Rule of Unclear Agency and Schrodinger's Rule

[Easy_Lee]

Three observations I've made in gaming recently have led to an epiphany. This holds true in real life as well as in gaming.


Fifth edition has many ambiguous or unclear rules. The sheer size of the RAW threads, compounded with the thousands of tweets to Sage Advice, should be evidence enough. Some crucial rules, such as the exact timing of reactions, are inconsistent. Furthermore, basic rules of play are split between the PHB and DMG, so players don't have all of the information.


I've noticed another trend: DMs who normally power trip are power tripping harder than ever this edition. Especially from AL, I'm hearing more and more stories of class abilities not working and DM PCs breaking the rules. This is in stark contrast to 3.5e, the last major edition I played, where DMs sometimes felt they had no power because players had all of the information.

Furthermore, these stories are not even limited to unclear rules. DMs in this edition are not only inconsistent with unclear abilities, such as stealth and illusion, but even clear ones, such as grappling, cover, and action economy. 5e seems to have empowered DMs to change rules as they please. After all, "rulings, not rules" is the expectation this edition. I've had to write out an extensive and ever-growing list of house rulings to clarify exactly how things work for my players.


Finally, I've been playing some Star Wars D6 lately with a friend who wanted to DM it. While I overall like that system, I've noticed something very troubling about it. Since I don't know exactly how hard most things are to do, the DM decides what roll I need to make in order to do anything. How likely am I to succeed on this lie? How hard is it to jump that gap? Our ideas of easy, moderate, and difficult often do not match. This leaves me paralyzed, as I never know how likely I am to succeed at anything I attempt.

I've dubbed my conclusion the Rule of Unclear Agency: when the rules are unclear, and players don't know what they can and cannot do, the players have less agency. If a player doesn't know what roll he needs to make in order to do a thing, or even if it's possible, and he doesn't know what the consequences of failure will be, his options are arbitrarily limited. Options are limited to only the clearest, least ambiguous aspects of play.

This leads to Schrodinger's Rule: when a rule of play is unclear, it enters a quantum state. The player doesn't know what the rule is until he tries to do something, at which point the rule resolves into one of several possibilities. If the player is particularly unlucky, the rule will change in the future, especially when a DM PC would be subject to it.

Unclear rules also expand DM power. If the players don't know the rules of the game, the DM can make them up as he goes along. We see this in real life with ambiguous laws, which enable judges to rule however they like on cases. Ambiguous laws leave the general populace in fear of courts and police, since they never know what the laws mean (or even what the laws are, in some cases) or how they will be enforced.

Long story short: unclear rules suck for players.

[Cybren]

Your premise and conclusion are both wrong. I'd suggest trying out games using FATE, Powered by the Apocalypse, or GURPS, which all explicitly call out the gm as having to not only adjudicate rules decisions but actively decide how many abilities work.

[ad_hoc]

The DM has always had all the power, 5e just stops pretending.

In 3.x if you wanted an NPC to do something you would stat them up according to a bunch of rules ahead of time. In 5e you just say they can do it. The end result is the same.

In reality, power is dependent on the group. Everyone in the group should be invested and treat each other with respect.

No game system is going to force people to treat others with respect. Looking for it from the rules system is the mistake.

5e makes it easier for good groups to play the way they want, but also highlights the problems in bad groups. To me both aspects are good. If I am in a bad group I want to know in the first session so I can get out.

[Easy_Lee]

5e makes it easier for good groups to play the way they want, but also highlights the problems in bad groups. To me both aspects are good. If I am in a bad group I want to know in the first session so I can get out.

This isn't just about good DMs vs bad DMs. The star wars d6 game I'm in is a good group with a good DM. However, if I'd known what I know now about his specific style and rulings, I would have built my character differently.

This is just as true in 5e. Regardless of the DM, intelligent play in 5e depends on familiarity with the DM's rulings, not just the rules of the game. This was far less true in 3.5e, to the point that I never once encountered it in that system. And this is the major problem with AL, which necessitates playing with unfamiliar and inconsistent DMs.

[Cybren]

If anything I'd argue 3.5 harmed DMs by falsely engendering an attitude of entitlement in players, and that that was only really an issue for a small subset of players re: hardcore charop people

[Fwiffo86]

I've dubbed my conclusion the Rule of Unclear Agency: when the rules are unclear, and players don't know what they can and cannot do, the players have less agency. If a player doesn't know what roll he needs to make in order to do a thing, or even if it's possible, and he doesn't know what the consequences of failure will be, his options are arbitrarily limited. Options are limited to only the clearest, least ambiguous aspects of play.

This leads to Schrodinger's Rule: when a rule of play is unclear, it enters a quantum state. The player doesn't know what the rule is until he tries to do something, at which point the rule resolves into one of several possibilities. If the player is particularly unlucky, the rule will change in the future, especially when a DM PC would be subject to it.

Unclear rules also expand DM power. If the players don't know the rules of the game, the DM can make them up as he goes along. We see this in real life with ambiguous laws, which enable judges to rule however they like on cases. Ambiguous laws leave the general populace in fear of courts and police, since they never know what the laws mean (or even what the laws are, in some cases) or how they will be enforced.

Long story short: unclear rules suck for players.

I completely disagree here. Noone "should" know exactly what the odds are of any action they take. I know how to distance jump. This doesn't tell me anything about how well I would do if I were to leap a chasm. I believe that it has become far to common for players to make decisions based on numbers their character has no way of knowing period. I do not know how strong I am, nor how insightful I am. All I do know is that I know how to ride a horse, fence, and how to cook. My "skill" level is nothing I could know for certain. I can certainly know I am better than Bob, and worse than Janet, but that is about the extent of specificity I can know. I don't think it is remotely bad that players (and consequently their characters) are faced with uncertain outcomes. That is a more accurate roleplay in my opinion.

[Pex]

I said the same thing a long while ago. Different words, same point. Prepared to be pilloried like I was by those who disagree.

What I said was that 5E makes it easier for tyrannical DMs to be such because they have the excuse of making rulings on vague rules and players have no recourse other than to vote with their feet. Even if they do vote that way the DM learns no lesson because he can righteously claim 5E gives him carte blanche permission for any ruling he makes. If the players quit it could only mean that they're min/max powergamer rollplaying munchkins.

I had also said that 5E does not cause tyrannical DMing. The 5E DMG does teach how to be a good DM. It speaks highly of catering the game to what players like. I had to repeat that several times before people realized I said that originally.

A bad DM will be a bad DM regardless of system. 5E just makes it easier to be one than in 3E and 4E. Experienced players won't tolerate it, so the system is irrelevant. It's the new players who won't know any better. They won't recognize the DM is being Il Duce. They won't know it doesn't have to be that way. If it bothers them enough they might just quit the genre altogether thinking tyrannical DMing is how it's supposed to be played. They don't have defined rules to know and compare.

Defined rules, however, is not itself a solution. 2E had defined rules, but it had a lot of tyrannical DMing. Such DMs existed because the 2E DMG rules told them to be. The 2E DMG advises DMs to say no to players. It assumes if a player asks for something he just wants the POWER! Since the rules told DM to say no, the players didn't know any better. It took 3E, its plethora of player choices of character builds and telling DMs to work with their players not against, that players realized being a DM doesn't mean being the Lord and Master. Tyrannical DMs got shunned. 4E got more explicit with its Just Say Yes campaign, with the corollaries of "yes, and" and "yes, but".

[pwykersotz]

My play has been limited, but I loved every moment of it. The rules you claim are unclear are freeing to me. They allow narrative to be introduced on both sides of the table without being shackled by pointless subsystems. I played the Folk Hero Champion Fighter in Lost Mines of Phandelver, as well as an Evoker Wizard in the same module. The rules weren't unclear, I understood exactly how the game worked. The outcome was what was unclear. But I always knew the level of risk (the DM told us the DC of checks in advance).

I know exactly what I can do as a player, and so do the players in my games because we talk to each other. The dice are there to add a factor of random chance, which they do well.

Your troubles sound like a playstyle issue. That's not a dismissal, just an observation.

[MaxWilson]

I've dubbed my conclusion the Rule of Unclear Agency: when the rules are unclear, and players don't know what they can and cannot do, the players have less agency. If a player doesn't know what roll he needs to make in order to do a thing, or even if it's possible, and he doesn't know what the consequences of failure will be, his options are arbitrarily limited. Options are limited to only the clearest, least ambiguous aspects of play.

I generally agree with this, with just one nitpick: the player doesn't necessarily need to know the rules the DM is using. He just has to be able to make an informed choice. If I'm using some complicated wild surge table for wild mages, he does not necessarily need to understand the arcane procedure I'm using to resolve wild surges (although if there are things he could do to affect that procedure, knowing the details would certainly increase his ability to apply leverage and therefore increase feelings of agency). But all he really has to have is a knowledge of his own expected outcomes: "I'm wild surging because I expect, based on past experience, that the worst that can happen is a Fireball right on top of these kobolds that are swarming me."

Or as Courtney Campbell put it:



If a choice is made without information, then the results cannot be predicted.

A tabletop role-playing game consists of Infinite Play. There are no impassible walls, the most minor guard can be talked to, nothing is pre-programmed.

If you remove the ability to access information, you are restricting agency. It is information and the players ability to gather it that allows them to have an expectation of the results of their actions. This allows them to form an intent to act on.

Emphasis added in bold.

But I agree with what I perceive to be your overall point: it is useful and good for the DM to be willing to spell rules out explicitly, especially if the players inquire as to the rules being used. I think it is not always necessary to fill the players in on every single rule that you have, because some players prefer to learn experientially, but you should always be willing to elaborate, unless there's a good reason not to. (E.g. if monsters are using a variant magic system that is deliberately designed to be opaque until the players learn its strengths and weaknesses as a plot point, then you might tell the player, "There's no way you could know that yet.")

[smcmike]

This thread needs concrete examples for me to make heads or tails of it. The "jump the gap" example is pretty poor - you've got a pretty defined idea of how far you can jump, actually.

Yes, ambiguity can lead to arbitrary and unfair results in the hands of a bad DM, or even a good DM on a bad day.

On the other hand, the solution is far from obvious. To extend the metaphor of bad laws and arbitrary judges, mandatory minimums and other ways to reign in judicial discretion can cause equally unfair results.

[Easy_Lee]

But I agree with what I perceive to be your overall point: it is useful and good for the DM to be willing to spell rules out explicitly, especially if the players inquire as to the rules being used. I think it is not always necessary to fill the players in on every single rule that you have, because some players prefer to learn experientially, but you should always be willing to elaborate, unless there's a good reason not to. (E.g. if monsters are using a variant magic system that is deliberately designed to be opaque until the players learn its strengths and weaknesses as a plot point, then you might tell the player, "There's no way you could know that yet.")

I agree with you in the case of things the players wouldn't know. I'm talking primarily about player expectations of the options they take. For example, someone with the Athletics skill ought to know whether or not he can climb a dry rope. When he attempts to do so and has to make a different DC depending on where he is, that's a problem. Similarly, a wizard who casts illusion spells ought to know exactly how they work, rather than finding out at the last minute that everyone in a ten mile radius gets an automatic save to detect it, and that one successful save negates the illusion for everyone.

Players should know what they can and cannot do with their own abilities. Those things should have been clearly spelled out in the book, and should be clearly spelled out by DMs.

[MaxWilson]

I agree with you in the case of things the players wouldn't know. I'm talking primarily about player expectations of the options they take. For example, someone with the Athletics skill ought to know whether or not he can climb a dry rope. When he attempts to do so and has to make a different DC depending on where he is, that's a problem. Similarly, a wizard who casts illusion spells ought to know exactly how they work, rather than finding out at the last minute that everyone in a ten mile radius gets an automatic save to detect it, and that one successful save negates the illusion for everyone.

Players should know what they can and cannot do with their own abilities. Those things should have been clearly spelled out in the book, and should be clearly spelled out by DMs.

Yes, absolutely, he should know exactly the rules for climbing a dry rope. A DM who refuses to divulge those when asked is just being a jerk. A DM who has no rules but just wings it, and does so with noticeable inconsistency, is not a jerk but is not providing a satisfying experience.

Ditto on your illusion spell example. Even a good DM might fail to convey the illusion rules to a specific player in advance, especially if he doesn't realize that the player doesn't know them--I've had players be surprised at my stealth rulings for example, even when I think I'm going by the PHB rules--but such occasions should be rare and dealt with as mature adults, which might sometimes include the DM giving the player a one-time pass, or the player giving the DM a one-time pass and just rolling with it, or retconning the player's action now that he fully understands the situation.

[JakOfAllTirades]

I'm not going to "pillory" anyone; I partially agree in that I think the authors of the 5E core books used the "rulings not rules" mantra as an excuse for a lot of extremely sloppy writing, with the expectation that the DMs and players would figure it all out on a case-by-case basis. This has led to a great deal of confusion and one heck of a lot of arguments and poor play all around. Some tighter writing and decent editing would have (and should have!) prevented many of these issues.

However, "tyrannical GMs" have been around from the very beginning of the RPG scene, and there's quite simply no game they can't alter to suit their whims. (Blaming the game system for poor GM-ing or poor play has also been around forever.) It's no surprise you're seeing more bad GMs running 5E now; it's the most popular RPG. It also has the most good GMs running it as well, so my advice is to go find one, and tell your tyrannical ex-GM what you think of him.

[CantigThimble]

The solution to this is just that both parties need to act like reasonable mature people. If a player wants to know how an ability works before he invests in it then the DM should usually tell him. If something unexpected comes up and there's a conflict then the reasonable response is usually 'It will work like this right now to resolve the situation, this is how I will rule it for future scenarios, and if you invested into it assuming it worked differently we'll work out some modifications to your character after this session.'

[Cybren]

Unclear rules also expand DM power. If the players don't know the rules of the game, the DM can make them up as he goes along. We see this in real life with ambiguous laws, which enable judges to rule however they like on cases. Ambiguous laws leave the general populace in fear of courts and police, since they never know what the laws mean (or even what the laws are, in some cases) or how they will be enforced.
Also, are you trying to flippantly disprove the entire concept of jurisprudence in an aside on a D&D post?

[Shining Wrath]

I read through a lot of the controversy threads here and tried to address them in a "houserules" release prior to starting our campaign. I think that's true even in 3.5, but it's more true in 5e.

[Cybren]

I read through a lot of the controversy threads here and tried to address them in a "houserules" release prior to starting our campaign. I think that's true even in 3.5, but it's more true in 5e.

This just good practice for all RPGs. If not an explicit document outlining appropriate character options/generation methods/house rules/ then a conversation during character creation about what is and isn't appropriate and how things will work. Otherwise in 3.5 you get DMs that don't tell their players their primary antagonists are undead and the adventure is mostly in a volcano while the party rogue and ranger are left going 'uhhhhh'

[Easy_Lee]

Also, are you trying to flippantly disprove the entire concept of jurisprudence in an aside on a D&D post?

You can't disprove the concept of jurisprudence because there isn't one concept. That word just refers to the theory or philosophy of law. What I'm arguing for is one aspect of Legal Formalism, a school of the ought falling under jurisprudence. "The ultimate goal of formalism would be to formalise the underlying principles in a single, determinate, system that could be applied mechanically (hence the label 'mechanical jurisprudence')."

[Cybren]

You can't disprove the concept of jurisprudence because there isn't one concept. That word just refers to the theory or philosophy of law. What I'm arguing for is one aspect of Legal Formalism, a school of the ought falling under jurisprudence. "The ultimate goal of formalism would be to formalise the underlying principles in a single, determinate, system that could be applied mechanically (hence the label 'mechanical jurisprudence')."
Very impressive googling "define: jurisprudence" there, but the word also refers to the practice of judiciary rulings.

[Easy_Lee]

Very impressive googling "define: jurisprudence" there, but the word also refers to the practice of judiciary rulings.

Not according to any definition I've found. You may be thinking of legal precedence (edit: which also doesn't mean what I think you're talking about, though I'm not sure because you're being about as clear as 5e's rules).

[Cybren]

Not according to any definition I've found. You may be thinking of legal precedence (edit: which also doesn't mean what I think you're talking about, though I'm not sure because you're being about as clear as 5e's rules).

Jurisprudence, as the theory and philosophy of law, is how particular judges arrive at their decisions, and legislatively mandated decisions take that power away from judges. This is the political discussion I wish to avoid, so I hope I can keep things abstract, but the fair practice of law requires judges empowered by interpret law, because that is the job of the judiciary. So too the job of the DM is to interpret the rules of the game, and to communicate that interpretation to the players. The rule system of 5E does not any more encourage a tyrannical GM than GURPS or FATE do. I think GURPS serves as very substantial example that disproves your thesis, because GURPS very very strongly and explicitly has rules to handle a variety of situations, but ultimately hands all power to resolve them to the GM, and the system does so with intentional and deliberate purpose. A player should not expect the DM to act as a neutral arbiter because the DM isn't a neutral arbiter, the DM is the final arbiter, whose rulings should be consistent and should be both informed and transparent, but shouldn't be beholden to any document.


Does 5E have particular rules holes? Yes, but the general attitude of "rulings not rules" is a strength of the edition, because it creates a more permissive environment for play. I have mentioned it before, but I consider there to have grown up sometime during the 3.5 era a cult of player expectation, which existed in many areas, and you would frequently see it with people deriding DMs that wanted to run core only games, or not allow certain classes in play, or that wouldn't want to use Tome of Battle. Players had an expectation that 3.5 was the entirety of 3.5, and that DMs were beholden to any published material or options.

[Beleriphon]

I think part of the problem is that the rules for D&D are a combination of both natural language and rules terms at the same time. Stealth for example needs adjudication because there are way too many corner cases, and to a degree a dash of common sense rather than hide bound rules applications needs to be used.

[Easy_Lee]

Does 5E have particular rules holes? Yes, but the general attitude of "rulings not rules" is a strength of the edition, because it creates a more permissive environment for play. I have mentioned it before, but I consider there to have grown up sometime during the 3.5 era a cult of player expectation, which existed in many areas, and you would frequently see it with people deriding DMs that wanted to run core only games, or not allow certain classes in play, or that wouldn't want to use Tome of Battle. Players had an expectation that 3.5 was the entirety of 3.5, and that DMs were beholden to any published material or options.

Going to skip over your custom definition for jurisprudence. I disagree with everything you said in the quote above.

"Rulings not rules" does not create a more permissive environment. By definition, the DM always has and continues to be able to do anything he or she wants. No system could grant additional permission to the DM, because DMs play God.

However, clear rules, rather than rulings, grant the players leverage. In 3.5e, if a DM broke the rules, the players knew he did so. The DM had to state that he was running house rules.

This is not the case in 5e. In 5e, DMs who ignore the rules can state, usually with authority, that the player doesn't fully understand the rules if the player disagrees with the DM. The player might still be right, but the fact that the rules in 5e are so light, ambiguous, and inconsistent means that literally everything is up to interpretation.

Again, some of the core rules of play are only contained in the DMG, and far more are not stated at all. What's the DC to climb a dry rope? What's the DC to pick a simple lock? How hard is it to bend iron? To kick down a wooden door? If I'm hiding in a box, do enemies have to know to look for me, or do they automatically get individual perception checks to spot me? If a wizard controls the weather, what effect does that weather actually have on people caught in it? And so on, forever.

That doesn't create a more permissive environment. It creates one where the players are only able to do what the DM decides they may do. And the list of do's and don't's varies far more, from DM to DM, in this edition than in previous editions. Thus, players have to know their specific DM's style in order to properly plan.

You said, "Players had an expectation that 3.5 was the entirety of 3.5, and that DMs were beholden to any published material or options." Not only do I not see this as a bad thing, I don't see what was stopping DMs from just banning options they didn't want players to take. Every DM I knew back then had a list of banned options. And it worked fine, because players knew basically what to expect.

In 3.5e, jerk DMs were jerks because their DM PCs and creatures had knowledge, items, and abilities the players didn't. In 5e, jerk DMs regularly screw with the laws of d&d physics, because the players have no idea what those laws are supposed to be.

The cult of player expectation you're talking about, in which players expect the game to work the way the books they bought say it works, is something that only God-complex DMs ever complained about. Everyone else recognizes that when you buy a game, and that game has rules, those rules should tell you how the game works. Nobody wants to keep a logbook of d&d precedent handy for every DM they ever play with.

The DM's primary job is not to be a rules arbiter, but to design or manage the campaign, control the NPCs, and keep everything moving. The rules should stand on their own. Any situation that the rules don't cover is a hole in the rules. There will be some of these in any edition, since players can take infinite actions. But when literally everything anyone tries is subject to DM approval or interpretation, that's a big freaking problem.

[Cybren]

The DM's primary job is not to be a rules arbiter, but to design or manage the campaign, control the NPCs, and keep everything moving. The rules should stand on their own. Any situation that the rules don't cover is a hole in the rules. There will be some of these in any edition, since players can take infinite actions. But when literally everything anyone tries is subject to DM approval or interpretation, that's a big freaking problem.

I don't think anyone who writes a published RPG shares that opinion, but I respect that you hold it. Certainly none of the authors of any game I want to play believe that.

[MaxWilson]

I think part of the problem is that the rules for D&D are a combination of both natural language and rules terms at the same time. Stealth for example needs adjudication because there are way too many corner cases, and to a degree a dash of common sense rather than hide bound rules applications needs to be used.

Yes, this combination is a problem, especially when things that on first glance look like natural language ("you can see in darkness") turn out to be jargon ("you can see in darkness but not dim light", according to Jeremy Crawford). Other examples abound unfortunately.

This isn't necessarily a huge problem for an individual table because any given DM can just make a sane ruling on the spot, but it tends to cause contention online.


Also, are you trying to flippantly disprove the entire concept of jurisprudence in an aside on a D&D post?

Fortunately, stare decisis doesn't apply to D&D. If the DM next door, or JeremyCrawford, or someone on the Internet makes a ruling I think is insane, I am free to ignore it.

[Easy_Lee]

I don't think anyone who writes a published RPG shares that opinion, but I respect that you hold it. Certainly none of the authors of any game I want to play believe that.

Oh really? Are you sure about that? Are you absolutely sure? Have you asked them?

Game designers have just as many quirks and varying philosophies as the players. Just look at how different 5e is from 4e. WotC wanted to create a rules-light system, but they went overboard and crested one where the players don't know anything about the rules of the world where their characters live.

You like ambiguous and inconsistent rules which change at the DMs whim? You don't want rules to be written down clearly, readily available to the players, and consistently followed by DMs? I guess that's you're prerogative. But I don't care to read a lore book and then sit in a circle playing pretend with a bunch of other adults. Games are games because they have rules. And because 5e rules are so loose and confusing, every 5e table is, effectively, playing a different game.

And don't think for a second you're pulling the wool over your players' eyes. When you change the rules of them, or do something just to keep things "challenging," they know damn well what you're doing. And nine times out of ten, they don't appreciate it.

Rules are there to protect and empower the players, not to be interpreted by the DM.

[Cybren]

Oh really? Are you sure about that? Are you absolutely sure? Have you asked them?

Game designers have just as many quirks and varying philosophies as the players. Just look at how different 5e is from 4e. WotC wanted to create a rules-light system, but they went overboard and crested one where the players don't know anything about the rules of the world where their characters live.

It's certainly the opinions of D. Vincent Baker in Dogs in the Vineyard and Apocalypse World, Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel in Dungeonworld, Hamish Cameron in The Sprawl, Sean Punch, Phil Masters, Steve Jackson & Jason Levine with GURPS, Jeremy Crawford and Mike Mearls with 5th edition, Mike Olson in the Atomic Robo RPG, Luke Crane in Burning Wheel, and Gygax et Al in AD&D. Else they wouldn't have designed their games the way they have.


You like ambiguous and inconsistent rules which change at the DMs whim? You don't want rules to be written down clearly, readily available to the players, and consistently followed by DMs? I guess that's you're prerogative. But I don't care to read a lore book and then sit in a circle playing pretend with a bunch of other adults. Games are games because they have rules. And because 5e rules are so loose and confusing, every 5e table is, effectively, playing a different game.


this is kinda rude.


And don't think for a second you're pulling the wool over your players' eyes. When you change the rules of them, or do something just to keep things "challenging," they know damn well what you're doing. And nine times out of ten, they don't appreciate it.


I'm not pulling wool over anyoens eyes, as I don't typically DM D&D. Other than a brief one shot mines of madness game because our wizard was away, I haven't DM'd D&D in a long time.


Rules are there to protect and empower the players, not to be interpreted by the DM.
no, rules are there to give the game a sense of structure. The rules require interpretation by the DM because that's the DM's job.

[MaxWilson]

It's certainly the opinions of D. Vincent Baker in Dogs in the Vineyard and Apocalypse World, Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel in Dungeonworld, Hamish Cameron in The Sprawl, Sean Punch, Phil Masters, Steve Jackson & Jason Levine with GURPS, Jeremy Crawford and Mike Mearls with 5th edition, Mike Olson in the Atomic Robo RPG, Luke Crane in Burning Wheel, and Gygax et Al in AD&D. Else they wouldn't have designed their games the way they have.

