While there’s a lot of things going on with D&D right now, there’s one thing that happened a bit longer ago where I was surprised to see the reaction that I did. It was a suggested change for future editions.

An Explanation

D&D famously has players rolling a lot of twenty sided dice, usually to perform a check, AKA performing some task. You roll a die, then add some bonuses and such, and then if it’s high enough, you succeed at whatever task you were attempting. The big change that the designers were thinking of implementing was that if you roll the highest number on the die, then you automatically succeed, even if your bonuses wouldn’t have gotten you past the threshold for success, and if you roll the lowest possible number, the same happens but with a failure.

I love this rule, because it makes something very clear to dungeon masters: don’t make your player roll a die if what they’re attempting is impossible or a given. If a player can’t succeed in the best case scenario, then don’t waste time making them roll and do math and all that. I really like how much it speeds up the game and encourages honest communication between players

However, players did not like it. In fact, they hated it. They didn’t understand how a player with incredible skill and a ton of bonuses could still fail at something simple. You may have already noticed, but the problem here is that they are blaming the rules of the game and not the DM who is making them roll to perform something where the result is already a forgone conclusion.

Counterarguments

Before I go into analysis, let me address some common counterarguments, AKA reasons to roll dice when the outcome will be successful or not regardless of the result of the die:

Some people think it’s important to roll in order to gauge the level of success. For example, if you roll to intimidate someone easily intimidated into giving you something, then you could reason that rolling a 1, even though it succeeds, means the target is scared enough to hand over the object, but only cautiously, whereas a 20 might mean they hand it to you and run away screaming. While this seems like a pretty clear reason, I’m not a fan. First, the DM could make it either result, regardless of the number. If they succeed, then they succeed, and the DM can make up any story they want. Second, that means you’re rolling for the wrong target. If you’ll always succeed at intimidating the person, then you’re basically deciding after the roll that you have to beat a different, higher number in order to succeed at making them run away scared. I understand wanting to use dice results to scuplt a scene, but doing so may undercut the design of the mechanics.

You may want to make a player roll a die that won’t matter if you want to trick them into thinking it could. If a player tries to break open a door, something completely reasonable, but you, as the DM, know that the door is magically reinforced beyond belief, then you don’t want to give it away by telling them they can’t roll to open it. Now, personally I don’t believe this should come up that often, but I understand that twists like these can sometimes be popular. But I also like the story it could tell. The idea that nothing is ever certain is enjoyable, and maybe the idea that a player may circumvent something you considered impossible is entertaining. Besides, if they roll a 20 and don’t succeed, they’ll already know something is up, so why not just let them succeed anyway?

The last major reason people do rolls like this is because they think it keeps the player involved. If a player wants to do something, then you should at least let them roll for it, is the argument. I disagree with this too, but to explain it we’ll have to go deeper.

What is a Roll?

If you ask the average D&D player when they roll for a skill check, they’ll probably say something along the lines of “whenever I want to try and do something.” If you’re lucky, they’ll realize that’s too broad, and they’ll say “whenever I want to try and do something hard.” This is how many players see it, but it’s not a great way to think about it.

A lot of people see rolling dice as the “button” in D&D. For example, if you were trying to climb a mountain in Skyrim, then you might walk towards it and press the jump button. The game would then register your jump and do the math to decide whether or not to place your character on that mountain. If you were trying to climb a cliff face, then it would naturally not let you jump up it, and you’d fall back to the ground. So to some people, rolling that die is like pressing the jump button, and the results of the dice are like the math the computer does to see if you successfully did it. So in the same way a video game won’t let you climb a cliff because no jump could get you high enough, then similarly no result of the roll could get you a result to climb the cliff.

But that’s the thing: D&D doesn’t have buttons, and DMs aren’t computers. In a video game, your jump button exists because there’s no other way for you to tell the game you want to ascend. It is your only form of communication. But in RPGs, you have plenty of forms of communicating what you want to the DM. Not only that, but your actions as a player are not the same as your actions as a character. In a video game, if you decide you want to jump, your only option is to jump. But in an RPG, if you decide you want to jump, your character doesn’t just do it. You can ask the DM what the results will be and not have your character try something dumb. You’re taking advantage of the medium.

Conclusion

Remember: you, as a player, can decide what happens without having to roll dice, and your DM should be able to as well. You can try and fail at something without having to prove it. Don’t waste everyone’s time with math and dice rolls that are meaningless and could have been avoided with proper communication.