I was having a discussion the other day with Mike Shea and a few other people on his discord about mechanics that are “All or Nothing”. Which is a really inaccurate way of saying spells like Hold Person – either it works or it fails, and you’ve given up a resource to attempt the action.

“Do or Die” mechanics? “Risk it All” mechanics? I don’t know. I might need more sleep. (I definitely need more sleep).

The example Mike actually gave that started me thinking about this was one present in a few games where you have a stack of chips that you can spend to increase your die roll – but must be used before you roll the die. There are lots of games that do this.

So, if you have 10 chips, before you roll a d20 and try to get a target of 10, you can spend 5 of them to increase your chances to 80%, or nine of them to increase your chances to 100%.

Other games allow you to spend the chips AFTER you roll.

Which do I prefer as a mechanic? The ones that allow you to spend the chips after you roll. Especially if there are clear guidelines to how many chips you have, and there are enough rolls to make the expenditure significant.

This system doesn’t work so well when you only roll a die that matters ONCE in the session – and yes, I’ve played games like that. (A lot of the session was taken up with glorious role-playing between ourselves and with NPCs that wasn’t needing dice rolls. You don’t need to roll dice to have fun!)

But if you’ve got five rolls in the session that are absolutely significant, then the tension becomes more real.

Honestly, I’m not that fond of pools of points to increase rolls before or after in any case. The way the bard grants a 1d8 (or similar) to increase a roll after it fails feels the best – the bard knows when it’s appropriate to use, and there’s still a real feeling of risk. (Knowing the DC ahead of time is something I prefer – it allows a better judgement on whether to use the bardic inspiration or not).

There was a boardgame I played once, that had one die roll of massive significance. You made that roll a total of five times in the game. It was a research roll – roll 8+ on a 1d12 to gain a big bonus. You could spend your very limited actions (in advance) to gain bonuses to it – giving up the opportunity to do other things. In a competitive game, this was absolutely awful. One of the players never spent actions and succeeded on every roll. I spent extra actions and still failed. I didn’t come away from that game feeling good about it.

But I don’t have this feeling about spells like Hold Person. Why not? Here’s the key difference: It’s my choice whether to go with spells that always have an effect or have a “save for no effect” option. I get to choose if the risk is worth the reward.

When a player gets frustrated at missing with those type of spells, it’s worth asking them why they took them. Some classes have more of these types of spells than others, of course, but again – that’s a player’s choice to go into the class. Although I will say there are classes that I feel should work differently than they do. (Often support classes that feel like they can never do a good action themselves, they only exist to make other characters better. The bard is not one of those. With one particular exception, I really like the class. The exception? I don’t think it gets enough uses of its inspiration die. That’s their core mechanic! Let them use it more!)

Of course, in D&D, the most common of these actions is the simple attack roll. It typically does nothing on a miss, and you’re giving up a resource – your action – to make it. Is this a bad mechanic? Well, some people think so. I don’t. (I know MCDM’s upcoming RPG says you always hit and just roll for damage – to my mind, rolling low to damage will end up feeling similar to missing with an attack roll. There are always frustration points in games with random chance, and you just shuffle them around. I’ll probably be proven wrong – and this type of approach is better for a lot of people. Good luck with it, MCDM!)

Where the missing on an attack roll becomes most frustrating – for me at least – is when everything is taking too long. If I’m waiting 20 minutes between turns to miss again. Luckily, it’s not how I run my game, but based on posts I’ve seen around the web, it works that way for many groups. “Keep it moving” is great advice – even if some game systems make resolution so ornate that it’s hard to do so.

So, are these “all or nothing” mechanics bad? It depends on context. The less common the resources is, and the less choice you have about whether you engage with it, the more frustration it can cause.

I think failing is fine. I just don’t want to end up feeling bad or stupid about trying in the first place.