Three Dice Rolls

The highest praise I have heard for the latest edition of D&D so far is that the layout and editing are far better than 5e. The UI and UX are supposed to be a vast improvement over the old designs, and when I got my hands on a copy from the privateers, I had to agree. The content was much diminished, but how it was laid out is quite impressive. It is because of this that I decided to switch to this new SRD to continue my work on Heartbreaker, my own version of D&D that fulfills the broken promise. What is that promise? That there are three pillars for this type of game, and that all of them are equally important and equally rewarded.

On page 8 of the new 2024 Player’s Handbook, “[t]he three main pillars of D&D play are social interaction, exploration, and combat.” And they are laid out in that specific order, as if anything other than combat has any rules to speak of. Those “pillars” were the promise, and that promise was supposed to be fulfilled.

Dungeons and dragons evolved from a mass miniature warfare game that played out on tabletops, in yards, and across carpeted floors. Because of this the primary mechanics revolve around combat, which has also lasted the test of time because combat is exciting and easy. In a fight, everyone knows what the goal is and how to get there, even if they don’t understand the rules or know how to play their character yet.

This promise came from everything that happened outside of that combat. Early D&D was paired with a variety of other games or supplements, or even just DMs making stuff up on the fly, to simulate the environment and the circumstances around the adventurers and their shenanigans. This style of play eventually led to the primary split in the hobby as a whole; rules vs rulings.

This debate has been hashed to death across the whole of the interwebs so I will only vaguely cover it for the context of this article. Some people think there should be more rules to define the parameters of the game world, to the extent that they are useful and approachable, while others think that all of those that are not of paramount importance, such as combat, should be made up by the DM on the fly. And yes, this debate has to do with the three dice rolls and the broken promise.

The balancing mechanism of all of these tabletop games is the rules. The fact that both the players and the DMs have access to them makes the field a level one. If the players break a rule, the DM can call them out, and vice versa. More than ensuring fair play, access to all of these rules allows both sides to learn, ingest, and then manipulate these rules. One of the most fundamental elements of creativity is limitation, a constraint, which leads to people thinking of ingenious methods to overcome said limitation. The rules of the game define the world, the play space, that everyone is participating in, and provides limits to the players and the DM. When those limits are better defined, they have a much better chance of being creative.

For those who play with the rulings mindset, they see all of those world-defining rules as extraneous, and often as a limitation to the fun and creativity. The primary argument is that players should be looking to their character and the world, rather than the rules, for how they behave in any given situation. That is a fair argument, but in a magical world the constraints that we are all used to may not apply. When a god actually answers prayers, rather than absently ignoring genocide and bone cancer in children, the people are going to think differently, and thus behave differently. Having some of the parameter defining rules could be helpful.

All of this comes to a head when we look at the rules set under contention in this argument that divides the hobby, Dungeons and Dragons. Due to its origins, D&D is a combat focused game, thus the majority of the most well defined rules concern how to kill and avoid being killed. Meanwhile, the older editions stapled on additional rules for exploring or traveling through the wilderness, and handled social interactions with only a handful of other optional rules, reserving most of the response to player engagement up to the whims of the DM.

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At any time the DM can determine how the world shifts or changes around the lowly characters and summon their doom as well as their salvation.

When it comes to the advancement of society, there has been none greater than recognizing the fallibility of humans and creating structures of society and government to account for it. When it comes to how we determine justice this is of paramount importance. When it comes to our games, it is far less imperative, but it does impact the overall fairness, and is worth consideration.

The power dynamic of these games between the players and the DM is a massive gulf, and is a topic I have rarely touched on. This dynamic can be uncomfortable for people, especially when something goes wrong and a player looks to their friend behind the DM screen to fix it. At any time the DM can determine how the world shifts or changes around the lowly characters and summon their doom as well as their salvation. This power difference is one that is rarely experienced in games.

Considering all of this is important when rules are being created, or vetted. One of the biggest issues I have with the rulings style of play is this dynamic, and it is not because I do not trust other players in this hobby to be decent and fair arbiters of the game. In fact, I trust that most people in this hobby will strive for those goals. My problem is that when they are juggling all of the things they are always juggling as the DM, there is a chance for the rules to take some of that weight by determining how things work.

In the middle of a complex situation the DM is going to consider how to make the ruling to move the situation forward, often with little regard for outside consequences or other interpretations. This is not necessarily a problem, but it results in limiting the potentials. For players that want to explore parts of the game that do not revolve around combat, such as exploration or social interaction, how are they going to track advancement along those routes? There are no mechanics within the existing system to designate how good or bad they are at trekking or negotiating, or even what it means to succeed or fail in those circumstances. This leaves the whole of determining that on the DM.

The rules are of paramount importance when it comes to how you want players to execute your game. It is not only the rules that are included that shape their thoughts around the game, but also the rules that are not included. It is not only the editing and the layout, but the art and the fiction. Dungeons and Dragons is a combat game for all of these reasons:

• The only fully fleshed out rules revolve around combat.

• The only reward system is based on combat outcomes.

• The only equipment of import, and is thus described in detail, is weapons and armor.

• The only magic that gets in-depth description, is for combat, and how it affects combat.

• Everything in this game revolves around combat.

I want to make this plainly clear: THIS IS NOT A BAD THING. I am not making a value judgment, I am merely stating the primary issue with trying to have an exploration or social interaction game in our “storm the alien creature’s home, slay them brutally, and take their shit!” game. When everything is a gun or a bullet it is really hard to write a treaty and have everyone sign it.

It is because of these inherent design elements, those that are clear but not explicit, that we as the players of this game look to combat as the solution for all of our encounters and impasses. We have been trained by this game, by its design, by its art, by its reward system, by everything, to think of the roles we play as being oriented around combat as the solution to all of our conflict.

So, when a player wants to engage in a different system, the DM not only thinks of that engagement in the context of combat, and thus victory/defeat (or pass/fail), but they also consider the solution in that same way. When the game lays out everything in terms of dice rolls, everyone looks to the dice as their solution, even when they are claiming that they are determining something outside of the rules, they are still working within the rules as they have been trained by them.

It is because of all of this, in my years long journey to discover how to make my own game, and even my own version of the beloved (because admit it, it is!) D&D, that I come to this solution. The rules need to be written with the consideration that they determine how players approach the game, that players are reward seeking (because they are people), and when the only rewards and parameters and systems all revolve around combat, that is going to be the dominant outcome.

So, in order to address this (I almost said fix, as if this were a problem), we need to consider the rules. For the longest time I was considering the rules in the context of making exploration and social interaction systems based on new rolls, new rules sets, or whole new mechanical scaffolds that could be tacked onto the existing set and plugged into the class, race, background setup. I kept coming at this whole existing universe from the side, and making little to no progress.

After I would have something that felt half-viable, I would go back out into the internet and just wander around reading articles, discussions, and perusing supplements. I kept finding other peoples solutions and they would work, but I would always ask if they really addressed the issues I, or maybe even we, as a hobby space and community, were clearly having.

Then it happened. The executives over at Hasbro took D&D into their hands and began to squeeze, just like all the rest of the companies are doing right now. Only with this company, and this hobby space, they were quickly reminded that they own the IP, but they have no control over the game.

Afterward the community immediately sprang into action. Developers and publishers and individuals started making plans to take the material and ensure that it would stay in the open, that it could be accessible to anyone, and multiple different versions of dungeons and dragons started being designed.

For the most part each of them had their own little changes and alterations, after all, this was their version of the iconic game. But none of them made any truly fundamental changes, no one introduced a paradigm shift, or even a correction for any of the ages-old problems that everyone admits are present but no one seems to mind anymore.

Everyone knows that out of the mass of new games that have been created since the inception of the hobby, there have been iterations, solutions, and efficiencies that D&D could learn from. Vancian magic, ability scores, straight randomization as opposed to bell-curves, and a whole lot more have been experimented with and advanced throughout the hobby space, but for some reason D&D still has Wisdom as one of their abilities. Oh, and my personal hell, only THREE effects throughout the whole of RAW 5e require an Intelligence Saving Throw. Less than worthless!

Looking at the multitude of different takes on D&D in the modern day can show that a lot of thought went into both retaining the “original concepts” as well as making small changes in the hopes of improving the overall experience. Advanced 5e brought in maneuvers, but kept the staggering experience point requirements (starting at 100 and ending with 355,000). They gave in to the race non-issue and replaced the term with a synonym, all the while bringing in the ideas of culture and heritage (genuine improvements). My favorite idea is a simple one: you can sacrifice your shield in order to turn a critical hit into a normal hit (chef’s kiss). There are a lot more ideas they brought to the table, but I still never felt as if they created the true new version of Dungeons and Dragons, in what it could be in the modern soup of tabletop RPGs.

Black Flag, and its eventual form Tales of the Valiant, also sought to address some issues and bring their own minor flavors and themes to the argument. They expanded tool proficiencies and what they mean, they brought magic items into the players hands, which is important so that players know what their characters know about using and interacting with magic items, and they changed out inspiration (something I have never seen anyone use) for luck, which I hear great things about.

Then there is a host of other responses out there from Nimble 5e to Draw Steel! and very likely a hundred others. And of course, there is mine, but I have been working on mine for far longer than even 5e has been around, from back in the days of 3e. Either way, the community has had a response, and so far I haven’t seen anything revolutionary in any of it.

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This brings us back to the topic at hand, my latest discovery, the foundation of the game. Recently while I was trying to figure out how to go about creating a new class (several actually, a summoner, alchemist, and shapechanger, like a lycanthrope), I discovered that it wasn’t the upper layers of the rules that would need to be addressed for my project, but the foundation. I also realized that I had not been considering these rules as either foundation or layer upon that foundation. Here’s the idea:

Successive Layers Everything else (all the besides, over theres, and other add-ons)

Layer 2 Combat (how both the foundation and layer 1 interact)

Layer 1 Three Rolls (ability check, attack roll, and saving throw)

Foundation Roleplay (the guidance of: say what you do and the DM will respond)

This is a rough sketch of what I am thinking. Anyway, once I had reached this point, I decided to “go back to the drawing board,” so to speak, and reassess my perspective. So I went to my computer, found the latest version of the SRD, isolated the Playing the Game and Combat rules, and printed them off. I like to print things because I find it easier to read and make notes on things in hand rather than on pdfs and ODF documents, which is more of a finishing and editing maneuver.

With this packet in hand, I started reading the rules again, looking at the fundamental elements that the rest of the game is built upon, and I discovered the problem. Which yes, now that I am pointing it out, it seems obvious even to me, and I feel dumb.

The problem is that the three rolls, upon which all of the rest of the game is built, are geared towards combat, and nothing else. On page 10 the rules explain this, “[t]hese rolls are called D20 Tests, and they come in three kinds: ability checks, saving throws, and attack rolls.” As I mentioned earlier, they list these in this order as if anything but attack rolls gets much of an explanation or guidance, given that the most prominent roll in a combat game is going to be the attack roll.

If we are to build new rules to guide the players during anything other than combat, we have to contend with the three rolls concept. There are only three after all, thus we need to explain how an attack roll is useful in exploration or social interaction. In a fantasy medieval world I can easily imagine the most important social interactions being akin to conflict, combative in nature with life or death stakes, but putting the interaction mechanics in the terms of outright physical melee is setting up one of those implicit influences we discussed earlier, where the player is going to think of these situations as victory/defeat, rather than the nuanced multitude of outcomes that can result from a negotiation.

My solution is to get rid of the three rolls, or at least reframe them, redefine them. One of my first ideas comes from some of my older work, where I considered the literal parameters of each kind of dice roll we normally encounter to determine the names and definitions of those rolls. Let me explain:

• If you are comparing the result against a static TN (target number), such as those set by an environment or an object, it would be one kind of roll.

• If you are comparing the result against a dynamic TN, such as the defense value of another entity, another kind of roll.

• If you are comparing the result against the result of someone else’s roll, be that player or game master, a third kind of roll.

• I even imagined another kind of roll, where you compare the result to a table or chart.

Other than those, I didn’t see that many rolls coming up and being available for broad classification for successive rules layers to build upon.

During my research, because yes I did go out into the interwebs to do some more reading while formulating these ideas, I came across an article I had not read in a while. This article is written by the AngryGM and has a lot of good points, but one in particular stood out to me as being another one of those “should have been obvious” things. Saving throws don’t work like anything else.

You should read the article, it’s great. The summary of this one point is that when you make an ability check or an attack roll, you are INITIATING the action; you declare that you or your character does something, so you need to roll a die to determine how well it goes. With a saving throw, that is completely turned on its head. Someone else does something and all of a sudden you have to roll a die to see how their action goes, not your own.

When he put it into these terms it seemed like saving throws needed to be addressed, and possibly even done away with. When it comes to area effects it can kind of make sense. You envelop a bunch of entities in an explosive ball of fire and they all need to determine if they react accordingly to survive, but this is an attack. You are attacking all of them, so why is this not another kind of attack roll? This is especially important to consider when you realize that players love rolling dice, so why not give them an excuse to roll a handful of d20s when they cast fireball at the horde of goblins?

The idea I came to was to make these kinds of rolls a reaction. You get engulfed in flames so I ask the players if they want to spend their reaction to attempt to mitigate the damage. But then we have to examine the reaction as a part of the action economy. So far there seems to be only one thing that a reaction allows entities to do: make an opportunity attack. When someone moves farther away the game allows you to make a final strike, supposedly into their back, but the reaction isn’t used for anything else. This would have been the perfect opportunity for hasbro to introduce a little more tactical choice into their latest version; use your reaction to attack, or save it in case something breathes fire onto your group of murderous buddies.

Coming back to the initiation point, I think it is important that the rolls be put back into the hands of those initiating the activity, rather than anyone else. It can be jarring for even the most veteran of players to suddenly be subjected to making a roll, especially if their character is poor in that regard, that means the difference between life and death of their character. Personally, saving throws have always been this weird element of the game, especially because the rules are so limited and rarely ever touched. This could be because the design of that system is so well done that it is concise and compact and just quietly reliable as the rest of the game churns and evolves over time, or it could be a remnant from a time when the game was not improving as ideas and methods in the hobby shifted.

In order to address a new system that is designed to include all three pillars, the basic rolls that sit directly on top of the foundational rules need to be changed. With two out of the three rolls being directly related to combat, or at least some sort of peril or implicit conflict (saving throws), the last dice roll cannot carry the weight of new systems all on its own.

Result vs entity TN.

You Affect when you passively interact with another entity. This roll accounts for interactions that would be passively resisted, such as touching, influencing, or obstructing. Affects are made against the entity’s TN.

Result vs entity result.

You Contest when you actively interact with another entity. This roll accounts for arm wrestling, competing for the same thing (“pick me!”), or any other direct competition. Contests are made against the entity’s result.

Result vs non-entity TN.

You Check when you interact with a non-entity, such as the environment, an object, or even an idea. This roll accounts for navigating the wilderness, investigating a crime scene, or breaking a mug. Checks are made against the relevant TN.

Changing the three rolls of the game is going to have a lot of knock-on effects. The first that came to my mind as I was puzzling my way through was the saving throw itself. By getting rid of the saving throw we have to account for how abilities and features (like spells), affect a group of entities. Wanna blow up a bunch of goblins with a fireball? Rather than throwing down a template and trying to fit all of them beneath it, grab a handful of d20s and go from left to right to see which ones you hit. Players love rolling lots of dice.

How I deal with the rest of the system is going to be the subject of my project, Heartbreaker. So if you want to know what I do and how it goes, you will just have to stay tuned.