RPGMemes

So just playing as the average Lemmy user? Seems boring and like you would still get in lots of fights.

Or just luck. Like with lockpicking, it's possible to bang a keyed lock and pull on it and get lucky with the pins all lining up and it opens. There's vibration devices that work by doing this constantly until it works. The odds are much lower than 5% (without a vibrator), but dnd is supposed to be fun and exaggerated odds can be fun.

I've played a homebrew game that was based on the devil may cry world, where the cut scenes were constantly full of crazy shit, so the GM decided that the crazier the idea you came up with, the more likely it was to succeed, and it was fun. It did really help that he was very good at thinking on his feet and let the game flow more naturally instead of getting stuck in situations where a player succeeding at some random thing they want to do breaks the whole campaign.

For the scenario shown in the OP, a character could get lucky and guess what runes mean. The context could give clues, or maybe one rune looks kinda like something else, is a red herring on its own, but just happens to lead to the correct conclusion in that particular case.

Though it would be fair for the next (unsuccessful) roll to give actual useless red herrings. It's probably better for the GM to do the rolls for the player so they don't know if it's a nat 20. I like this for any kind of information gathering rolls, like spot checks, because it allows players to second guess roll results without it being meta gaming. Also pre-rolling some of those can help, because "roll a spot check" tells the players that there's something to spot, even if they all fail. And not asking can imply there's nothing there.

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).

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.

That sounds like fun!

I love it. I'm not even mad.....well....maybe a little. Lol

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.

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.