Depending on what skill they are rolling, a nat 20 doesn’t necessarily mean they just instantly have all knowledge of the thing they are deciphering.
Let’s say it’s an ancient form of Elvish, and the character speaks Elvish. They’d know modern Elvish, and might be able to use that to discern enough to get the general gist of the writing, but not a perfect translation. Which could come into play later on to hilarious effect.
If they used uh… I forgot the skill name but the generic “adventurer knowledge” one, they might not know what it says at all, but they may be able to know what language it is, who wrote it, and what they might expect based on knowing about the script in other dungeons.
If it’s an arcana check they could understand it is magical, and what it does; maybe activate/deactivate it but not how to recreate it or translate it, per se.
I actually now want to make a character that’s just super knowledgeable. No ability to fight, or even cast magic. They just know everything about everything.
Personally I’d rather have a character who has approximate knowledge of all things. Like, correct enough that progress can occur, but with enough wrong that they’re hopelessly misguided or just generally not getting things. Bonus points if they’re really arrogant about their intelligence.
“Umm…‘mellon’?”
I take this more as the character just guesses and somehow gets it right. Or at least close enough.
Lindybeige once put dice rolls into a different perspective.
Rather than the dice describing how well the action was performed, his suggesting was that the dice would describe the environment.
In this case, that would describe how complicated the code is. One of his examples were for athletics, where he thought of it as describing how tall a wall is. Your athletics was 14, this wall turned out to be 15, sorry, you just barely didn’t make it over.
Though it gets a bit weird if you take into account the player looking at their environment and making decisions, faced with Schrödinger’s Wall.
i think the real answer is using whatever makes sense in context: if your character has some experience with the language they could have a brainwave where they see a connection with their existing knowledge, whereas if your character has no way of actually figuring it out they might for example look at the number of characters and blurt out some sounds that fit and that turns out to be correct (or just close enough).
“Ok your dumbass character gets the genius idea to ask someone who knows more about runes to read them.”
This reminds me of it’s always sunny when Charlie, who is illiterate, realises he can read Irish gaelic because his childhood penpal, who turns out to be his father, wrote to him in Irish.
The runes are written in English.
Sadly, the elf only knows Common and Elven.
This made me laugh really hard
My bestie had a character who only had a +1 in Charisma, but this was the highest in the party, so she became the party face. And she never rolled lower than 19 total when making Charisma checks for that character. The dice clearly had plans.
Or when the awkward friend wants to play a bard and the butterfly plays a fighter with CHA as a dump stat, then becomes the face anyways because they love roleplaying and can manipulate the GM IRL
I was once GMing for that same bestie in a 3d6-based system. I told her to roll, then realised her stats weren’t high enough for her to succeed, so told her not to. She gave me a look, picked up the dice, and rolled a crit. Out of SPITE. And this is 3d6, so it’s a 1 in 216 chance.
She didn’t need to manipulate me. Either I went along with it, or my dice would be forever cursed.
Why not roll Luck?
Sounds like a possibility for a really creative story moment. Maybe the comic book that character always carries around with them just so happened to use the same runes as their “secret language” and the author of that comic is some super nerd for that specific language.
They’re the “Say Friend and Enter” runes. Gandalf couldn’t figure them out but Merry (accidentally) did.
The bottom bit looks like Loss;
:.|:;it was Frodo who figured it out
Actually my inspiration to use the “your character is too smart” sometimes when a smart character flops a roll
“You’re too busy getting lost in the many potential complex solutions to the riddle, and are hopelessly consumed by it’s mysteries” for “when is a door not a door” or similar
That sounds like fun!
Just read that scene last week, actually. I forgot Gandalf’s cope entirely.
“I was trying to so hard to remember obscure lore I forgot we weren’t all paranoid psychos in those days”
I can’t believe nobody has mentioned it yet. The runes clearly say “Is this Loss?” It’s written plain as day
Your daily reminder that"Nat 20" doesn’t apply to skill or ability checks. It’s applies to combat only.
Also a reminder that Pathfinder 2E has a significantly better system for criticals, in a way that makes sense for ability checks. It has degrees of success and failure, and a crit only moves it one degree higher or lower, so a crit can potentially still be a failure if your really bad at something or it’s very hard.
Really, P2e is better at almost everything, especially making it so you don’t need to remember tons of exceptions like D&D5e. You also aren’t supporting Hasbro, which is always a good thing.
Also a Nat 20 / Critical Skill check doesn’t guarantee success, just the best possible result.
Critical Skillchecks is an optional rule in the Dungeon Master Guide 5e on page 242.
They are as optional as feats and multiclassing.
It does in fact apply to skill checks and ability checks. Nat 20 just means rolling a 20 naturally on the dice before any modifiers are added :) I think what you meant was that “critical success” only applies to combat! In this instance, the natural 20 still means it’s the highest possible roll for an ability checks which gives it the highest possibility of success.
