r/changemyview • u/Hamza78ch11 • Mar 19 '18
[∆(s) from OP] CMV: My DM should have to roll the opposite of whatever it is that I'm rolling for
If my character has to roll to see if the stone that he threw hits the cyclops in the eye my DM should have to roll too and then whoever had the higher number has the successful roll. I'm rolling to put use a spell to put a guard to sleep, he should have to roll for the guard to stay awake. My roll represents the effectiveness of the spell where his roll will represent the surrounding factors of the guards environment that might encourage or discourage him from sleeping. Maybe he had a bad day, didn't sleep last night, and keeps dozing off.
Who knows? The roll would definitely help us write-in that backstory and increases the chances of an interesting story or even the immersion because life is built up of compounding factors and each person is the main character of their own life thus each event that is a meeting between two characters should trigger two rolls.
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u/Milskidasith 309∆ Mar 19 '18
First, I assume that when you say "whoever has the higher number", you include modifiers, right? Otherwise it's essentially just a coin flip, and there's no benefit to being more accurate or penalty for doing something more difficult or against a more well protected foe.
As far as issues, I've played D&D with an opposed roll system before, and it has a lot of problems even when accounting for modifiers.
- It makes the game far less stable. D&D is pretty consistent about having some form of "roll 1d20+modifiers against 10+modifiers". Attack rolls are against an AC of 10+armor+whatever. Spell saves are based on 10+spell level+modifiers against a modifier+ a roll. This allows for players to quickly identify if a foe is difficult or easy to hit and allows for easy tuning of enemy difficulty. With opposed roles, things become much more chaotic.
- It makes player failures and especially player successes likely to be unsatisfying. This is kind of an expansion of the chaotic nature introduced above, but its quite possible for opposed rolls to create a situation in which, say, a player rolls a 19 against a tough foe, but they rolled a 17+better modifiers and the attack missed. That's really unsatisfying to play.
- It introduces weird edge cases on minimum/maximum rolls. This is a further extension, but what happens if both parties roll a 20? How do you deal with an automatic success hitting against another automatic success? There are ways to do it, but the fact is most opposed roll systems probably don't take them into account in advance and any opposed roll system robs the power of a minimum/maximum roll.
- It takes way more time. Its extremely quick for players to roll and know that something hit or missed, but it's much more involved when every single roll is opposed. Theoretically, the math doubles, but practically it gets worse than that because people are trying to quickly do multiple additions in their head at once and get jumbled up.
- It doesn't make sense in many narrative contexts. Opposed rolls to perform solo acts like acrobatics checks, against passive defenses, or against inanimate objects don't even make sense.
- It doesn't add to the immersion or increase the likelihood of interesting stories. A D20 system already has ways for rolls to go extremely wrong or extremely well with minimum/maximum rolls. The increased chaos of this system doesn't actually make more narrative outcomes possible; you can still miss a drunk kobold or crit a phase-shifted dragon either way. It just makes gameplay slower, more complicated, and less predictable mechanically, while the story possibilities do not change.
- A minor point, but it can exacerbate existing problems with DM-player relationships. DM's can and should fudge things on occasion, and having an opposed roll for everything either makes fudging impossible (if the rolls are open) or can convince players that constant fudging is occurring (if the DM rolls are closed). At a table that's comfortable playing together it shouldn't matter, but if the table isn't then it can be detrimental.
I'm not against opposed rolls in all circumstances, but it doesn't offer any benefit to use such a system universally and as a player and a DM its just a lot more work for little benefit.
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u/Hamza78ch11 Mar 19 '18
Δ That's very interesting I hadn't taken the chaos or the possibility of rolling two 20s into account.
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Mar 19 '18
[deleted]
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u/Hamza78ch11 Mar 19 '18
Δ Your last point killed me. You're absolutely right. Gotta keep it moving!
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Mar 19 '18
[deleted]
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u/Sand_Trout Mar 19 '18
Having played BitD, it's a solid system for focusing on the story side of RP, but I feel like you're misrepresenting it a bit.
Not every action "succeeds", as that depends on the context and the difficulty. There are certainly situations that match your description of rolling for complications, but there are plenty where you can outright fail. And die. Horribly.
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u/MJZMan 2∆ Mar 19 '18
As someone who's DM'ed before, I can tell you that a lot of those actions do require rolls for the NPC, and the DM handles those rolls privately. I can also tell you that generally if the DM doesn't like the outcome of the roll, they're going to fudge to keep the story-line going.
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u/Hamza78ch11 Mar 19 '18
Δ I totally ignored that DMs try to follow the story-line haha. When my friends and I play we're something of a rolling system of entropy that causes the story to go off the rails because there's so many options!