This seems like a bit much of an assumption. How do you know they're not simply a-OK with "holes" in the rules, assuming that the DM will fill them in as needed?

As an aside, the roles of "rules arbiter" and "game referee" and "content designer" and "monster advocate" don't need to be conflated. You could have a fun and successful game of D&D in which rules arbitration is settled by a third party, or by consensus among all the participants, or some other method. I tend to poll for consensus when I'm DMing, unless the issue is either (1) so unimportant that I don't think it's worth the bother; or (2) so important to me that I would quit the game before running it any other way. For example, you won't ever see me allowing Disciple of Life to apply to Goodberry or Grim Harvest to Animate Dead--I would quit the game rather than play at a table with that philosophy toward game rules.

For stuff in between though I treat rules adjudication as a table responsibility, not a DM's responsibility per se. Works fine.

[pwykersotz]

You like ambiguous and inconsistent rules which change at the DMs whim? You don't want rules to be written down clearly, readily available to the players, and consistently followed by DMs? I guess that's you're prerogative. But I don't care to read a lore book and then sit in a circle playing pretend with a bunch of other adults. Games are games because they have rules. And because 5e rules are so loose and confusing, every 5e table is, effectively, playing a different game.

And don't think for a second you're pulling the wool over your players' eyes. When you change the rules of them, or do something just to keep things "challenging," they know damn well what you're doing. And nine times out of ten, they don't appreciate it.

Rules are there to protect and empower the players, not to be interpreted by the DM.

You're being unnecessarily combative here. But the bolded is relevant. That's a good thing. Tables can change things from campaign to campaign without undermining the core of the system. It's a design goal, one that succeeded.

Your stance that those who appreciate the flexibility are by nature being jerks to players is a pretty insulting one.

[Cybren]

This seems like a bit much of an assumption. How do you know they're not simply a-OK with "holes" in the rules, assuming that the DM will fill them in as needed?

I know for a fact that Sean Punch has written about saying it's foolish to assume a GM isn't an interpreter of the rules and has actively derided the idea of a neutral GM beholden to rules, and the nature of apocalypse world and it's derivatives like the sprawl and dungeon world actively encourages giving wide leeway for the GM to interpret and adjducicate rules. Here's an excerpt from Dungeon World for Spout Lore, the games catch-all knowledge skill

Spout Lore
When you consult your accumulated knowledge about something,
roll+Int. ✴On a 10+, the GM will tell you something interesting and
useful about the subject relevant to your situation. ✴On a 7–9, the
GM will only tell you something interesting—it’s on you to make it
useful. The GM might ask you “How do you know this?” Tell them
the truth, now.
What a GM considers "useful" and "relevant" is up to interpretation. Heck, in any PbtA game, you don't even get to choose when you use a particular move: you narrate what your character does "I try to remember if I know anything about blue kobolds", and then the GM tells you you triggered a particular move and to roll for it. the GM is also free to simply say you do or don't due to the fictional positioning, which is extremely important in these games. None of the games I listed make an attempt to be all-inclusive RPGs with uniform rules systems for every event, either out of deliberate design (Dogs in the Vineyard, Apocalypse World, Dungeon World, The Sprawl, The Atomic Robo RPG), or because they acknowledge that a rule system that is that would be both cumbersome and boring (GURPS, AD&D)
edit:

As an aside, the roles of "rules arbiter" and "game referee" and "content designer" and "monster advocate" don't need to be conflated. You could have a fun and successful game of D&D in which rules arbitration is settled by a third party, or by consensus among all the participants, or some other method. I tend to poll for consensus when I'm DMing, unless the issue is either (1) so unimportant that I don't think it's worth the bother; or (2) so important to me that I would quit the game before running it any other way. For example, you won't ever see me allowing Disciple of Life to apply to Goodberry or Grim Harvest to Animate Dead--I would quit the game rather than play at a table with that philosophy toward game rules.

For stuff in between though I treat rules adjudication as a table responsibility, not a DM's responsibility per se. Works fine.

I don't disagree with this, but I'm pointing out that games that lean on the GM to interpret and frame the rules aren't intrinsically bad for players. That's a combative attitude that is just going to set yourself up to feel resentful when DM's don't make rules that agree with you

[Tehnar]

I'm not going to "pillory" anyone; I partially agree in that I think the authors of the 5E core books used the "rulings not rules" mantra as an excuse for a lot of extremely sloppy writing, with the expectation that the DMs and players would figure it all out on a case-by-case basis. This has led to a great deal of confusion and one heck of a lot of arguments and poor play all around. Some tighter writing and decent editing would have (and should have!) prevented many of these issues.

However, "tyrannical GMs" have been around from the very beginning of the RPG scene, and there's quite simply no game they can't alter to suit their whims. (Blaming the game system for poor GM-ing or poor play has also been around forever.) It's no surprise you're seeing more bad GMs running 5E now; it's the most popular RPG. It also has the most good GMs running it as well, so my advice is to go find one, and tell your tyrannical ex-GM what you think of him.

This, especially the bolded part.



Long story short: unclear rules suck for players.

This is what I am talking about when I talk about a resolution system that is either LOLRANDOM or DMFIAT. I would add a caveat that unclear rules suck for DM's even more then for players, because you lose time and energy thinking how to deal with rule holes instead of making interesting encounters or fun NPCs.

The reason I buy 1000 pages of rulebooks is so the rules work, not that I have to make my own to make the game work.

[Fishybugs]

Rules are there to protect and empower the players, not to be interpreted by the DM.

I think it's the GM's job to empower the players...or the group's job. It sounds like you have adversarial relationships with your GM. I've been playing about 30 years, and have never had a situation where we had to argue about the rules. One person states their interpretation, one person another, and the group decides to go with the one which sounds the most fun.

That's what it boils down to. Fun. If lack of clarity of rules is a problem in your group...maybe you're playing with the wrong people.

[CantigThimble]

That's what it boils down to. Fun. If lack of clarity of rules is a problem in your group...maybe you're playing with the wrong people.

Or those people are playing the wrong system. Not every game works for every person/group.

It's now pretty clear that many people, including myself, have not suffered due to lack of rules and have benefitted from them in many cases. Unless we are engaged in self destructive behavior or some kind of mass delusion the reason why the rules allow dm interpretation is clear: to make the game more fun for people like us. If you don't like that aspect of the system then you should probably find a system that caters to what you want from an RPG instead of objecting to what we want from an RPG.

[Easy_Lee]

I think it's the GM's job to empower the players...or the group's job. It sounds like you have adversarial relationships with your GM. I've been playing about 30 years, and have never had a situation where we had to argue about the rules. One person states their interpretation, one person another, and the group decides to go with the one which sounds the most fun.

That's what it boils down to. Fun. If lack of clarity of rules is a problem in your group...maybe you're playing with the wrong people.

Actually, I am the DM usually, and have an adversarial relationship with God-complex DMs. I don't have any trouble with ambiguous rules at my table because I fix them. I either let everyone know what the fix is or, if I'm not sure, I ask the others for help and we reach a consensus.

I used to think that's how most groups worked, until I started hearing, seeing, and experiencing horror stories from 5e, particularly AL. It's one thing for a DM to throw impossible challenges at the party. Those players will go find another DM, or stay and enjoy the challenge. It's quite another for players to have no idea whether what seems obvious to them is actually going to work, because the rules don't make it clear and the DM is encouraged to make his own rulings.

I don't particularly care how rude I come across with these points, either. This idea that the DM is God, that the players can either deal with everything he says as he says it or they can leave, that is what needs to change. That DM centric culture where disagreeing with the DM or challenging a rule leads to the expectation of rocks falling. Where players are treated as beggars and the DM treated as the hand that feeds them. That crap, right there, is the toxic element of d&d that needs to go away.

And DMs making up rulings on the fly, so players have no idea what the rules even are, is the single biggest problem in all of 5e. Anyone who disagrees with that is part of the problem. I'm not pulling my punches on this one, because it needs to be said if our little hobby is ever going to be anything more than what it is now.

[Fishybugs]

And DMs making up rulings on the fly, so players have no idea what the rules even are, is the single biggest problem in all of 5e. Anyone who disagrees with that is part of the problem. I'm not pulling my punches on this one, because it needs to be said if our little hobby is ever going to be anything more than what it is now.

Actually, WotC is reporting higher D&D sales right now than they have had in ages. Shows such as 'Critical Role' and 'Dice, Camera, Action' are showing people how fun playing can be and people are having higher expectations of their DM. I feel sorry for those people you are describing, though I have never met any. I've played in groups at my local gaming shop, with my friends, and PbP here. I guess I'm rolling nat 20s on my investigation scores.

[LaserFace]

Okay, this is a long-ass post and I don't expect any reasonable human being to actually read it, and it probably retreads some grounds people have visited while I was typing anyway, but here it is.

---

Generally speaking, I think if there are misgivings about 5E's vagueness, it's due to misunderstanding the intent behind it; this can be on the end of the player or the DM.

Before I get into that, though, I'll say as an aside that I know nothing about OP's beef with reactions (I've seen nothing come up in play so far that creates a problem). I also haven't seen any more Power Tripping DMs running around than normal, but then again I only really play with friends, and have never participated in the Adventurer's League.

Anyway, if you read the DMG, there are vital pieces of information that help lend a perspective to the game's design. This attitude is reinforced throughout the book, but here are some select pieces:

Page 6:


"Know your players

The success of a D&D game hinges on your ability to entertain the other players at the game table. Whereas their role is to create characters (the protagonists of the campaign), breathe life into them, and help steer the campaign through their character's actions, your role is to keep the players (and yourself) interested and immersed in the world you've created, and to let their characters do awesome things."

Page 26


"Set the Stage

As you start to develop your campaign, you'll need to fill in the players on the basics. For easy distribution, compile essential information into a campaign handout. Such a handout typically includes the following material:

-Any restrictions or new options for character creation, such as new or prohibited races
-Any information in the backstory of your campaign that the characters would know about. If you have a theme or direction in mind for the campaign, this information could include seeds hinting at that focus.
...
"


Pages 38-41 talk about "Favors of Fantasy", talking about styles such as Sword & Sorcery, Mythic Fantasy, Mystery, Swashbuckling and Wuxia (and others as well).

A DM should be taking on a role that supports the enjoyment of the players at the table, and informing them of the world they're playing in both OOC through discussion and IC through tone and setting. 5E brought flexible catch-all rules with this in mind, instead of rigid and specific rules that require more work, to allow wider functionality.

If the game it were to codify some rules aspects more firmly - let's say skill DCs - you may find this has a restriction on their use, which will stand in place regardless of tone. You might consider making rules that allow you to grant more or less levity to skills based upon your setting's tone (for example, I would be way more liberal and easy-going on acrobatic stunts in a Swashbuckling campaign than in Dark Fantasy), although broad classifications essentially accomplish the same thing by trusting DMs to interpret what is a Hard Skill Check is for a given setting.

Excess codification on the other hand could require players to revisit the 3.x days where one need to take Feats X, Y and Z to qualify for the Prestige Class that allows them to do the things we wanted to do from day 1 of the campaign. So, we might not even be able to play the game we want at the desired level, without houserules anyway. This is one example of how I prefer the vagueness in 5E's rule set.

If you feel that the rules should have had baseline DCs for very specific situations and a clause that said "for some settings and tones, maybe adjust some DCs up or down 5 points", then I think you're faulting the design of the system for trusting the player base; maybe it was a mistake, but the game is designed to be played by intelligent and mature people who are ultimately looking to have an "awesome" time with friends. If everyone's motives are true to that end, I really can't see how any vagueness is actually a lasting problem. As they are, you can allow a table to share their opinions with a DM and communicate what they find to be more reasonable, or perhaps just enjoyable, and adapt. If you want to bind a DM's hands, how do you expect them to personalize the setting and tone to better-suit the table?

I think it would be good to revisit your axioms with all of the above in mind.


I've dubbed my conclusion the Rule of Unclear Agency: when the rules are unclear, and players don't know what they can and cannot do, the players have less agency. If a player doesn't know what roll he needs to make in order to do a thing, or even if it's possible, and he doesn't know what the consequences of failure will be, his options are arbitrarily limited. Options are limited to only the clearest, least ambiguous aspects of play.

I agree that if a player is confused about the setting and tone or the DM's style, making choices is hard. Usually the first session with any new DM or party is going to be awkward, because players need to get used to one-another, even if they're all good people, perhaps also close friends.

But, this is something groups grow out of as they communicate and play. A DM should be taking everyone opportunity to learn about their fellow players and trying to get a sense of the game they want to participate in. They should also be indicating the rules of their world to the party, so that they don't attempt inappropriate action that isn't worth their time and doesn't add anything to the game. Even a DM you really like can fail to communicate; it doesn't mean they're a bad DM or a bad person. But it's still a mistake to ignore the players or fail to articulate to them (in game or outside it) their place in the world and what they're capable of.

Do you think all of this could be averted by more concrete rules?
I suspect if everyone had the exact same expectations of gameplay, there might be less of the awkwardness I'm describing. But, I also suspect DMs would have less freedom in how they choose to design their campaigns, because despite their desire to personalize things to fit their setting and desired tone, they are beholden to what everyone else expects before even suggesting they sit down and play D&D one night out of the month. The players might even have so many expectations already, that the DM role is entirely unneeded.

I suspect design headed in the direction it did because there are so many different ways people would like to play the game, and an attempt at allowing everyone to enjoy what they like with purchasing as few books as possible was ideal.


Schrodinger's Rule: when a rule of play is unclear, it enters a quantum state. The player doesn't know what the rule is until he tries to do something, at which point the rule resolves into one of several possibilities. If the player is particularly unlucky, the rule will change in the future, especially when a DM PC would be subject to it.

We're still in the same general territory as above, but you move on to assumptions about DM behavior in the negative. I think you're exaggerating how frequently this sort of abuse happens in real play. Are rulings frequently changing for the worse in your games? And how many DMs run DMPCs anyway?

[jas61292]

And DMs making up rulings on the fly, so players have no idea what the rules even are, is the single biggest problem in all of 5e. Anyone who disagrees with that is part of the problem. I'm not pulling my punches on this one, because it needs to be said if our little hobby is ever going to be anything more than what it is now.

I can just as easily state that the reason 5e is doing so well is exactly because of the freer rules, and the way they empower Dungeon Masters. And I could just as easily say that anyone who disagrees with that is a problem.

You have an opinion, but many, if not most, people disagree with it. That's just how things are.

But the fact is that the game is how it is for reasons stated by its designers, and tons of people like it for that. You saying that is a problem doesn't make it one.

[CantigThimble]

So you want to stop pulling punches? Fine, we can stop pulling punches. The DM is the most important person at the table hands down. If he doesn't want to play then no one plays. If 3/4 of his players quit the game can still happen, if all his players want to play but he doesn't then the game doesn't happen. He has a monopoly on the commodity that is his game and if you want to play then you have to pay whatever price he sets. You can negotiate as much as you want to convince him to lower the price so you'll buy it at all but he can still set that price wherever he wants.

You can either pay the price or find someone offering a better deal. That better deal might even be someone running a completely different game with different rules, but the player has no authority whatsoever to force a DM to set the price of entry lower than the DM wants to and still run the game for them. If they did then I would never become a DM in the first place, and then where does the hobby go?

[Cybren]

I don't particularly care how rude I come across with these points, either. This idea that the DM is God, that the players can either deal with everything he says as he says it or they can leave, that is what needs to change. That DM centric culture where disagreeing with the DM or challenging a rule leads to the expectation of rocks falling. Where players are treated as beggars and the DM treated as the hand that feeds them. That crap, right there, is the toxic element of d&d that needs to go away.

And DMs making up rulings on the fly, so players have no idea what the rules even are, is the single biggest problem in all of 5e. Anyone who disagrees with that is part of the problem. I'm not pulling my punches on this one, because it needs to be said if our little hobby is ever going to be anything more than what it is now.

I would argue
1) "people not caring how rude they come across" is a toxic element to any community
and
2) you need a slice of perspective pie, because D&D isn't important enough to be a jerk about.

[MaxWilson]

I can just as easily state that the reason 5e is doing so well is exactly because of the freer rules, and the way they empower Dungeon Masters. And I could just as easily say that anyone who disagrees with that is a problem.

I had to do a double take here--for a second I honestly thought you had written "freer beer", and thought that maybe AL was giving out free beer or something.

(Full disclosure: I don't drink, but apparently my subconscious still pays attention to free beer anyway.)

[LaserFace]

I had to do a double take here--for a second I honestly thought you had written "freer beer", and thought that maybe AL was giving out free beer or something.

(Full disclosure: I don't drink, but apparently my subconscious still pays attention to free beer anyway.)

If not already, WotC should employ you. This idea is excellent.

[Cybren]

Somehow I imagine that would cut out a significant fraction of their target demographic, both in terms of players, and stores for running the AL

[Fishybugs]

Somehow I imagine that would cut out a significant fraction of their target demographic, both in terms of players, and stores for running the AL

We have a few places around Seattle that are adult-themed gaming shops....basically bars with gaming tables. They are always full...just wish I lived a little closer. It's just far enough to discourage going more than once per week.

[Dr.Gunsforhands]

I'm not pulling my punches on this one, because it needs to be said if our little hobby is ever going to be anything more than what it is now.

So, here's a question for you EL: what, "more," do you wish or expect these games to be?

I'm actually not going to ask much more than that. I think that everyone in this thread actually agrees about most of this; we're just looking at it from different directions.

[Tehnar]

A few posters stated it, but I'm curious, why do you think 5e is selling well?

[Fishybugs]

A few posters stated it, but I'm curious, why do you think 5e is selling well?

Well, WotC doesn't release sales numbers, so my information is purely anecdotal. I do game with a few people who work there and they have said that sales of 5e materials have been better than they hoped for. That's a good sign for the release of more material, in my opinion.

[Easy_Lee]

So, here's a question for you EL: what, "more," do you wish or expect these games to be?

When I first read your line about how you didn't want to sit in a room playing pretend with a bunch of other adults, my first reaction was to wonder why you were playing D&D in the first place as opposed to, say, a well-tuned video game or board game where each participant's options are clearly laid out in their entirety. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but the core of your philosophy does seem to be to make games more procedural rather than relying so much on moment-to-moment creativity. Is that fair to say?

The rules to any game should be procedural, so that people playing that game can spend their time actually playing it, and not arguing over the rules. Even if nobody argues, they all think it. There's that little tic in the player's head where he thinks, "huh, it never occurred to me to even think to interpret the rule that way. Wait, then how come..."

Do you think tabletop games are any different? Just because the rules are necessarily incomplete doesn't mean it's a bad thing to clearly cover most things. In fact, that's exactly what 3.5e did. The failings of 3.5e were not related to rules clarity.

But look at 5e. We have reach vs within 5' on melee abilities, opportunity attacks vs reaction attacks and these being two different things, a wide variety of reaction timings which aren't clearly stated, and poorly defined or missing rules regarding many spells. Skills are the biggest offender, as the player has no idea how hard any skill check is going to be until the DM tells him (or doesn't).

Take a look again at the RAW thread and sage advice. Note the many contradictions and unintuitive rulings, some of which require scouring the DMG and clearly remembering whether the ability said 5' or reach, whether it said opportunity attack or reaction attack. These are problems. And that's just the rulings which actually are stated somewhere.

It would be quite easy to fix these things. It wouldn't really change the game. WotC never did. The least they could do is release a consolidated list of rulings and require all AL games to use those rulings. That, at least, would establish a baseline for this edition.

[Cybren]

It would be quite easy to fix these things. It wouldn't really change the game. WotC never did. The least they could do is release a consolidated list of rulings and require all AL games to use those rulings. That, at least, would establish a baseline for this edition.

That would be the opposite of easy. They did that in 4E, and decided it was not a good system. Having updates released regularly like that would not even help your issue, as players with low engagement that only have a first printing of the PHB would suddenly find their AL table is playing "D&D 5.n", and the problem is even worse for non AL games, where you will never know which "patch iteration" any given table is using. The things that were misprints or unclear are fixed in errata and the things that need to be rebalanced or rewritten entirely will be fixed in edition updates. They've explicitly stated this as their operating procedure.

[Hrugner]

I think this is a bigger issue for new or sloppy DMs who would like to run a rules consistent game and have more guidance but find that guidance isn't provided in the rules. Player versus DM games never go well regardless of the system and I'd be surprised if the most hostile DMs I've ever had didn't love 5e. 5e is a great game if it doesn't matter what game you're using, but it doesn't really bring anything exciting with it, and it would be pretty awful to run a game in as a new DM.

If the rules are going to be this light, there should at least be a mechanic for a player to determine how difficult something is before attempting it. A free investigation check to determine DC and time taken. DC 5:familiar action DC 10:new way of doing a familiar action DC 15: completely new action.

[ad_hoc]

Maybe the game isn't for you. That's okay.

I don't think I have disagreed with Sage Rulings yet. They have all been the way I originally interpreted the rules.

Contagion, for example, has always been clear to me.

I don't think this is because I'm smarter than other people. I think it is because the design philosophy is in line with what I want out of a game.

5e is almost perfect for me. Conversely, I was never interested in 4e. I didn't like anything about it. That doesn't mean that the people who made it and the people who like it should feel bad or that it is a terrible game. It was unfortunate that I didn't enjoy the latest edition of D&D at the time, but there are other things in life so I did those other things.

[Easy_Lee]

That would be the opposite of easy. They did that in 4E, and decided it was not a good system. Having updates released regularly like that would not even help your issue, as players with low engagement that only have a first printing of the PHB would suddenly find their AL table is playing "D&D 5.n", and the problem is even worse for non AL games, where you will never know which "patch iteration" any given table is using. The things that were misprints or unclear are fixed in errata and the things that need to be rebalanced or rewritten entirely will be fixed in edition updates. They've explicitly stated this as their operating procedure.

I meant for them to do it before they released the edition. I don't believe in changing printed text after release. You take the time to get it right the first time.

I'm an author, and there's a common writing problem, which authors learn to recognize, called an "indefinite reference." Carl took his son to Home Depot to pick out a paint color for his room. Who's room? It's unclear. And 5e is full of this sort of writing. Where rules aren't missing, they are instead unclear, leading to our RAW thread. But far more rules are missing, such as DCs for standard actions.

It all points to one thing: the writers of 5e used the design goals to justify laziness. They left all of the power in the DM's hands not because it was right, but because it was easy. The product they're selling this time around is less of a game and more of a basis upon which to base one. Except one then has to make his own rulings on the base rules as well, since so many of the rules are unclear.

It's frustrating and unnecessary. We shouldn't need Sage Advice. We shouldn't need a RAW thread. The rules should be clear, and there should be tables for common checks like there used to be. These things would not have hurt 5e at all.

[Giant2005]

That "Rule of Unclear Agency" is entirely subjective, based purely on how trustworthy your DM is.
If you trust your DM, then player agency isn't reduced, it is increased. You can state an action and know quite well that the human element will consider all of the variables and give you a realistic chance.
If the books govern the rules to such an extent that the human factor has no relevance, then you have no more agency than you do in other mediums (like crpgs) that do not contain the human element and crgs are notorious for being inflexible when it comes to player agency.

[Cybren]

It all points to one thing: the writers of 5e used the design goals to justify laziness. They left all of the power in the DM's hands not because it was right, but because it was easy. The product they're selling this time around is less of a game and more of a basis upon which to base other rules. Except one then has to make his own rulings in addition, since so many of the rules are unclear.

It's frustrating and unnecessary. We shouldn't need Sage advice. We shouldn't need a RAW thread. The rules should be clear, and there should be tables for common checks like there used to be. These things would not have hurt 5e at all.

You are returning to an incorrect thesis. "practical acknowledgement as to the limit of human labor" is not "laziness"

[jas61292]

If not already, WotC should employ you. This idea is excellent.

Agreed. I have never done AL, but I would for that.

[Easy_Lee]

That "Rule of Unclear Agency" is entirely subjective, based purely on how trustworthy your DM is.
If you trust your DM, then player agency isn't reduced, it is increased. You can state an action and know quite well that the human element will consider all of the variables and give you a realistic chance.
If the books govern the rules to such an extent that the human factor has no relevance, then you have no more agency than you do in other mediums (like crpgs) that do not contain the human element and crgs are notorious for being inflexible when it comes to player agency.

That's where the word "unclear" comes from. It's unclear whether the player has agency or not until he sits down at the DM's table. He can take nothing for granted, as 5e encourages rulings on everything. Even worse, this leads to DMs feeling "empowered" to change rules they don't agree with or add ones they think should be there. And many do all of this on the fly and without notifying the player due to the simplistic nature of 5e.

Could DMs do this in the past? Yes. But few did compared to now.