Just a daily reminder that someone can always come around and surpass in pedantry. (Sorry I couldn’t resist :) No hard feelings meant)
Bad faith and pedantry aren’t the same.
The comic very clearly implies that the nat 20 caused their dumbass character to be able to decipher the runes.
If it didn’t, the player wouldn’t have announced “Nat 20”, but the actual score, wirth modifiers taken into account.
I wasn’t arguing in bad faith. Everything I said was factual, honest, and trustworthy. You are correct that a nat 20 caused them to be really smart and have the best chance to read the runes (nothing shows them actually reading it to be fair). This is because the nat 20 is the highest possible roll available to the player, before modifiers are added! In many instances, rolling that high passes skill checks up to “Hard” (according to the DMG) automatically unless you have some negative modifiers. With the assumption that this player was attempting something actually attainable, this high roll is translated as the character having the absolute epitome of their ability to translate the runes (whether or not it is successful.)
Nat 20 is very, very commonly used by GMs to mean “critcal success” in or out of combat, no matter the explict rule. Same goes for nat 1 being a “critical failure.”
Why? Because it makes the game better for everyone to have these rare rolls rewarded or hilariously punished.
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I love it. I’m not even mad…well…maybe a little. Lol
Thanks for being a good sport!
Could be Pathfinder 2e and raised their result from failure to success, or any of the playgroups that house rule it so a 20 does apply which in my experience is so common it might as well be the default
If a Nat 20 (the highest you can ever roll on a 20-sided die!) doesn’t succeed, what was the point of rolling in the first place?
Generally speaking it’s considered bad practice for a GM to call for rolls that literally no one in the party can succeed at, but as with anything in tabletop roleplaying there is nuance.
There could be a narrative reason for the player to not know just how difficult something is and you don’t want to give it away by just telling the players they can’t succeed. If the most capable member of the party rolls a 20 and fails then the “reward” is the narrative of the attempt and learning what you’re up against.
Or maybe someone in the party could succeed but for whatever reason the child-prodigy wizard with a strength of 8 wants to try lifting the portcullis. It wouldn’t make any sense for them to actually do it.
I house rule it to anything where dumb luck might help anyway. deciphering a language you know nothing about? nah. lockpicking a simple lock despite not really having much of a skill? woah, you don’t know wtf you did but things clicked. you could probably force it open with a high enough strength check too but hey.
If someone wants to jump into a cavern and use strength to flap his arms to fly, rolling a d20 can be to see how much the person fucked up. A 20 isn’t an automatic success.
Same when someone mixes a potion, the d20 may be to see how much it will poison the creator if they drink it.
Roll to see how badly you fail.
the tension before DM can put on a self satisfied look and say “even that wasn’t enough”
Generally speaking, to shut the player up about it
You could technically have negative modifiers that would make it impossible for you to succeed, where others might.
You’re right in that your DM likely will not even let you roll…but it’s still possible.
In BG3 (which mostly follows d&d 5e rules) you succeed in a skill check with DC 30 on a natural 20 even if you have less than +10 as a modifier on the roll
Are you sure a 20 has no special meaning in checks in d&d (I presume you mean in d&d as it’s the most popular system)?
Yes he is and no it does (edit: has) not. That is a common house rule Larian implemented into BG3, but it is not part of the original rules of DnD 5e.
I’m glad you know them so well. In what way is such a popularly used rule not a rule?
Incidentally I find it interesting that d&d 3.5 specifically calls out that a 20 isn’t automatic success, and a 1 is not an automatic failure, where 5e removes that clarification, simply saying “if the roll plus bonuses is less than the DC the check fails”.
That looks to me like they are leaving it more open to the common house rule
To expand on the other comment, to include in the rules everything that doesn’t happen would be insane. If it isn’t in the rules it isn’t in the rules. You don’t have to list every possible thing that a player may say applies for it to not be included. If a player falls out of their chair, does that change the result? It isn’t included in either of these rulesets…
I think you answered your rethorical question yourself: If it is not in the official books, it is not an official rule.
And I would not say that they leave it vague. To quote the PHB: “To make an ability check, roll a d20 and add the relevant ability modifier. As with other d20 rolls, apply bonuses and penalties, and compare the total to the De. If the total equals or exceeds the DC, the ability check is a success […]. Otherwise, it’s a failure, which means the character or monster makes no progress toward the objective[…].” That does not leave much room for interpretation. It plainly say that if the exceed, then they succeed and if they don’t, than they fail. Yes they don’t make an explicit remark about critical results, but they don’t need to, because such a rule was never meant to exist in 5e aside attack rolls and death saves.
Not to say that you can’t make it a rule at your table (same as with everything else), but there is still not much room for missunderstanding the official print.
Oh hey, its the funny elf face comics but from another artist!
Ah yes. They group hearing the language without understanding it. ESL (Elvish as Second Language) character.
Is that The Obelisk?
