Originally Posted by Nebuul
Larian,

I've played this game far more than is healthy for a pre-release, and I've really enjoyed it. There are a few design decisions you've made, though, that I think seriously detract from the game. Mostly, these center around ways you have "homebrewed" D&D 5e. However, rather than just making a "PLZ FOLLOW 5E GG NO RE" argument, I thought I'd give some reasoning as to why it's important in these cases:

I. Skill Rolls: Automatic Failures and Automatic Successes
These need to go. In any worthwhile progression-style game, there are challenges that are either too hard for a character to currently complete, or so trivial that an advanced-enough character should automatically succeed. D&D 5e recognizes this. In 5e, there are only two times that a roll can be a guaranteed success or failure:
  • Attack Rolls
  • Save vs Death to avoid dying

That's it. And that's ok.

Consider a character with dexterity 8 and no slight-of-hand proficiency who is trying to lockpick a DC 25 door. Why should they automatically succeed on a natural 20? This character should either try to bash the door down, or they should find another character with the skillset required. At the same time, consider a character with 20 dex, guidance, and slight-of-hand proficiency wearing the smuggler's ring. Then they should never, ever fail the DC 5 lock picking check. They are too good. The roll is beneath them. It is extremely frustrating to see a failure when it neither mirrors the 5e rules nor what people experience in real life. Would the Lockpicking Lawyer ever fail to open a consumer-grade masterlock padlock? No, he wouldn't. It's beneath his skill. As a player who raises a champion to be explicitly good at a specific task, it is extremely frustrating to see my <whatever>-skill-focused champion fail at a menial task. It is not fun. It makes me wish I had save scummed beforehand for the explicit purpose of bypassing this unavoidable failure. And make no mistake: A 1-in-20 chance, also known as 5%, is a huge auto-failure/success chance. Most importantly, it completely removes agency from player decisions.

In general, I agree with this statement!

Honestly, in this debate I am in the Pathfinder club. In pathfinder, the modifiers you specialize in gets so insane after a while that it will be *literally* impossible to fail or succeed certain skill checks (unless you have the guaranteed fail/success in, which I agree should go away).

Just one question - does critical success / failure actually exist for skill checks according to RAW? I was under the impression that critical success/failure and grades of success/failure in DnD was just two very, very common homebrews?

Hoot hoot, stranger! Fairly new to CRPGs, but I tried my best to provide some feedback regardless! <3 Read it here: My Open Letter to Larian