You are returning to an incorrect thesis. "practical acknowledgement as to the limit of human labor" is not "laziness"

I don't know what source you're using for the "limit of human labor", but dotting your I's and crossing your T's doesn't take much effort. Importing already-written tables and adjusting their numbers doesn't take long, either, even if these things are merely used as guidelines.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

1. Something being unclear or up for interpretation is a hole in the rules, period. Holes in the rules, at least initially, create ambiguity, and ambiguity reduces agency. This is certainly true, and if pressed I doubt any game designer would fight the point (in fact, fighting it by flat out calling it wrong without much in the way of explanation is the only "rude" thing I've seen in the thread.)

Where EL seems to go too far is to suggest (if not directly state as such) that this is clearly bad in all cases. All this establishes is that there is a cost of having a hole in the rules. But there is also a cost to filling the hole in the rules, and that is all the drawbacks of a crunchy system - bloat, power creep (overstated in 3.5 but still), and the general slog of crunchiness. To this end, we have countless systems, all trading off the benefits of speed/ease/focus on the narrative with consistency/reliability/direct player agency and options. Where the balance is drawn will depend on individual preference, but the best RPGs lie along a Pareto Frontier (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency#Pareto_frontier) of sorts.

2. Most rules-lite systems, when allowing for lots of GM interpretation on conflict resolution, explicitly give players more say in the overall narrative. They do this for very good reason. One, the focus of these games is generally on constructing a narrative anyway, and you want everyone involved. But in addition to that, these designers recognize that narrative control compensates for a loss of player agency due to ambiguity. They acknowledge the trade-off and make their games better for it.

3. Following from point 2, this edition is a pain in the ass to GM relative to 3e or 4e or any of the lighter systems bandied about in this thread, because each of those systems (even 3e!) was more cognizant of their respective limitations and worked around it.

[Cybren]

2. Most rules-lite systems, when allowing for lots of GM interpretation on conflict resolution, explicitly give players more say in the overall narrative. They do this for very good reason. One, the focus of these games is generally on constructing a narrative anyway, and you want everyone involved. But in addition to that, these designers recognize that narrative control compensates for a loss of player agency due to ambiguity. They acknowledge the trade-off and make their games better for it.

3. Following from point 2, this edition is a pain in the ass to GM relative to 3e or 4e or any of the lighter systems bandied about in this thread, because each of those systems (even 3e!) was more cognizant of their respective limitations and worked around it.

I'd hardly call GURPS a rules lite system, but I'd say that it empowers the GM as much as any other system does and can, and used it as one of my examples multiple times.

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

I'd hardly call GURPS a rules lite system, but I'd say that it empowers the GM as much as any other system does and can, and used it as one of my examples multiple times.GURPS is the one crunchy system you mentioned, sure, but it's also not that good. A system with that much crunch shouldn't have to construct an apologia for the holes it has; the only reason GURPS does is because it's trying to cover so much ground.

[Fishybugs]

I enjoy the rules-lite version. As does every single player I have played 5e with. I left the game when 4th edition came out; there was very little there that interested me. After a few year hiatus, I wanted to jump back in to Pathfinder or 3.5. It had become way too complex. If anything, the rule complexity was what kept me from getting back in to it. Too many rules and too many tasks to perform which took away from the gaming experience.

5e is finally the version you can actually do the R and the P in RPG. It's not just a game now, it's an experience. Don't stress the details of a DC15 vs DC17...tell a story with your friends and have fun doing it. 5e is everything I've wanted D&D to be since I started playing.

[Cybren]

GURPS is the one crunchy system you mentioned, sure, but it's also not that good. A system with that much crunch shouldn't have to construct an apologia for the holes it has; the only reason GURPS does is because it's trying to cover so much ground.
Given that "not that good" is a meaningless subjective assessment given without context, I'm not sure what your point is.


I enjoy the rules-lite version. As does every single player I have played 5e with. I left the game when 4th edition came out; there was very little there that interested me. After a few year hiatus, I wanted to jump back in to Pathfinder or 3.5. It had become way too complex. If anything, the rule complexity was what kept me from getting back in to it. Too many rules and too many tasks to perform which took away from the gaming experience.

5e is finally the version you can actually do the R and the P in RPG. It's not just a game now, it's an experience. Don't stress the details of a DC15 vs DC17...tell a story with your friends and have fun doing it. 5e is everything I've wanted D&D to be since I started playing.


My conjecture is that a lot of D&D players agree with you and was the intention behind many of the design decisions of 5E. (Well, aside from the line of "R and the P", because that opens several cans of worms with regards to what is/how to roleplay)

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Given that "not that good" is a meaningless subjective assessment given without context, I'm not sure what your point is.Hey, I'm just following your tangent; my original point had nothing to do with GURPS.

[Cybren]

Hey, I'm just following your tangent; my original point had nothing to do with GURPS.

Well, it offered the idea that being vague and open to interpenetration required an explicit method of player input in that, but really the only example I gave that did was FATE with the fate point economy. 5E isn't without any of the mechanics that Dungeonworld uses, for example, for allowing players to influence and dictate the game world. Dungeonworld calls them moves, and tells players "you can do this", and 5E does the same thing, it's just as it happens, that those abilities (like the rangers favored terrain), are generally maligned because they aren't combat related.

[LaserFace]

I enjoy the rules-lite version. As does every single player I have played 5e with. I left the game when 4th edition came out; there was very little there that interested me. After a few year hiatus, I wanted to jump back in to Pathfinder or 3.5. It had become way too complex. If anything, the rule complexity was what kept me from getting back in to it. Too many rules and too many tasks to perform which took away from the gaming experience.

5e is finally the version you can actually do the R and the P in RPG. It's not just a game now, it's an experience. Don't stress the details of a DC15 vs DC17...tell a story with your friends and have fun doing it. 5e is everything I've wanted D&D to be since I started playing.

That's all well and good, but apparently we shouldn't tolerate an edition that enables a DM somewhere to lure unsuspecting adventurers to a realm of constantly-shifting criteria of player action, with zero interest in Joy, Fun or Happiness. Damn you Mike Mearls, stop being lazy and go build a system that nobody can screw up!

[GoodbyeSoberDay]

Well, it offered the idea that being vague and open to interpenetration required an explicit method of player input in that, but really the only example I gave that did was FATE with the fate point economy. 5E isn't without any of the mechanics that Dungeonworld uses, for example, for allowing players to influence and dictate the game world. Dungeonworld calls them moves, and tells players "you can do this", and 5E does the same thing, it's just as it happens, that those abilities (like the rangers favored terrain), are generally maligned because they aren't combat related.Oh, there's no requirement. My point was that it was good for lighter systems to grant players more narrative control, not that all systems with ambiguity do this. Apocalypse World's central mechanic gives a lot more control than you're giving it credit; partial successes especially let the players choose how the story moves forward. And of course you mentioned Dogs, which (for instance) gives PCs the power to end a violent conflict peacefully, guaranteed, so long as they're willing to accept the cost. The good systems, or at least good in this respect, tend to give more control over to the players than... being better at a particular type of overland travel.

[MaxWilson]

If the rules are going to be this light, there should at least be a mechanic for a player to determine how difficult something is before attempting it. A free investigation check to determine DC and time taken. DC 5:familiar action DC 10:new way of doing a familiar action DC 15: completely new action.

It's called "your DM is supposed to tell you."

Player: I want to jump from this tree and land on that spinosaur's back so I can capture it and make it mine!
Bad DM: roll an Acrobatics check.
Player: 4
Bad DM: you fall out of the tree and land right on a spine. Take 4d4 points of damage.
Player: Ouch. But I can ride him now, right?
Bad DM: make an Animal Handling check.
Player: natural 20! 27 total
Bad DM: you realize that spinosaurs are untameable beasts. Okay, next player's turn.

Player: I want to jump from this tree and land on that spinosaur's back so I can capture it and make it mine!
Better DM: It's unlikely that you'll be able to tame it, but there exists a possibility you might be able to steer it in the direction you want to go for a few seconds. Landing on its back will require a successful DC 13 Acrobatics check; if you fail you'll take some falling damage. Either way you'll get to make your Animal Handling check this turn; I'm not going to tell you the difficulty on that but if you succeed you get to control its movement for a while. Do you want to try it?

I'm not sure what a truly good DM would do because I'm probably not one, but at least I'm pretty sure this is the road to good DMing. :)

[Easy_Lee]

That's all well and good, but apparently we shouldn't tolerate an edition that enables a DM somewhere to lure unsuspecting adventurers to a realm of constantly-shifting criteria of player action, with zero interest in Joy, Fun or Happiness. Damn you Mike Mearls, stop being lazy and go build a system that nobody can screw up!

And the straw man arises. Need I remind you that Tomb of Horrors not only is a thing, and was invented in a previous generation with more rules, but has been successfully ported to every edition of D&D? I haven't seen the 5e port, yet, but I'm sure it's out there.

My point: as I said before, the DM can do anything. The DM has infinite agency. I can't tolerate DMs for whom that is not enough. Who not only have to keep their players guessing as to what will happen next, but can't even tell the players how the rules work.

5e empowers DMs to tell their players nothing. Leave them in the dark until the ruling comes up. Don't look at the rules, just make a ruling based on what feels right. You end up with lots of rulings, and not a lot of rules.

What that means is that A leads to B in one game, but leads to C in another and D in yet another. In some games, individual rules are in a quantum state (Schrodinger's Rule) depending on who they affect. That's pretty damn difficult for players to deal with. And unlike in previous editions, where players could clearly point to the relevant rule, players have no such defense in 5e. There is no official set of rules, just a semi-official, inconsistent and incomplete set of rulings. And that's frustrating for many. Players can do naught but feel cheated, and the fickle and power-hungry DM is encouraged to keep cheating them.

[Cybren]

And the straw man arises. Need I remind you that Tomb of Horrors not only is a thing, and was invented in a previous generation with more rules, but has been successfully ported to every edition of D&D? I haven't seen the 5e port, yet, but I'm sure it's out there.

My point: as I said before, the DM can do anything. The DM has infinite agency. I can't tolerate DMs for whom that is not enough. Who not only have to keep their players guessing as to what will happen next, but can't even tell the players how the rules work.

5e empowers DMs to tell their players nothing. Leave them in the dark until the ruling comes up. Don't look at the rules, just make a ruling based on what feels right. You end up with lots of rulings, and not a lot of rules.

What that means is that A leads to B in one game, but leads to C in another and D in yet another. In some games, individual rules are in a quantum state (Schrodinger's Rule) depending on who they affect. That's pretty damn difficult for players to deal with. And unlike in previous editions, where players could clearly point to the relevant rule, players have no such defense in 5e. There is no official set of rules, just a semi-official, inconsistent and incomplete set of rulings. And that's frustrating for many. Players can do naught but feel cheated, and the fickle and power-hungry DM is encouraged to keep cheating them.
This entire thread has been you attacking a large "bad DM" made of straw, so it's slightly galling to see you say someone else was using that fallacy.

[Easy_Lee]

This entire thread has been you attacking a large "bad DM" made of straw, so it's slightly galling to see you say someone else was using that fallacy.

Every point I've made in this thread has been made before, both by me and by many others. However, perhaps you would like to read the thread which inspired my post. You won't have to go far.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?494308-My-DM-cheats-(venting)

[jas61292]

It's called "your DM is supposed to tell you."

Player: I want to jump from this tree and land on that spinosaur's back so I can capture it and make it mine!
Bad DM: roll an Acrobatics check.
Player: 4
Bad DM: you fall out of the tree and land right on a spine. Take 4d4 points of damage.
Player: Ouch. But I can ride him now, right?
Bad DM: make an Animal Handling check.
Player: natural 20! 27 total
Bad DM: you realize that spinosaurs are untameable beasts. Okay, next player's turn.

Player: I want to jump from this tree and land on that spinosaur's back so I can capture it and make it mine!
Better DM: It's unlikely that you'll be able to tame it, but there exists a possibility you might be able to steer it in the direction you want to go for a few seconds. Landing on its back will require a successful DC 13 Acrobatics check; if you fail you'll take some falling damage. Either way you'll get to make your Animal Handling check this turn; I'm not going to tell you the difficulty on that but if you succeed you get to control its movement for a while. Do you want to try it?

I'm not sure what a truly good DM would do because I'm probably not one, but at least I'm pretty sure this is the road to good DMing. :)

And herein lies the problem. Show this to a bunch of people and you will get different answers as to whether or not they are a good DM.

Take your second example: some will say that is a good DM for letting the players know what they can and cannot do. Others, such as myself, will say that the DM is not great, but not bad, as while giving the player a sense of what they feel might happen is good, stating exact DCs in any situation is bad, because it not only is handing out metagame knowledge, but also encourages players playing the odds, rather than the character. Other people might think something completely different. The fact is, that what makes a good DM depends on the expectations of his players.

[Cybren]

A thread about a crummy DM does not serve as an indictment of 5th edition, or of DM adjudication.

I mean, you make comments about how DM's can use different rules for DMPC's over PC's, but just having a DMPC at all is already a sign of a bad DM.


And herein lies the problem. Show this to a bunch of people and you will get different answers as to whether or not they are a good DM.

Take your second example: some will say that is a good DM for letting the players know what they can and cannot do. Others, such as myself, will say that the DM is not great, but not bad, as while giving the player a sense of what they feel might happen is good, stating exact DCs in any situation is bad, because it not only is handing out metagame knowledge, but also encourages players playing the odds, rather than the character. Other people might think something completely different. The fact is, that what makes a good DM depends on the expectations of his players.

Whether players should or should not have metagame knowledge is a style question. I tend to favor giving the players more information, and letting them roleplay how they would.

[LaserFace]

And the straw man arises. Need I remind you that Tomb of Horrors not only is a thing, and was invented in a previous generation with more rules, but has been successfully ported to every edition of D&D? I haven't seen the 5e port, yet, but I'm sure it's out there.

My point: as I said before, the DM can do anything. The DM has infinite agency. I can't tolerate DMs for whom that is not enough. Who not only have to keep their players guessing as to what will happen next, but can't even tell the players how the rules work.

5e empowers DMs to tell their players nothing. Leave them in the dark until the ruling comes up. Don't look at the rules, just make a ruling based on what feels right. You end up with lots of rulings, and not a lot of rules.

What that means is that A leads to B in one game, but leads to C in another and D in yet another. In some games, individual rules are in a quantum state (Schrodinger's Rule) depending on who they affect. That's pretty damn difficult for players to deal with. And unlike in previous editions, where players could clearly point to the relevant rule, players have no such defense in 5e. There is no official set of rules, just a semi-official, inconsistent and incomplete set of rulings. And that's frustrating for many. Players can do naught but feel cheated, and the fickle and power-hungry DM is encouraged to keep cheating them.

I tried to fashion a thorough argument, piecing together my reasoning stepwise so that anyone could have the opportunity to point out problems with anything I said. You didn't agree or disagree with it. Excuse me for trying to get your attention another way.

If my writing is that indigestible, here's another attempt: 5E absolutely has rules and it says you should know the rules. Literally every problem you have is with people who don't read the DMG and play outside the spirit of the rules.

If players don't understand the tone of the adventure, if they don't understand potential consequences of actions, if they are left completely in the dark, it's because their DM isn't doing their job. Your problem is that the edition is made for humans and there are too many emotionless evil robots wearing people-skin who think they're providing a D&D experience, but are just incompetent or *******s or both. I get it, you want to protect us all from bad DMs by having the Ultimate Player Edition, but not everyone has to acknowledge that your problems are actually widespread; really I think you live in bizarro-land and what you're describing is one of the biggest non-issues of 5E.

[Safety Sword]

And the straw man arises. Need I remind you that Tomb of Horrors not only is a thing, and was invented in a previous generation with more rules, but has been successfully ported to every edition of D&D? I haven't seen the 5e port, yet, but I'm sure it's out there.

My point: as I said before, the DM can do anything. The DM has infinite agency. I can't tolerate DMs for whom that is not enough. Who not only have to keep their players guessing as to what will happen next, but can't even tell the players how the rules work.

5e empowers DMs to tell their players nothing. Leave them in the dark until the ruling comes up. Don't look at the rules, just make a ruling based on what feels right. You end up with lots of rulings, and not a lot of rules.

What that means is that A leads to B in one game, but leads to C in another and D in yet another. In some games, individual rules are in a quantum state (Schrodinger's Rule) depending on who they affect. That's pretty damn difficult for players to deal with. And unlike in previous editions, where players could clearly point to the relevant rule, players have no such defense in 5e. There is no official set of rules, just a semi-official, inconsistent and incomplete set of rulings. And that's frustrating for many. Players can do naught but feel cheated, and the fickle and power-hungry DM is encouraged to keep cheating them.

I've been running two campaigns with the rules in the Player's Handbook and haven't had one instance of anyone thinking that there are rules for the DM and players separately. If your DM can't tell you how the rules work in their own game that's a problem with your DM. If you're unsure, ask?

It seems you're trying to give people "agency" to argue with the DM. That's the worst kind of arguing. It grinds games to a halt and empowers rules lawyers and people who like to read individual words in abilities without context.

The philosophy of 5E is not giving DMs the freedom to make rulings and keep the game moving (we've always had that), it's just pointing out that that's actually OK. The DM is there as the arbiter of the rules, the final say on what happens and how things work in their own games. The reason permission had to be given is that many 3.5 tables ground to a halt because so many rules from so many sources made it very easy for people to make mistakes or make overly language critical decisions about how they think things work. The game ended up being a study in language analysis to build a character and that is boring for people who want to get together and throw dice for fun.

If someone else's game doesn't work the way mine does, why do I give two hoots? My players know how things work because we talk about the game and we make sure everyone understands things the way the DM does. I have had my mind changed on how things work on occasion. It's a game based on communication and every DM of every game presumably can communicate with their players and work out a solution to any rules issue.

[Easy_Lee]

Players ought to know the DCs for most actions ahead of time. In real life, I can tell from looking at a gap how hard it will be to jump, or looking at a wall whether I think I can climb it or not. In the absence of a ready DC, players don't have the same level of information that they usually would in real life.

That doesn't mean they should have all of the DCs. But having published DCs to use as guidelines for the common stuff, like climbing ropes or kicking in doors, is absolutely reasonable.

And while we're on the topic of DCs, the reason why published guidelines are good is because individual people have different capabilities and expectations. As mean as I'm about to sound, I once played in a game with an overweight female DM. In that game, basic stuff like climbing rope, not slipping on ice, and swimming took herculean effort and high rolls. In that case, I wasn't too bothered because it was consistent, and I think she was having a laugh. But AL DMs pull this kind of thing more often than not just to "challenge" the players.

Call me crazy, but I don't want to feel like I'm going to need magic loaded dice to win. I'd much rather that my actions, planning, and foresight actually matter. I want to know what the rules are so that I can make the best choice in a given situation. I want the game to be consistent. And if I'm screwing up something that should be trivial, it had better be because I rolled a 1. That's the way I run games, and that's the way I play.

[Pex]

And the straw man arises. Need I remind you that Tomb of Horrors not only is a thing, and was invented in a previous generation with more rules, but has been successfully ported to every edition of D&D? I haven't seen the 5e port, yet, but I'm sure it's out there.

My point: as I said before, the DM can do anything. The DM has infinite agency. I can't tolerate DMs for whom that is not enough. Who not only have to keep their players guessing as to what will happen next, but can't even tell the players how the rules work.

5e empowers DMs to tell their players nothing. Leave them in the dark until the ruling comes up. Don't look at the rules, just make a ruling based on what feels right. You end up with lots of rulings, and not a lot of rules.

What that means is that A leads to B in one game, but leads to C in another and D in yet another. In some games, individual rules are in a quantum state (Schrodinger's Rule) depending on who they affect. That's pretty damn difficult for players to deal with. And unlike in previous editions, where players could clearly point to the relevant rule, players have no such defense in 5e. There is no official set of rules, just a semi-official, inconsistent and incomplete set of rulings. And that's frustrating for many. Players can do naught but feel cheated, and the fickle and power-hungry DM is encouraged to keep cheating them.

You mean I have to relearn how to play the game each time I play with a different DM? That sounds familiar. Where have I heard that before? :smallsmile:

[Safety Sword]

Call me crazy, but I don't want to feel like I'm going to need magic loaded dice to win. I'd much rather that my actions, planning, and foresight actually matter. I want to know what the rules are so that I can make the best choice in a given situation. I want the game to be consistent. And if I'm screwing up something that should be trivial, it had better be because I rolled a 1. That's the way I run games, and that's the way I play.

You're crazy.

You're also trying to "win" D&D. I run games for fun. I enjoy describing the scene and the actions and putting my players in their character's shoes and letting that guide the choices.

If you say to your players "It looks like a difficult climb because of all of the ice", that should be enough for most people who are playing the game for fun. Roll the die, beat the DC I have in mind. I don't necessarily want to do a statistical analysis to calculate my chance to climb the icy cliff face.

And if your DM is making you roll for trivial tasks, again, it's a DM problem, not a rules problem.


You mean I have to relearn how to play the game each time I play with a different DM? That sounds familiar. Where have I heard that before? :smallsmile:

Your character plays in the DMs world. The DM provides the campaign. The DM can modify the rules, I think we all acknowledge the concept of house rules. As long as you're aware of any significant change before you make a character it's a non-issue.

If you have a difference of opinion on how a rule works, talk it out away from the gaming table. Just get on with the game and have some fun now and do your language and statistical analysis between sessions.

[jas61292]

Players ought to know the DCs for most actions ahead of time. In real life, I can tell from looking at a gap how hard it will be to jump, or looking at a wall whether I think I can climb it or not. In the absence of a ready DC, players don't have the same level of information that they usually would in real life.

No. Absolutely not. Ok, sure, maybe you like it that way, but I completely disagree that players should know DCs. Heck, I think they should almost never know any DCs. I have no problem telling someone whether a task appears easy or difficult or somewhere in between, but I will never give a number. As you say, a person might know how difficult something is, but its always just going to be a gut feeling. You will never, ever look at a cliff and think "I think I have a 65% chance of climbing this cliff." So no, DCs are not the same level of info a person would have in real life. It is far more.


Call me crazy, but I don't want to feel like I'm going to need magic loaded dice to win. I'd much rather that my actions, planning, and foresight actually matter. I want to know what the rules are so that I can make the best choice in a given situation. I want the game to be consistent. And if I'm screwing up something that should be trivial, it had better be because I rolled a 1. That's the way I run games, and that's the way I play.

As was said by someone else, this sounds like you are trying to win D&D, not play it. You should be analyzing the situation as your character would analyze the situation. Not weighing odds and figuring out ideal scenarios. Yes, the character should have information to go on, but it should be the same information a person in the real world would have: description and feeling.
And to note a personal pet peeve of mine, if something is trivial, you shouldn't be rolling in the first place. Making people roll when a task is trivial and then having them fail on a 1 is dumb. I don't mind fumbles, but if a task is trivial, rolling at all is just wasting my time.

[LaserFace]

Players ought to know the DCs for most actions ahead of time. In real life, I can tell from looking at a gap how hard it will be to jump, or looking at a wall whether I think I can climb it or not. In the absence of a ready DC, players don't have the same level of information that they usually would in real life.

That doesn't mean they should have all of the DCs. But having published DCs to use as guidelines for the common stuff, like climbing ropes or kicking in doors, is absolutely reasonable.

And while we're on the topic of DCs, the reason why published guidelines are good is because individual people have different capabilities and expectations. As mean as I'm about to sound, I once played in a game with an overweight female DM. In that game, basic stuff like climbing rope, not slipping on ice, and swimming took herculean effort and high rolls. In that case, I wasn't too bothered because it was consistent, and I think she was having a laugh. But AL DMs pull this kind of thing more often than not just to "challenge" the players.

Call me crazy, but I don't want to feel like I'm going to need magic loaded dice to win. I'd much rather that my actions, planning, and foresight actually matter. I want to know what the rules are so that I can make the best choice in a given situation. I want the game to be consistent. And if I'm screwing up something that should be trivial, it had better be because I rolled a 1. That's the way I run games, and that's the way I play.

Nothing that you want really strikes me as crazy. I don't agree with some things from the perspective of how the game was apparently designed, but to want a stronger idea of task difficulty isn't really the disagreement I'm foremost trying to illustrate, because I think you can design a game where that's perfectly reasonable and even strongly desired. I personally don't give out actual numbered DCs, but I do describe relative difficulty through adjectives.

What I'm asking is if AL is so bad because it draws uncultured swine for DMs, does that mean the system is flawed for homegrown parties, composed of friends who read the rulebooks, with a DM who earnestly wants to provide entertainment, through playing the game as intended? I think 5E works great for plenty of people who are not at the mercy of some disgruntled nerd, who couldn't keep his own group together, and now hunts poor folks without a regular party at AL. A quasi-DM who has strong ideas of what D&D is, but never really read any of the rulebooks, doesn't care about player enjoyment, doesn't care about the spirit of the rules, and just pisses everyone off through railroading and self-insertion DMPCs.

The game doesn't have to include these people in its design consideration. It may have been an oversight to assume they are not as prevalent as they could be (although I don't think it's that common), but why must the game be designed in a way to protect you from someone who should, by all rights, be on your side from the beginning?

