Letting Players Roll the Dice

Players rolling more often than the DM

Rolling dice is a fun part of Dungeons & Dragons. So as DMs, we can look for opportunities to let players roll the dice where we might be tempted to roll ourselves. The clearest example is this: An NPC is lying to the party. Do we roll a Charisma (Deception) check for the NPC? Do we ask the players to roll a Wisdom (Insight) check? Do we do both and turn it into a contested roll? I suspect that option 2, letting just the players roll the check, can be our default model as we run our D&D games. In essence: let players roll the dice more often than the DM.

Reasons why we let players roll more often than the DM

There are three main reasons why letting players roll the dice can be our default solution.

It lets players drive the gaming action.
It intuitively links the numbers on a character sheet to the character’s competence.
It’s fun for the players.

It lets players drive the gaming action

As DMs we likely already take up a lot of the speaking time at the table. By making player rolls our go-to assumption, we put them in the driver seat of the action. If an NPC is deceiving the characters, the players should feel like it’s in their hands whether they can detect the NPCs motives or not. Letting them roll a Wisdom (Insight) check, instead of the DM rolling a Charisma (Deception) check mechanically establishes the PCs as the dramatic agents of the scene. The player rolls the dice. The character is in the spotlight.

It intuitively links the numbers on a character sheet to the character’s competence

But why not both? In the above example, why doesn’t the DM roll a Charisma (Deception) check, and the player rolls a Wisdom (Insight) check? We could turn this situation into a contested Ability check.

The fact is, letting just the player roll the dice, makes it so that for every +1 bonus to their Wisdom (Insight) check, their chance of success goes up by 5%. Making it a contested check results in less intuitive success chances. Even players with a very high bonus still face a significant chance of failure due to the randomness of the d20 roll of the NPC. Conversely, players with bad or negative bonuses, will succeed more often, even against difficult challenges, such as discovering the lie of a skilled deceiver.

The numbers on a character sheet mean something in the fiction of the world. Rolling contested checks obscures this connection between the modifiers on the sheet, and the competence of the character. Letting just the players roll the dice more often will make the numbers on their character sheet more intuitively linked with their character’s skill.

It’s fun for the players

Letting the players have a good time is probably the most important goal of running a game. And letting them roll the dice is part of that. That doesn’t mean that we call for Ability checks every 20 seconds. It just means that when an outcome is uncertain, and dice rolls are needed, we can fall back to the default solution of letting the players roll.

Turning DM rolls into player rolls

Sometimes it seems to make sense that we as a DM roll the dice. Especially when an NPC is involved in the action. But often, we can find a mechanical solution that lets the players roll the dice, and still accurately reflects the fictional situation. Here are some examples of DM rolls that can be turned into player rolls:

An NPC tries to spot the sneaking characters. Instead of rolling a Wisdom (Perception) check for the NPC, let the players roll a Dexterity (Stealth) check.
An NPC tries to steal from the characters. Instead of rolling a Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check for the NPC, let the players roll a Wisdom (Perception) check.
An NPC tries to lure the party into its lair. Instead of rolling a Charisma (Deception) check for the NPC, let the players roll a Wisdom (Insight) check.
A friendly NPC is bleeding out. Instead of rolling a death saving throw for the NPC, let the players roll a Wisdom (Medicine) check.
A group of enemy NPCs must decide whether to fight on or flee. Instead of rolling a Wisdom saving throw for the NPCs, let the players roll a Charisma or Strength (Intimidation) check.
An NPC is retrieving information for the characters. Instead of rolling an Intelligence check for the NPC, let the players roll a Charisma (Persuasion) or Intelligence (Investigation) skill to see how well they motivated the NPC or how good the choice of NPC for this research task was.

Instead of rolling for an NPC, determine a DC

What all of these examples come down to is that instead of rolling a check for an NPC, we determine a Difficulty Class (DC) which the players must overcome with their roll. Rolling for the NPC takes less mental work. If we set a DC, we need to know how to come up with an appropriate number. There are two methods for this:

Using the table from chapter 7 of the Player’s Handbook

We can imagine how difficult a task is on a scale from “very easy” to “nearly impossible.” The Player’s Handbook provides a table to convert these categories to DCs:

Task Difficulty	DC
Very easy	5
Easy	10
Medium	15
Hard	20
Very hard	25
Nearly impossible	30

As a variation to the table, Mike Shea from slyflourish.com suggests that we rate a task’s difficulty on a scale from 1-10, add 10 to it and come to a DC in this way. This has the benefit of simplicity, and let’s us generate a DC without checking the table above. But it also means that all DCs will be in the range from 10-20.

Using NPC passive Ability scores

Alternatively, when players are working to overcome an NPC, we can use the NPC’s stat block to generate a passive Ability score for them and use that number as the DC. The passive Ability score is 10 plus the NPC’s Ability modifier. If the NPC is proficient with the skill in question we use the modifier for that skill, as noted in the stat block.

For example, instead of rolling a Charisma (Deception) check for the cultist to lure the characters into its lair, we let the players roll a Wisdom (Insight) check. The DC is 12 because of the cultist’s +2 modifier to Deception.

A notable exception: Armor Class

One area where the approach of turning DM rolls into player rolls does not work is attacks. If a trap in a hallway shoots a projectile at a character, we might be tempted to default to letting the character make a Dexterity saving throw. This however circumvents Armor Class. There is no easy way to turn Armor Class into a player roll. And the defenses of some characters, particularly those in heavy armor are represented in their Armor Class, and not in their Dexterity score. By eliminating attack rolls we undermine the character creation choices of players who invest in Armor Class.

Narratively, these characters don’t need to dodge away from a projectile trap. The arrow simply bounces off their plate armor. In general, combat is the pillar of play where DM rolls remain most necessary. Everywhere else, we can try to let the players roll the dice instead of us. This lets the players drive the gaming action, it matches the numbers on their character sheet with the characters’ competence, and it’s a fun part of the game.