The Accomplishing Nothing Problem:
- If you are in combat and get hit by an effect that temporarily takes you out of the fight and you fail your save, you are about to spend an amount of real-world time potentially measured in hours doing nothing. That's a recipe for player disengagement at best.
- If you cast a high-level spell and your target makes their save, not only have you wasted your Action, you have blown one of your main limited daily resource, and accomplished nothing to show for it.
The Swedish TTRPG Dragonbane has a solution where, if you fail a roll, you can take a bane to one of your abilities to reroll.
I've been rolling around in the back of my mind, and trying to remember, the possibility of offering a choice of minor consequence to turn an almost-success into a success.
Then, recently, I had a burst of inspiration in the shower, and hacked together some actual numbers and stuff. The main downside is it may be too complicated, though I laid it out in a way that flows fairly well, at least for my mind.
To wit:
