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

When the DM still says no.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

*critical success* Okay fine, you are in the council, but we do not grant you the rank of master

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

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

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. 😂

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!

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

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

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

And this is why critical success on skill checks is an OPTIONAL rule. Crits really are only supposed to matter on attack rolls in 5E that's it.

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.)

"The Absolute gazes upon your existence, what do you do?" "seduce." "....what?"