When to Call for a Roll
Header Art: Dungeon Master’s Guide (2008) by Wizards of the Coast / William O’Connor
I encounter this strange phenomenon where Game Masters ask their table for rolls for pretty much anything. You want to climb up 10 feet to a ledge with ample footholds? That’ll be an athletics check. You want to convince this barmaid to give you a discount on some beer? That’ll be a persuasion check. You want to swim from one side of the shore to the other? That’ll be athletics.
And so on it goes. A Game Master asking for rolls at the table for simple things that just shouldn’t be rolled for. But when should you be rolling for checks? Here are three things I keep in mind when I decide whether something should require a check, and thus a dice roll, to see if the party succeeds against it.
Dungeon Master’s Guide, 2008 Wizards of the Coast / William O’Connor
Interesting Failure
The number one reason you should ask for a check is if failing the check would be interesting or drive the story or plot forward. For example, climbing up a cliff to get out of a pit trap is only interesting if failure results in activating another part of the trap, there is a time-crunch like if the party is currently fighting against goblins and they need the player to get out of the pit quickly, or there is something very dangerous at the bottom of the trap, like a sphere of annihilation, that will kill the player character.
When you have something interesting as a fail state, it makes the chance of succeeding and failing exciting. Players hold their collective breath as the dice are rolled and cheer when they win. This doesn’t happen if you are asking for the fifth athletics check to climb up a wall and failure only results in taking a few bits of damage that will be easily healed up over a short rest or a low-level spell. Rarely is a tiny amount of damage going to be an interesting state of failure, so in that type of situation, it’s better to just tell the table that they climb up the wall since failure just isn’t interesting.
Another example would be trying to barter with a shopkeeper. If a character wants 10% off a sword, is it really that interesting to ask for a dice roll? If the character has proficiency in persuasion or a high charisma score, they just automatically succeed and get that 5 or 10% off discount. The situation just isn’t that interesting to warrant dragging the game to a halt for a player to roll a die, check their numbers, present the result to the Game Master, and then wait for the Game Master to decide if it was a high enough check to warrant the discount, especially when the Game Master wouldn’t have even thought to create a DC before the game began.
Genuine Risk
If there is a consequence that is more than a few hit points in damage or an NPC ignores them, then that is a good time to call for a roll. This is similar to the interesting failures mentioned above, but you can have interesting events take place on a failed roll, but still not have genuine risks, and vice versa. If you fall 500 feet off a cliff, falling isn’t that interesting (since it’s kind of mundane), but there is a genuine risk of dying if you do fall off the cliff.
Then again, balancing across a rickety wooden bridge can be interesting… but if there is no real risk, then why are you asking for a dice roll? If the only risk is that the character gets wet, then why put the obstacle in front of them? The risk should be as extreme as the obstacle they face, perhaps under the rickety bridge is a river of crocodiles, the party is being chased by the fearsome and legendary kobold, the party is in a three-legged race to claim a prize, or something that gives weight to the roll.
We want risk in our games, we want to play adventurers risking life and limb to win the day. What we don’t want is to do something impressive, but there was no risk. There was nothing we were gambling our character’s life and safety with, which made the dice we rolled pointless. If there was no risk of defeat, no risk that would take its toll on the story and the resources of the party, why drag the table to a halt to see the result of a check that won’t have an impact?
Dungeon Master’s Guide, 2008 Wizards of the Coast / Dan Scott
Adjudicate Knowledge
The last point I want to make is a bit more nebulous, but it condenses down into a simple statement that I have heard from multiple Game Masters when I’ve been at their table, “I’m glad that you guys rolled well, or else nobody would have found [important story element that is the only way to advance the plot].”
Why anyone hides information that is the only way to advance the plot is beyond me, but I’ve been at a table where no one could roll a high enough check to learn a single piece of information that we needed to carry on the story, so we basically soft-locked the game until the Game Master came up with a convoluted reason as to why we could retry the checks and someone was able to roll high enough to hit some mysterious DC that ‘seemed’ high enough to warrant the Game Master giving us the information.
When asking for checks for the players to recall information, never hide important story elements that you want the players to learn to further the story behind a DC. Tell the players that information up front that they find, and then allow further rolls to uncover more of the mystery, to gain actually useful information they can use to give them a slight edge against their opponent, or directly actionable information. If all you give them for succeeding on the check is a lore dump that has little bearing on the party or their adventures, then that shouldn’t be locked behind a DC, it should just be upfront so that the players don’t feel as if it is pointless for them to roll the dice.
Dice rolling, when trying to learn lore, should end with the players getting useful information that will give them an edge over whatever it is that will come up against them, like learning the BBEG's weakness or that they have a lot of undead servants. If they aren’t getting that, then the purpose of rolling is rather ambiguous at that point. Are you just having them roll to continue the story? That’s bad. Are you just having them roll so you can lore dump on them? Well, that probably isn’t interesting to them. Are you just having them roll because that’s what you’ve always done and their results don’t matter? Don’t have them roll, just tell them the information.
When To Roll
As always, these rules are flexible and not set in stone. I’ve had players roll an acrobatics check to flip over a table for ‘style’ points because they liked describing how acrobatic their character was and wanted to talk up their skill. I’ve had people roll to find story information, but that was because there were two paths ahead of them, one that was obvious that they learned immediately, and one that was a bit more secretive and offered them a greater reward with more risk that they could choose to take or not.
The point of calling for a roll, though, should always bring with it interest from the table and the players. If they are invested in rolling every 10 feet to climb a cliff covered in handholds and footholds, well, that’s your table and they are excited to roll those dice but for many people, that would just be a waste of their good dice luck. Rolling for dice should always be an exciting event at the table where the risk of failure and success are shrouded in anticipation.
Dungeon Master’s Guide, 2008 Wizards of the Coast / William O’Connor
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