Absolutely Essential

If you run an high-adventure game (success by the skin of your teeth, catastrophic failure leading to new wrinkles in the story, daring victories in impossible ways, that sort of stuff), then this supliment is a go-to. I run an Eberron game with a lot of homebrew rules, and this is one of only 2 suppliments I actually paid to print out, because I reference it that often during each session.

This makes D&D feel less binary (pass-fail) and a whole lot more dynamic. I use it along with skill challenges, and my players often have more fun rolling skill checks now than fighting monsters.

This was exactly the thing I was looking for to fix a hole in my game. I like my games to have a constant feeling of forward motion, and drawing on some of the suggestions from this book means that a failed roll now adds an interesting new wrinkle to the story.

My favourite example is if the player fails a history roll by one or two, they can succeed but only if: "You share an embarrassing incident from your past, which in turn reminds you of the lore you want to remember."

What a gift! I can give the player the bit of history they need to move forward, they get to add a little bit to their backstory, and perhaps create a fun interaction with the rest of the party.

The information presented here is complete and well thought out. I want to make that clear, that the product is well created with good intentions. However I removed two stars for these reasons:

1. The system doesn't fit well into the simplified 5e rules. The new edition of DND focuses on a more narrative driven experience and that's where this supplement shines: it provides additional narrative options for both PCs and DMs however it does so at the expense of simplicity which is a strength with 5e. Having to reference a skill to remind yourself what minor failures result in vs major ones... it slows down the table.

2. Death/Success spiral: Extreme success and failure (that is, rolling a 1 or 20) results in extraordinary results. While narratively these seem fun, the players are losing/succeeding already, and the additional effect of MORE failure or success pushes momentum into future skill checks. An example, rolling Intimidation and rolling a 1 can result in an enemy getting advantage on initative. Your failure results in yet more failure. You already failed the Intimidate check, why punish the player further?

3. The 5e skill system allows successes with low results and failures on high ones. The bounded accuracy ensures that DCs are static across nearly all tiers of play. Yet here, we have a 1 treated as a critical failure, but you can STILL SUCCEED with a 1. If a DC to intimidate is 10 and you have +9, you can roll a 1 and succeed but the results from this skill system has you taking damage for your success. Likewise, if you only have +1 on Intimidate, and the DC is 25 (say, against a dragon), your roll of 20 treats you as having succeeded but is infact a failure.

4. Adventures (hardcover books as well as the type of adventures found here on the guild) are not designed with this system in mind. That means they might have skill checks that, when you fail them, come with additional detrimental effects (Rise of Tiamat is a good example of this, when dealing with the council). Now you're failing three times, once on the roll and again with the adventure results and a third time with this skill system.

So while I applaud the author for creating a narratively interesting product, I can't recommend it as it doesn't 'fit' with 5e. However, I DO recommend DMs who are interested take a look, because it's well thought out, well produced, and has a lot of interesting ideas.

This is a well organized treatment of ways a DM can get a bit more from skill checks beyond simply success or failure. It includes a handy list of possible outcomes for each skill depending on how close the PC rolled to the target DC for the check. Using this as reference guide to approaching skill checks will undoubtely help enrich your player's experience that has them gaining more from high rolls and making new complications from low rolls.