Dungeons And Dragons: How To Create The Perfect One Shot

A reliance on combat in D&D can only get a player so far. The rest of the time, victory will be granted by two things: a judicious use of spells, if the party has them, or skill checks. These checks are tied to the attributes of players and determine how good they are at certain physical or mental attributes. A powerful barbarian with a +7 to Athletics is suited for breaking open the door to a sealed library while the +9 Investigation Wizard can subsequently discover ancient tomes.

While all of this is happening, the Bard is lying to the librarian about the noise and succeeding with a +13 modifier of course, because Bards laugh in the face of your skillchecks.

However, skill checks in a one-shot can be a double-edged sword. Specifically if they're tied to storyline progression. If the Dungeon Master is counting on that Wizard to roll a high Arcana to decipher the forbidden tome's texts and accidentally summon the endgame boss, what happens if they roll a Natural 1?

Dungeon Masters must be extremely cognizant not to make it impossible to advance in the game due to a single bad dice roll. There are plenty of other times when players can conduct skill checks that might result in trouble, decreased rewards, or angering NPCs, but a single roll should not automatically mean game over.