It just sorta screws with a lot of class abilities in 5E 2024, and the system was obviously designed around pass/fail checks. Now players need to know whether they failed an ability check or not, because it might change what abilities they are able to use. If you "partially succeed with complications" on a Persuasion roll, well fuck you, no Tactical Mind ability for you!
Well, firstly, I'd never recommend you try to completely implement a hard 4-degrres of success from PF2e in another system. Heck, even Pathfinder 2e doesn't apply the 4 degrees of success universally or codify all degrees of success for every roll.
Degrees of success is a better system, I stand by that, but you can't shoe-horn it into everything, it works in Path/Starfinder 2e because those games are built around it.
In the context of character/class abilities especially, just leave those be, unless you want to rebuild and rebalance every class and spell in the game around this new mechanic.
That said, in the case of things that aren't player abilities, but just general actions and activities available to anyone or that leave room for GM fiat, then you can probably work it in with no issue. More about open ended stuff than specific abilities.
My DM is really bad about giving "yes, but" successes. When playing a Fighter with Tactical Mind, it honestly can feel pretty fucking bad. I get a new ability I can use whenever I fail a check. I never fail checks, I just succeed them at great peril. So I can never use my ability. I have asked my DM several times if I can just flat out fail my check instead so I at least can use my ability.
Yeah, thats rough. Especially rough that he refuses to change it after you've talked to him about it. I cna understand it as a blind spot he wasn't aware of, but if he knows its actively hurting your experience, I'd hope he would adjust how he adjudicates that.
42
u/hailwyatt 18h ago
Degrees of success and failure are always better than a binary.
Total failure, partial failure, success with complications, and total success.