Degree of success (or failure) is a shared feature of many of the main variant options in this handbook. It's a simple way to add depth by expanding “pass or fail” into a spectrum of outcomes, while also linking skill to the likelihood of achieving the best results. It rewards players for doing what they can to achieve the very best roll, while giving them reason to think twice about risking a botched effort.

This variant builds on the “Degrees of Failure” option in Wizards of the Coast's Dungeon Master's Guide to provide a standard system for both success and failure across different types of rolls, while preserving the familiar fifth edition mechanic of Difficulty Class (DC) being in tiers of +/- 5. It’s a very intuitive system: rolling much higher than the target results in a much better outcome, rolling much lower results in a much worse outcome. And using steps of +/- 5 keeps the system fast and undemanding.

For example, the next table shows the rolls that would lead to each outcome when making a DC 10 or a DC 15 roll. For a DC 10 roll, after adjusting for any modifiers: a 10 is marginal; above that's a success; from 15 it's a strong success; and from 20 it's a critical success. Similarly, below 10 is a failure; from 5 it's a heavy failure; and from 0 it's a critical failure.

| Adjusted Roll DC 10 | Outcome | Adjusted Roll DC 15 | Outcome |

In playtesting, these tiered outcomes have been immensely popular, both the descriptive flavor and the mechanics. Some outcomes, like heavy failure on an attack roll, don't need a mechanical effect (it's more exciting to move on to the next attack) but even there, a narrative effect was very popular.

Rolling a critical success or critical failure when using degree of success is the equivalent of rolling a natural 20 or a natural 1 with the standard system. In playtesting, the preferred option was to combine the two by keeping the effect of a natural 20 or 1: simply count a roll of 20 as always being a critical success and a 1 as always being a critical failure.