Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Critical fails on skill checks are a mistake

With one of the last patches/fixes a bad thing slipped into the game. We now have critical fail on skill checks. We even have a tooltip that says it's there. It shouldn't be there. Not only because it's wrong by D&D rules, but also because it ruins the roleplay.
Imagine, I'm playing a wizard, who studied arcane magic for years, he has the proficiency and now he fails an arcane check with a difficulty challenge of 5 points just because he rolled 1 and his 5 points of well earned knowledge are not taken into account. This is madness! In examples from the real world it is the same if a programmer suddenly wouldn't be able to tell you what a compiler is. He may not be a super cool professional but he still should have some basic knowledge. If it's not a basic knowledge then the difficulty shouldn't be just 5.
Critical miss is there to represent things that are totally out of your control in a fight even if you were fencing and throwing offensive spells for centuries. You may slip, you may get distracted, your opponent can get lucky in his attempt to avoid your attack. They are also balanced by critical hits.
Critical failure on stabilization rolls is there to represent the struggle against death as not something that you can learn to do. And this is also balanced by critical success.
But skills… they are your knowledge, your training, which you're using in a quite controllable environment. If you don't remember something from your studies, you can just spend some time trying to remember. And the roll against higher difficulty is an extrapolation attempt, not an attempt to do something random to get a random result. And there is no mechanic for critical success.
Larian, please, fix it.

+1

I agree and there are already many posts to this effect.

When did this get in the game? What happens if you crit fail a skill?

Yeah, that's def not a 5e rule, not sure what it adds to the game, or what the thinking behind it is.

Same as with critical miss, you roll 1 means you fail, proficiency is ignored, buffs are ignored.
My guess is that it came in the game because many people who don't really know the rules were complaining otherwise:
https://twitter.com/larianstudios/status/1448698868556701701

+1

this should follow the rules, if some people want to critically fail skill checks I'm ok with two options:

1- let it be modded
2- make a configuration setting.

Just please dont make us mod to remove critical fails on skills or worse .. having to savescum to avoid it.

+1

It's actually been in the game more of less from the beginning, and it's been discussed (and for the most part objected to, with a few staunch supporters) quite a bit. The unfortunate news is that Larian's official word on this right now is that it's deliberate and working as intended, however I would encourage anyone who disagrees with the implementation to submit their own direct feedback reports saying so and seeking a proper implementation of the rules; as long as it gets enough attention and people asking for the actual 5e version of the rules here, there's a possibility of it being changed.

I have rolled quite a few critical fails on skill checks - and I am OK with it. I do not view it as unrealistic. Take lockpicking, for example. It’s an easy lock and I’ve done this a hundred times in my sleep so a DC 5 lock with my +5 bonus should be automatic - except that the stupid lock pick snapped off in my hand because it had a flaw - or - I didn’t notice that a tiny stone had gotten jammed in the lock before I tried - or - whatever. These things happen in real life, even on “automatic gimmes”. How many times on a real life intelligence check have you had something that you definitely know, but you just can’t pull up its name in your head? Geez, I can even see it and I had a whole college section on it, but I can’t pull it up in the heat of the moment, maybe while watching Jeopardy, or playing Trivia at the local bar. These things happen.

I do understand the argument of it’s not in the DnD rules or that there is not a corresponding good benefit of rolling a 20 to offset this. I’m fine and supportive of those arguments. I just don’t understand the argument of not being realistic.

They could easily implement the optional rule that a natural 1 on a skill check has an unintended consequence (like the lockpick breaking you mentioned) while the skill check in question is still a success. Bottom line, this is yet another deviation from the 5e rules that adds nothing to the game.

Your examples are simply wrong.
DC is there to show how hard it is from the start till the end.
Critical miss means something that wasn't there at first suddenly happened during the fight. It always translates that way.

