, minus the Nat 1 part
Some people do like crits on skill checks. Other people just like rolling dice as much as possible.
The best way I've seen it in game was a DM making it so a natural one that you'd succeed with anyways just means you succeed in the ugliest way possible.
Like, you picked the lock, but you cut your hand on a rough edge just enough to annoy you for the rest of the day.
You made the jump, but stumbled awkwardly on landing.
Etc etc
That’s pretty close to the way I’ve seen it done when the DM wants a 1 to be a special number and I didn’t hate it.
A slight alteration of that is to have a successful 1 result in a complication - some of which would result in the attempted task becoming impossible or irrelevant. Maybe you pick the lock but the door is stuck or barred, or maybe you’re halfway through picking the lock when an ogre slams into it, shattering it into little more than splinters. Or you pick the lock flawlessly, but the thing you were after is missing because it was already stolen. It’s crucial that it’s something that’s out of your control with regard to the task you were performing, not that you slipped up in some way to cause the failure. It’s not perfect, but I personally like it a lot more than other implementations.
Woah, crit fail tables, ain't nobody got time for that. I like to use crit fails as an opportunity to impose a cost or hard choice on my players, both in combat and in skill checks. But then, sometimes I just have it as a no, because it's possible to make no mistakes and still lose.
Really, though, I always just thought that that was how it worked.
Crit fails on skill checks have been houseruled into the game for ages, this is not something cooked up by Larian
Crit fail and success for skill checks is a variant rule in the dmg (maybe even discussed in the PHB)
Ultimately if 1 will not fail or 20 will not succeed, why are you even rolling? While there is no default automatic success/failure rule, it's a natural assumption that 1 and 20 are automatic fail and success based on the fact that the roll is pointless otherwise.
What changes have they made? I’d love to know as I’m always game to allow homebrew etc at my table (so long as I’ve read the material, everyone agrees, and we roll with it from the start of a campaign).
Off the top of my head:
Changes fall into two categories:
Under 1:
Under 2:
Numerous weapons and items have systems attached to them that create or consumes various "charges" to add additional effects
As an example, weapons and items with the "spark" ability builds Lightning Charges in the wielder when certain criteria are fulfilled.
If 5 Lightning Charges are built up, the next instance of damage done with an attack role inflicts an additional 1d8 Lightning Damage.
There are many more. See Here and Here
Bonus action shove is so good, it lets you try shoving people off of edges or into environmental hazards instead of just whacking turn after turn. Also great for spellcasters and ranged attackers, but you need to roll for it so it's not too overpowered. Bonus action potion drinking is also really nice.
Thank you so much for this. These sounds like really reasonable tweaks and additions that I’d love to run a game with them!
I love this changes and I really going to struggle to back to martial in 5e without them.
No more I swing my sword end turn.
Instead I use my Lacerate skill and hit with my sword. Then I use my bonus action to shove.
People on the same turn sharing initiative can go at the same time. Drinking a potion is a bonus action. Those are the ones I've incorporated.
It makes much sense and avoids action spamming I’ve seen at tables that let a potion be used for free. I know Crawford intended potions to be an action since they’re “bottled spells” but it results in players never using them in fights. Also less squishy PCs makes for far for entertaining encounter design (read that as additional peril haha).
"Bottled spells" that don't recharge on a long rest but instead cost an arm and a leg and heal for a pittance, basically ensuring that in the time that it takes to gulp one down you've already taken twice as much damage than what it'll heal. I guess I get the idea but RAW, the potions are just awful outside of last resort to bring up downed characters (and that's assuming your GM has no problems making an unconscious character forcibly drink them).
You make a real good point. The movers cost plus lack of recharge already seems balance enough for it to be bonus action worthy. Honestly, it just means encounters can be either more frequent, dynamic, or epic. Not to mention a nice way to balance players’ wallets.
There are quite a few, but a simple one that I've put into my own house rules is giving all Clerics proficiency with flails and morningstars.
I love this. I can’t remember the last time a player used one of those two.
Flails are just objectively worse than warhammers. Same damage die, but lacking the Versatile trait. I've played with giving flails some other sort of secondary ability but never found something that works.
Morningstars are functionally the same as warpicks, and both lack the Versatile trait. I've settled on changing the morningstar's damage to 2d4 split between 1d4 bludgeoning and 1d4 piercing to set it apart.
I really wish they went over the weapons for the next edition and made sure that at the very least there were no weapons that were objectively worse than another. Might want to just homogenize the weapons under some handful of archetypes that have some legitimate advantages over each other.
I once played a cleric worshipping Loviatar so thematically I made him use whips as his weapon of choice. Roleplay-wise I loved it, gameplay-wise 1d4 damage is ass and reach allowing me to mostly harmlessly tickle the enemies from very slightly farther away is absolutely useless 99% of the time.
The weapon system in 5e is half-baked. It feels like someone put it in as a placeholder and never bothered to give it a second look.
Does BG3 do anything with overlapping extra attack features?
Regular Extra Attack and Pact of the Blade's extra attack stacks in BG3 IIRC
As a mainline Pallylock I enjoy that, probably a bit too much.
Not that I'm aware of.
It sounds like an interesting change, though.
I'm pretty pressed for time, but it would be interesting to do some testing on this.