Maybe the AL is more of a bad idea with 5E than with other editions, because you're less able to strongarm a bad DM with a smackdown righteous rules-lawyering. But, I still think you lose regardless of what edition you're playing, because you're still playing with a bad DM. If you want to talk more about the culture of AL, I think that merits way more discussion than how the edition fails to provide under all circumstances.

[Easy_Lee]

No. Absolutely not. Ok, sure, maybe you like it that way, but I completely disagree that players should know DCs. Heck, I think they should almost never know any DCs. I have no problem telling someone whether a task appears easy or difficult or somewhere in between, but I will never give a number. As you say, a person might know how difficult something is, but its always just going to be a gut feeling. You will never, ever look at a cliff and think "I think I have a 65% chance of climbing this cliff." So no, DCs are not the same level of info a person would have in real life. It is far more.

As was said by someone else, this sounds like you are trying to win D&D, not play it. You should be analyzing the situation as your character would analyze the situation. Not weighing odds and figuring out ideal scenarios. Yes, the character should have information to go on, but it should be the same information a person in the real world would have: description and feeling.
And to note a personal pet peeve of mine, if something is trivial, you shouldn't be rolling in the first place. Making people roll when a task is trivial and then having them fail on a 1 is dumb. I don't mind fumbles, but if a task is trivial, rolling at all is just wasting my time.

What is this mentality? What is this "intelligent play = metagaming" mentality that I see from so many D&D players?

Analyzing the situation as your character would? What in the hell does that mean? Why does knowing the DC automatically mean that I'm "weighing odds?" Why does figuring out ideal scenarios mean that I'm not thinking the way my character would? I figure out ideal scenarios in real life all the time. Before I do anything risky, like jumping off a ledge into water or listening to Justin Bieber, I analyze the risk ahead of time and weight the odds. In real life! So why is it suddenly a problem to do so in games? I never take issue when my players do these things, I just give them incentive to move along if they take more than a minute to discuss things.

And how does the DM know how my character feels? What looks difficult to one person might look easy to another, depending on capabilities. The easiest way to represent that is with DCs. Even if you represent things as easy, moderate, hard, etc., there are DCs for those things, too. Those are some of the only stated DCs we have in all of 5e!

Players can't rely on DM descriptions to guess how hard something will be. And they aren't there to see through their character's eyes. DCs, or words like easy, moderate, and hard (which have DCs attached to them in the book), are the only reasonable way to represent a task's difficulty. DCs should be hidden when the player has no idea how difficult something is going to be, such as an Arcana check to read an ancient rune or a Nature check to identify an unknown poison. But if it's a ledge, an athletic individual knows damn well how difficult it is to climb and whether or not they're likely to manage it. And if it's a door, any adventurer will know about how hard it is to kick that sucker in.


What I'm asking is if AL is so bad because it draws uncultured swine for DMs, does that mean the system is flawed for homegrown parties, composed of friends who read the rulebooks, with a DM who earnestly wants to provide entertainment, through playing the game as intended?

Any system can be fun with a group of friends / mature players. Most systems work well under ideal conditions. Like with software, the way to properly test a game system is to put it through the worst possible situations. Find the worst players, and see how they handle it.

I had fewer issues with random PUGs in previous editions than I do now. At least in the past, people could look up the rules and know, generally, how a given situation would resolve.

My argument is against this "rulings, not rules" concept of 5e. Without stable rules, the players have no consistent options to take and must rely on the DM to be fair. Even with the most unfair of DMs, I could find ways to have fun in 3.5e. That edition gave the player total control over their own abilities. But when I watch AL players take action after action, only to have it be shut down by the DM who claims it doesn't work because reasons...that's not a good thing. And it's only made possible by the "rulings, not rules" system, which invalidates player opinion. It prevents players from calling foul because the DM, who used to hold most of the cards, now holds all of them.

[Cybren]

What is this mentality? What is this "intelligent play = metagaming" mentality that I see from so many D&D players?

Analyzing the situation as your character would? What in the hell does that mean? Why does knowing the DC automatically mean that I'm "weighing odds?" Why does figuring out ideal scenarios mean that I'm not thinking the way my character would? I figure out ideal scenarios in real life all the time. Before I do anything risky, like jumping off a ledge into water or listening to Justin Bieber, I analyze the risk ahead of time and weight the odds. In real life! So why is it suddenly a problem to do so in games? I never take issue when my players do these things, I just give them incentive to move along if they take more than a minute to discuss things.


Because people, which characters ideally are, don't evaluate every decision they make from an objective framework of making THE MOST INTELLIGENT decision. They have motivations and compulsive behaviors and preferences and tastes and likes and dislikes and nostalgia and fears and all sorts of complex emotions and feelings that guide their decision making. "I'm not jumping the Gorge of Death, not after what happened at Deadmans Gulch", Bob the Fighter/Rogue says, despite having expertise in athletics and 20 strength, and knowing full well they have a very very very good chance of making the jump.

Playing your character smart in a tactical sense is fun, but only doing that is boring.

[Easy_Lee]

Because people, which characters ideally are, don't evaluate every decision they make from an objective framework of making THE MOST INTELLIGENT decision. They have motivations and compulsive behaviors and preferences and tastes and likes and dislikes and nostalgia and fears and all sorts of complex emotions and feelings that guide their decision making. "I'm not jumping the Gorge of Death, not after what happened at Deadmans Gulch", Bob the Fighter/Rogue says, despite having expertise in athletics and 20 strength, and knowing full well they have a very very very good chance of making the jump.

Playing your character smart in a tactical sense is fun, but only doing that is boring.

Kind of getting off topic, but...

People certainly evaluate their decisions when those decisions are important. "I need to get across that gap," says Bob, "so I'm going to make sure I don't screw it up." The only time when it's unreasonable for players to do that is when they do it in the middle of combat. There's a simple way around that: give players a short time limit to declare combat actions.

Edit: and for the record, I'm one of those weird people who does deliberate over every decision. Perhaps you would find me boring.

[Gastronomie]

As a DM, I don't care about what's written in the Player's Handbook or in the DMG. I will judge based on my ideas and my players' personal needs. Not to make the enemies stronger, but to make the players have more fun.

For instance, the idea presented in the PH that having a friend in front of you counts as blocking the path for ranged attacks is stupid, because the friend is actually in a 5x5-foot square, and unless he's really fat, he isn't gonna block the entire path. The archer behind can easily shoot from the sides.
In cases such as this, as a DM, I will ignore even written rules and rule as I want.
(I will, however, be consistent with this ruling, and apply it to both the party archer and the enemy archer.)

So, my idea is that, the rulebooks should not delve too far into rulings.

Having too many rules set in the original book can lead to saucy players objecting to the DM's judgements. It also hinders imaginitive gameplay and lessens the fun, when something becomes impossible to do because of a badly designed rule (or even if a rule was designed fun, it may turn out to become boring in certain special situations).

It's part of the DM's job to entertain the players through creating rulings on ths spot that will make most sense for them and increase the fun. If a DM fails at this, that's a DM problem, not a rule problem.

It is inevitable that having vague rules increases the chances of a bad DM giving himself as a bad DM, but it's not like someone who's a great DM in 3.5e suddenly becomes awful in 5e. Regardless of the editions, stupid people are stupid, bad DMs are bad, and it's just that 5e has a system that makes it more clear to the players that their DM (who was terrible from the start) is a really terrible one.

I believe that it is part of table-talk manners for a player to ask the DM beforehand about vague rulings, while doing character creation. "How far are you letting me go with the Suggestion spell?" "How will you rule this trick I came up with Minor Illusion?" "My character is a Thief and he can't stop stealing. What will happen if he is caught?" ...The sort. The stuff that shouldn't take up time arguing during the actual session. Asking is easy, and it's also really beneficial. Of course it can't cover up every single problem, but a good DM wouldn't rule in such terrible ways that it results in arguing or the players grumbling. Again, if the DM rules badly, that's because the DM is a really bad DM.

[Pex]

No. Absolutely not. Ok, sure, maybe you like it that way, but I completely disagree that players should know DCs. Heck, I think they should almost never know any DCs. I have no problem telling someone whether a task appears easy or difficult or somewhere in between, but I will never give a number. As you say, a person might know how difficult something is, but its always just going to be a gut feeling. You will never, ever look at a cliff and think "I think I have a 65% chance of climbing this cliff." So no, DCs are not the same level of info a person would have in real life. It is far more.



As was said by someone else, this sounds like you are trying to win D&D, not play it. You should be analyzing the situation as your character would analyze the situation. Not weighing odds and figuring out ideal scenarios. Yes, the character should have information to go on, but it should be the same information a person in the real world would have: description and feeling.
And to note a personal pet peeve of mine, if something is trivial, you shouldn't be rolling in the first place. Making people roll when a task is trivial and then having them fail on a 1 is dumb. I don't mind fumbles, but if a task is trivial, rolling at all is just wasting my time.

I, on the other hand, don't think it an abomination players get to know stuff. I don't forget the G in RPG stands for "Game", and as a player I want to know the rules of the game. I don't want to have to guess what the DM is thinking or have him decide what my character can or cannot do. The math of the game is equally as important as the roleplay. The liking and ability to use one has no relation to the liking and ability to use the other. In real life we don't roll dice to determine success, but I'm playing a game not dealing with real life. In the game the rolling of the dice is how we relate to how the gameworld works. It is an abstraction of how well our characters can or cannot do something. In my real life job I can look at a document I need to work on and tell how long it will take to finish the project. I practically do the job in my head to know what it takes to do it. In game terms, that's knowing the odds of getting a DC number.




I believe that it is part of table-talk manners for a player to ask the DM beforehand about vague rulings, while doing character creation. "How far are you letting me go with the Suggestion spell?" "How will you rule this trick I came up with Minor Illusion?" "My character is a Thief and he can't stop stealing. What will happen if he is caught?" ...The sort. The stuff that shouldn't take up time arguing during the actual session. Asking is easy, and it's also really beneficial. Of course it can't cover up every single problem, but a good DM wouldn't rule in such terrible ways that it results in arguing or the players grumbling. Again, if the DM rules badly, that's because the DM is a really bad DM.

The problem with that is it's impossible to cover every possible scenario. It might seem obvious for a player to inquire how illusions will work before creating an Illusionist. Maybe it's only obvious to an experienced player to ask. It's the less obvious situations that come up that causes problems. What is the DC to climb a slippery rope? What spell is the enemy casting? I want to conjure pixies. What do you mean I can't reroll the 1 on my smite? I have Disadvantage? I use Lucky feat. Uh . . .? Sometimes even in games with more defined rules the DM has to make a ruling in an unforeseen situation. It is impossible for the rules to cover every possible scenario. However, that'll happen less often. In Pathfinder, I know the DC to climb a rope. I know how to determine what spell the enemy is casting. I can summon the creature I want. I have a class ability that let's me reroll a d20 but I keep any outside factor bonus or penalty. An unforeseen problem is someone rolling a 32 Diplomacy check asking the king to give him his crown.

[Gastronomie]

As for DCs, I show it to the players beforehand for three reasons.

1. Lets them understand whether something is good or bad.
2. Makes it clear that they succeeded or failed right after their roll.
3. Stops stuff like Bardic Inspiration or Superiority Dice from being meaningless.

On the note of "3": As a player, I don't like using up resources only to find out it was unneeded. As a DM, I don't want the players to have that happening.

For the same reason, I count "spending Inspiration" not as "giving advantage", but as "re-rolling the dice (after seeing the result of the first one, including whether it failed or suceeded) and taking the better result"

[jas61292]

I, on the other hand, don't think it an abomination players get to know stuff. I don't forget the G in RPG stands for "Game", and as a player I want to know the rules of the game. I don't want to have to guess what the DM is thinking or have him decide what my character can or cannot do. The math of the game is equally as important as the roleplay. The liking and ability to use one has no relation to the liking and ability to use the other. In real life we don't roll dice to determine success, but I'm playing a game not dealing with real life.

Hey, that's cool. Your way is a perfectly legitimate way to play the game. I take no issue with that. What I take issue with is people calling it the "correct" way to play, or indicating that doing it another way is bad. Or, as you do, use absurd hyperbole to try and paint any other way of playing in a bad light. I like my way, and so does my group, so it is just as correct as any other way.


In the game the rolling of the dice is how we relate to how the gameworld works. It is an abstraction of how well our characters can or cannot do something. In my real life job I can look at a document I need to work on and tell how long it will take to finish the project. I practically do the job in my head to know what it takes to do it. In game terms, that's knowing the odds of getting a DC number.

For what its worth, I don't think that is actually a great analogy, as in your real life example, if it were in d&d, no roll would have been made at all. You can look at something and know how long it takes. Fantastic. You succeed at that task. That is perfectly reasonable. What I argue is not reasonable would be if you looked at it and did not know how long it would take, but you somehow did knew an exact percentage chance that you could get it done in half an hour. Cause that is the situation where you would be rolling a die to see if you actually get it done.

[Knaight]

My argument is against this "rulings, not rules" concept of 5e. Without stable rules, the players have no consistent options to take and must rely on the DM to be fair. Even with the most unfair of DMs, I could find ways to have fun in 3.5e. That edition gave the player total control over their own abilities. But when I watch AL players take action after action, only to have it be shut down by the DM who claims it doesn't work because reasons...that's not a good thing. And it's only made possible by the "rulings, not rules" system, which invalidates player opinion. It prevents players from calling foul because the DM, who used to hold most of the cards, now holds all of them.

The problem here is that you're taking something which is a problem for you and extrapolating it to a problem for everyone. 3.5's standard of rules for everything killed the game for a lot of people as a player - speaking for myself, I cold have an excellent GM and still find all the fun sucked out of the game the instant I had to deal with the actual system side of things. I'm much more concerned about the system getting in the way for competent GMs than the system preventing bad GMs from sucking even harder; 3.5 got in my way. So does 5e for that matter, but to a much lesser degree.

[Safety Sword]

Kind of getting off topic, but...

People certainly evaluate their decisions when those decisions are important. "I need to get across that gap," says Bob, "so I'm going to make sure I don't screw it up." The only time when it's unreasonable for players to do that is when they do it in the middle of combat. There's a simple way around that: give players a short time limit to declare combat actions.

Edit: and for the record, I'm one of those weird people who does deliberate over every decision. Perhaps you would find me boring.

These "people" are already willing to stand in front of dragons breathing fire to gain shiny metal discs. They are very probably less risk averse than modern people. Also, in a magic elf game where wizards can fly and shoot bolts of fire at you and fighters can strike you 6 times in 6 seconds with a great sword the baseline might shift slightly.

I think this thread once again shows that not nearly as many people have the same opinions as people think they do, controversial thread titles garner attention and hyperbole doesn't change facts.

Lots of people are successfully enjoying using the 5E system just the way it is. Many people are tweaking it. And some people are never happy with D&D no matter what the rules are.

Diversity in opinion is wonderful!

Yes, pulling the rug out from under players is crappy behavior; if they rolled a 22 on Athletics but failed to climb a rope hanging along a wall, you're adjudicating poorly. On the other hand, giving indistinct-yet-telling descriptions such as "this doesn't look like it'll be too much trouble" for DC 10 or "it's going to be very tough, even for someone as skilled as you" for DC 25 should be enough, so long as you're consistent with it. "It might be a hassle, but you can handle it" for DC 25, even if you're talking to someone with expertise in the ability and advantage on the roll, is just poor form - that's still a hard roll, and they'll feel even more powerful for overcoming it if they think it's a challenge.

But how can a player be aware of the mechanical ramifications of a "Moderate" task? Simple: Read the DMG; it's right there on page 238. The DM is expected - I'd go as far as to say required - to know your PHB as well as or better than you, it won't kill you to take some time out and thumb through their book. Most DMs I know are players as well, so they should know this stuff already, and only the most unpleasant and power-trippy of DMs will refuse to let players read the DMG.

After you've read that, it's very simple:

Player: *points to DMG p. 238 DC table* Hey DM, do you set DCs based on this table's categories?
DM: Yes I do.
OR
DM: No, I don't use that scale.
Player: What scale do you use?

If the DM tells you their scale, you now have enough information to feel confident in your decisions in the future. If they refuse, they're being obtuse and not playing fair; THAT is DM power-tripping, and they need to climb down out of their tower.

It's not "power tripping" to want to keep the mathematics of the game on my side of the DM screen so that my players can feel immersed in the world. Your character doesn't have a Player's Handbook or a DMG as a reference when they look at the cliff and notice it's covered in ice. They have a general feeling of their abilities, a confidence with certain tasks. They don't have an advanced knowledge of there only being 20 discrete outcomes of the decision they are about to make.

There might be factors they don't know about which makes the task more difficult than they perceive. Or, conversely, they might have really good luck that is unable to be accounted for.

Game mechanics are there to add randomness to outcomes. If you are allowed to know the probabilities in advance I think it actually takes a lot away from the game.

I'm not saying it's not fascinating to know these things as a player or DM. I'm saying it lessens the game if you know them as a character.

[quinron]

*snip*

3 things: Firstly, if you don’t understand your abilities, the DM isn’t the one to blame when they don’t work out for you. If there’s a whole aspect of your character that you don’t understand - like how illusions work - that’s something you should talk about with the DM before the session, not as you’re casting the spell.

Secondly, any issues that are genuinely unclear - such as rerolling smite damage - should only be a problem once. Sure, you’ll feel a little robbed the first time you’re told you can’t reroll, but you don’t go into your next smite thinking you’ll be allowed to reroll 1s and 2s. If the DM is being inconsistent about that, it's not a system problem, it's a DM problem.

Thirdly, the whole “I don’t know what DC it is to do X” argument is pretty easy to solve:

Player: *points to DC table on DMG p. 238* Hey DM, do you use this table to gauge DCs in our game?
DM Response A: Yup, sure do.
or
DM Response B: No, I use a different scale.
- Player: And what might that scale be?
- DM Response 1: Well, I use blahblahblah and such-and-such instead.
- or
- DM Response 2: I’m not telling you, because I like my players to be constantly on edge thinking I'm going to screw them over at any second.
or
DM Response C: What are you doing with my DMG?! You’re just a player!

DM Responses 2 and C are power-trippers; they will not be reasoned with. Otherwise, so long as your DM is capable of accurately conveying the idea of “this skill check will be of Moderate difficulty,” whether by describing the circumstance or by simply stating the DC or difficulty (e.g., Easy, Hard), you should be fine.


Kind of getting off topic, but...

People certainly evaluate their decisions when those decisions are important. "I need to get across that gap," says Bob, "so I'm going to make sure I don't screw it up." The only time when it's unreasonable for players to do that is when they do it in the middle of combat. There's a simple way around that: give players a short time limit to declare combat actions.

Edit: and for the record, I'm one of those weird people who does deliberate over every decision. Perhaps you would find me boring.

Deliberating before taking an action is perfectly understandable; your character’s life or at least their wellbeing is almost always at stake when you have to make a die roll. What’s less understandable is - as tends to become the standard when everyone has total access to granular information like 3.5’s skill DC tables - when someone is told to roll an X check, and instead of their dice, they reach for their PHB. This slows the game down and completely robs the game of its uncertainty - which is what the dice are meant to represent in the first place.

A better option, like I said above, is to simply talk with the DM and find out what their policies on these things are. Unless they are genuinely power-tripping, most DMs will be more than happy to share their craft with the players.

In short: Communication is key!

[The-Magic-Sword]

Honestly, I have to agree with OP's point, but i think their approach to that point doesn't get to the heart of the matter.

When I go on to forums, and sub-reddits, and talk to other DND Players- there's this virulent witch-hunt going on for metagaming and power gaming. Threads where people are asking for build help become inundated for people deflecting the OP's question by insinuating builds are wrong, and that they should just "play what they want" never mind if this is how they want to do it. Every neat rules interaction anyone finds or describes in any context nets a peanut gallery of people insisting that such munchkinry would never fly in their games, even if it's absolutely kosher with the rules.

Every story with a power gamer where the DM is asking for help, dodges whether it's a problem at all, or about having a conversation about party op level, and goes straight to confronting the player and treating their habits as bad- that somehow their character creation is somehow wrong for being designed for synergy. People continue to discuss how their character was built "more for roleplay" as if an optimized build makes one less able to roleplay, or their character less interesting. It's never about solving problems created a by a power disparity, it's always about "how do i discipline these habits out of my players?"

While everything has always been up to the DM as a result of rule zero, 5e's constant reminder to check with your DM and it's choice in putting so many rules elements in the DMG instead of the PHB often does seem to encourage DM's to take an adversarial role to their player's desires. Everything must be nerfed into oblivion, Players need to learn to appreciate magic items more, players need to fear for their characters more in combat. The player character death count is a badge of honor to many.

We had so much information in 4e about working with your tablemates to run games- about Yes and, improvisational techniques, even a heads up for DM's that despite their status and rule zero, they should respect their friends playing the game by being willing to communicate and compromise with them. Really any of the players could DM, and the DM should have seen themselves as another player- albeit in a different role, the 4e DMG (and 2) were considered the best books on DMing ever written. The dynamics for the group's social cohesion presented in those texts, were far less juvenile, and treated everyone around the table as equals coming together to play a game and tell stories.

But it changed with the edition jump- now it's all back to Gygaxian old-school DMing values, where the master part of dungeon master is supposed to be loaded with special authority, where the ability of player's to create characters that are strong and fun to play in that respect is an unfortunate side effect of the rules. Rules that can change at a whim, rules lawyer, always something a dirty word, is anathema and applied to pretty much anyone who is aware of what the rules are and expects them to be utilized or subverted with formal houserules.

Quite frankly? I think it has less to do with the letter of the rules, and more to do with the trappings around it and how the DM is treated in the text. It's never talk to your DM and cooperate to incorporate an element into the game, it's seek the DM's permission for the element now. I think we should return to a place where we respect the players, and educate DM's more in the previous, very open, very cooperative style of play.

[smcmike]

But if it's a ledge, an athletic individual knows damn well how difficult it is to climb and whether or not they're likely to manage it. And if it's a door, any adventurer will know about how hard it is to kick that sucker in.


Not necessarily. Ledges can be obscured or deceptive. Doors come in various strengths, not necessarily obvious without a bit of inspection. This is the realm of good DMing and perhaps a perception check of some sort.


Like with software, the way to properly test a game system is to put it through the worst possible situations. Find the worst players, and see how they handle it.

This is literally the worst test I can imagine for a game. There is not a single game that will play enjoyably with "the worst players," or in the "worst possible situations." None.

This isn't to say that broad appeal or a solid foundation are bad goals. But all I'm looking for is a game that will work well with good people. I don't give two cents how it works with bad people.

[Easy_Lee]

This is literally the worst test I can imagine for a game. There is not a single game that will play enjoyably with "the worst players," or in the "worst possible situations." None.

This isn't to say that broad appeal or a solid foundation are bad goals. But all I'm looking for is a game that will work well with good people. I don't give two cents how it works with bad people.

Really? Because that test works just fine on every other type of system. I wish more lawmakers would apply that test. And games, the G in RPG, are nothing but a collection of rules and mechanics. if those mechanics can survive an inexperienced or malicious player, then they will work wonders for experienced players.

Or are you one of those people who believes games are only meant to be "fun," whatever the hell that subjective and poorly-defined term means? Obviously, testing a game's rules would decrease the "fun" of the game, right? Obviously, a game which still functions even when people are trying to play it wrong automatically sucks, right?

I question your methods.

[Pex]

3 things: Firstly, if you don’t understand your abilities, the DM isn’t the one to blame when they don’t work out for you. If there’s a whole aspect of your character that you don’t understand - like how illusions work - that’s something you should talk about with the DM before the session, not as you’re casting the spell.

Secondly, any issues that are genuinely unclear - such as rerolling smite damage - should only be a problem once. Sure, you’ll feel a little robbed the first time you’re told you can’t reroll, but you don’t go into your next smite thinking you’ll be allowed to reroll 1s and 2s. If the DM is being inconsistent about that, it's not a system problem, it's a DM problem.

Thirdly, the whole “I don’t know what DC it is to do X” argument is pretty easy to solve:

Player: *points to DC table on DMG p. 238* Hey DM, do you use this table to gauge DCs in our game?
DM Response A: Yup, sure do.
or
DM Response B: No, I use a different scale.
- Player: And what might that scale be?
- DM Response 1: Well, I use blahblahblah and such-and-such instead.
- or
- DM Response 2: I’m not telling you, because I like my players to be constantly on edge thinking I'm going to screw them over at any second.
or
DM Response C: What are you doing with my DMG?! You’re just a player!

DM Responses 2 and C are power-trippers; they will not be reasoned with. Otherwise, so long as your DM is capable of accurately conveying the idea of “this skill check will be of Moderate difficulty,” whether by describing the circumstance or by simply stating the DC or difficulty (e.g., Easy, Hard), you should be fine.



