Proposed mechanic: one roll to see how long you can keep doing something

[Segev]

This came to mind because of a post talking about the rules for chases and the repeated rolls to see if you become exhausted if you dash too many times. There are a number of cases where you are doing the same thing over and over, but one failure is "the end" of it. Just using a passive score would mean you could keep going forever or couldn't succeed at all under any circumstances, but rolling umpteen times gets tiresome and feels a little bad when one failure is all it takes to screw up an otherwise awesome run of successes.

This works out alright if each roll is a distinct bit of agency by the player. If you roll once to try one thing, and the result improves or weakens your overall position relative to your goal, that's one thing. Ideally, most scenarios where you're making a bunch of checks will be along these lines: tense situations where failures bring you closer to ultimate failure and/or give you progressively worse choices, and where successes bring you closer to ultimate success and give you progressively more/better options to try to get there. But that's not always feasible. Sometimes, it really is just a matter of, "I roll survival again to see if I still see their tracks."

Now, to some degree, you could use just one roll for the entire protracted action. The tracks go through multiple different terrain types, and are long with multiple chances to lose them, and that just influences the DC: roll once rather than rolling multiple times. But that's kind-of unsatisfying and unrealistic if the tracks could be followed to a point, but not all the way.

In that case, a single roll still could be used, with thresholds of success: DC 5 lets you locate the tracks and tell roughly what direction they went from where you start, for example. DC 10 might take you to the first place where they become hard to follow, where you lose them. Increased DCs get you further along the trail, until, if you roll high enough, you track them the whole way. (Improved gameplay may allow the players to attempt a new check from the point they lost the trail if they come up with a new method of tracking or do something that might help them out; perhaps they ask around if anybody's seen the creature they seek, and that gives them a new starting point where they can find new tracks, or perhaps they use a spell or something that can open new possibilities; this might allow for a blanket discount on the remaining thresholds with the new roll, as the trail is shorter and fewer things can go wrong on what's left of it.)

Preamble aside, what I am actually thinking about here is how to simplify those times when it really is best to just roll repeatedly, such as a chase to see how many times you can dash before getting exhausted.

What I'm thinking, as a first-order method, would be to have every point by which you beat the base DC be an additional time you can do it before you fail. In cases where you'd normally allow somebody to decide before each roll whether they press their luck, you can have the player give a maximum number of times they'll try. This effectively sets both a DC they must beat before their character will have a crucial failure vs. when their character gives up, and establishes how many times they push things vs. how many times they might need to push things.

There are probably more mathematically-accurate ways to map the result on a single d20 roll to expected values of success, but I think this has the value of great simplicity in actual play. What I haven't done is run the math on it to see just how fast and how far off this veers from actual expected values for number of times you can succeed before failure compared to the odds of rolling as high as you did.

[Sorinth]

I've never done it for something like a Chase, but for many skill checks I will adjust the time it takes based on the die roll. So I do think it's good thing to keep in mind but I'm not sure it's worth it to work out some mathematical formula rather then just leaving it up to the DM.

[Sigreid]

Why not a D20 against con, each pip under is a round or minute or whatever is appropriate you can continue? Maybe allow a modifier from an appropriate attribute for the task at hand. I.e. how long you can lift something heavy would be (Con+Str modifier)-D20 rounds.

[MaxWilson]

Now, to some degree, you could use just one roll for the entire protracted action. The tracks go through multiple different terrain types, and are long with multiple chances to lose them, and that just influences the DC: roll once rather than rolling multiple times. But that's kind-of unsatisfying and unrealistic if the tracks could be followed to a point, but not all the way.

In that case, a single roll still could be used, with thresholds of success: DC 5 lets you locate the tracks and tell roughly what direction they went from where you start, for example. DC 10 might take you to the first place where they become hard to follow, where you lose them. Increased DCs get you further along the trail, until, if you roll high enough, you track them the whole way.

The Alexandrian calls this method "let it ride."


When a PC is attempting a particular endeavor, make a single check and let the result of that check ride forward: If they’re trying to ascend a cliff, make a single Climb check to determine whether or not they get to the top (even if it would take them several rounds or minutes or hours to do so). If the intention is to “sneak through the enemy base”, then you make one Stealth check for the entire op and it determines how stealthy you are for the whole thing. (And the answer may be, “Not very stealthy, so someone is probably going to spot you.” And that’s OK.)

CONTINUING THE INTERACTION: A common mistake when letting it ride is to have the GM just summarize the entire attempt. For example, a player says they want to sneak into the orcs’ camp, so the GM calls for a Stealth check, sees a success, and says, “Okay, you manage to slide past the guards patrolling the border of the camp, make your way to the chieftain’s tent, and grab the tiara.”

That’s certainly an option, of course. But what’s great about letting it ride is that a player can still make meaningful choices while their result continues to roll forward. By leaving the player in the driver’s seat, the GM might discover that they want to knock out the sentries or eavesdrop at a tent to learn the orcs’ plans.

These choices could also impact the success or failure of the endeavor. For example, if they choose a path through the camp with higher security, it’s possible that their check won’t be high enough to handle it.

FAILURE POINT: Speaking of failure, how can the GM determine at what point during an attempt failure occurs if they’re using the let it ride approach?

Where the result of the check is being sequentially compared against a series of variable challenges (like a Stealth check being compared to various sentries and guards), this can be relatively easy. (You get spotted by whichever guard first exceeds your Stealth check.)

But what about something like that Climb check for scaling a cliff? On a failed check, how far up the cliff have they gotten before they failed the check?

(As with any check, of course, you still need to determine what failure means: Does it mean you fall? That you have to catch yourself before you fall? That you get stuck? That you realize you can’t reach the top for some reason and need to make your way back down?)

In general, there are three approaches: You can make a judgment call based on whatever result you think would be most interesting. You could determine it purely randomly. (For example, you could roll percentile dice to determine how far up the cliff they’d gotten or how much of their money they lost at the casino.) Or you could use the margin of failure on the check to calculate the result (or inform your judgment call).

POINT OF UNCERTAINTY: Another technique I’ve developed when letting it ride is the point of uncertainty. At the point of uncertainty, the original test result has been put at the risk of failure, but the character has the opportunity to save the result by taking some sort of action.

The point of uncertainty may be the result of the original check actually failing. For example, while sneaking into the orcs’ camp the PC encounters a scout whose Perception score is high enough to spot them. Can they knock him out (or take some other preventative action) before he raises the alarm? (If you wanted a mechanical cue, you might determine that a small margin of failure triggers a point of uncertainty and only a large margin of failure results in an immediate catastrophe.)

However, a point of uncertainty could also be the result of some tangential action coming in and interfering with your original check in an orthogonal fashion. For example, you’ve made a riding Social check while running a con job. You’re in the middle of chatting up the mark at a fancy party when you spot a former mark across the room. If they spot you, they’ll ruin your new cover. Can you make a Stealth check to avoid being seen?

What the point of uncertainty lets you do is to add complications while the overall resolution continues pushing forward. (Watch any heist movie ever made to see why that might be useful.)

Note that you’re never making a Stealth check to maintain your Stealth check or making a Social check to maintain your Social check. If you’re sneaking around and you’ve reached the point where the only way to succeed is to try sneaking again, that doesn’t mean that your original attempt is at risk. It means your original attempt has failed.

https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/38313/roleplaying-games/the-art-of-rulings-part-8-let-it-ride