Originally Posted by Kraeftig
Originally Posted by Khorvale
Other than it being needlessly annoying and using a different form than it's source material, it technically also changes the mechanic:

D20 + modifier vs. DC is "open-ended", you roll your dice and add your number to it. It could theoretically go to +1.000.000 if that was the scope of the game.

D20 vs DC - modifier is "closed off", in the sense that you can never, ever roll higher than 20 on a skill check since the modifier is added to the DC instead, and DCs can presumably go no lower than 1.

It seems like a unneeded change that has the potential to actually complicate things down the line as well.


It is an unnecessary change that is mechanically indifferent.

There is no mechanical difference between having a +10 bonus rolling a 1d20 and adding it to beat a DC10 check, compared to reducing a DC 10 by 10 (hitting the base floor of 1), then rolling 1d20.
In both situations it is impossible to fail, unless you hard-code in that a 1 of 1d20 is an automatic failure on a skill check.
Considering neither 1 being auto-fail nor 20 being auto-success is the case on skill checks under normal rules in DND 5e, this should not be an issue.

Auto success and failure on 20 and 1 respectively is a mechanic from attack rolls.
It is not part of skill checks unless the DM chooses to override the rules and make it that way.
At the moment I've not encountered any way of definitively determining if this has been applied to skill checks by Larian, but seeing as I've not received "critical failure/success" notifications from skill checks, it could tentatively be assumed that it is not being applied in this fashion, which is appropriate to the standard rules they're basing this game on. However it will be factually unknown for certain until someone encounters a DC21+ rolling 20, or DC1 rolling 1. The highest DC I've personally encountered is 18, I believe.

Thus, there is no mechanical difference for doing ability checks in this fashion. There will only be player confusion about understanding how this is being approached, which is a valid concern.



Sure you got almost exactly the same effect in practice, but it's not the same system, even if it is very similar.
And you're right, there's no auto-fail or auto-success on skill checks and so far Larian hasn't added it either.