Deliberating before taking an action is perfectly understandable; your character’s life or at least their wellbeing is almost always at stake when you have to make a die roll. What’s less understandable is - as tends to become the standard when everyone has total access to granular information like 3.5’s skill DC tables - when someone is told to roll an X check, and instead of their dice, they reach for their PHB. This slows the game down and completely robs the game of its uncertainty - which is what the dice are meant to represent in the first place.

A better option, like I said above, is to simply talk with the DM and find out what their policies on these things are. Unless they are genuinely power-tripping, most DMs will be more than happy to share their craft with the players.

In short: Communication is key!

Firstly: New players don't necessarily know to ask how illusions work, but that's missing the forest for the trees. It's not about the explicit examples given, but the illustration of the point the examples are for. 5E has too many vague rules that require interpretation. When the DM and player's interpretation don't match, there's a problem. Also, even as an experienced player I couldn't possibly know every situation the comes up, and 5E's vagueness leads to more interpretations than previous systems require. It's not about any particular skill use. It's about whether I know my character can do something based on the choices I made in creating it many real world months of play later I couldn't possibly know I would want to do when creating my character without having to ask "DM may I".

Secondly: Since vagueness depends on DM's whim, that is what facilitates tyrannical DMing. Facilitates, not cause. It's not about specifically whether or not I can reroll 1s and 2s on smites. It's whether my character can do something nifty. I am totally dependent on the DM for that. He decides the greatness my character can achieve. I have no control of my own character. That is what tyrannical DMing does. My only recourse is voting with my feet. I can do that in 3E too. The difference is the 5E DM has the game's permission. Not specifically, no. The game does not say be a donkey cavity to your players (as 2E does, figuratively). The game permits it by having the DM create the rules.

Thirdly, to acknowledge the trees in the forest, there is no table in 5E to point to ask the DM if he's going to use it. The table on pg 238 defines the DC numbers to assign given the difficulty label of a task, but it says nothing on the difficulty label to give a task. Is climbing a slippery rope very easy, easy, moderate, hard, very hard, or nearly impossible? It depends on who is DM. That lack of consistently between tables is the problem. That is having to relearn how to play the game depending on who is DM. The DM making everything up is what facilitates tyrannical DMing.

It didn't have to be that way. 5E could have converted the 3E skill tables into 5E Bounded Accuracy DCs, use the Advantage/Disadvantage system (say climbing a rope is DC 10, Disadvantage if slippery, Advantage if knotted), and take the opportunity to solve problems that crept up in previous editions, such as specifying Persuasion and Intimidate are not Suggestion or Dominate. A king is not going to give you his crown no matter what you roll, but a high Persuasion check could mean the king thinks you were joking and laugh it off instead of throwing you into the dungeon.

[Knaight]

Really? Because that test works just fine on every other type of system.

No it doesn't. To use one of many examples, in engineering there's almost always some design parameter where bad conditions will mess up whatever is being designed, but you decide you're fine with that because they're comparatively rare - and where specialized design for those harsh conditions makes something less suitable for more general uses. Most cars aren't designed to go anywhere near a tornado, and the specialized ones that are have major problems in other metrics (e.g. fuel efficiency) compared to ones that aren't designed to work under harsh conditions but to work better under normal conditions instead.

Similarly, in game design there's a case where mechanics can become ridiculously overspecialized to deal with niche problems that come up in obviously unintentional readings. That causes a lot of mechanical load for not a lot of benefit most of the time.


It didn't have to be that way. 5E could have converted the 3E skill tables into 5E Bounded Accuracy DCs, use the Advantage/Disadvantage system (say climbing a rope is DC 10, Disadvantage if slippery, Advantage if knotted), and take the opportunity to solve problems that crept up in previous editions, such as specifying Persuasion and Intimidate are not Suggestion or Dominate. A king is not going to give you his crown no matter what you roll, but a high Persuasion check could mean the king thinks you were joking and laugh it off instead of throwing you into the dungeon.
They could have. This wouldn't be some unalloyed good though - there's a tradeoff here. You do get the consistency between tables, but it comes at a cost. There's the sheer page count, which gets in the way whenever you need to look for anything. There's the mechanical load of either memorizing a whole bunch of skill tables, having a few more sheets of paper to search through, or searching the rules books more frequently, all of which cause slow down or cost focus. Then there's my personal favorite flaw, which is where an attempt to systematize produces completely bizarre results that wouldn't be there if the GM just used their intuition. The 3.5 Spot rules for distance are a particularly beautiful example of this, but there are others. Then there's the matter of how there's still a whole bunch of situations to be adjudicated, so you don't even get as much consistency as is hoped.

[Easy_Lee]

No it doesn't. To use one of many examples, in engineering there's almost always some design parameter where bad conditions will mess up whatever is being designed, but you decide you're fine with that because they're comparatively rare - and where specialized design for those harsh conditions makes something less suitable for more general uses. Most cars aren't designed to go anywhere near a tornado, and the specialized ones that are have major problems in other metrics (e.g. fuel efficiency) compared to ones that aren't designed to work under harsh conditions but to work better under normal conditions instead.

Similarly, in game design there's a case where mechanics can become ridiculously overspecialized to deal with niche problems that come up in obviously unintentional readings. That causes a lot of mechanical load for not a lot of benefit most of the time.

First, engineers design everything to deal with the worst situations they expect it to encounter. Sure, they may not design cars to deal with tornados, but that's mostly because they can't, and most people won't encounter them.

Second, I bet you can't find a single issue in 5e that I can't easily solve with a slight rewrite. WotC could have done the same, because I know they have at least a few technically-minded people.

[Strill]

I completely disagree here. Noone "should" know exactly what the odds are of any action they take. I know how to distance jump. This doesn't tell me anything about how well I would do if I were to leap a chasm. I believe that it has become far to common for players to make decisions based on numbers their character has no way of knowing period. I do not know how strong I am, nor how insightful I am. All I do know is that I know how to ride a horse, fence, and how to cook. My "skill" level is nothing I could know for certain. I can certainly know I am better than Bob, and worse than Janet, but that is about the extent of specificity I can know. I don't think it is remotely bad that players (and consequently their characters) are faced with uncertain outcomes. That is a more accurate roleplay in my opinion.
Of course you'd know whether you could leap a chasm. You've done plenty of jumps before and can look back at your past jumps to predict your performance now. You have extensive muscle memory, and can recall the sensation of previous jumps and how far they went.

You're basically saying that pole vaulters have no way to know how well they can pole vault, or weightlifters have no idea how much they can lift. Complete nonsense.


I believe that it has become far to common for players to make decisions based on numbers their character has no way of knowing period. Of course they have a way to know them! Those characters have lived their lives up to that point and have used their skills many times in the past. They've seen how good or bad things have gone.

If they've buttered up to nobles and sold refrigerators to eskimos, then they know damn well that they can swindle the pants off of the clueless mark in front of them. They've seen his kind a thousand times before.

If they've been lifting boulders every morning since they were a squire, and climb cliff faces in full plate armor every day as their training regime, then they absolutely have an idea of whether they can scale the cave wall and reach the upper level. They've spent thousands of hours looking for handholds and footholds.

[jas61292]

Or are you one of those people who believes games are only meant to be "fun," whatever the hell that subjective and poorly-defined term means? Obviously, testing a game's rules would decrease the "fun" of the game, right? Obviously, a game which still functions even when people are trying to play it wrong automatically sucks, right?

Like it or not, yes that is what a game is designed for. Subjective as it may be. If it wasn't fun, no one would play. And if no one plays, it doesn't matter how theoretically perfect your mechanics are.

And the implication you made that rules that are player-proof somehow make them better for more experienced players is just backwards. If you need to make rules that not even terrible players can screw up, that doesn't make the rules good. It makes them heavily codified. For experienced, good players, who are not trying to screw things up, such rules could work, but alternatively, they could be restrictive and only serve to hamper their experience, since they do not need to be forced to play right.

[pwykersotz]

Second, I bet you can't find a single issue in 5e that I can't easily solve with a slight rewrite.

But that's the issue, isn't it? Every table has a different idea of what an appropriate rewrite is. I've seen the stuff you rewrite, and it's very good, but I wouldn't put most of it at my table. I tweak in different directions. So as-is, the game allows both of us to play to our own styles with very little difficulty.

I lament the horror stories like the thread you mentioned earlier, but honestly no amount of anecdotal reports comes even close to the number of awful things I heard and experienced when playing 3.5. I don't hold that against the system though.

I'm in the awkward position here of technically agreeing with your points about "DM's being jerks is bad and players need to understand the game" while completely disagreeing with the point you seem to be trying to make with it, which advocates stripping away the flexibility of the system. It's a little bizarre. :smalltongue:

[Knaight]

First, engineers design everything to deal with the worst situations they expect it to encounter. Sure, they may not design cars to deal with tornados, but that's mostly because they can't, and most people won't encounter them.

They can - there are specialized storm chaser vehicles, and the key features of them are deliberately omitted on regular cars. Also engineers routinely don't design everything to deal with the worst situations they expect it to encounter. To use just one example, dams and the like are usually built to deal with floods of a particular frequency. There are dams designed to deal with 10 year floods, which are expected to be replaced every so often. There are dams designed to deal with 100 year floods, where there's still a chance of failure but it's probably going to be someone else's problem. Plenty are built to just barely comply with regulatory minimums, which usually vary based on what's downstream (in that they tend to move up a fair bit if there are people living there).

The same things applies to rules. There are all sorts of specialized rules you could make to do damage control for particularly crappy GMs, but there comes a point where it's just not worth it, and they get in the way for everyone else.

[Cybren]

They could have. This wouldn't be some unalloyed good though - there's a tradeoff here. You do get the consistency between tables, but it comes at a cost. There's the sheer page count, which gets in the way whenever you need to look for anything.

This isn't something to be overlooked to- page counts aren't infinite, and increasing the number of pages can dramatically increase production cost and thus the price point of the PHB. they do not have infinite space with which to print rules, so they have to balance what it is they want to spell out and what they want to imply and what they want to leave vague. It's only tangential to the thread topic, because I doubt it motivates them to use the "rulings not rules" mentality, but even if they wanted too they likely couldn't resolve every unclear question because they have a fixed page count to work with when doing the PHB

[Knaight]

This isn't something to be overlooked to- page counts aren't infinite, and increasing the number of pages can dramatically increase production cost and thus the price point of the PHB. they do not have infinite space with which to print rules, so they have to balance what it is they want to spell out and what they want to imply and what they want to leave vague. It's only tangential to the thread topic, because I doubt it motivates them to use the "rulings not rules" mentality, but even if they wanted too they likely couldn't resolve every unclear question because they have a fixed page count to work with when doing the PHB

I suspect it's more the rest of the tradeoffs that pushed the design philosophy, with page count being a more relevant limit for things like what made it into the MM.

[Strill]

"Rulings not rules" does not create a more permissive environment. By definition, the DM always has and continues to be able to do anything he or she wants. No system could grant additional permission to the DM, because DMs play God.

Absolutely right. If the players don't know what they're capable of, then all they can do is flail about and hurt themselves like five year olds as they blindly try everything, and fail in unforeseeable ways.

For example, a character who was a farmer could try to gauge the age of a stalk of wheat. However, when the DM makes it harder than they expected, the DM is effectively rewriting their character. He's not actually good at the things they meant for him to be good at. Then when the DM decides that the stealth check is much easier than they expected, the character who was supposed to be clumsy is effectively rewritten as well.

Clear rules give a clear way for players to express what their characters are and are not. Unclear rules lead to random arbitrary characters which don't live up to player expectations.

[Markoff Chainey]

I play D&D casually, but my group is obsessed with inventing our own system and we have been doing that now for more than 15 years.

I totally agree that one of the main challenges is to get to a common understanding between DM and PCs what those values mean, eg. what a character with "skill +2" is likely to perform. A common understanding of "DC 15" is very important, yet very hard to reach for each and every skill and circumstance. Someone in the real world also does not know if he will reach the other end of that chasm with one jump, but he will know if it is likely that he succeeds or not - and with growing skill, that information should also become more accurate. That should be reflected in the game too.

That problem is linked to the main issue (IMO) of any RPG system... the expectations of how a system works vs. how the real world works. We do not want a system that works like the "real world" - because in the real world, the results of skill checks are incredibly stable, especially at higher levels, under the same conditions and a monster would either kill a group or not, but it would depend much more on outside conditions than on luck, most would be determined by the raw combat skills. The expectation in an RPG is that you can do allmost everything when the dice lands in your favor, though. While in reality, if you never held a sword in your hand before, you won't hit a master swordsman, even not one time out of 20... (but when he turns his back, you would likely hit and it is highly likely that you could kill him with one stroke, something that we do not like to happen in a RPG.)

We cannot ignore the real world, though, because the "theater of the mind" works only when we as players can relate to it. And I think that the sloppy rules of 5e do a really bad job here. It was very very close to do a great job, but somehow it got messed up. Yeah, it is D&D, but no imaginable non-magical entity in my mind can fire a medieval heavy crossbow 9 times in 6 seconds...

One last remark about rules and agency... If you want your players to do something - like to flatten monsters all day long - make combat rules. If you want them to take part in a heated discussion that might change the future of a country - make social rules. But some parts of the game (social aspects) are virtually non-existent because of a lack of rules. There is a skill called "deception" - but how do I befriend someone, how do I make someone jealous? How can I "extract" vital information via small talk? When stuff like this is "fluff", player either won't do it of it will be very uninteresting, because if one roll decides all, there is not much fun in that. And with the lack of rules, players won't optimise their character for those situations because what is not reflected in rules, won't be reflected in stats as well.

[TheFlyingCleric]

It seems the OP suggests having more extensive Rules is a way of stopping bad DM's from being bad DM's, that won't work; I see them doing one of three things if you tried;



Ignoring them (they are the DM, they can do that).
Working out ways around them.
Using the rules as an excuse for their bad DM'ing.


You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. If a DM won't make a fun game in 5e's rules, which is not difficult to do, then you won't be able to force him to. You can provide a framework to guide them, but they will only use that if they want to. A coercive framework to guide DMs, like the OP suggests, will simply fail.

[Tehnar]

It's called "your DM is supposed to tell you."

Player: I want to jump from this tree and land on that spinosaur's back so I can capture it and make it mine!
Better DM: It's unlikely that you'll be able to tame it, but there exists a possibility you might be able to steer it in the direction you want to go for a few seconds. Landing on its back will require a successful DC 13 Acrobatics check; if you fail you'll take some falling damage. Either way you'll get to make your Animal Handling check this turn; I'm not going to tell you the difficulty on that but if you succeed you get to control its movement for a while. Do you want to try it?

I'm not sure what a truly good DM would do because I'm probably not one, but at least I'm pretty sure this is the road to good DMing. :)

As a rule I don't nitpick on example, but I will just use yours to demonstrate a point. Theoretically 5e is about permissive rulings and saying yes. In practise in 5e people often stop doing any sort of fun and creative ideas, and just stick with what will work. Why? Because people in general are very bad at determining probability, especially when multiple rolls are required. And 5e system is set up with little explanation and guidance to help DMs.

To use your example as demonstration. Lets say our character has +6 to acrobatics and +5 to handle animal; ie proficiency in both skills and good ability scores, about the best bar expertise he can have.

You set the first DC at 13, do he needs 7+ to make it, or 70% chance. Since you didn't precise the DC for the second action, but lets assume it is the same DC 13. so a 65% chance of success. To succeed at the action you need to make both, so 45,5% chance of success. Note I am using relatively modest DCs here, a lot of DMs would put the second DC at 15 or higher for such a seemingly complicated task, which further reduces the chance of failure. For a relatively minor bonus of controlling a creatures movement for one round. Why would any player attempt that action, at those odds, for a minor benefit with a major penalty (taking damage and ending up prone next to a monster).

So what happens? A player tries such a stunt a couple of times, fails most of them (because the odds are stacked against him) and then stops doing them. So from a advertised say Yes! system, you go to a No! system because the mechanics don't support a Say yes! system. (for a more detailed description of why the mechanics suck see any of the various 5e skill system threads).

But lets say the player decides not to jump on the monster and try to tame it, but asks Can I jump from the tree to the boulder further away then the maximum safe distance? or Can I stand on a treebranch and shoot at the monster with a longbow? You, as the DM, have a bigger job ahead of you because you have to think of rulings for every one of those, and the DC's for any skill checks you want them to take, because none of those are spelled out by the system, despite being relatively common things adventurers do.


It seems the OP suggests having more extensive Rules is a way of stopping bad DM's from being bad DM's, that won't work; I see them doing one of three things if you tried;



Ignoring them (they are the DM, they can do that).
Working out ways around them.
Using the rules as an excuse for their bad DM'ing.


You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. If a DM won't make a fun game in 5e's rules, which is not difficult to do, then you won't be able to force him to. You can provide a framework to guide them, but they will only use that if they want to. A coercive framework to guide DMs, like the OP suggests, will simply fail.

Having rules for most common things adventurers will face is a help for all DMs, since it gives them more time to do other things then think about rulings. I suppose DM's that have time to do 40h of prepwork per session, and eidetic memories might benefit more from ruling not rules, but those DMs are the exception; and they probably have created their own systems already.

And while Pex is talking about consistency between tables, which I agree is a issue, the bigger issue is consistency with the same DM. Are you seriously telling me a DM, who has 15-30s to make a ruling make a similar ruling to a issue he made a month ago? After playing for a couple of hours, around midnight after a couple of beers and a busy workweek?

[Moosoculars]

I think that 5e has it better than 3.x as it does allow for a more free gaming experience generally. The DM can decide what happens and snap decide difficulty for things without having to refer to several tables and having a panel of lawyers (read players) disagreeing.

I do think the OP has a point that there is more player uncertainty, but I think it is a good thing. The power should be in the hands of the DM and not the players. Uncertainty and risk are all part of exciting story telling.

What is important is consistency in DM rulings. Balancing on a tree branch in high wind has to have the same DC now and in 3 sessions time. Which puts a little pressure on DMs to remember what they say in game.

PCs (and NPCs) will fail in things both in and out of combat regularly, with banded accuracy it will happen all the time. I don't think that this will ever stop the PCs trying things. Swinging off the chandelier, jumping from a burning building and other things are part and parcel of the game.

It is also up to the DM and players to set the Fantasy vs Realism level. If the game is gritty realism then the game as set works well (swinging on a chandelier is tricky and you will hurt yourself when you land). If you want your PCs as near superheros and regularly doing heroic things then you have to lower DCs or auto success things as appropriate. (swing on the chandelier and land on the floor with a double twist while winking at the princess and running the bad guy through with your rapier - Sure no problem)

In the end it comes down to the style of game the DM runs and the game the PCs want. Unlike 3.x the DM is free to choose (not everything is set) which is a positive thing as long as the players want to play at the same realism level.

[Z3ro]

Absolutely right. If the players don't know what they're capable of, then all they can do is flail about and hurt themselves like five year olds as they blindly try everything, and fail in unforeseeable ways.

For example, a character who was a farmer could try to gauge the age of a stalk of wheat. However, when the DM makes it harder than they expected, the DM is effectively rewriting their character. He's not actually good at the things they meant for him to be good at. Then when the DM decides that the stealth check is much easier than they expected, the character who was supposed to be clumsy is effectively rewritten as well.

Clear rules give a clear way for players to express what their characters are and are not. Unclear rules lead to random arbitrary characters which don't live up to player expectations.

I'm just pointing this out as an example, but I really feel it's representative of the "clearer rules" side. You want to have set difficulties laid out by the system so you know what your character can do.

But we've never had that. Nor could a rule book account for every situation. Even in 3.5, there were times when this didn't apply. Imagine a simple situation that come up all the time; climbing a rope. The DM tells you there's a rope hanging that goes up to the ceiling. Now you know that the DC for an unknotted rope is 15, and you have a +12 in the skill, so you figure no problem. You roll, get an 8, and assume you succeeded; but the DM says no, the DC is actually 30. So you flip to the rules and point out, even if the rope is slippery, the highest DC it could be is 20, which you would still succeed. The DM informs you actually, the rope is very thin, no thicker than maybe a shoelace, and not made for climbing, making the DC much higher. You point out there are no variable DCs for different ropes, so this rope must be a DC15.

Now until they come out with a rope source book (which, incidentally, I would totally buy), there is no resolving this dispute, except to say the DM is god and sets the rules. For all intents and purposes, this is identical to 5E, just without all the rule citing. I don't see how it's better.

[Easy_Lee]

I'm just pointing this out as an example, but I really feel it's representative of the "clearer rules" side. You want to have set difficulties laid out by the system so you know what your character can do.

But we've never had that. Nor could a rule book account for every situation. Even in 3.5, there were times when this didn't apply. Imagine a simple situation that come up all the time; climbing a rope. The DM tells you there's a rope hanging that goes up to the ceiling. Now you know that the DC for an unknotted rope is 15, and you have a +12 in the skill, so you figure no problem. You roll, get an 8, and assume you succeeded; but the DM says no, the DC is actually 30. So you flip to the rules and point out, even if the rope is slippery, the highest DC it could be is 20, which you would still succeed. The DM informs you actually, the rope is very thin, no thicker than maybe a shoelace, and not made for climbing, making the DC much higher. You point out there are no variable DCs for different ropes, so this rope must be a DC15.

Now until they come out with a rope source book (which, incidentally, I would totally buy), there is no resolving this dispute, except to say the DM is god and sets the rules. For all intents and purposes, this is identical to 5E, just without all the rule citing. I don't see how it's better.

The difference is that in that situation, the DM had to go out of his way to be a jerk. Not only did he change the DC, but he also failed to tell the player what kind of "rope" the player was attempting to climb. Further, that's an obvious situation where the character would have known that the rope was going to be exceptionally difficult to climb, but the DM never told the players about it.

Most bad and inconsistent DMs are bad and inconsistent by accident. Having common things like rope DCs written out helps them, because it gives them a basis from which to determine the difficulty of other tasks.

But again, that's just one obvious instance of the confusion caused by "rulings, not rules."

[Tehnar]

I'm just pointing this out as an example, but I really feel it's representative of the "clearer rules" side. You want to have set difficulties laid out by the system so you know what your character can do.

But we've never had that. Nor could a rule book account for every situation. Even in 3.5, there were times when this didn't apply. Imagine a simple situation that come up all the time; climbing a rope. The DM tells you there's a rope hanging that goes up to the ceiling. Now you know that the DC for an unknotted rope is 15, and you have a +12 in the skill, so you figure no problem. You roll, get an 8, and assume you succeeded; but the DM says no, the DC is actually 30. So you flip to the rules and point out, even if the rope is slippery, the highest DC it could be is 20, which you would still succeed. The DM informs you actually, the rope is very thin, no thicker than maybe a shoelace, and not made for climbing, making the DC much higher. You point out there are no variable DCs for different ropes, so this rope must be a DC15.

Now until they come out with a rope source book (which, incidentally, I would totally buy), there is no resolving this dispute, except to say the DM is god and sets the rules. For all intents and purposes, this is identical to 5E, just without all the rule citing. I don't see how it's better.

Seriously? That's the example you used? That's a example of a jerk DM, and not of a situation a rule is unable to handle. Total strawman.

[Fwiffo86]

And 5e is full of this sort of writing. Where rules aren't missing, they are instead unclear, leading to our RAW thread. But far more rules are missing, such as DCs for standard actions.


A standard action needs no roll. That is in the rules. If it is use of a skill/ability/etc that fall into routine use for that skill/ability/etc, there is no reason to roll as there is no DC. This is meant to speed game play and not bog players down in excessive die rolling and research page turning (a personally perceived flaw in 3rd-4th).

If you are referencing assigning a DC based on perceived difficulty, I can maybe see your issue. Consistently I see posts about "you don't know what the DC will be from table to table. Lets be realistic here. How many tables are you actually going to be playing? 10? 20? In my experience most players play with the same group day in day out. That table builds its own scales and houserules that everyone (at that table) plays with.

Finding issue with something like this sounds to me more like arguing for lack of anything else to discuss. It serves little to no benefit other than to rile up posters to flirt with the flaming rules.

[smcmike]

Really? Because that test works just fine on every other type of system. I wish more lawmakers would apply that test. And games, the G in RPG, are nothing but a collection of rules and mechanics. if those mechanics can survive an inexperienced or malicious player, then they will work wonders for experienced players.


Other systems do cost/benefit analysis. They do not prepare for the worst possible conditions. Cars are not designed to be safely driven into buildings at 200 miles per hour, for example. If you are riding with someone who likes to crash cars into buildings, get out. If you are playing with people who are not good at playing RPGs in a way that promotes fun for everyone, stop playing with those people.



Or are you one of those people who believes games are only meant to be "fun," whatever the hell that subjective and poorly-defined term means? Obviously, testing a game's rules would decrease the "fun" of the game, right? Obviously, a game which still functions even when people are trying to play it wrong automatically sucks, right?

Guilty as charged. I do play games for fun. What do you play them for?

Past that, you're wading through a whole field of straw men. Testing a game's rules is necessary and fine. If a game still functions when people are deliberately trying to play it wrong, that's a very interesting facet, but it tells me very little about how it functions when people are trying to play it right. I'm far more interested in the second test, usually, though I can imagine a corner case where the anti-game is even more fun than the intended game.