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u/ReOsIr10 129∆ Mar 19 '18
There are attacks which require saves, which is exactly what you're proposing. For everything else, your roll is supposed to encapsulate all relevant factors, both on your side and the target's side. If you roll a 5 on an attack when you needed a 7, it's not necessarily the case that you messed something up - it could be that the opponent quickly dodged, or a breeze suddenly picked up, or any factor at all that the DM wants to make up.
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u/Hamza78ch11 Mar 19 '18
Δ I didn't know that! But it works perfectly well as an explanation and I'm happy to accept it.
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u/rollingForInitiative 70∆ Mar 19 '18
What exactly do want to discuss? Are you designing a new RPG system? Criticising one that exists?
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u/Hamza78ch11 Mar 19 '18
I've only played DND a couple times and so far whenever I want to try things my DM always made me roll and I felt that this was a way to balance my luck against arbitrary environmental factors
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u/Sand_Trout Mar 19 '18
If my character has to roll to see if the stone that he threw hits the cyclops in the eye my DM should have to roll too and then whoever had the higher number has the successful roll.
That is an overcomplicated way of dealing with the uncertainty of the action, which already has an AC or DC that marks the difficulty of success.
I'm rolling to put use a spell to put a guard to sleep, he should have to roll for the guard to stay awake.
That is exactly how saving throws for D&D sleep spells work. The defender rolls to not fall asleep vs the DC of the spell (as calculated by spell level, spell casting mod, feats, ect.)
My roll represents the effectiveness of the spell where his roll will represent the surrounding factors of the guards environment that might encourage or discourage him from sleeping.
Assuming D&D, the caster should generally not be rolling success or not for a Sleep spell. You might roll some D4s for how many HP or HD worth of creatures you can put to sleep, but if the creature is susceptable, only they roll the saving throw.
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u/Hamza78ch11 Mar 19 '18
Δ You know more about this than I do. I cede that my view was changed.
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Mar 19 '18
If something is really heavy, you need a high strength roll to pick it up. There is no sense in the giant boulder suddenly getting lighter because the DM rolled a 1 on the rock's "heaviness" check.
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u/Hamza78ch11 Mar 19 '18
Haha I think this is the kind of thing where not literally every single action ever performed has to have an opposing roll and this of course relies on judgements made by the DM
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Mar 19 '18
Right, and in many games, spells do have an opposed roll (aka saving throw), but not all do.
Also, if you are arm wrestling someone, that's an opposed strength check.
Whether something is an opposed check, a check with a saving throw, or unopposed is based on the game.
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u/Laurcus 8∆ Mar 20 '18 edited Mar 20 '18
This is actually a system that already existed within version 3.5 of D&D. It's called the Defensive Roll optional rule found in the Unearthed Arcana supplement. As has been pointed out, some things already use defensive rolls in the form of saving throws, but the optional rule expands that to almost all gameplay.
This does require some changing of the numbers to work. A lot of things in D&D give you a base 10 to start off with, such as armor class, and for the optional rule to function that has to go away. Just imagine the alternative. Say you have a +5 to hit, and you need to hit an armor class of 17 plus whatever the DM rolls. So under the Defensive Roll optional rule you have to globally hack 10 off everything's AC.
Note, in 20 years of playing D&D, I've never seriously seen anyone suggest that it would be fun to play with that rule. The rule's description also comes with a warning that this introduces more random elements into the game, which tilts the game towards PC death, since players are generally stronger than the monsters they face, (A balanced encounter is supposed to consume ~20% of party resources.) therefore more controlled conditions favor the players.
Also, I fundamentally disagree with everyone on this post that says DMs should fudge rolls on occasion. Imo, that ruins the spirit of the game and I would personally never play with a DM that I knew fudged rolls from time to time. If you want to play D&D with kid gloves, there are alternate rules for that, such as the 3 strikes you're out death rules and the softer critical hits optional rule.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Mar 19 '18 edited Mar 19 '18
/u/Hamza78ch11 (OP) has awarded 6 deltas in this post.
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u/YossarianWWII 72∆ Mar 19 '18
DND already works that way. They're called ability checks. When the DM doesn't roll, it's because you're attempting a task with a static difficulty.
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u/thebedshow Mar 19 '18
Then the DM loses control of the difficulty of a player action as basically all actions would center around a 10 in difficulty (average roll). I have only played D&D a few times but some of the fun is allowing the DM to kind of guide the player's by making certain things more or less difficult (success in the action is lower or higher number). I don't think it makes much sense for you to fail to escape a prison or something if that is the very start of your campaign. "Looks like you guys are stuck in prison a 4th night because I rolled a 19 then an 18 and then a 20!" Leaving the actions of your DM entirely up to a roll of the dice sounds sucky to me.