5DC means it's so simple and basic a commoner could do it.
If your low-level character has 5 points in corresponding skill means he is either naturally super good in this kind of work (20 in the ability) or has good knaks for it and it's part of his everyday professional practice (16 in the ability+proficiency)

So now to your examples:
1) You practically can’t snap a lockpick if you’re doing it right, even if it happens to have a flaw. It’s made of metal and lockpicking with a lockpick doesn’t use brute force (if you wish to take a look at some real lockpicking here you go https://www.youtube.com/c/lockpickinglawyer). If the brute force suddenly came into play it means the lock happened to be more sophisticated than you thought so it’s simply not 5DC from the start. Also lockpick has its flaw before the start, so you are either supposed to be able to examine it before even starting working with it or you anyway get your higher DC for working with broken tools beforehand.
2) The little stone didn't crawl into the lock while you were trying to open it. So it's a damaged lock from the start, which is supposed to be known by your DM beforehand and it is also not 5DC.
3) I highly doubt that you have problems with recalling things that you actually use all the time as part of your professional practice unless you have some health problems or temporary condition causing memory problems, which is again higher DC beforehand. I already covered the question of remembering stuff in the OP post:

+1

Skill checks already have an element of frustration where a new character who is as specialized as can be in a certain field (+3 ability modifier and +2 proficiency) will fail a Medium (DC15) skill check about half the time. Introducing critical fails only adds to the frustration and makes characters look even more incompetent. This isn't Disco Elysium either, there aren't any particularly interesting outcomes for failing checks (that I've seen, anyway).

Isnt there another option that he is a Rogue? (Meaning have Expertise?)

That would mean 12 + Proficiency ...

No?
(Seriously i dont know. )

Well that's not even implemented, but would make the problem even more ridiculous. As in you're a professional that not only does this stuff regularly, but also knows some very special pro-tricks, and you fail at performing the most basic task meant for newbie training because... random.
PS: And, yes, your value is wrong. Expertise doubles proficiency bonus, which is 2 for lvl1, so 4+ability modifier.

That 12 was for Ability Score.
I was using same format as you did in quoted part.

In my mind it was:

Ability 12 = +1 Modifier ...
Expretise = Prof 2 * 2 = 4 ...
Therefore Ability 12 should be enough for character to preform task of Dif. 5 on level 1.

Oh. That's what your meant with 12+! That's just not the proper way to write it, but ok. Well, a rogue with expertise would be fine against 5DC even with 10 point in corresponding ability. Because you can't roll less than 1 and you add your skill and ability modifier to it, so 1+4...

Another important reason why crit fails on skill checks should not be a thing is that all checks in the game are necessarily universal - they're the same for every character, so the DCs must be universal DCs too.

Normally your DM tailors DCs relative to the person performing the action, and IF the result is that the individual simply cannot fail at all, then there is no roll (same goes for impossibilities too - if a task is impossible to fail or impossible to succeed, the DM narrates the outcome - for everything in between, you roll). With flat universal DCs however, those extreme no-roll situations are rarer because every possible character needs to be accounted for - so what might be a sure thing for one character is not for another, and we must roll regardless. This is why you cannot have critical failures on skill checks:

If a young child runs up to the party and says "My mum says Mystra is the goddess of the weave... What's the Weave?" There is no possibility that Gale will not have an answer to give - but it is possible that someone else might not know much about magic and may not be able to answer this (still unlikely but possible). Because at least one character might fail this check, the roll must be made regardless, but the Dc is low enough that most folks can't reasonably fail it - Gale certainly can't. With critical failures on skill checks, however, Gale CAN fail to answer this question, and that just doesn't compute.

It's one of those rule misconceptions that becomes so ubiquitous that it starts being treated as real. Or maybe people just like opportunities to roleplay criticals.

While I don't actually think DCs need to be universal, there shouldn't be any critical success or fails.
In combat, because it takes place over such a short period of time and because it's outcomes aren't managed it makes some more sense.

Here's an interesting article on skill checks I like thealexandrian

I think this is one of best exaple where optional rule can be aplied.

I thought this is the reason we have those not-rolled dialogue options. O_o

You know ...
[Druid], [Fighter], ... but also [Drow], [Baldurian], etc ...

I mean PC game is explicit environment after all ...
We are unable to get into any unimplemented dialogue situation ... and while possibilities can be (and sometimes are) oversighted ...
We get this unfailable options for our unfailable situations ...

So in your exaple Gale would (or should) have options:
[Wizard] Weave is just other word for Magic.
[Insert skill here] *try to explain it as thoroughly as possible ... yet easily so that kid understands*

The joke is that currently in the game we sometimes have it as:
[Arcane magic] Weave is just another word for Magic. - ROLL
[Wizard] [Arcane magic] *read the full lecture to the kid and tell him the full story about Mystra* - ROLL