5 Ways to Fail a Skill Check (and it's Not Your Fault!)
When you fail a skill roll, it doesn’t have to be because your character is an incompetent buffoon. A poor result on the d20 doesn’t even have to mean that you failed.
For me, one of the least interesting things at the table is a failed roll that stops forward motion. If you failed to unlock a door, that’s it. Now the party’s adventure grinds to a halt because there is a door in the way and the rogue failed to pick the lock and the barbarian failed to break the door. Now what?
Failing Forward
The most important mechanic to think about when calling for skill checks is the concept of failing forward. Don’t let a bad roll result in the party not moving forward in the story, instead let the world react to the players.
The party still unlocks the door, but they made so much noise that an orc guard has wondered over to investigate the noise.
The wizard is able to read the ritual notes, but now they have been blasted by powerful arcane energy (that may make them feebleminded for a few minutes or hours).
We are going over things you could instead turn to when a roll goes poorly and you want to make the results more exciting than just, you failed.
Increase the Danger
You find an old book covered in thick dust. You flip open the cover and blow the dust from the pages, and begin reading arcane secrets that speak of ancient rituals to reach the very edge of the multiverse. As you attempt to wrest these secrets into your mind, dust falls to your head, then a large rock, and then more and more stone. The room is collapsing as the book glows. It is protecting its secrets from you by causing a cave-in.
In this example, the character is attempting to read a book but they failed the check. Instead of just saying they can’t read the book cause your character is unintelligent, we make it so that the book is explicitly fighting back against the character by creating drama and tension.
You don’t have to make the room collapse on a character, you could instead have the book go blank as it protects its secrets or the character takes psychic damage for every portion of the book they read, and they can keep reading as much as they want, but they will take more and more damage until they finish reading it. It creates an adversary for the player to fight against, not just a skill check to fail.
And this isn’t just for failing to read a book. You failed to knock open a door? You smash through it but the door damages you with wooden splinters. You failed to convince the king? A rival intrudes upon your meeting.
In these situations, it isn’t because the character is lacking that they failed, but that the world around them is fighting back.
You Become Distracted
You find an old tome covered in dust, just as you beginning to read an ancient treatise on escaping the edges of the multiverse, you are interrupted. The archwizard’s mechanical servant enters the room, letting you know that your presence is required at once.
In this example, your failed roll isn’t due to your lack of ability to understand the words, but those around you are being a distraction. Maybe this means you’ll have to try again later, or do something drastic (like steal the book) before you can make any progress on understanding it.
Other distractions could be your own party being the distraction. Maybe the rogue found some treasure and is demanding you make an arcana check. Maybe your allies are telling you how bored they are and want to get going. Maybe something about the dungeon you are in is magical and strange, distracting your focus from the book and onto other important magical phenomenon around you.
When using distractions, think about what is going on where the party is. Is the BBEG hard at work? Maybe a frozen flame laser blast just erupted out of the cosmic quantum volcano and obliterated a small fishing village. Or maybe the party are in someone else’s home, like a castle, and important NPCs are calling on them or interrupting them while they are trying to open a chest without being noticed.
Wrong Information
You open a dust covered tome, it’s title long ago lost to time. Prying its moldering pages apart, you hope to find information on the boundaries of the multiverse, but instead the information is discussing the boundaries of the plane of dreams on the Ethereal Plane.
In this example, you are not failing to read a book or gain it’s knowledge, it’s simply not the book you thought it was going to be. Your failure is translated to being given the wrong information that does not help you on your quest.
But an important thing to keep in mind is that your players don’t know that the information is wrong, so you must tell them! The character realizes that the information they are getting is not what they are looking for, so the player should know that information as well. It can be easy, as a player, to take in the information, and just find yourself confused about how it fits into the bigger picture. It is not often in games that we are given the wrong information, so Game Masters must make sure that they tell the player that the information they were looking for was not what they were looking for and they will have to keep searching for more information.
Other examples of wrong information could be making a Persuasion check to ask around time for directions to the local wizard tower. Maybe the barkeep gives you instructions, but its to the wrong mage who is a bitter rival. Or otherwise you are attempting to break down a door, but the door leads to the wrong location, like into a latrine or into the kitchens. They succeeded in knocking down the door, but what they got was wrong and they’ll have to keep going to continue their adventure.
Lied Too
You crack open the worn tome, expecting to find a detailed and thorough history of dwarven kings and their lineage. You know about the history of dwarven kings, and this is not it. It seems as if someone wrote an entire book about a fake history and may be trying to obfuscate an important part of history, but for what reason?
In this example, our adventurer finds a book they thought contained information, but it is deliberately wrong. Again, it is important to make sure the player knows that the character knows the information is wrong—and not just because they aren’t interested in the intricate mating rituals of basilisks. They are being lied too, and whether that becomes a bigger plot point, it is something that is actively blocking them from gaining the information, not just that they rolled low and seemed to have forgotten how to read.
You could also make the lie part of a code that the character must try to decode. Either they can crack the cipher over the course of multiple days, or by making another hard check, but regardless, they will eventually crack the code and gain the information they are looking for.
This could be a door that the barbarian broke down actually led to a trap. Or maybe the rogue was trying to unlock a chest, but it turns out it is a mimic. Maybe when the bard talked to a farmer about evil druid activity, the farmer gave them false information and it is only a few hours in-game later that the character realizes the lie and, when returning, the farmer has disappeared.
You Do It, But It Hurts
You open the tome, attempting to understand its knowledge about the worlds beyond, but the words lash out as if fighting your ability to consume their knowledge. You suffer psychic trauma, but by the end of the ordeal, you have learned the tome’s secrets.
In this example, you succeed but it hurts or comes with a cost. Before you enact the cost or harm, ask your players first. You rolled low, but you can still learn the knowledge in the tome but you will suffer 4d8 psychic damage. Do you want to learn the information or leave it unknown.
This could also be a rogue climbing a difficult tower, but instead of falling, they make it to the top but twist their ankle, resulting in a -5 penalty for 1d4 hours. Or the barbarian breaks through the metal door, but they rip and tear their flesh. Or the wizard completes the ritual, but they are drained of 1d4 spell slots. Or the bard successfully sings at a tavern, but they have attracted the ire of a noble or rival bard.
Keep It Moving
Regardless of how you handle failures in your games, the most important thing is to keep it moving forward. Don’t let a failure halt all progress in the adventure, don’t let a lock door stump your party. Come up with ways how failure doesn’t result in no progress, but progress with a consequence.
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