I'm in the awkward position here of technically agreeing with your points about "DM's being jerks is bad and players need to understand the game" while completely disagreeing with the point you seem to be trying to make with it, which advocates stripping away the flexibility of the system. It's a little bizarre. :smalltongue:

This is my position on every single thread on this board. Everyone makes a lot of good points, while also being completely wrong about everything.


For example, a character who was a farmer could try to gauge the age of a stalk of wheat. However, when the DM makes it harder than they expected, the DM is effectively rewriting their character. He's not actually good at the things they meant for him to be good at.

Clear rules give a clear way for players to express what their characters are and are not. Unclear rules lead to random arbitrary characters which don't live up to player expectations.

Wait, you want rules for gauging the age of wheat?

[Blarmb]

I'm just pointing this out as an example, but I really feel it's representative of the "clearer rules" side. You want to have set difficulties laid out by the system so you know what your character can do.

But we've never had that. Nor could a rule book account for every situation. Even in 3.5, there were times when this didn't apply. Imagine a simple situation that come up all the time; climbing a rope. The DM tells you there's a rope hanging that goes up to the ceiling. Now you know that the DC for an unknotted rope is 15, and you have a +12 in the skill, so you figure no problem. You roll, get an 8, and assume you succeeded; but the DM says no, the DC is actually 30. So you flip to the rules and point out, even if the rope is slippery, the highest DC it could be is 20, which you would still succeed. The DM informs you actually, the rope is very thin, no thicker than maybe a shoelace, and not made for climbing, making the DC much higher. You point out there are no variable DCs for different ropes, so this rope must be a DC15.

Now until they come out with a rope source book (which, incidentally, I would totally buy), there is no resolving this dispute, except to say the DM is god and sets the rules. For all intents and purposes, this is identical to 5E, just without all the rule citing. I don't see how it's better.

This is another variety of lacking clarity as one typically does not describe a shoe-laced sized dangly bit as a "Rope". This doesn't invalidate your point of course but rather it leaves space to confuse the issue as one could claim "Gotcha DM" on account of not having clarified it was a thin rope ahead of time. That being said I think outside of that specific problem this illustrates the point well. I hope it isn't overreaching to give another example along these lines:

Let's say we're playing 3.5:
The players enter a room and see a jet of water of streaming across one side of a pit to the other. The jet is "about the thickness and shape of an elongated potato, it pulsates somewhat growing narrow and thicker every few seconds" After a successful Knowledge[Arcana] check the GM reveals:



"That is a kind of phenomenon known as stillwater, hardwater. It is caused to be a localized concentration of of inverted water energy. It's rare in nature but about the time this temple was built such things were easily produced by spells and magic devices - this almost certainly artificial. It has the property of changing the pressure and tension of the water such that you can walk on the surface without falling through, it's not as firm as solid ground or even ice but generally has less give than rope. The stability of the effect can vary depending on the strength of the spell and the aura of individual crossing, with less stable effects causing the stream to shake or produce small "holes" in the effect where solid objects easily pass through"


Let's assume for a moment given their resources on hand they good decision or bad, decide to cross by trying to tip-toe over stillwater.

What should the players expect the balance ( http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/balance.htm ) check to be? What should the DM set it at? Are the answers to these two questions the same? Why?

What would you set the DC to in 5e? Why?



EDIT: Yep. I was right. Folks ignored your broader point about rules invariably being unable to cover all cases in favor of fixating on the error in the example.

[Tehnar]

This is another variety of lacking clarity as one typically does not describe a shoe-laced sized dangly bit as a "Rope". This doesn't invalidate your point of course but rather it leaves space to confuse the issue as one could claim "Gotcha DM" on account of not having clarified it was a thin rope ahead of time. That being said I think outside of that specific problem this illustrates the point well. I hope it isn't overreaching to give another example along these lines:

Let's say we're playing 3.5:
The players enter a room and see a jet of water of streaming across one side of a pit to the other. The jet is "about the thickness and shape of an elongated potato, it pulsates somewhat growing narrow and thicker every few seconds" After a successful Knowledge[Arcana] check the GM reveals:



Let's assume for a moment given their resources on hand they good decision or bad, decide to cross by trying to tip-toe over stillwater.

What should the players expect the balance ( http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/balance.htm ) check to be? What should the DM set it at? Are the answers to these two questions the same? Why?

What would you set the DC to in 5e? Why?



EDIT: Yep. I was right. Folks ignored your broader point about rules invariably being unable to cover all cases in favor of fixating on the error in the example.

In 3.5, as a potato is often larger then 2" would use the base DC of 15, with a +2 for lightly slippery and if it wasn't flat probably another +2 for small angles, for a total DC of 19. Since you stated that its harder then a rope, and I know you can walk a tightrope with a DC 20 balance check I would expect that balancing on the arcane water thingy to be easier to balance then on a rope. And surprise surprise they do.

I have no idea what the DC would be in 5e.

What your example does, and Zeros does not is that your example is that you accurately represents the reality, and in 3.5 you have a way to translate natural language into mechanics. Since you stated it has less give then rope, I can assume its easier to balance then on a tightrope, and I know the DC for that, so as a player I can estimate the task difficulty.

Zero just states. Oh thats not a rope, AFTER you tried to climb it and he gave you no indication that there is something different going on. Its the definition of a jerk DM. ITs the same as saying that when you attack a naked orc (and the DM describes him like a common orc), that your attack roll of 25 misses, because those are secretly adamantine orcs that have skin of adamantine.

[TheFlyingCleric]

Wait, you want rules for gauging the age of wheat?

I think this line sums up the entire thread. Well done.

[Z3ro]

The difference is that in that situation, the DM had to go out of his way to be a jerk. Not only did he change the DC, but he also failed to tell the player what kind of "rope" the player was attempting to climb. Further, that's an obvious situation where the character would have known that the rope was going to be exceptionally difficult to climb, but the DM never told the players about it.

Wait, what? In my example, the players never asked. They assumed they could do it, as the rules give no guidance to the DCs of various ropes. Some DMs give more description, some give less. Most DMs I know give a certain minimum description, and only more if the player asks.

But please, using just the RAW of 3.5, tell me the difficulty of that rope to climb, without making any rulings, in such a way that the player could reasonably guess it ahead of time.

In addition, please tell me how my situation would have been different if it had gone like this: the players walk into the room and the DM describes the rope (the rope is very thin, no thicker than maybe a shoelace, and not made for climbing). Player rolls, same situation; player rolls a 20, argues the DC should be no higher than a 20, the DM says no, it's a 30. How is this different from 5E?

[TheFlyingCleric]

Wait, what? In my example, the players never asked. They assumed they could do it, as the rules give no guidance to the DCs of various ropes. Some DMs give more description, some give less. Most DMs I know give a certain minimum description, and only more if the player asks.

But please, using just the RAW of 3.5, tell me the difficulty of that rope to climb, without making any rulings, in such a way that the player could reasonably guess it ahead of time.

In addition, please tell me how my situation would have been different if it had gone like this: the players walk into the room and the DM describes the rope (the rope is very thin, no thicker than maybe a shoelace, and not made for climbing). Player rolls, same situation; player rolls a 20, argues the DC should be no higher than a 20, the DM says no, it's a 30. How is this different from 5E?

That should have been the example the first time. And it's a good one. nothing annoys me so much as an argument (or example) I disagree with used to make a point I agree with.

[MaxWilson]

As a rule I don't nitpick on example, but I will just use yours to demonstrate a point. Theoretically 5e is about permissive rulings and saying yes. In practise in 5e people often stop doing any sort of fun and creative ideas, and just stick with what will work. Why? Because people in general are very bad at determining probability, especially when multiple rolls are required. And 5e system is set up with little explanation and guidance to help DMs.

To use your example as demonstration. Lets say our character has +6 to acrobatics and +5 to handle animal; ie proficiency in both skills and good ability scores, about the best bar expertise he can have.

You set the first DC at 13, do he needs 7+ to make it, or 70% chance. Since you didn't precise the DC for the second action, but lets assume it is the same DC 13. so a 65% chance of success. To succeed at the action you need to make both, so 45,5% chance of success. Note I am using relatively modest DCs here, a lot of DMs would put the second DC at 15 or higher for such a seemingly complicated task, which further reduces the chance of failure. For a relatively minor bonus of controlling a creatures movement for one round. Why would any player attempt that action, at those odds, for a minor benefit with a major penalty (taking damage and ending up prone next to a monster).

Beats me. The DM is trying to warn him "don't try this"; but in my experience players sometimes try things like this anyway, and I don't know why they do. And yet they do, maybe because they find the result cool.

While the specific numbers in the example aren't important, as a general principle any time I stack two checks on top of each other that is a signal that "this thing is going to be pretty hard," due to the multiplicative failure principle. In this case I intended to illustrate two DMs, one of whom punishes a player with vague rules and harsh rulings, and another DM who is transparent about the fact that "this is a minor benefit with a [moderate] penalty" without saying "no, you can't even try that." It's the same harsh ruling either way (DM doesn't intend the spinosaur to be controlled) but you can at least be transparent about it.

BTW, to address your concern, in actual play I have a metagame rule called the Rule of Yes: the first time anyone ever tries something new at the table, it "just works" as they intend it. The second or subsequent times, the DM stops to come up with a rule. This is intended to encourage creativity and fun play without setting game-wrecking precedents down the line; it also smooths the game flow because there is less need for the players to "Mother may I?" their actions. In this specific example, that might mean that the player declares, "I want to drop from the trees, land on its back, and take control," and the DM says, "Rule of Yes: if you do this, you'll be able to control its movement this round but not its action," and then the player says go or no go.

But for purposes of this example let's assume that this is the second time a player has tried to take control of an animal. (Mine try it all the time.)


But lets say the player decides not to jump on the monster and try to tame it, but asks Can I jump from the tree to the boulder further away then the maximum safe distance? or Can I stand on a treebranch and shoot at the monster with a longbow? You, as the DM, have a bigger job ahead of you because you have to think of rulings for every one of those, and the DC's for any skill checks you want them to take, because none of those are spelled out by the system, despite being relatively common things adventurers do.

It's not that hard to do if you understand probability and game design. Yes, WotC's designers could have given us a table, but you know what? They'd probably have given us a bad table that I'd just have to ignore anyway, just like the bad table for spell design in the DMG.

I just pick a DC that makes sense for an average, moderately Dextrous person, and let the PCs scale themselves up from there. Shooting while standing on a 3' thick tree branch seems pretty hard to me; I bet a normal person would have no better than a 50% chance of achieving it, but an agile and trained person could do it fairly reliably; DC 10 Acrobatics check. Same as running along the tree branch BTW.

[Easy_Lee]

But please, using just the RAW of 3.5, tell me the difficulty of that rope to climb, without making any rulings, in such a way that the player could reasonably guess it ahead of time.

In addition, please tell me how my situation would have been different if it had gone like this: the players walk into the room and the DM describes the rope (the rope is very thin, no thicker than maybe a shoelace, and not made for climbing). Player rolls, same situation; player rolls a 20, argues the DC should be no higher than a 20, the DM says no, it's a 30. How is this different from 5E?

You answered your own question. The DM describes the rope and says it's not made for climbing. The player attempts to climb it and fails. At this point, the player doesn't have an excuse to complain.

That's a far cry from there just being "a rope" in the middle of the room.

Edit: and while we're on the topic of ropes, I can climb a rope in real life. I get pretty freaking irritated when my PC can't. It always makes me think the DM must be a wimp if he thinks that's difficult. That's why I run most of the 5e games I play in, anymore. I got sick of this kind of thing happening every single game. Every. Single. Game.

[Tehnar]

In addition, please tell me how my situation would have been different if it had gone like this: the players walk into the room and the DM describes the rope (the rope is very thin, no thicker than maybe a shoelace, and not made for climbing). Player rolls, same situation; player rolls a 20, argues the DC should be no higher than a 20, the DM says no, it's a 30. How is this different from 5E?

The difference is:
3.x provides examples for common situations adventurers are likely to encounter. Climbing a rope too thin to grasp is not a common situation, however a DC may be extrapolated from listed DCs. In a nontypical situation, such as this one, you have some rulebook support.

In 5e you have none. You are pulling a DC out of thin air.



If you made it clear its a very thin rope, not made for climbing, then I don't see the problem why the DC shouldn't be 30 for free hand climbing. Note a very thin rope is too thin to grasp, so you need some sort of device to grasp it. Also low tech thin ropes might not be able to support the weight of the climber. If the player wants to go slower and use a climbers kit or make a climbers hitch, then the DC should drop.

[Blarmb]

In 3.5, as a potato is often larger then 2" would use the base DC of 15, with a +2 for lightly slippery and if it wasn't flat probably another +2 for small angles, for a total DC of 19. Since you stated that its harder then a rope, and I know you can walk a tightrope with a DC 20 balance check I would expect that balancing on the arcane water thingy to be easier to balance then on a rope. And surprise surprise they do.


Unfortunately this particular translation fails to take in account several parts of the description I gave and how they relate to the 3.5 rules.

First, the 3.5 rules are all for surfaces of fixed widths. You have chosen 2" here, given my reference to the potato. However that same sentence as you quoted it also indicates the it is changing in size on a timescale smaller than 1 round "a few seconds". In other words even on the most granular time scale 3.5 has, the round the width of the surface is changing and not the same at all times during this period. This is not the same as "2 inches", and thus is can't be definitively covered by the "2 inches" entry on the chart no matter if the fact it is variable makes it easier or harder.

Secondly, the material. You'll note that I make no reference to how slippery it is but rather refer to the amount give the material has. You have applied the slipperiness modifier here where none is either explicitly mentioned or implied. The chart does not account for give & sway.

Thirdly, the "stability" factor. You'll note I said that depending on the stability of the spell it may begin to shake or randomly generate holes once under pressure by a living being (their aura figures into it). The chart also gives us no insight into how shaking, stability or random generated holes may figure into the DC.


You'll note there are sort of two threads here. First:

Things the chart does not tell us the DC for: give in the material, movement of the surface, holes in the surface. Meaning we either make these non-factors, best-fit other parts of chart and violate RAW, or rule ourselves and admit the chart has failed us.

This thread is relevant to the question "What is the DC" and to some extent "What DC should the PCs expect"

Second, things the PCs don't know about the check ahead of time:

Note that the stability of spell effect plays a large role in how hard the check is, but the stability of the spell is not known until the players aura interfaces with the spell during check.

This thread is relevant to the question "What DC should the PCs expect" and "should it (the actual DC) but the same as the PCs expectations of the DC".

[MaxWilson]

Edit: and while we're on the topic of ropes, I can climb a rope in real life. I get pretty freaking irritated when my PC can't. It always makes me think the DM must be a wimp if he thinks that's difficult. That's why I run most of the 5e games I play in, anymore. I got sick of this kind of thing happening every single game. Every. Single. Game.

Heh. Early in 5E, I had a DM who set DC 15 Acrobatics checks to climb trees, LOL.

[smcmike]

Heh. Early in 5E, I had a DM who set DC 15 Acrobatics checks to climb trees, LOL.

Depends on the tree.

[MrFahrenheit]

Really fascinating topic...one observation from the game I DM:

As a general rule of thumb, bounded accuracy being back in play this edition gives the power gaming/number cruncher types of players a run for their money.

At one point a few sessions ago, the party was camped overlooking an enemy army comprised of ten thousand troops. The vast majority of the soldiers were your low level mook types. Party's most veteran player (playing since 2e) meta games and says "we can crush most of these guys with some well placed spells using hit and run tactics. iIf we get caught, no biggie - they're mainly like CR 1s or 2s."

At that point I had to intervene ("had to" because I could see that he wasn't just arguing a point, but completely misunderstanding 5e and dragging the rest of the party - most of whom never even played d&d prior to this campaign - with him), remind him of bounded accuracy, and that, while the party may be able to take out a few dozen of these guys if caught, their ACs are comparable, their spell slots are finite, and their special abilities situational.

They ended up taking a different approach.

It's a DM's job to understand the rules, or make a player who understands them as well or better their "deputy," for RAW adjudications. RAI can obviously vary. And I don't think a player should be barred from picking up the DMG.

[Z3ro]

You answered your own question. The DM describes the rope and says it's not made for climbing. The player attempts to climb it and fails. At this point, the player doesn't have an excuse to complain.


You just made a ruling, congratulations! There's no rule in 3.5 specifying ropes and climb-ability. Every single rope in 3.5 ever made, by RAW, has the same DC to climb; 15.

Is this stupid? Of course. The DM will make up whatever set of circumstances to achieve the DC they want. And the rules give absolutely no guidance. What if the rope is silk, instead of hemp? What if it's made for a giant? A halfling? The rules give no guidance in any of those situations. All they give is a base; 15. I don't see how that's any better than 5E.

[Easy_Lee]

You just made a ruling, congratulations! There's no rule in 3.5 specifying ropes and climb-ability. Every single rope in 3.5 ever made, by RAW, has the same DC to climb; 15.

Is this stupid? Of course. The DM will make up whatever set of circumstances to achieve the DC they want. And the rules give absolutely no guidance. What if the rope is silk, instead of hemp? What if it's made for a giant? A halfling? The rules give no guidance in any of those situations. All they give is a base; 15. I don't see how that's any better than 5E.

I don't see how I made a ruling. I said ropes not made for climbing are not made to be climbed, which, if anything, is redundant...

And the 3.5e "rope" DC pretty clearly applied to normal ropes. If a rope isn't a normal rope, all the DM needs do is tell the player so.

In 5e, there is no such thing as a normal rope. I sit down at a table and the DM tells me there's a rope. I have no idea what that DC is going to be, meaning I have no idea how hard it's going to be to climb. That's a problem, because anyone should be able to look at a rope and gauge how relatively difficult or easy it is to climb.

Edit: and though not everything is a standard check, having these standard DCs gives both the player an DM a basis for exotic checks. If I know that climbing a rope is DC 15 (though it should be lower in 5e than in 3.5e), then I might be able to guess that climbing vines should be 15 as well, or perhaps a bit higher. As a player, I might ask if that vine looks easier or harder to climb than a rope. And so on.

[Gastronomie]

anyone should be able to look at a rope and gauge how relatively difficult or easy it is to climb.I don't know if this statement is really serious or not, but one thing for sure, I'm very sad that I wasn't included in "everyone".

Well, even if the DM wasn't of my type and didn't give direct DCs to the players, the player should have the right to ask the DM "does it look easy to climb?"

The DM can then answer, "I can't give away the DC, but it seems pretty good quality and you think you can climb it relatively easily unless something really bad and unexpected happens", or, "It's old and rotting, and it might snap as you climb - no way to know right now".

If the DM starts saying "you don't know, just f***ing roll the dice", or "uhhhhhhhhhhh ummmmmmmmmmm uhhhhhhhhh I don't know", that's a sign you should probably go find a new DM.

[MrFahrenheit]

I don't see how I made a ruling. I said ropes not made for climbing are not made to be climbed, which, if anything, is redundant...

And the 3.5e rope DC pretty clearly applied to normal ropes. If a rope isn't a normal rope, all the DM needs to is tell the player so.

In 5e, there is no such thing as a normal rope. I sit down at a table and the DM tells me there's a rope. I have no idea what that DC is going to be, meaning I have no idea how hard it's going to be to climb. That's a problem, because anyone should be able to look at a rope and gauge how relatively difficult or easy it is to climb.

What's preventing you from asking the DM to describe the rope?

I played an Earthdawn game where we entered a room in a dungeon to encounter a "wyvern with its fangs out." I swung at the thing and damaged my weapon. It was only a statue of a wyvern. There was no perception (or its equivalent in ED, I can't remember) check, or any reason to believe it was anything other than another monster in another room...like all the others we had cleared. That's DMing shenanigans.

But I wouldn't categorize being given a rope and going to climb it without asking for more info as such. As long as there is no hazard behind you, or an illusion that you're not even granted a save chance against (I.e., "I cut the snake's body in two from as high as I can reach!" "Lol it was really a rope!"), your character should have the time and ability to gauge the item.

[Reynaert]

I'm just pointing this out as an example, but I really feel it's representative of the "clearer rules" side. You want to have set difficulties laid out by the system so you know what your character can do.

But we've never had that. Nor could a rule book account for every situation. Even in 3.5, there were times when this didn't apply. Imagine a simple situation that come up all the time; climbing a rope. The DM tells you there's a rope hanging that goes up to the ceiling. Now you know that the DC for an unknotted rope is 15, and you have a +12 in the skill, so you figure no problem. You roll, get an 8, and assume you succeeded; but the DM says no, the DC is actually 30. So you flip to the rules and point out, even if the rope is slippery, the highest DC it could be is 20, which you would still succeed. The DM informs you actually, the rope is very thin, no thicker than maybe a shoelace, and not made for climbing, making the DC much higher. You point out there are no variable DCs for different ropes, so this rope must be a DC15.

Now until they come out with a rope source book (which, incidentally, I would totally buy), there is no resolving this dispute, except to say the DM is god and sets the rules. For all intents and purposes, this is identical to 5E, just without all the rule citing. I don't see how it's better.

See, this is the kind of situation where I would get in a heated discussion with the DM, because I happen to know a bit about rope climbing, and the thickness of the rope really doesn't make that much of a difference.

Which really frustrates the DM, because he ruled the rope too difficult to climb for plot reasons and doesn't really want to be arguing about how the physical reason he made up is wrong because it's just that, a made up reason.

(Of course, IMO a better DM would have ruled that the rope is too weak to hold the weight of any of the PCs, and determines that if you make the DC you figure that out, but if you fail you find out the hard way.)

[MaxWilson]

See, this is the kind of situation where I would get in a heated discussion with the DM, because I happen to know a bit about rope climbing, and the thickness of the rope really doesn't make that much of a difference.

Which really frustrates the DM, because he ruled the rope too difficult to climb for plot reasons and doesn't really want to be arguing about how the physical reason he made up is wrong because it's just that, a made up reason.

(Of course, IMO a better DM would have ruled that the rope is too weak to hold the weight of any of the PCs, and determines that if you make the DC you figure that out, but if you fail you find out the hard way.)

Nice. Thanks, I will steal that failure mode.

Out of curiosity, why doesn't the rope thickness matter? Could you really climb an infinitely-strong thread of dental floss just as easily as a quarter-inch rope?

[smcmike]

See, this is the kind of situation where I would get in a heated discussion with the DM, because I happen to know a bit about rope climbing, and the thickness of the rope really doesn't make that much of a difference.

Which really frustrates the DM, because he ruled the rope too difficult to climb for plot reasons and doesn't really want to be arguing about how the physical reason he made up is wrong because it's just that, a made up reason.

(Of course, IMO a better DM would have ruled that the rope is too weak to hold the weight of any of the PCs, and determines that if you make the DC you figure that out, but if you fail you find out the hard way.)

This might be off topic, but I don't know much about rope climbing, and this information is fascinating. Is it really equally easy to climb a strong shoelace and a nice thick rope?

[Z3ro]

I don't see how I made a ruling. I said ropes not made for climbing are not made to be climbed, which, if anything, is redundant...

You made a ruling, because nothing in the rules differentiates one rope from another. There is no category in the rules that lists ropes with DCs, including "unclimbable". You decided that as a DM, without consulting rules, because there are none.


And the 3.5e "rope" DC pretty clearly applied to normal ropes.

There are no normal ropes. Ropes don't have a category, with subheadings for differences or such. Also, quibble if you like, but nothing in the rules says the DC is for "normal" rope, if there is such a thing. You made that up yourself (a ruling, even). Maybe the DC is intended for difficult ropes, you have no idea.


If a rope isn't a normal rope, all the DM needs do is tell the player so.

There's nothing in the rules that says that either. Though I would imagine this would vary table to table. At my usual table, we have a habit of DMs giving minimal details unless the players ask more; my DM would very well describe an unclimbable rope as "a rope" unless we asked more details. There's no right or wrong way to do it.


In 5e, there is no such thing as a normal rope.

Please provide the 3.5 RAW that defines "normal" rope.


I sit down at a table and the DM tells me there's a rope. I have no idea what that DC is going to be, meaning I have no idea how hard it's going to be to climb. That's a problem, because anyone should be able to look at a rope and gauge how relatively difficult or easy it is to climb.

There's literally one DC for rope (unknotted) in 3.5, so you don't even need to gauge the difficulty. They're all, RAW, the same. Unless the DM is just deciding arbitrary DCs, like 5E.


Edit: and though not everything is a standard check, having these standard DCs gives both the player an DM a basis for exotic checks. If I know that climbing a rope is DC 15 (though it should be lower in 5e than in 3.5e), then I might be able to guess that climbing vines should be 15 as well, or perhaps a bit higher. As a player, I might ask if that vine looks easier or harder to climb than a rope. And so on.

But no idea by how much, in which direction, the check should move. Maybe vines are easier, but by how much? Or how much harder? It's all literally arbitrary, no different from just starting at DC10 in 5E and moving from there.

