(in D&D at least)
this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2025
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They do at my table. Because it's more fun, god damn it!
Taking a 10 is a strategic choice. You can automatically succeed because the DC is >10, or you can roll for it and try to get a critical success that comes with a random fringe bonus (such as extra XP, or making an action more permanent; like you crit a lockpicking check which just breaks the lock so it can't be relocked) but also with the chance of critically failing (you broke the lock and now it can't be unlocked!).
It also allows you to maybe succeed even if your stats would not let you. The DC is 50. With your bonuses, even a 20 would not beat the DC. But maybe fate intervened and you got lucky as fuck. Disco Elysium uses this a lot. Hell, there's a whole sidequest locked behind a door that can only be opened if you roll a double 6.
2 things:
1: I've gotten disco Elysium, and Ive only played a few minutes, but I don't remember it having rolls like that? How does one know what one is rolling? I played like 20 minutes of it 3 months ago, so maybe I'm misremembering.
2: that's how my brother DMs. I once critfailed a lock picking so badly that my character broke his finger. My brother laughed his ass off
A lot of dialogue points and other actions will bring up a thing that rolls 2 D6s. Snake eyes is a critical failure, double sixes is critical success. The earliest point in the game where you can make one of these rolls is in your hotel room. Either by attempting to get your tie out of the ceiling fan, trying to piece together what happened with your shoes by analyzing the broken window, or by using the mirror and trying to stop making "The Expression."
Many of them can be re-rolled later once you get more skill points. Others are one and done unless you reload or start a new game.
It calls these white checks. Specifically they'll unlock again (supposing you failed them) once you level up the skill or stat they're associated to.
You can also find or buy dice that'll unlock some of them.
It calls these red checks. And they're often much more fun than white checks, especially when you fail them.
Those actually do something? :O
They do! Each one reopens a different set of white checks, and reduces their difficulty! :D