It was a good roll
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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To the guy saying Nat 20 doesn’t break reality.
A nat 20 does whatever the dm and the table agree the nat 20 does.
Remember folks, fun is #1
“Your character just remembered this was there native language and read it perfectly “
Treat it the same as if you’re playing Disco Elysium and have a high Encyclopedia score.
im going to buy a lottery ticket
roll 20: i won 30 millions!
roll 1: I won but why do i have to go to this shady place to take my price?
He locked in
We’re going by Baldur’s Gate 3 rules here folks, no need to get nitpicky about critical successes on skill checks.
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Deciphering runes isn’t realistic? And yet we all bought that a fish with memory loss could read P.Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney.
In situations like these you can treat it like that scene in LotR when Frodo guesses the answer to the Doors of Durin when Gandalf couldn’t.
The DM calls the roles. If it impossible for a character to achieve something, the DM can deny a role.
Another call the DM can make is, that a role only gives you the best possible outcome. In this case the “Dumbass Character” can’t decipher the runes, but maybe it remembers a way to do it (like a NPC, book, spell, etc.), it makes a connection between the runes and something else or it just recognizes some symbols being repeated.
The barbarian who’s never seen a word in his life: this ancient tablet is clearly telling us an ancient curse will be unleashed if we enter
Party: how do you know that?
Barb: look you don’t ask water why it’s wet do you?
No, please no more faces like the ones in those comics about the Elf lady.
Definition of Locked in
Think of it like the blackjack scene in the hangover.
Your dumbass character has this strange hidden tallant that they can’t really explain, but they’re fantastic at this time.
Or they stubmle on the answer in the most random way. “What’s 2+4? Ok… so assume we have two cats, and four dogs, say the cats are fluffy haired. Now I know that dogs like to chew on bones, and cats like fish, so if we go fishing in the morning and catch several, we should have enough to feed all the cats. But the dogs might not like to go fishing so what we should do is go to the butcher and ask for extra soup bones. If we decide to actually make soup we’d need enough for everyone so I’d say…. Six. Six bowls of soup. The answer is six.”
Or in barbarian math “There are four bodies, I bring my great axe down onto the heads of two more of the enemy, now there are six bodies.”
Is your character Peregrin Took?
That’s so real
love the comic Shen!
TOO serious^^
When your single braincell does its job for once
I was always able to flavor it in a good way. You noticed some past adventurer who started deciphering notes on the bottom. You happen to have a book that would help with the process. You noticed the language is fairly similar to a language you do know, etc.
When this happens (a dumb character doing a smart thing like reading the runes) I always imagine it’s a Slumdog Millionaire situation.
The halfling once hid inside a church while evading the guard on the exact day the priest happened to be reviewing a text on ancient runes.
> what the fuck is ovaltine?
Lock in
I would roleplay it as the character just guessing and getting it right anyway.
Plot twist the runes were a cognitohazard and deciphering them vaporizes you.
Brennan Lee Mulligan summed it up in a way I really like, and mind you this IS homebrew.
Every table is different, but if you are going to have a player roll for something there should be at least the smallest possible chance (let’s say 1 in 20 because nobody likes percentile dice) that they can do it.
If they are doing something insanely improbable, 1 in 20 is a fun way of giving them hope and on a very rare occasion giving the DM a heart attack while they pull off the dumbest fucking thing possible.
If they are doing something impossible, just say that. “I’m sorry, but there is literally no way you can pick up an entire church. You can roll but even a 20 will, at best, make it so you don’t rip your pants and hurt yourself in the process”.
Nat 20 doesn’t HAVE to mean a success, but I think if you are allowing a player to roll its more fun for them to have a chance. Otherwise, just be honest with your player and tell them the thing they want to do is too outlandish to even happen.
This is what it feels like in Pathfinder2e when you hit a nat 20 when you were already going to critically succeed. For context: Nat 1’s and Nat 20’s do modify rolls somewhat by raising/lowering degrees of success.
u/shenanigan r/dndmemes may enjoy this as well, more exposure for your comics!
Dammit, I just realized the “runes” are the absolute cinema meme from r/PhoenixSC.
I once played a travelling duo with a friend, he was the brains and I was the muscle. But to an insane quirk of chance whenever we would make ANY knowledge check he would roll low and I would roll high, so it ended up becoming a running gag that he would stand there, stroking his beard and I would go “Boss, didn’t you always use to say that it was dependent on the whatchamacallit planar alignment?”
A funny way to solve it would be for the character just blurt out something stupid which happens to be correct yet nobody believes them.
“You remember sitting in a tavern and a crazy man was going over random symbols. Suddenly, the memory of this flushes back to you and you’re able interpret the symbols before you as…”
We spent 30 minutes arguing about some ancient ruins language that we could not translate. At our table the biggest rule is we need to remember what we buy, our skills/abilities, and inventory. I finally said, “screw it I’ll roll for intelligence, with my freaking 8!” Nat 20.
“You start giggling and look at the wizard, ‘why is your picture book printed on the wall?’”
The resulting laughter at the fact we bought a guide book at the suggestion of the wizard, so we could translate the ruins and find our way to the vault hidden in the ruins. The very vault he wanted to raid! Worst of all the first placard we couldn’t translate literally translated to, “welcome to the great vault of secrets, please mind your step, and don’t feed the wild life.”
They locked in. “You know nat 20 is only a guaranteed success on attack rolls, rights?”
…Well my int’s 8 so… it’s a 19. Does that pass?
Sometimes people see a puzzle and it just clicks in their mind what the answer is.
My wife and I do those Escape Room puzzle box games from Barnes and Nobles and sometimes we both get stumped at a puzzle and sometimes one of us will just see it and go “oh the answer is this” immediately.
“As you look at it, you begin to realize the symbols look not unlike the ancient language written in your people’s holy books; and while you can only recognize a few words, you get the gist of it”
I think of it more like they had a Slumdog Millionaire moment and just had the right knowledge at the right time
DM: Hmmm … ok “As you try to say the first word you unknowingly say a trigger word and a ghost only you can see appears and takes over you and starts to translate the text…*translation goes here*…. After the text is translated the ghost leaves your body.”
Rolls a nat 20 in investigation: You don’t find any clues
but I rolled a 20
You’re REALLY sure you don’t find any clues
My group just destroyed a wraith, because the poor thing defeated itself with terrible rolls. Our new DM was so disappointed.
Skill rolls determine how well a character does something, to the *best of their abilities*.
For example, someone who knows shit about cooking rolling a nat 20 when preparing a meal doesn’t mean they suddenly made a 5 star, Michelin worthy dinner. It means that they managed to cook the food decently enough that it’s actually pretty tasty and it won’t poison whoever eats it.
At least that’s the intention behind critical rolls.