[CantigThimble]

There are any number of reasons the rope could have been difficult to climb, a dm who doesn't know the ins and outs of rope climbing has two options:

1. Do a bunch of research on this. (and presumably any physical task the pcs do that he doesn't)

2. Pick an intuitive reason why the rope might be difficult to climb and hope his players can roll with it.

As much as you may want a perfect simulation of a realistic world a dm just can't provide that without a Ph.D. In everything and arguing with him because he's misrepresenting things he doesn't understand for the sake of the story just isn't helpful.

Accept that it IS a made up reason because the world is made up and DMs aren't geniuses.

P.S. This also goes for biologists during the tiger attack, physicists during spellcasting and anyone who's ever read a medieval history book or played crusader kings.

[Reynaert]

Well, of course there is a difference, it's just that it's not that great. And with floss-thickness you get into the realm of stuff that can cut your flesh so that's also a consideration (you'd need strong gloves).

In any case, when climbing you usually wrap the cord/rope around your limbs or feet, to create the needed friction. Or at the least, you make a twist in it when holding it. The major limitation here is in how smaller cords cut into your hands more and therefore how much pain you can handle.

Come to think of it, for an inexperienced climber I can see a much larger DC difference, because a smaller rope would be much less forgiving to bad technique. But then, the type of climbing rope you would find in gym class is something that every student is supposed to be able to climb so DC15 is ridiculously high.

[Easy_Lee]

If the DM starts saying "you don't know, just f***ing roll the dice", or "uhhhhhhhhhhh ummmmmmmmmmm uhhhhhhhhh I don't know", that's a sign you should probably go find a new DM.

What bad 5e DMs actually say is to go ahead and try. Then, when you fail and ask why, they tell you the rope was such and such. Later, they might mention that the DC for climbing it was 20, even though it was a regular rope.

But at another table, that DC might have been 10.

But at another table, that DC might have been 12.

And at yet another table, that DC might be 8, but the DM might ask the player to make a strength check instead of an Athletics check.

Point being, players don't know what their characters can do. At a minimum, we should have two or three fixed DCs for common usages of each skill. Instead, we have none.

And, again, skills are just one particularly egregious area of unclear 5e rules.

[Reynaert]

There are any number of reasons the rope could have been difficult to climb, a dm who doesn't know the ins and outs of rope climbing has two options:

1. Do a bunch of research on this. (and presumably any physical task the pcs do that he doesn't)

2. Pick an intuitive reason why the rope might be difficult to climb and hope his players can roll with it.

As much as you may want a perfect simulation of a realistic world a dm just can't provide that without a Ph.D. In everything and arguing with him because he's misrepresenting things he doesn't understand for the sake of the story just isn't helpful.

Accept that it IS a made up reason because the world is made up and DMs aren't geniuses.

P.S. This also goes for biologists during the tiger attack, physicists during spellcasting and anyone who's ever read a medieval history book or played crusader kings.

On the one hand I agree with you, but on the other hand it's very frustrating to be told "you just can't do it because I say so/that would ruin the plot/etc.". Especially if you had a group like mine which saw every obstacle as a challenge, and an unsurmountable obstacle was just a greater challenge that required cleverer thinking.

I guess it depends on if your game is more about collaboratively narrating, or if you're pitting your wits against the puzzle-building of the DM. (Ours was more the latter).

[CantigThimble]

On the one hand I agree with you, but on the other hand it's very frustrating to be told "you just can't do it because I say so/that would ruin the plot/etc.". Especially if you had a group like mine which saw every obstacle as a challenge, and an unsurmountable obstacle was just a greater challenge that required cleverer thinking.

I guess it depends on if your game is more about collaboratively narrating, or if you're pitting your wits against the puzzle-building of the DM. (Ours was more the latter).

That's fine, just remember that DMs are people and when they make mistakes it's often better to give them a chance to fix them instead of getting into a heated argument. Maybe instead you could suggest a different way that the rope could be difficult to climb, like an unusual material or something like that. If everyone's getting along he could just say, 'Sure, yeah, regular thickness but made out of that suff, thanks.' It would be nice if we never needed to retcon stuff but that's unrealistic in practice.

[Pex]

I'm just pointing this out as an example, but I really feel it's representative of the "clearer rules" side. You want to have set difficulties laid out by the system so you know what your character can do.

But we've never had that. Nor could a rule book account for every situation. Even in 3.5, there were times when this didn't apply. Imagine a simple situation that come up all the time; climbing a rope. The DM tells you there's a rope hanging that goes up to the ceiling. Now you know that the DC for an unknotted rope is 15, and you have a +12 in the skill, so you figure no problem. You roll, get an 8, and assume you succeeded; but the DM says no, the DC is actually 30. So you flip to the rules and point out, even if the rope is slippery, the highest DC it could be is 20, which you would still succeed. The DM informs you actually, the rope is very thin, no thicker than maybe a shoelace, and not made for climbing, making the DC much higher. You point out there are no variable DCs for different ropes, so this rope must be a DC15.

Now until they come out with a rope source book (which, incidentally, I would totally buy), there is no resolving this dispute, except to say the DM is god and sets the rules. For all intents and purposes, this is identical to 5E, just without all the rule citing. I don't see how it's better.

A 3E DM can certainly ignore the tables and use whatever DCs he wants whenever he wants. The difference is the players know he's doing it. If it was agreed upon house rules beforehand, great. If not, it is a reasonable question for a player to ask what's going on. It's perfectly ok for this one particular rope to be special. It's possible some outside influence the PC is not aware of makes the task harder, and it's an encounter plot point for the player to figure out the cause. The fact he can't climb this rope so easily when he knows he's fantastic at climbing ropes Means Something. If every rope is very hard to impossible climb despite his high climbing skill, then the player knows the DM is being a jerk at worst or making an honest mistake at best misapplying what it means to be challenging and not realizing it's ok for a PC to be just that good at something, climbing ropes in this case. The player asking what's going on gets the answer and can respond accordingly. If the DM is just being a jerk, the player walks. If all the DM's players walk, he knows he needs to get over himself and let PCs climb ropes. He still might not, but he has only himself to blame.

The exact same scenario can happen in 5E. The difference is new players don't know the DM is being a jerk about climbing ropes. He's following the rules, of which they say the DM makes it up. They don't know they should be asking what's going on. They might then play at a different table and that DM doesn't even have PCs roll to climb a rope. They just do when the player says he climbs the rope. They go to a third table. That DM asks for a roll, but PCs succeed more than fail because the DC is lower than the first DM's. All three DMs are following the rules, yet the PC's ability to climb a rope is different. For many people that's a great feature. For me and others, that's a bug of the game.

Now the players might ask the first DM what's going on, but he can respond "my table, my rules" and he's not wrong. Without the benefit of having played at other tables, new players might think climbing ropes are always difficult tasks. If it bothers them enough to quit the game, they might just quit playing D&D altogether because they thinks DMs must be donkey cavities when it comes to climbing ropes or whatever a PC wants to do. Having played with other DMs then they might finally discover the first DM is just a jerk. However, the first DM can still use the rules to defend his play and determine the former players are min/max powergamer rollplaying munchkins. If he's an experienced DM and was always a jerk, he feels righteous indignation but there's no changing a leopard's spots. If he's a new DM he learns nothing because he's doing what the rules says he can do. It must be the players' fault.

[Easy_Lee]

You made a ruling, because nothing in the rules differentiates one rope from another. There is no category in the rules that lists ropes with DCs, including "unclimbable". You decided that as a DM, without consulting rules, because there are none.



There are no normal ropes. Ropes don't have a category, with subheadings for differences or such. Also, quibble if you like, but nothing in the rules says the DC is for "normal" rope, if there is such a thing. You made that up yourself (a ruling, even). Maybe the DC is intended for difficult ropes, you have no idea.



There's nothing in the rules that says that either. Though I would imagine this would vary table to table. At my usual table, we have a habit of DMs giving minimal details unless the players ask more; my DM would very well describe an unclimbable rope as "a rope" unless we asked more details. There's no right or wrong way to do it.



Please provide the 3.5 RAW that defines "normal" rope.



There's literally one DC for rope (unknotted) in 3.5, so you don't even need to gauge the difficulty. They're all, RAW, the same. Unless the DM is just deciding arbitrary DCs, like 5E.



But no idea by how much, in which direction, the check should move. Maybe vines are easier, but by how much? Or how much harder? It's all literally arbitrary, no different from just starting at DC10 in 5E and moving from there.

Your post is the very definition of splitting hairs. In real life, we have the concept of a typical rope. It's thickness falls within a common range, and it's generally made of one of a few similar materials. If I can climb rope A, I can also climb rope B. The exceptions are things like steel cables or those huge ropes used for ships. And I know those things are exceptions when I look at them.

In 3.5e, we had the concept of a typical rope climb DC. Players rolled to hit it unless their DM told them otherwise. A DM who doesn't tell the players crucial, obvious details until they ask is a terrible DM.

5e doesn't have a typical rope climb DC, or typical lock pick DC, ancient rune arcana read DC, nature track animal DC, tumble past enemies acrobatics DC, and so on. That means that DMs have to make these things up with no basis, meaning they come up with wildly different numbers. And that's not a good thing for players, who need to know how difficult things are in order to plan intelligently. No one can honestly argue that simple point.

[Baptor]

This leads to Schrodinger's Rule: when a rule of play is unclear, it enters a quantum state. The player doesn't know what the rule is until he tries to do something, at which point the rule resolves into one of several possibilities. If the player is particularly unlucky, the rule will change in the future, especially when a DM PC would be subject to it.

DM here. In my games, I let the player know before he rolls what the DC will be. So if a character is like, how hard would it be for me to free climb this wall. I will tell him, DC 14, or whatever. Then he can say, OK I'm going for it or Oh, that's harder than I expected, never mind.

I do this for two reasons:

1. Practical. For the very problems you mention in your OP.

2. Realism. IMHO, a character in the "real world" will be able to examine the wall or size up the situation to a reasonable degree and have some idea of how hard a task will be. If you show me a pit IRL and ask me if I can jump it, I can judge that pit vs. my athletic ability and tell you whether I am likely to easily clear it, clear it with some risk, or likely to fall in.

Often times the DM's descriptions of a situation don't translate as well as we'd like, so the player ends up assuming the wall is more difficult than we intended it to look or vice versa. In "real life" this would not happen. Thus my rule.

Of course if the wall were magically glamoured to appear to have lots of hand holds when it was really smooth half way up, that's a different issue. :)

[jas61292]

5e doesn't have a typical rope climb DC, or typical lock pick DC, ancient rune arcana read DC, nature track animal DC, tumble past enemies acrobatics DC, and so on. That means that DMs have to make these things up with no basis, meaning they come up with wildly different numbers. And that's not a good thing for players, who need to know how difficult things are in order to plan intelligently. No one can honestly argue that simple point.

No. It only even matters for players too self absorbed to ask questions. Is asking "does this look difficult to climb?" really that painful?

There is never any reason for generic numbers, because there is no such thing as generic situations. All that is needed is for a DM to make sure his players have an idea what they are facing. And yes, DMs that don't do that are bad. But you don't need anything more than that. It doesn't matter if a task is DC 20 for one DM and DC 2 for another. What matters is that the DM makes the situation clear to the players. You don't need set DCs for that.

[Easy_Lee]

DM here. In my games, I let the player know before he rolls what the DC will be. So if a character is like, how hard would it be for me to free climb this wall. I will tell him, DC 14, or whatever. Then he can say, OK I'm going for it or Oh, that's harder than I expected, never mind.

I do this for two reasons:

1. Practical. For the very problems you mention in your OP.

2. Realism. IMHO, a character in the "real world" will be able to examine the wall or size up the situation to a reasonable degree and have some idea of how hard a task will be. If you show me a pit IRL and ask me if I can jump it, I can judge that pit vs. my athletic ability and tell you whether I am likely to easily clear it, clear it with some risk, or likely to fall in.

Often times the DM's descriptions of a situation don't translate as well as we'd like, so the player ends up assuming the wall is more difficult than we intended it to look or vice versa. In "real life" this would not happen. Thus my rule.

Of course if the wall were magically glamoured to appear to have lots of hand holds when it was really smooth half way up, that's a different issue. :)

Exactly. Wish I could +1 this.


No. It only even matters for players too self absorbed to ask questions. Is asking "does this look difficult to climb?" really that painful?

There is never any reason for generic numbers, because there is no such thing as generic situations. All that is needed is for a DM to make sure his players have an idea what they are facing. And yes, DMs that don't do that are bad. But you don't need anything more than that. It doesn't matter if a task is DC 20 for one DM and DC 2 for another. What matters is that the DM makes the situation clear to the players. You don't need set DCs for that.

There are no generic situations? You're kidding, right? Climbing a normal rope is a generic task. If it's more difficult because of reasons, then the DM can state those reasons. If he doesn't, then the player has no reason to assume them because he's not a freaking psychic.

And DCs matter a lot for planning purposes. If I'm designing a sailor, I want to know what DC I need to reliably hit in order to climb a rope. In fact, I need to know because it's my character's job.

Using widely varying DCs for similar tasks and not telling your players crucial information are both absolutely terrible, player-unfriendly DM practices.

[jas61292]

There are no generic situations? You're kidding, right? Climbing a normal rope is a generic task. If it's more difficult because of reasons, then the DM can state those reasons. If he doesn't, then the player has no reason to assume them because he's not a freaking psychic.

And DCs matter a lot for planning purposes. If I'm designing a sailor, I want to know what DC I need to reliably hit in order to climb a rope. In fact, I need to know because it's my character's job.

Using widely varying DCs for similar tasks and not telling your players crucial information are both absolutely terrible, player-unfriendly DM practices.

You completely missed the point. My entire point is that there doesn't need to be specific DCs because it is the DMs job to make sure the players know how difficult a task appears to be. And if they don't, then ask! Yes, if they never make it apparent, or refuse to answer you if you ask, they are a bad DM. But why does it matter if a plain looking rope is easy or hard to climb, so long as your characters know that prior to attempting that task?

[Gastronomie]

What bad 5e DMs actually say is to go ahead and try. Then, when you fail and ask why, they tell you the rope was such and such. Later, they might mention that the DC for climbing it was 20, even though it was a regular rope. Not giving enough descriptions - Check.
Not being generous to the players - Check.
Generally being a big jerk - Check.

IMO those sorts of bad DMs will be bad in any given edition.

As I have already explained in a previous post, most of your problems seem to stem from a bad DM. While it may be true that 5e's system makes bad DMs even worse, those bad DMs will be bad in any edition. Arguing "the bad DMs in 5e are worse than the bad DMs in 3.5e" is pointless because either way the DM is bad, the session boring/not fun, and the players would (and should) quit the table.


-Snip- At a minimum, we should have two or three fixed DCs for common usages of each skill. Instead, we have none.I do agree with this on how there's too little examples of "what DC is what" in the original PH, though. Granted, there are some, but only several, and far from a good handful that can be perhaps useful for beginner DMs.

[Z3ro]

Your post is the very definition of splitting hairs.

I'm not the one claiming their are objective rules that give the same results at every table, allowing the players to interchangably move from one to another.


In real life, we have the concept of a typical rope. It's thickness falls within a common range, and it's generally made of one of a few similar materials. If I can climb rope A, I can also climb rope B. The exceptions are things like steel cables or those huge ropes used for ships. And I know those things are exceptions when I look at them.

Sure you do. But we're not in real life, we're playing a game, a game with rules. Rules that you state are not sufficient (in regards to 5E). It seems to me that if the rules need to be the same at every table, things like a "typical" rope should be spelled out more clearly.


In 3.5e, we had the concept of a typical rope climb DC. Players rolled to hit it unless their DM told them otherwise. A DM who doesn't tell the players crucial, obvious details until they ask is a terrible DM.

Depends on the details, really. But my argument isn't that we need typical DCs; my argument is the idea of a player assuming anything. There's no reason a player should ever assume a DC, or get upset if it's not what the book says it should be.


5e doesn't have a typical rope climb DC, or typical lock pick DC, ancient rune arcana read DC, nature track animal DC, tumble past enemies acrobatics DC, and so on. That means that DMs have to make these things up with no basis, meaning they come up with wildly different numbers. And that's not a good thing for players, who need to know how difficult things are in order to plan intelligently. No one can honestly argue that simple point.

But I am arguing it, honestly. And they're not coming up with different number, we all use the same; an easy task is DC5, a moderate is DC10, and so on. We're arguing with what falls under an "easy" task, but we could do that with 3.5 too. See this very thread, about how hard it really is to climb a rope.

[georgie_leech]

Easy_Lee, have you ever played those old text rpg's where you had to type in how you interacted with the scene the game set before you? Did you notice how they left the general scene... well, general, until you started interacting with something? This is because there's a limit to how complex you can make a scene before players start losing track of where everything is. By keeping the scene to a general description, and then 'zooming in' when players examine or otherwise express interest in some element, you reduce the complexity of the scene for everyone while preserving detail for when it's appropriate. Not giving all potentially relevent descriptors right away isn't a sign of bad DMing, it's a sign of not being a supercomputer playing with other supercomputers. Bad DMing is neglecting to provide those details when a player starts interacting with it. And bad playing is just jumping right to the interactive bit before taking the time to actually get those details. If I describe a pit in the floor and a player jumps down without looking, they deserve it when they fall 50 feet to the stone floor below. Likewise, if the player just says 'I climb the rope' without bothering to check what kind of rope it is, or where it's going, that's on them.

Carry on with the rest of it; I agree that all things being equal, clarity in rules is preferred. It was just bugging me that your apparent standard for good DMing is 'is a computer.'

[Z3ro]

Let me see if I can clarify my position, building on my rope example:

Let's assume that, for this example, we have a completely normal rope, DC15 in 3.5e. Simple. Now, let's assume that, as the party tries to climb the rope, they come under fire from a group of archers. Is there a change in DC, and if so, what is it?

And this is why I see no difference between a system like 3.5 and 5 when it comes to skill DCs. The DM in the arrow scenario is still going to have to decide what the DC is, with no guidance from the rules as to how to determine that. 3.5 offers no help whatsoever; the base DC is set, sure, but not the modifier. At least in 5E, we can combine the tasks; the rope climbing might have been easy, but the extra arrows turned it into a hard task; look up the number for hard, and there we go.

[Easy_Lee]

Let me see if I can clarify my position, building on my rope example:

Let's assume that, for this example, we have a completely normal rope, DC15 in 3.5e. Simple. Now, let's assume that, as the party tries to climb the rope, they come under fire from a group of archers. Is there a change in DC, and if so, what is it?

And this is why I see no difference between a system like 3.5 and 5 when it comes to skill DCs. The DM in the arrow scenario is still going to have to decide what the DC is, with no guidance from the rules as to how to determine that. 3.5 offers no help whatsoever; the base DC is set, sure, but not the modifier. At least in 5E, we can combine the tasks; the rope climbing might have been easy, but the extra arrows turned it into a hard task; look up the number for hard, and there we go.

Assuming you know that climbing a rope is normally supposed to be a moderate task. Which you don't. Some DMs think it's moderate, some easy, and some trivial. And incidentally, I'd represent doing it under archer fire as disadvantage. But that's just a preference.

[Cybren]

Assuming you know that climbing a rope is normally supposed to be a moderate task. Which you don't. Some DMs think it's moderate, some easy, and some trivial. And incidentally, I'd represent doing it under archer fire as disadvantage. But that's just a preference.

I'm pretty sure Z3ro's point is that it doesn't matter what the DM thinks so long as the DM communicates the difficulty before the player acts.

[Easy_Lee]

I'm pretty sure Z3ro's point is that it doesn't matter what the DM thinks so long as the DM communicates the difficulty before the player acts.

Except that it does if you've built your character to be able to do a certain thing. Your ability to do that thing depends on the DM. This is especially prevalent in AL.

The result is that no roll is good enough. A player who wants to be able to do a thing has to optimize even harder than he would have in 3.5e, just to cover for the DM.

Edit: And that assumes that what he wants to do is even possible. Players could once assume that X, Y, and Z worked and were possible with a roll of X, because the rules said so. They could extrapolate and guess at other DCs. No more.

[smcmike]

Except that it does if you've built your character to be able to do a certain thing. Your ability to do that thing depends on the DM. This is especially prevalent in AL.

The result is that no roll is good enough. A player who wants to be able to do a thing has to optimize even harder than he would have in 3.5e, just to cover for the DM.

Edit: And that assumes that what he wants to do is even possible. Players could once assume that X, Y, and Z worked and were possible with a roll of X, because the rules said so. They could extrapolate and guess at other DCs. No more.

Again, a more concrete example would be helpful. I don't think building a character to climb ropes well is a real issue.

[krugaan]

Nice. Thanks, I will steal that failure mode.

Out of curiosity, why doesn't the rope thickness matter? Could you really climb an infinitely-strong thread of dental floss just as easily as a quarter-inch rope?

As a multitude of bikini wearing fantasy trope amazons can attest to, thickness (or any dimensions, really) have no bearing on the usefulness / effectiveness of an object.

[ad_hoc]

For the majority of examples given in this thread I just wouldn't have a roll at all in 5e.

That applies to balancing in a tree, climbing a rope, etc.

[Cybren]

Except that it does if you've built your character to be able to do a certain thing. Your ability to do that thing depends on the DM. This is especially prevalent in AL.

The result is that no roll is good enough. A player who wants to be able to do a thing has to optimize even harder than he would have in 3.5e, just to cover for the DM.

Edit: And that assumes that what he wants to do is even possible. Players could once assume that X, Y, and Z worked and were possible with a roll of X, because the rules said so. They could extrapolate and guess at other DCs. No more.

That's a parallel issue though: the DM not establishing what an appropriate character is for the campaign. All you've demonstrated in this thread is how bad an idea the adventurer's league is, not the design of 5E

[Segev]

I will say that clear guidelines of what is expected to be doable are helpful to the DM, too. Knowing the default DC and then adding or subtracting circumstance bonuses/penalties means the DM isn't guessing, "Well, um, is DC 15 too hard? Too easy?" The reason a lot of DMs probably come off seeming to be too hard is that DMs think their job is to provide a challenge. And they're right, to a degree. But "how much?" If they know that Alice has a +15 to her Bluff score, obviously Deidre Emily ("Dee-Em" for short) needs to challenge her with high sense motives! Right?

It's not an easy lesson to learn in a vacuum - how much is too much, and when to just let the PCs be awesome. Rules that give clear guidance that a +15 to bluff is actually really darned good because sense motive scores tend to be in the +4 to +8 range help. The same is true for defined DCs for climbing, swimming, jumping, etc.

[MaxWilson]

I will say that clear guidelines of what is expected to be doable are helpful to the DM, too.

Yes. I've seen some posters on this forum suggest that a a moderately high Athletics bonus (+30 or so) should allow you to leap hundreds of feat into the air. I think that's bonkers--but it's hard to tell whether or not it's in keeping with 5E's intent for Athletics because the PHB/DMG are almost totally silent on the matter.

Maybe that's on purpose. After all, the DMG does explicitly discuss wuxia as a genre--maybe the intent is that DCs should vary by emulated genre. If so it wouldn't have taken that much space in the DMG to say so. "Wuxia... in this campaign style, the DM may wish to allow impossible feats of strength or skill to those who succeed on DC 30 skill checks." Obviously you'd want to have other suggested rules tweaks (to skills, spells, etc.) for each genre.

Fertile ground for a DMsGuild product I suppose.

[Cybren]

Yes. I've seen some posters on this forum suggest that a a moderately high Athletics bonus (+30 or so) should allow you to leap hundreds of feat into the air. I think that's bonkers--but it's hard to tell whether or not it's in keeping with 5E's intent for Athletics because the PHB/DMG are almost totally silent on the matter.

Maybe that's on purpose. After all, the DMG does explicitly discuss wuxia as a genre--maybe the intent is that DCs should very by emulated genre. If so it wouldn't have taken that much space in the DMG to say so. "Wuxia... in this campaign style, the DM may wish to allow impossible feats of strength or skill to those who succeed on DC 30 skill checks." Obviously you'd want to have other suggested rules tweaks (to skills, spells, etc.) for each genre.

Fertile ground for a DMsGuild product I suppose.

This is what LaserFace was saying earlier in the thread.

[CantigThimble]

Yes. I've seen some posters on this forum suggest that a a moderately high Athletics bonus (+30 or so) should allow you to leap hundreds of feat into the air.

Moderately high? You have about a 20% chance of getting a bonus that high with an entire party working together at level 20 (+12 expertise +5 str +1d4 guidance +1d12 bardic inspiration= +19-33) unless they have specialized magic items. I'm not commenting on the validity of the rest of your post but I'd call that an absurdly high athletics bonus.

[MaxWilson]

Moderately high? You have about a 20% chance of getting a bonus that high with an entire party working together at level 20 (+12 expertise +5 str +1d4 guidance +1d12 bardic inspiration= +19-33) unless they have specialized magic items. I'm not commenting on the validity of the rest of your post but I'd call that an absurdly high athletics bonus.

