QQ&A: Spamming rolls
A question I saw online:
“Let’s say the PCs are in a room searching for hidden loot, secret doors and that sort of thing. What’s to stop them rerolling until they succeed?”
I’m not the first person to answer this in this way.
But since this question keeps popping up, allow me to illuminate it for you.
Every roll should have consequences for success and different consequences for failure. In the example of searching a room…
… success means finding the treasure. Failure means knocking over a lamp and the room burns down.
… success means finding the treasure and getting out. Failure means finding the treasure but not before the guards catch them.
… success means extracting the delicate treasure from among a nest of traps. Failure means setting off the traps.
… success means finding the treasure. Failure means finding fake treasure and thinking it’s real.
If there’s no failure, then don’t roll for it.
I see this manure all the time. “Oh, I tried to pick the lock and failed. Oh well, the bard can try… and they succeeded, yay!” No. If there’s nothing at stake, don’t make them roll. If they can take ten minutes to breathe, relax and pick the lock at their leisure, they should automatically succeed. Rolling the dice should never be pointless - but, for PC 1, it just was.
If you want to have consequences to picking a lock, have failed rolls damage the lock, damage the lock pick, activate traps, take too long, be too noisy…
Related manure I see all the time:
PC 1: “I search the room for treasure… damn, I rolled a 2.”
PC 2: “Can I roll to search the room?”
No, no you can’t. PC 1 already tried that and failed.
Group checks where only one character needs to succeed? Those are pointless, because they almost certainly will pass.
Let’s talk about a social encounter. Let’s say the party want to convince a guard to let them by, even though they don’t have the right papers.
PC 1 tries flattery. I’ll ask them to roll, probably Persuasion. It fails.
PC2 tries flattery. The guard stares at them and tells them to move along or they’ll be arrested. No roll because there’s no chance of success. They already tried that and it didn’t work. They need a new approach, not a better roll.
The party needs to try different stuff, not the same stuff but with different rolls.
“But isn’t that just spamming different checks until something works? How is trying to flatter them over and over different from them trying to bribe, threaten, coerce, seduce, bluff them…?”
Because it forces the players to get creative - to think, not just roll again and again.
Because it’s how you’d actually convince someone to do something in real life. If the first thing didn’t work, you’d try something else.
Because it’s fun - more fun than waiting for randomness to go your way.
Because there are consequences to failure. If the party keeps badgering the guard, they’ll eventually try to arrest them.
Because it requires the party to be proactive, not sitting at the mercy of the dice.
You wouldn’t make your party fight an enemy with high HP but no attack. Why? Because the party will obviously and inevitably win - this makes the fight boring.
So why do the same thing outside of combat?
Anyway, this was supposed to be a quick Q&A and it wasn’t. Oh well.
Want to know what’s actually quick? Reading the GM Virtues - my free guide to GMs wanting to take their craft to the next level.
And the level above that.
I’m misleading you, though. Sure, it’s quick to read. If you’re using it right, then you should sit down and reflect on it, coming back to it often.
I can - and do - set out to improve my Virtues all the time and I wrote the bloody thing.
So that takes time, I guess.
Still…
Grab your copy here: