>what would you even expect to happen on an ability crit? Extra information, owed a favour, make a friend, get a small reward, get a clue to a larger reward, impress someone important, uncover a secret, get forewarning of a danger, hinder a rival, gain advantage on something, opponent is exhausted/confused/embarrassed and must pass a saving throw to act... Skill check crits would be just like combat crits except there's way more scope for fictional as well as mechanical benefits.

Yeah, the people that do rules as written, or follow a book for a campaign to the letter, to hard often end up taking the fun out of it. My first ever campaign I was an outlander ranger with high survival. We started in a swamp and it was written "pass survival check, if fail, roll to go in a random direction". I somehow failed 7/8 rolls with +7 (bad luck). We spent the whole session going round in circles and ended up further away from our objective than we started. I felt awkward/stressed, and the others just felt bored/frustrated. Chatting with more seasoned players afterwards they were like "yeah, that shouldn't be how it normally goes, but it's not your fault, DM should have a fail safe for stuff like that. First rule is 'is it fun'. Just cause the campaign says 'do x' doesn't necessarily mean you should if it's not fun for anyone"

Exactly. Why not make them crit? It's going to be up to the DM anyway to define what a "critical success" means on a skill check. There's no hard rule like the extra damage that comes with crit successes on attacks. The DM gets to choose what a critical success on a skill check actually produces. The DM can easily just make sure the crit success isn't game breaking. Your players are in an audience with the king. The bard tries to be funny and tries to convince the king to give him his crown and hand the kingdom over to him. Actually making the bard the new king would break the game. But maybe a critical fail means the bard gets sent to the dungeon to be tortured for daring to make such a request. A critical success means the king will grant the bard one "wish," ie, any reasonable single reasonable request that is within the king's power. The whole situation is fully in the DM's power.

Worse! At just level 7, a rogue is likely to have +11 and Advantage to pick a lock, which combined with Reliable Talent means they can't fail a DC 21, and have a 1/2 chance of beating a DC 26. So if you want there to be uncertainty and challenge, you have to make the DC more like 25-28. Making it all the more likely that the lock should be impossible to the rest of the party. If I wanted to formally add ability check crits I would make them add/subtract something from your result. Not automatically pass/fail, because the consequences of that are bonkers.

> Not automatically pass/fail, because the consequences of that are bonkers. Agreed

That's why I really enjoy the "fail but" or "success except" mechanic were even failing still advances the plot. Maybe you get lost however stumble upon something that can help with the objective.

Yeah, one of the other players in that sesh was a forever GM, he was saying how he will maybe do one big "bad roll, bad consequences", but then if it happens again something like "you go in the right direction but you twist your ankle in the brush" or "it takes twice as long" or something

FWIW, inconsistency is one of the things I hate the most about the game design in Elden Ring. It does not properly communicate the actual impact of stat upgrades at different levels (e.g. 39-40 vigor is a significantly higher jump than 40-41 vigor) and enemies will have resistances or weaknesses to different damage types that often feel arbitrary/poorly communicated (e.g. the Magma Wyrm, a creature that breathes fire, is more resistant to fire than the Fire Giant; Borealis, an icy dragon that breathes ice, is nearly as resistant to fire as the Fire Giant; Hero of Zamor, an icy man that shoots ice, is weak to fire). Elden Ring's design is essentially a form of trial and error that often punishes you for choosing poorly, relying instead on metagame knowledge (patterns from previous Souls games, online discourse) to patch up its shortcomings. Fun as all hell when you know what to do, but its systems are incredibly arcane for newcomers.

That's still not clear what you mean, all of those things are typically the results of a success. Do you mean nat 20 should always succeed? Do you mean nat 20 should always be a success with extra benefits? Do you mean nat 20 should always give you a side benefit even if it fails? You need to be more clear.

No, you're misunderstanding, I'm not saying the *player*, I'm saying *the DM*. I'm not going to waste everyone's time at the table checking whether a 20 on the die could possibly succeed given their modifier when I can just ask them to make a roll. It's way quicker.

Just because I have a sense of what modifiers are and might check during encounter building doesn't mean I have them all memorized. That's genuinely like over a hundred numbers to have memorized. Plus I can look at a sheet while building an encounter and not waste anyone's time.

It's also not really designed to make combat particularly interesting, other games manage that much better. Either shorter or narratively interesting.

Ah yeah i see. A roll skips you having to sort through character sheets introducing a silent pause in the narrative to determine whether a check passively succeeds. I was a little confused by talk of character sheets because the players have them right there and they should be carbon copy with what the dm has. I meant that for checks as the DM you can save time by relying on players who you can trust to know the game and be honest, rolled or passive. I argue that a DM that asks for my stats has not yet been any less immersive for me. It takes a split second and I'll take it over railroading every time.

I never mentioned having them *memorized.* I specifically said you should have a copy of their sheets. lol

They do if it's funny. Fails too.

> Do you want me to ***check all eight of their sheets*** and all their abilities that could possibly modify their scores or just ask them to make a Blah (Foo) check check and see what the result is? It's gonna be way faster for everyone to just ask them to roll. I never said I didn't have the sheets.

I think most people would say not letting you attempt to do something because they think your character can't possibly have enough of a bonus to do it is railroading. Again, like I said, I don't have foresight to know what the bonus might be. What if the bard decides to inspire them? What if the cleric uses guidance before? What if they have some item that gives them a bonus and they haven't written that in and just add it in the fly?

I agree completely! ::: spoiler Tap for spoiler I assume you're just adding context because I don't believe dialogue has clashing ideas any longer :::

Sometimes, it's about sending a message.

Because I don't know what their max roll might be and it achieves them something, they gain knowledge that something is impossible for them.