Them Bones of Adventure - IX: Rolling Differently (Extended, Teamwork, Collective, Unified Group Rolls)

Continuing my exposition on table procedures for common exploration feats & rules, which began here with part one.

Introduction

While addressing chases I ended up reccomending a unified party roll for long distance pursuits, one that better typified the kind of collective effort from a party, not otherwise well represented by having all the characters make a check. I figured I’d expand a bit on the odds and ends governing these situations where randomization occurs in a less than typical fashion. The referee already does a lot of this out of logistic necessity, I’m out to point how the party has a need to do so as well, from time to time. Be aware, this one's part rant, part rules document.

Discrete Rolls for Discrete Benefits

Or “when is a single unified roll desirable versus a collective array of rolls?”

The way I see it, on probably the majority of situations, individual rolling from each player is preferential, many of them I’ve already described in the previous posts: Stealth, Infiltration, Athletic feats, Combat, etc., are all examples of how some thrive while others flounder. The rewards and thorns are individually meted out, so too must be the roll.

Linked to the game’s wilderness exploration facet, it is when we zoom out to a more macro level, with the party becoming a more aglutinated entity, that single unified rolls become the more sensible way of representing the integrants' linked fortunes: after all, they either all find food, shelter or the way through adverse topography or they don’t, there’s not much room for partial results.

Here is where the book typically points to what therein is called the “group check”.

Singular Roll, Collective Woes

I get that the PHB’s group checks are an abtraction. It’s just that I see them as being in the way of turning the wilderness into a more gameable place. While collective party rolls are ingrained in the current version of the rules as some kind of democratic ideal of everyone getting to pitch in, the truth is they are a statistical trap and make you a horrible person. By this I mean that I rolled my share of them and I’m a horrible person, which makes it a pretty clear-cut case to me.

There’s an understandably inherent desire by every player to chuck their d20 into the ring and having it count to shift the balance of any given challenge. Yet, veering this way absolutely murders variance and rapidly becomes a statistical exercise in futility: whatever tasks the party was likely to be successful at will get done and those that it wasn’t won’t (Eric Diaz crunches a few numbers for this here). That’s pretty near the polar opposite of what one’s aiming for when tossing the bones of uncertainty.

Collectively rolling for not getting lost or traversing dangerous terrain is ill-thought, both on abstractional grounds as well as on logical ones: negotiating treacherous terrain isn’t a collective sum of pass/fail efforts, it is all about following the lead of the person designated as pathfinder and there’s pretty much no way I’m asking rolls to see if people are able to do that.

Stepping on 1’s, Fishing for 20’s

Here are the classic examples of preserving variance for the sake of (a reasonable mockery of) realism – Wilderness rolls (Navigation, Tracking, Dowsing, Finding Shelter).

Navigation, tracking or dowsing for water are not collective activities: there’s a person who is the superior navigator or outdoorsman, and this is not just a mere figurehead representing a 5-to-25% edge on odds over the average shmuck in the party, this is someone who will be shouldering the burden alone and on whom the party will be depending utterly and explicitly.

Of course, back at the table, navigation or tracking are quintessential “me too” kinds of rolls, as the party is already slowed down by having the pointsman navigate or track, it follows that everyone meeting the skill criteria (if any) and otherwise unocuppied will want to pitch in even if their contribution is to be marginal. They’ll just be fishing for 20’s and high numbers as to prop the scout’s chance for failure.

Here is how I visualize things, applying the barest quantum of realism: the party is stranded in a gods-forsaken waste and a few altogether uninviting options open up before our protagonists. The ranger steps up to the plate and gives his piece over which path to take. Then some other soul makes a case for a different track. Remember, you only ever roll for faits accomplis, meaning after the facts, twenty-back-breaking-miles-stinging-the-inside-of-your-ragged-soles after the facts. Now, tell me, who should our brave wanderers give credence to? They’ll only find out who was right in the end, and yes, both could end up being right and both can even end up being wrong. The matter at hand is: where lieth the smart wager?

Internalising the above, any player will quickly realize that a check of this nature is nothing but electing the most apt pair of hands and letting these handle the reins.

It stands to reason that a few things might happen: the party can split itself in two and each follow a distinct proposition (and thus meriting a different roll apiece), and the ranger *can* confer with another outdoor-savvy character for aid in finding the most efficient pathway, leading to teamwork modifying the roll (see below) but the essence remains: one single roll is all the party gets.

The Crunchy Bits

Bear with: I only intend to do the above on an improv situation, when pressed into it. I hope to have something better in place for wilderness travel than a flat sequence of rolls. It’s just that I’m only now still fixing the abstraction part about how group checks & co. will be handled. Though I'm not beholden to any of these choices as yet and despite feeling this section is up for some serious rewriting pending testplay, I still think of it as being already coalesced enough to merit publishing on the blog.

Modifying a roll representing the whole party is a headscratcher. I'm striving to avoid words like median or average here, but I may just end up going off that deep end, no promises.

Collected Rolls

- Group of checks made by multiple characters individually, each success summing up to a total. Tasks requiring this usually will need multiple successes either at once or as an extended challenge.

