Skill checks are a part of almost every roleplaying game in some form or another, but to be clear by skill check I mean any randomized determination of whether a character is successful or not at an action they are attempting (this may or may not include attack actions in some games). They are a vital part of the foundation of RPGs, allowing people to have characters with expertise and knowledge that the player does not possess themselves. As useful as skill mechanics are in games, they come with drawbacks as well. So let’s discuss what some of those drawbacks are, and ways as a player and gamemaster you can adapt your approach to skill checks so that you are owning your experience.

Two of the main shortcomings of many skill mechanics are their binary results and their knack for incurring inopportune failures. While some systems have degrees of success built in, most are still fundamentally a pass/fail system. This can lead to failures happening at times that are frustrating for the gamemaster, that are disappointing and demoralizing to players, or both. This can frequently derail the plot and momentum of a session, making it less fun for everyone. This aspect of skill checks also leads to two other issues I refer to as dog-piling and button-mashing.

Dog-piling is when most or all of the players all try to make the same skill check at the same time, frequently when the gamemaster is only addressing a single player. Players do this because they (quite reasonably) don’t want to miss out on something important that they thought to look for/ask about just because of a single bad roll. But this can break the immersion in a game and rob certain players of the feeling of expertise or special knowledge that their characters have, as well as being frustrating for the gamemaster who usually has specific reasons for wanting only certain characters to make a skill check.

Button-mashing is similar, being when players try rolling skill after skill, looking for the right “button” (skill check) to overcome the obstacle. In video game parlance it’s treating a scenario like a quick time event rather than a puzzle.This frequently happens when players are having a hard time thinking through a scene, or when they fail at a check and want to roll other skills until they succeed. It is rolling the problem instead of working the problem. This frustrates gamemasters because they feel like their players aren’t engaging with the scene, and players because they’re being made to feel insufficient or like their abilities don’t matter.

So how do you address these issues with skill mechanics? Well, it seems like part of the problem is failure; no one likes to fail, and most stories are predicated on the party ultimately succeeding. But if you get rid of failures, it robs players of their feeling of specialness and accomplishment. Their abilities and skills don’t seem as important if there isn’t a cost to failure or if success is guaranteed, and it feels like they have less agency since the outcomes seem guaranteed. And if you just remove checks altogether, it again makes characters’ abilities feel less special and the players feel like they have lost agency.

These issues can be addressed by changing how we look at the fail states associated with skill checks. We don’t want to remove failure, so instead we redefine it. There are many situations where a character’s success at an endeavor should be essentially guaranteed, whether because of skills and experiences or because of the demands of the story, but we don’t want to remove that fail state altogether. So instead we say that the baseline is a minimal degree of success, with the normal success threshold indicating a much greater degree of success. In many systems it is easy to interpret the relative degree of success based on how close the roll was to the target number (in either direction). I refer to these as Skill Tests to differentiate them from traditional pass/fail skill checks.

Communicating this to your players will discourage dog-piling and button mashing, as they won’t have that same fear of missing a check and can focus more on the scene at hand rather than trying to figure out which skill/ability gives them the best roll. You can take this to an even deeper level by giving different information based on what skill is used, further encouraging players to take a wide range of approaches to a scenario. By dividing a solution or information between multiple skills it allows everyone in the group to feel relevant.

While redefining the fail state in this way is great for many skills (in particular knowledge and social skills), it is not appropriate for all situations. There are many times it is important or logical for there to be a detrimental fail state, such as when making a check to leap over a fatally deep chasm or avoid crashing a vehicle into a deadly obstacle. These I will refer to as Skill Threats, reflecting the higher stakes involved.

While a detrimental fail state is required for Skill Threats, they do not have to be as final, fatal, or arresting as one might first think. Taking the example of a dangerous leap, the obvious fail state is that a character falls on failure. But what does falling mean in this case? If it’s an NPC unimportant to the overall plot, then it likely means falling to their doom; but if it’s an important NPC or a player character? That can derail a campaign, negatively impact the tone, or worse. One way to address this is to allow success at a cost, such as when a character just barely misses a roll; a character trying to dodge a lightning bolt who just misses their roll might still successfully dodge but have a piece of equipment take the full brunt of the lightning.

This can be further addressed by dividing failure into steps; rather than a PC falling to their death on a failed roll, they come up short and now have to grab for the ledge they just missed. This allows for another Skill Threat roll while not just maintaining but upping the stakes. If they miss this roll they manage to grab for the edge but their grip falters, causing them to slide down the steep side of the ledge, scrambling for purchase, so they make another Skill Threat roll to perhaps look for something to grab or to dig their hands into the cliff wall. By always treating a failed Skill Threat as a half step toward ultimate failure, it maintains the stakes for the players while never truly leading to ultimate failure and sabotaging everyone’s fun. That being said, sometimes a gamemaster will determine that a Skill Threat calls for an unmitigatable fail state, and they should not shy away from using them when appropriate.

One of the systems most guilty of this is Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition with it’s binary success/failure d20 rolls. This is in fact a misconception about the system though, present more because of people learning the game through rote rather than what is strictly present in the rules. Of particular note are the rules for adjudicating rolls found on page 242 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. There, they introduce concepts such as Success At A Cost, Degrees Of Failure, and Critical Success Or Failure as core mechanics of the game; I highly recommend giving that page a read for anyone who runs or plays D&D 5E (also check out Automatic Success on page 239).

This approach to Skill Tests and Skill Threats can add depth to skill based scenarios, lead to more group engagement with the gamemaster’s world and plot, and mitigate some of the drawbacks to skill mechanics in many games. As a gamemaster it is easy enough to implement this approach to skill rolls in your games, though you should be sure to inform your players and make sure they are on board first. As a player, you can apply these principles by speaking about them with your gamemaster outside of game time, and by suggesting some of these possible outcomes before you make a roll for a skill or ability in the game. While many gamemasters will be receptive to these concepts, you must respect their decision if they decide not to incorporate them. But whether you use this approach or not, just considering whether this has a place in your game is another step toward owning your experience, and ultimately having better games for you and your friends.