Fairly often when playing RPGs the whole group decides to do something together. A lot of systems have rules for these situations but they are often not great, so I thought I would share how I handle them. Oh, I’m specifically thinking of single tasks which pass or fail on one roll, not long term projects like “Lets build a new spaceship!”
It is important to realise that there are two types of whole-party actions. There are tests where just one member of the party needs to pass, for example when the whole party is trying to find something; and there are tests where the whole party needs to pass, for example when the whole party is trying to stealth somewhere. Both of these situations suffer from the same problem though, if you make everyone roll you will pretty much always get some passes and some failures, which means the party will basically always pass the first type of group test and always fail the second type.
Neither of these situations are good. You want there to be a chance that the group won’t find the thing they are looking for or you wouldn’t have made them roll (erm, unless you really don’t want them to fail to find the thing, in which case ignore all this and just give them the thing) and if they are sneaking in somewhere you want there to be a chance that they get in. So here are my two solutions which I think are simple and logical and fun:
When just one PC needs to pass, have just two players roll. Any two will do but usually the players will choose the most skilled two. If either of them pass, the group passes. If neither of them pass, you can assume that the rest of the group failed in the same way.
When the whole party needs to pass, have just the most skilled member and the least skilled member roll. If both of them pass you can assume everyone else did too. If either of them fail, then it doesn’t really matter what the rest would have rolled.
In effect this makes group tests play out similar to rolls with Advantage and Disadvantage (to use the common 5e terminology) which is a significant bonus or penalty, but it doesn’t make the test a foregone conclusion. It also means that each group test will involve two players, which is enough to make the process feel different to standard solo tests. Best of all it’s fairly easy to remember and it works with just about any system.
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Ominosity 