Extended Rolls

Bugger my eyes, but despite mentioning extended rolls in the previous post and them being a fairly common staple to rely upon, I can’t seem to find any mention of them in the PHB or DMG.

- Extended checks will be used for gradual accrual of successes over a time frame or when two parties are at cross-purpose. They can be iterated single party rolls or collective rolls with everyone contributing individually.

Party Rolls

- Single roll made in representation of the whole party. The nature of the challenge must be determined: can it be shouldered alone by the most competent in the company, will it be pulled by the shared quality found in the party (abstracting modifiers into one single common denominator) or will it be irredeemably hindered by _any_ mediocrity present? The answer to this question will dictate the modifier to the party’s one single roll, in addition to the type of stat engaged.

- If only the leader needs to succeed, the whole group can hinge on the best modifier present, including relevant skill use. Examples: navigation, foraging.

- If failure from any part will dictate a downfall, the whole group will be tied to the worst modifier present, skills withstanding. Examples: stealth, long chases. 

- When the whole party is in a situation calling for a test to its holistic quality, we compact the disparate modifiers of the party's characters into a single roll with a merged modifier. Examples: the whole party is rowing a boat, Initiative.

This one will imply a quick and simple standard method, with two cornercase offshoots:

- Sum the lowest negative modifier to the highest positive modifier present in the party (note that this includes skills, which are essentially just task-specific modifiers).

For situations in which the party counts all positive or all negative modifiers, or whenever the method is clearly resulting in distortion (five characters with an array of middling positive modifiers contrasted with just one member with a particularly low negative, for example): 

- For a party with a clear majority of positive mods, use the second highest positive modifier for the group roll.

- For a party with a clear majority of negative mods, use the second lowest negative modifier for the group roll.

Examples abound:

Can the protagonists row their trusty longship ashore as the weather begins to turn? Extended Party Roll for Strength (Athletics), using the group's merged modifier, upon reaching the target number of successes – translated in nr. of miles or whatever feels appropriate – under the hourly time limit (each hour being a round of rolling), they may reach safety.

Will the party lose too much time before nightfall in the topography of mazelike gorges that skirt the barony’s watchtowers? Party Check for navigation [Wisdom (Survival)], using the best modifier present in the group.

Will our roving warband pull the grueling escape from the reeve’s mounted yeomanry and make it back to ship after pillaging the heartland? Extended Party Check for a protracted chase, using the worst Constitution modifier present.

A special inclusion in this category will be the Initiative check, which I tackle at some length in the closing thoughts:

- At the beginning of a combat, a party makes a contested Party Roll for Initiative, modified by the group's merged modifier. Ties on this roll favour the party if even and the opposition if odd. Combat takes alternate turns from thereon in.

Teamwork Rolls

The book’s rendition of teamwork is acceptable but keeps it too simple, prescribing Advantage to any aided task regardless of how many capable hands are on deck at a time, as if trying to shoehorn the mechanic into every single available nook, no matter how nonsensical.

After determining if a task bears being helped on (shared skillset, more people actually helping, etc):

- One appropriate d20 point roll (plus mods) from the main actor, to which sources of minor help contribute a +1 and sources of significant help contribute a +2, all cumulative.

“Minor” and “significant” are terms which must be adjudicated task by task, as it would be too reductive to attempt otherwise. 

Closing Thoughts - On Initiative as a Single Roll

I’ve banged my head on this wall many times. Here’s what the current topography of lumps looks like:

Despite deeply ingrained habit, I find that there’s a vanishing amount of engagement to be gained from tracking individualized Initiative totals and a whole lot of accounting overhead to contend with, since adopting this system also forces each individual NPC to be inserted in the count. And then there’s the approach to how it is set: if it is rolled once to skip on heavy lifting, the combat shortly becomes as predictable as the single roll method and, as the number of combatants decreases (or right from the outset against single creatures), the two become virtually indistinguishable. The alternative is even worse: rolling Initiative every round does shake up the tactical order but at a tall cost on time spent lining up the combatants so they can take a missed swing and sigh as a new count needs to be wound up.

DnD’s combat system is not played on a basis of first-strikes, it’s a game about attrition. Past the first few levels the Hp cushion is well and truly set and my use of a Dismemberment table extends comfiness even to neophyte characters.

By cutting all this structure the players can actually make the most of knowing they can count on each other to pull more elaborate maneuvers, expanding the scope of play. Yet, the greatest gain for me lies in momentum, as the conflict flows much more effortlessly and the greatest strength of a combat – its brevity and concentrated uncertainty – is leveraged to the greatest extent. Short, brutal and memorable is how I want my fights.

Too much hinging on one roll? Yes, were the referee to play creatures as automatons, intent on squeezing every last ounce of Hp from a single target before moving with clockwork precision on to the next in a disciplined firing-drill. In other words, it’s a spurious argument: I think that much the same behaviour could almost perfectly be replicated with the individually rolled initiative, and still pretty much no character would be safe when bearing the brunt of an enemy group’s attention.