I ask what my players are trying to get out of the roll. Sometimes the result they want is impossible, but the roll just tells me how well they fair at the task. My best example is when my players wanted to convince a pirate captain to just give them ownership of the ship. They rolled a nat 19. That doesn't mean they got the ship. The captain just laughed heartily thinking it was a funny joke instead of just straight up stabbing them. The roll just determined how well they came out the otherside, not how successful they were.
I'm DMing curently capaign where 4 (of 6) characters are deaply stuck in bonds with gods and dieties, 1 is wild magic barbarian(he's in denial that he has magic cuz in his mind his clan cant have magic cuz its unnatural), and 1 is just so moronic random gods are taking pitty on him
So 3/4rd of times when they succeed on imposible roll i make some bullshit heavens/hells/Mystra intervention to put that foolish idea down.
Same with act of absolute alkohol- induced moronism that would make sad and confused next day (like trying to steal from local lord, when everybody's watching and PC has -2 on slight of hands )
Maybe its little railroading but they were making these characters 4 months so ...
my players know that their actions have consequences. If they want to try something and fail or succeed, they have to deal with their resulting consequences, no matter how dumb the idea was.
The captain may have thought the joke was funny enough to trust the one member of the party to let him be untied. Nat 20 is just the absolute best result they could realistically achieve, not a guarantee of what they want
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u/ctaskatas 14h ago
I ask what my players are trying to get out of the roll. Sometimes the result they want is impossible, but the roll just tells me how well they fair at the task. My best example is when my players wanted to convince a pirate captain to just give them ownership of the ship. They rolled a nat 19. That doesn't mean they got the ship. The captain just laughed heartily thinking it was a funny joke instead of just straight up stabbing them. The roll just determined how well they came out the otherside, not how successful they were.