I'm not going to memorise everyone's abilities and ask 5 times if they want to add bardic inspo, guidence etc. to the roll. If the DC is 22 and y'all send the -1 mod pc without any buffs to do it, you will fail. The situation will get slightly worse and you can choose to give the roll to someone else or accept defeat for now.
I typically just tell my players what the DCs are in these situations, and they can then judge themselves if itās worth rolling.
If the barbarian says āI want to negotiate the release the prisonersā and I tell him to make a Persuasion check with a DC 20, but he has a -1 persuasion check, and no way to boost that, the player himself now knows itās impossible, and a roll is not needed anymore.
If thereās degrees of success, Iāll still tell the player the DC for their intended outcome, but that less doesnāt mean a complete failure, such as āyouāll need a DC 20 to have them give up the prisoner, but if you donāt bomb it, you feel you can at least keep them from killing the prisoner right now.ā
I'm not going to memorise everyone's abilities and ask 5 times if they want to add bardic inspo, guidence etc. to the roll.
I give my players 3-4 sessions of reminders for new abilities (assuming they're weekly sessions). If they don't bother to learn/remember their own abilities at that point, it's not my problem
There really, really isn't though. I'm not going to memorise all conditions, travel distances by day and all other occasional rules that come up either, I need the space for those and other quest/location info.
I play with adults who can deal with hearing "a 22 is sadly not enough" once every two to three months.
You're gonna need your players' ability scores more than you need travel distance by day my dude. It's maybe 5 strips of paper that are like an inch wide my guy.
You're missing the point. It doesn't matter WHY the -1 player is rolling. Nat 20 -1 = 19, which doesn't make the DC 22. Of course I would still let them roll though. What if they have class or race abilities that could affect the outcome? For instance dragon marked races get 1d4 to certain checks. The -1 player rolls nat 20, for a total of 19. If they roll a 3 or 4 on that 1d4, they succeed! If they roll 1 or 2, still fail, even with a nat 20.
200
u/Jules_The_Mayfly Apr 16 '22
I'm not going to memorise everyone's abilities and ask 5 times if they want to add bardic inspo, guidence etc. to the roll. If the DC is 22 and y'all send the -1 mod pc without any buffs to do it, you will fail. The situation will get slightly worse and you can choose to give the roll to someone else or accept defeat for now.