The failures for skill checks are a bit absurd

I think the skill check result system needs some refinement. The results feel completely unnatural at times of failure and it immediately takes me out of the game.

The problem is that when you fail a check, no matter what the context is the entire world itself literally goes out of its way to harm you and that feels so intentionally !!!!! by Franz, I can’t take it seriously at all. I’m trying to do an Arcana check to see if I know anything about a particular topic. The results of success and failure are very obvious: if you succeed, you know; and if you fail, you don’t. That’s it. Maybe critical failue can instead cause you to think you know an incorrect piece of knowledge but that’s it.

So what happens when I fail at the Arcana check? A literal surge of shadow blasts at me to harm me and my companion. What. The. Hell. How does this make any sense at all? There is literally no relation between my attempt at remembering knowledge and the physical world around me. It goes against common sense. If you try to remember a recipe you learned a few years ago and you fail, do the walls of your house blow up and smash against you?

I looked at the thought process of Franz and saw a few lines that were something like “x character failed their check, I need to accurately convey this by putting an obstacle in their way.“ And it seems to me that that line is exactly the problem. There is no “obstacle“ that gets in your way if you fail an Arcana knowledge check, you just fail to know. That’s it, nothing else. There are two general categories that checks can be put into: ones that can cause the status quo to worsen if you fail, and ones that won’t change the status quo in any shape whatsoever with failue. Arcana checks to determine knowledge sit squarely in that second category.

I feel like stuff like this needs to be refined asap if this system is to work. Checks are the lifeblood of DnD, you can’t have stuff like this happen.