D&D 5E Raw d20 rolls?

[Sunseeker]

I don't make an overt effort to track my players bonuses. I don't track what they are or are not proficient in. I don't track when they do or do not get advantage on a roll. Since I don't know every player's proficiency, I've started setting "raw rolls" as the minimum barrier for success. I may not know each of their specific bonuses, but I know that there are only 20 numbers on a die. So instead of saying "you need to break a 25!" I tell them "you need to roll at least a 17 raw to succeed". Then depending on how high their bonus is over that number will determine their level of success and how that success plays out.

I've found it works insomuch as to "grade" a challenge based on probability for success and then use whatever they get beyond the bare minimum affects how well they've succeeded. Easy challenges are a 10. Hard challenges are a 15. Very hard challenges are 19-20. Impossible challenges are a nat 20 only. I also find it saves a lot of "math time" of "did I make it?!" You know, right off the bat, if you made it or not, no time spend fuddling with +X and +y until the cows come home. It also keeps me from having to remember who's most likely to do well in any given challenge. They tell me what they're doing, I tell them what roll that will use and how hard it will be and then they roll and tell me their bonus if they win.

Any thoughts?

 

[MostlyDm]

If easy challenges are 10 *raw* then people fail at easy tasks 45% of the time.

Yikes!

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

First thought: I have not experienced the "math time" in-game being noteworthy, let alone long enough to bother trying to reduce it. That may be partly because while I don't track what exactly each player adds to each roll, I do have a sense of what their modifier to any given thing probably is, and I can thus see the result on the die and be sure of their success even as a player checks their sheet to see if they are adding +4 or +7 to that roll.

Second thought: your assessment of easy, hard, very hard, and (nearly) impossible are off if you are requiring a natural roll of those values - that effectively means that easy is effectively something like 12-15. Starting at 5 or 8 for easy fixes that. Then scaling up each difficulty by 4-5 (i.e. going with 8 for easy, 12 for medium, 17 for hard, and keeping 20 for the near impossible) would actually come kind of close to mirroring what natural rolls are needed with the standard DCs and actually taking the handful of seconds at most to actually add modifiers.

Third thought: I am actually more confused about what "fuddling with +X and +Y until the comes come home," you are even referring to now that I have responded than I was before - 5th edition already stripped the +Xs and +Ys down to a bare minimum, all of which are a more constant modifier that can just be recorded on the character sheet so that the player is effectively only ever adding a single number to any die roll, not adding what their sheet says, then being reminded of some some number of circumstantial buff that they might have forgotten.

And anything that fell into the realm of circumstantial minutiae to track is replaced by the lightning fast system of advantage if you have an edge, disadvantage if you have extra obstacles, or neither if you have neither or both.

Trying to make the fastest D&D I've ever seen go faster... seems like a waste of brainpower.

 

[Pjack]

This reminds me of playing "Totemic GURPS". We would put all the GURPs books in the center of the table, and then ignore them while we rolled our 3d6s. "What'd you get, an eight? Eh, good enough."

It sounds like you're saying that if a player rolls at least a certain number, you hand-wave the details and call it a success. So far, sounds great to me!

What isn't clear is what you do if they don't roll at least that number. Do you call it a failure? That's a pretty steep departure from the rules. Or, do you have them add up their bonuses and compare the result to a target number, as usual? That's the way I would do it. If the number on the die is at least X, keep the game moving. If it's not, take a sec to add & check.

 

[Valmarius]

I don't think that you should be taking your PCs skill scores into consideration when setting DCs in the first place. Changing the DC based on the character's skills either negates or doubles the effect of having skills.

If PC A has a skill bonus of +5 and attempts to perform the same task as unskilled PC B:
You set the DC easier for the person who is trained --> PC A has effectively doubled their bonus.
You set the DC harder for the person who is trained --> Their training is nullified and their character building decisions haven't meant a thing.

As for you suggestion of using Raw d20 rolls. It seems a little counter-intuitive to me.
For example: PC A is proficient with thieves tools, PC B is not. Using raw d20 rolls, they have the exact same chance of being able to open a locked door. PC A might do it quieter or faster, but is no more likely to succeed.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Any thoughts?

Easy, tends to work fine. There's a certain player mind-set that'd be utterly outraged if they realized what you were doing, so tread lightly if you have someone like that in the group (and you probably know whether you do or not). Even those not outraged might be a tad disappointed to realize that their characters' are essentially fungible.

 

[abirdcall]

I too, am perplexed by this houserule.

I don't even look at what the player actually rolls. I just say make an ability check with whatever proficiency if it applies, tell me the total.

Sometimes I announce DCs ahead of time, sometimes I don't.

Numbers tend to be static over long periods of time. Ability scores and proficiency bonus doesn't change very often so I'm not sure where the difficulty comes in.

 

[Psikerlord#]

This kind of reminds me of old style ability checks, where the player just has to roll under their stat. Eg Str 13 PC wants to bust down a door. They roll a d20 and if they get 13 or less they succeed. DM could put modifiers on it for easier/harder.

Personally I don't think there isnt much difference - brainpower wise - between picking a natural roll number to succeed, or making up a DC on the spot. I think bounded accuracy means you can pretty much make a DC between 10 and 20 and you're mostly good. Easy stuff, don't even roll. Really hard stuff? OK stretch that DC range out to 25 maybe.

Only thing I would say is looking at the scale you're thinking of using, 10-20 on a natural roll, I think you are definitely up the chance of failure compared to the default. Which is perfectly fine as long as that's what you're after.

 

[Unwise]

I really don't think I would like the level of randomness that this implies if I were a player. I certainly would not go scouting anything if my rogue had at least a 45% chance of failing to do the thing she was built to do. For that matter, I would not play a rogue or anybody with a skill focus at all under those conditions.

As a DM I do sometimes use minimum raw rolls, but that is only at times where pure luck comes into play. For instance, you are swinging across a chasm on a rotten rope, roll less than 7 and it snaps, I still then ask for the skill total to see if they made it across if the rope didn't snap.

 

[Connorsrpg]

Perhaps you should take a look at the Cypher System