What happens if you pass the 99 skill check roll against The Absolute | Baldur's Gate 3

Gather your party and return to the Forgotten Realms in a tale of fellowship and betrayal, sacrifice and survival, and the lure of absolute power.

Mysterious abilities are awakening inside you, drawn from a mind flayer parasite planted in your brain. Resist, and turn darkness against itself. Or embrace corruption, and become ultimate evil.

From the creators of Divinity: Original Sin 2 comes a next-generation RPG, set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons.

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[Hadrows]

Saving the game is like: "Dormammu, I've Come to Bargain"

[Diresilence]

When the DM points out that a critical skill success does not equal an automatic success.

[ivanf]

You missed something. When you fight the elder brain again the game rewards you a status called "Against all odds", which directly reduce the elder brain hp by about 10%. You can check it when you examine the elder brain

[minben]

I got three nat 20s in a row during this whole section and I thought that the nat 20s were scripted to show us just how helpless we were against the netherbrain. Turns out I just got extremely lucky with my rolls lmao

[Mongaloose]

There should be a secret ending for wild magic sorcerers, where you just polymorph The Absolute into a potted plant.
You just take the plant home and nurture it to the best of your abilities.
For if the little succulent ever suffers harm, it will unleash The Absolute upon the realm once again.

[Stickweasel]

If you Nat 20 this check, the final boss gets a debuff that cuts a huge chunk of HP off of it.

[conchbubbies]

This was such an epic moment for my bro and I. We saw the 99, failed the role but decided to use an inspiration roll anyway and got our nat 20. A nice touch though is that even though you still have to retreat, beating the odds and actually succeeding the role still has an effect later on.

[docholiday]

Love how every single check is aggressively saying “DOMINATE THE BRAIN.”

[USicilianu]

First time seeing this difficulty class:
"... I'm gonna cast Guidance"

[SURCHKS]

Just to let you all know that this DOES do something. The Brain has less HP when you fight it if you get a nat 20 here.

[noblebork]

Ah yes, the scariest type of critical success: you don't die immediately.

[ladyalicent]

The amount of save scumming I had to do to get this was _unbelievable. . ._ I pushed through it by telling myself my struggle was akin to actual mental warfare with such a powerful being and resisting against all odds would actually be like. You can imagine how frustrated I was when the DM still said no and I didn’t get my ‘Power of Friendship’ anime moment after all that work!

[pennyrq]

When the dm says "you can certainly try" but railroads you anyways

[kzxkzxkzx]

that 99 check is so funny, was able to roll a 20 without save scumming, that was epic

[Trailerparked]

The Elder Brain was so pissed off it skipped that villain speech.

[TheSylveonSurfer]

I failed it initially, watched the scenes play out, but was aggressively curious what would happen if i succeeded. The scenes play put pretty much the same, BUT the benefit doesn't rear its head till the final battle.

When you enter the portal to kill the Netherbrain, if you succeed, it'll have reduced HP.

Now that I know that, I don't think I'll bother next time. I had more than enough damage to kill it in a turn and a half with reduced HP, I'm confident that I could've killed it with full HP.

[harrisonpayne]

This is why I like Degrees of Success systems a lot. You'll always get something better out of that nat 20, but your proficiencies, modifiers, and the overall situation still matter a ton. It also means that a nat 1 can only be so bad if you are specialized in a certain area. In this case, you still fail your overall objective, but the crit basically turns it into a minor success as it does slightly weaken the boss. (In a normal ttrpg though, the DC would likely be no higher than 40-50 even in the most outlandish cases, so in the event of systems like pf2e, you could avoid starting from an automatic crit fail with the +/- 10 system. Otherwise, allowing a roll seems kind of pointless on the DM's end.)

[Knight_Marshal]

The screen should have popped up, Legendary Resistance as the Brain's action.

[pkminpkmon]

I got a Nat 20 first try, and assumed it was by design, given the huge 99 needed. Didn’t realise you can fail it.

[EmptyBrewsky]

This actually happened to me today. Rolled Nat 20 first try, no save reload. I was hyped, then I failed anyway and was very…very annoyed. 😂