Much as I'd love to get into a semantic argument about superlatives, qualifiers, and subjective value judgments, I'm afraid I must decline the opportunity.

[CantigThimble]

Much as I'd love to get into a semantic argument about superlatives, qualifiers, and subjective value judgments, I'm afraid I must decline the opportunity.

Fair enough. :biggrin:

[Z3ro]

Except that it does if you've built your character to be able to do a certain thing. Your ability to do that thing depends on the DM. This is especially prevalent in AL.

But the rules of 3.5, for example, don't allow you to do that either.

If you want to make a character that can always climb a rope, what DC do you always need to be able to hit? Well, 15, sure, but that's just a basic rope. What about the arrow example? Or a rope on a tossing ship in the middle of a storm? Or climb up a single strand of string? You don't know what those DCs are, any more than the 5E player does, except "more than 15". Heck, if you're concerned about making a character who can always succeed, 5E is better; just make someone who can always hit a 30. By RAW skill DCs can't go higher than that. In 3.5, they can be as high as you want.


The result is that no roll is good enough. A player who wants to be able to do a thing has to optimize even harder than he would have in 3.5e, just to cover for the DM.

Edit: And that assumes that what he wants to do is even possible. Players could once assume that X, Y, and Z worked and were possible with a roll of X, because the rules said so. They could extrapolate and guess at other DCs. No more.

Impossible rolls were always a thing, even in 3.5. As has been said a million times, a bad DMs gotta bad DM. Nothing in 3.5 makes the DM not make a roll impossible. You really think a bad DM is going to look at the arrow rope climb and be persuaded when his player tells him it shouldn't be higher than a 15, because that's all the book says it is?

[Easy_Lee]

Impossible rolls were always a thing, even in 3.5. As has been said a million times, a bad DMs gotta bad DM. Nothing in 3.5 makes the DM not make a roll impossible. You really think a bad DM is going to look at the arrow rope climb and be persuaded when his player tells him it shouldn't be higher than a 15, because that's all the book says it is?

No, I think the player is going to look it up after the game, conclude that the DM was doing it wrong, check on the Internet for advice, and ultimately confront the DM or leave.

In 5e, it's harder to tell whether someone is being a bad DM or not. We can tell, generally. But new players may not be able to tell. And they'll have no resources to guess at how hard things are supposed to be. So they'll just get frustrated, and assume that they're either doing something wrong, or the game sucks.

5e makes it pretty clear, to everyone involved, that what the DM says goes and if you question the DM, you're the problem. I believe that mindset is and always has been the worst part of tabletop gaming in general and d&d in particular.

[Safety Sword]

No, I think the player is going to look it up after the game, conclude that the DM was doing it wrong, check on the Internet for advice, and ultimately confront the DM or leave.

In 5e, it's harder to tell whether someone is being a bad DM or not. We can tell, generally. But new players may not be able to tell. And they'll have no resources to guess at how hard things are supposed to be. So they'll just get frustrated, and assume that they're either doing something wrong, or the game sucks.

5e makes it pretty clear, to everyone involved, that what the DM says goes and if you question the DM, you're the problem. I believe that mindset is and always has been the worst part of tabletop gaming in general and d&d in particular.

If the DM sucks, the game does suck. The game is highly DM dependant.

And if the DM says that something works a certain way and you start an argument at the table, you are the problem.

Rules discussions should be held out of game time and away from the gaming table so D&D can be about rolling dice and being awesome and not debating club. There's nothing more boring than a rules discussion taking up playing time... except four people watching two people having a rules discussion during playing time.

[LaserFace]

5e makes it pretty clear, to everyone involved, that what the DM says goes and if you question the DM, you're the problem. I believe that mindset is and always has been the worst part of tabletop gaming in general and d&d in particular.

It's a leap to say "The success of a D&D game hinges on your ability to entertain the other players at the game table" and "Listen to the players' ideas, and say yes if you can" is really to be taken by DMs to mean crush all dissent at your table.

[Blarmb]

No, I think the player is going to look it up after the game, conclude that the DM was doing it wrong, check on the Internet for advice, and ultimately confront the DM or leave.

I think for the average person, you're wrong. Most people just don't that much of adversarial approach to the game. When things don't go their way or things seem tougher than they expected on average they're kind frustrated for the all of 5-10 seconds it's relevant then they take another bite of their pizza and have moved on by the time their next go comes around.

I've played and run in a lot of games, and seen a lot of players disagree with a lot of calls. I've seen them take the "look it up, get argument ammunition on the internet, then start a confrontation over it" approach all of once. The GM didn't budge and even then they shrugged their shoulders, were salty for 1 session and proceeded to get on with the rest of the game without bringing it up again.


Either the sample of players I've dealt with is grossly misrepresentative or the number of players who take to the books and go "The right way or I walk" when the GM goes off-RAW in ways they don't like is vanishingly small.

[Pex]

Let me see if I can clarify my position, building on my rope example:

Let's assume that, for this example, we have a completely normal rope, DC15 in 3.5e. Simple. Now, let's assume that, as the party tries to climb the rope, they come under fire from a group of archers. Is there a change in DC, and if so, what is it?

And this is why I see no difference between a system like 3.5 and 5 when it comes to skill DCs. The DM in the arrow scenario is still going to have to decide what the DC is, with no guidance from the rules as to how to determine that. 3.5 offers no help whatsoever; the base DC is set, sure, but not the modifier. At least in 5E, we can combine the tasks; the rope climbing might have been easy, but the extra arrows turned it into a hard task; look up the number for hard, and there we go.

No change at all. Nothing changed about the rope. Instead, the 3E DM might say the character is flatfooted against the archers. However, if he makes a DC 20 climb check he's not, but it's still DC 15 for the regular climbing a rope. That's adjudicating a situation that wasn't conceived of at character creation and for a scenario the tables don't specifically cover. In 5E the DM could say the archers attack with advantage and also say the character can stop the advantage if makes a higher check. The difference is in 5E there's no explicit DC 15 in the first place. It could be 10. It could be 20. It could be the player never had to roll but now that there are archers there's a need to roll of DC whatever the DM feels like.

[DeAnno]

I meant for them to do it before they released the edition. I don't believe in changing printed text after release. You take the time to get it right the first time.

I'm an author, and there's a common writing problem, which authors learn to recognize, called an "indefinite reference." Carl took his son to Home Depot to pick out a paint color for his room. Who's room? It's unclear. And 5e is full of this sort of writing. Where rules aren't missing, they are instead unclear, leading to our RAW thread. But far more rules are missing, such as DCs for standard actions.

It all points to one thing: the writers of 5e used the design goals to justify laziness. They left all of the power in the DM's hands not because it was right, but because it was easy. The product they're selling this time around is less of a game and more of a basis upon which to base one. Except one then has to make his own rulings on the base rules as well, since so many of the rules are unclear.

It's frustrating and unnecessary. We shouldn't need Sage Advice. We shouldn't need a RAW thread. The rules should be clear, and there should be tables for common checks like there used to be. These things would not have hurt 5e at all.

This was a really cogent summary of the problems of 5e I've been frustrated with myself. I agree completely with the concerns you've brought up in the thread, and I think you hit the nail on the head in this post.

One thing I will ask though, is in the case of 5e where we have a lot of dysfunction, would you support a "hard" errata that went in aggressively to fix all the vagueness problems? You say that you don't support changing text after release, and that has a certain moral weight, but leaving a broken product broken is a problem in itself.

I remember back in the errata-heavy days of 4e I was always appreciative that problems in the game were getting patched even if sometimes I didn't agree with the content of the patches. It seemed like a definite step up from the somewhat extreme and singularity-laced environment that was 3.5e, with its slow and unreliable errata cycle (Poor Tome of Battle...)

With 5e the errata pendulum has swung back the other way. A lot of things that need fixing don't get fixed, and many of the very few changes have seemed like negative motion to me. I would be surprised if 5e Core got any errata ever again, sadly.

[Cybren]

Errata shouldn't be used to change or rebalance the gsms and clear up misunderstandings. Even accepting the premise of the thread as true, wotc should fix it in 6E (also- edition changes should be used to make revisions and compile large accumulations of errata, not sell you a new set of the same splat books). I'm very glad the days of 4e patching things to the point where physical books were irrelevant

[Gtdead]

Not having some guidelines to help me predict the DC of skill checks has sucked all the fun of interacting with the environment in our game. Our DM is extremely inconsistent. Sometimes he warns me against something, other times he lets me roll but it's impossible to succeed and while he mostly sets DC 15 for common tasks in encounters, if he wants us to succeed in something for faster pacing, he still asks us to roll but we may even succeed with a natural 1.

Our DM isn't bad. Just inexperienced. He doesn't know how to deal with it. My proficiency in persuasion for example is useless. It will either be an autosuccess or an autofail depending on my argument and the target npc.

[Easy_Lee]

This was a really cogent summary of the problems of 5e I've been frustrated with myself. I agree completely with the concerns you've brought up in the thread, and I think you hit the nail on the head in this post.

One thing I will ask though, is in the case of 5e where we have a lot of dysfunction, would you support a "hard" errata that went in aggressively to fix all the vagueness problems? You say that you don't support changing text after release, and that has a certain moral weight, but leaving a broken product broken is a problem in itself.

I remember back in the errata-heavy days of 4e I was always appreciative that problems in the game were getting patched even if sometimes I didn't agree with the content of the patches. It seemed like a definite step up from the somewhat extreme and singularity-laced environment that was 3.5e, with its slow and unreliable errata cycle (Poor Tome of Battle...)

With 5e the errata pendulum has swung back the other way. A lot of things that need fixing don't get fixed, and many of the very few changes have seemed like negative motion to me. I would be surprised if 5e Core got any errata ever again, sadly.

They've designed 5e, from the ground up, with this idea of rulings, not rules. Errata to change that would be extensive. Many players sticky-note errata into their books, but there aren't enough sticky-notes in a pack for that kind of overhaul. I don't think errata is the answer.

However, crazy idea here, but one thing they could do is release a set of official rulings and DCs. They already have something like that in Sage Advice. What they could do is gather up all of the most common rule questions and DCs, give official answers, and say here, this is your standard if you don't want to make your own rulings. Then specify that AL DMs must use those rulings and DCs. That way, players know what to expect with AL, and don't have to deal with their same character bouncing between inconsistent DMs.

Additionally, new DMs would have some basis for their rulings. They could use the official ones when unsure, or while learning.

Some people don't want to make their own rulings and DCs, and others have no idea what values to set. I think a comprehensive set of official rulings and common DCs would help the edition. And I think something like that is necessary for AL. Players would still have to deal with railroading DMs, of course, but at least they would be consistent.

[Strill]

Wait, you want rules for gauging the age of wheat?

No. I want a collection of common example DCs to set a consistent baseline for the difficulty of tasks. That provides a clear and common standard for judging the difficulty of more esoteric tasks.

I'd also say there should be a page that shows what the chances of success for given rolls are, for added perspective. Especially when it comes to tasks requiring multiple rolls.

[Pex]

Our DM isn't bad. Just inexperienced. He doesn't know how to deal with it. My proficiency in persuasion for example is useless. It will either be an autosuccess or an autofail depending on my argument and the target npc.

To be fair, while that is an inexperienced DM issue that is not a 5E specific issue. It's an old problem since even before 3E. Some DMs, even Honest True trying to be fair - no "tyrannical DMing" at all, overvalue what a player says to adjudicate social skill outcomes. A player does not have to be physically strong or know how to fight for his fighter to make an attack roll and can use the math of the game to slay the dragon, but he has to be a master manipulator in real life to get NPCs to listen. If you are shy or not loquacious in real life, then so too are your characters. The real life charismatic cool player will have his 8 CH barbarian smooth talk the princess but the real life introvert player can't get his 18 CH bard to convince a bartender to let him play a song for his supper. (Not meaning to imply you're a shy introvert. I don't know you. :smallsmile: )

There is a point to say even the shy introvert player needs to say something. He needs to make the effort to at least explain what he wants his character to accomplish even if the player himself feels uncomfortable talking to the DM as his character. In a social skill use if a player does come up with a brilliant, witty verbiage, The Rule Of Cool says he's to be awarded a bonus or something to improve his chance of success on the social skill roll. However, you need to teach the DM that the use of the Persuasion and Intimidate skills are precisely so the DM doesn't have to judge the brilliance or lack there of what the player says in talking in character. That judgment has an inherent bias. Since the game does not give specific rules the DM has to make up his own. He would not be in the wrong to say that even letting you roll more he doesn't want a set DC to determine success. The alternative is an opposed roll by the NPC, using Insight or its own social skill depending on the situation. He is also in his rights to rule the king will not give you his crown even if you roll a 30 Persuasion when you asked. Instead, that 30 means the king laughs at your "obvious joke" instead of throwing you in the dungeon for insolence.

[Gtdead]

@Pex

Agreed, persuasion is a more specific kind of problem. I gave it more as an example of the skill system failing to simulate events in the game. However, even a skill like acrobatics can go wrong if the DM is inexperienced.

For example the shadow monk wants to blink on a ledge and use his longbow, and he asks for a spot that he can balance easier. Even if he is successful on his perception check (that I found unnecessary), DM still sets a unrealistically high DC because that action may trivialize his encounter (goons don't have ranged attacks).

In that particular example, I gave him the idea to let the monk blink without problems and roll an acrobatic check each time he attacks, which affects his hit chance, and not his ability to balance on a ledge that even an average person like me can (and has).

I'm aware that this isn't a particular problem with 5e, however this edition doesn't make it any better at all.

[Segev]

Much as I'd love to get into a semantic argument about superlatives, qualifiers, and subjective value judgments, I'm afraid I must decline the opportunity.

But... but... we could use fuzzy logic! Apply member functions to the adjectives tying them to ranges of values, and apply dillution and compression functions to the superlatives and qualifiers, and make the subjective discussion mathematically cogent!

[jamieth]

Let's assume that, for this example, we have a completely normal rope, DC15 in 3.5e. Simple. Now, let's assume that, as the party tries to climb the rope, they come under fire from a group of archers. Is there a change in DC, and if so, what is it?
DC to climb a rope won't change; however, the PCs would lose their Dex bonus to AC (and all associated Dodge boni), and would have to make another Climb check (against the same DC15) every time archers hit them.
They can also attempt to climb faster, to reduce the time archers have to shoot on them; doing so would increase the DC of climbing the rope to 20.
Sourse: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/climb.htm

[Blarmb]

DC to climb a rope won't change; however, the PCs would lose their Dex bonus to AC (and all associated Dodge boni), and would have to make another Climb check (against the same DC15) every time archers hit them.
They can also attempt to climb faster, to reduce the time archers have to shoot on them; doing so would increase the DC of climbing the rope to 20.
Sourse: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/climb.htm

Is this a sensible result?
If not, is what we are gaining in clarity worth the trade off in not being able to produce a sensible result without going outside the scope of the rules ?

The answers to both these questions are subjective, however I'd wager for some folks the answer to both is "No".

That's what people who are into what 5e is offering like about it. If we think given the tone of the campaign being under fire from archers would make the task harder the DC can be harder, if we think it has no effect we grant none.

If we think "climbing sure takes away from battle readiness" we can give the attacker's advantage, if the tone of the game is "when you're on a rope you're swinging around like a crazy pirate dude and all the mooks still miss you" we can make it do nothing to attacks, or even grant advantage.

5e gives you toolbox, but not a blueprint. Sometimes all some folks want is a toolbox.

[jamieth]

Is this a sensible result?
If not, is what we are gaining in clarity worth the trade off in not being able to produce a sensible result without going outside the scope of the rules ?

The answers to both these questions are subjective, however I'd wager for some folks the answer to both is "No".

That's what people who are into what 5e is offering like about it. If we think given the tone of the campaign being under fire from archers would make the task harder the DC can be harder, if we think it has no effect we grant none.

If we think "climbing sure takes away from battle readiness" we can give the attacker's advantage, if the tone of the game is "when you're on a rope you're swinging around like a crazy pirate dude and all the mooks still miss you" we can make it do nothing to attacks, or even grant advantage.

5e gives you toolbox, but not a blueprint. Sometimes all some folks want is a toolbox.

If you don't like the result 3.5 rules give you, you can change the rules. (Can't quote the relevant section of DMG, but I believe it's is there). But you're changing them using RAW as a baseline. If you say, "in my game, DC to climb a rope is 20", you know you're making it harder than default. I'd you're saying, "in our game, climbing doesn't leave you flat-footed", you know you're making climbing less distracting than default. And you can always just use the default if you feel it works fine.
In 5e, there's no default. You have to invent your own rule, want it or not. And removing the rule you don't like is much easier than inserting one where there's none in the first place

[Blarmb]

If you don't like the result 3.5 rules give you, you can change the rules. (Can't quote the relevant section of DMG, but I believe it's is there). But you're changing them using RAW as a baseline. If you say, "in my game, DC to climb a rope is 20", you know you're making it harder than default. I'd you're saying, "in our game, climbing doesn't leave you flat-footed", you know you're making climbing less distracting than default. And you can always just use the default if you feel it works fine.
In 5e, there's no default. You have to invent your own rule, want it or not. And removing the rule you don't like is much easier than inserting one where there's none in the first place

I disagree. When the system tells you "to make your own rule" or "fill out the specifics of the rule as you see fit" you're operating within the bounds of the system when you do so. If you want the flexibility that the system is giving it to you, it is fair to credit the game with giving you a general framework that allows you to use it as you want.

If a game says "Here are the exact rules and procedure, follow them" and you go "I don't like that rule, let's ignore or change it" then you're operating outside the bounds of the system. If you want that flexibility the system is not giving it to you. In this case it is not fair to credit the system with whatever experience you're having with the changes you make.

You can change any system into anything you want with enough effort. You can patch away all the specificity in 3.P or patch over their specificity with what you think is the correct, but that doesn't make whatever you patch over to the merit of 3.P. If I want to play tic-tac-toe the approach "Just play connect four and remove things until it plays like tic-tac-toe. As bonus you've still got a game of connect four under there if you want it" is just super roundabout. With a rule set as rigid and defined as 3.P if you want to have any hope of hammering into a shape you like, you've got to have an in-depth understanding of the whole system and where any parts that run contrary to your desires lie. With 5e you just kind of set up what you want and that's that. This is of course of no value if you don't enjoy the setup process or find the person doing the setup incompetent, to be acting in bad taste or if there is no mutually agreeable idea of what to set up.

[Vogonjeltz]

Yes, absolutely, he should know exactly the rules for climbing a dry rope. A DM who refuses to divulge those when asked is just being a jerk. A DM who has no rules but just wings it, and does so with noticeable inconsistency, is not a jerk but is not providing a satisfying experience.

If the DM strays from the rules it's literally no different than if they strayed in any other edition or any other game that has ever or will ever exist.

The rules for climbing are written in the PHB, not secreted away by the DM.

If the Player is unwilling to read those rules, that's entirely their problem.
If they are unable to read those rules, then unclear climbing is the least of their problems in playing the game.


Any situation that the rules don't cover is a hole in the rules.

Why wouldn't the basic rule of gameplay, that the DM adjudicates, cover a gap in either the rules or the DM/Player knowledge of the rules?

Also, can you come up with a common example of this so-called hole in the rules?

Climbing is not one such example, it's covered by the rules in the PHB.


So you want to stop pulling punches? Fine, we can stop pulling punches. The DM is the most important person at the table hands down. If he doesn't want to play then no one plays. If 3/4 of his players quit the game can still happen, if all his players want to play but he doesn't then the game doesn't happen. He has a monopoly on the commodity that is his game and if you want to play then you have to pay whatever price he sets. You can negotiate as much as you want to convince him to lower the price so you'll buy it at all but he can still set that price wherever he wants.

You can either pay the price or find someone offering a better deal. That better deal might even be someone running a completely different game with different rules, but the player has no authority whatsoever to force a DM to set the price of entry lower than the DM wants to and still run the game for them. If they did then I would never become a DM in the first place, and then where does the hobby go?

Witin the marketplace of ideas, sure the DM has every right to refuse to alter their style; but that doesn't preclude one of the people filling the role of player from switching to the role of DM and vice versa. Both roles are required, and both can be filled by anyone making all persons disposable as the game can go on if someone is willing.

Now, if nobody is willing to do the game running or game playing, then sure, the game can't go on.


Players ought to know the DCs for most actions ahead of time. In real life, I can tell from looking at a gap how hard it will be to jump, or looking at a wall whether I think I can climb it or not. In the absence of a ready DC, players don't have the same level of information that they usually would in real life.

It's well documented that humans are awful at making an accurate assessment of their own performance. This phenomena is more extreme in those who are unskilled at a task, they vastly overestimate their own capabilities. It's also affected by gender (men often over-rate themselves, women often under-rate themselves), although if that's purely a consequence of social norms is not something I've come across as as yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb03/overestimate.aspx
http://www.businessinsider.com/overconfidence-and-bad-reasoning-2015-5
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131125-why-the-stupid-say-theyre-smart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_fallacy
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/110201_throwing
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/06/24/study-men-think-they-are-better-math-they-are
http://www.cnet.com/news/men-think-theyre-smarter-than-they-so-they-study-science-says-researcher/


Really? Because that test works just fine on every other type of system.

GIGO is applicable to that claim. No system works all of the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_in,_garbage_out


For example, a character who was a farmer could try to gauge the age of a stalk of wheat.

Ability checks only apply when there's a chance of failure. If this is a novice farmer who has no knowledge of wheat specifically, then there's a chance of failure. If it's a wheat farmer, then there's no chance of failure.

The rules could not be more clear: There's no roll if there's no chance of failure.

[Segev]

The trouble arises in that the rules for difficulty are that "an easy task is DC x, a medium task DC y, and a hard task DC z." There is literally no guideline as to what constitutes "easy" or "hard."

I don't know about you, but I think that getting up in the morning and forcing yourself to do a simple exercise routine is very hard. Does that mean everybody who wants to do such a thing should have to make a DC 25 Wisdom check to convince themselves that it's a good idea RIGHT NOW and that staying in bed an extra hour isn't more appealing?

I hardly think so; that would really depend on the person. But...isn't "depends on the person" a factor of the stat?



The point being that "if you think it's hard/easy/medium" being the only guide provided means it will skew heavily based on the DM's own proficiencies. While things he knows are unusual skills or unusual frailties of his may be more fairly judged, there's a lot out there that people don't realize they are not the best benchmark for.

Guidelines are thus useful, because "an example of a medium-difficulty climb is a rope next to a sheer wall" lets the DM know where to start with this. As opposed to "easy," as he might have thought it was based on how talented he was in gym class in elementary school, or "very hard" based on how talented he wasn't in that same gym class.

[Blarmb]

The trouble arises in that the rules for difficulty are that "an easy task is DC x, a medium task DC y, and a hard task DC z." There is literally no guideline as to what constitutes "easy" or "hard."

I don't know about you, but I think that getting up in the morning and forcing yourself to do a simple exercise routine is very hard. Does that mean everybody who wants to do such a thing should have to make a DC 25 Wisdom check to convince themselves that it's a good idea RIGHT NOW and that staying in bed an extra hour isn't more appealing?

I hardly think so; that would really depend on the person. But...isn't "depends on the person" a factor of the stat?



The point being that "if you think it's hard/easy/medium" being the only guide provided means it will skew heavily based on the DM's own proficiencies. While things he knows are unusual skills or unusual frailties of his may be more fairly judged, there's a lot out there that people don't realize they are not the best benchmark for.

Guidelines are thus useful, because "an example of a medium-difficulty climb is a rope next to a sheer wall" lets the DM know where to start with this. As opposed to "easy," as he might have thought it was based on how talented he was in gym class in elementary school, or "very hard" based on how talented he wasn't in that same gym class.

I sucked at gym class and every time I've attempt to climb a rope I've barely managed to get my feet off the ground, certainly never even made it so much as a 1/5th of the way up. I'd probably still only call climbing up rope next to the wall as easy.

"The GM sets all difficulties using themselves as the baseline" speaks to a very specific style and one I've never even seen anyone use. Most DMs I've played under seem to use some piece of fiction they're aiming to emulate as the yardstick. Like the guy who loved the lord of the rings movies is probably pretty open to making sure players can surf on shields while shooting arrows, but might be less inclined to make crazy parkour stunts easy to do than the dude who has spent hours playing Assassins Creed.

I've played with people prone to breaking into humming the Indiana Jones theme when traps are sprung and wanting "run away from it" to be the best solution to a big boulder. Never seen anyone go "Sprinting after all that is gonna be really tough, not the best way to get away from the boulder DC 20 at this point".

[MaxWilson]

Our DM isn't bad. Just inexperienced. He doesn't know how to deal with it. My proficiency in persuasion for example is useless. It will either be an autosuccess or an autofail depending on my argument and the target npc.

Is your DM by any chance an engineer or other mathy type? He seems to be under the misapprehension that a logically-sound argument will always convince the audience. Only an engineer could believe something so naive. :)

I can understand autofails for impossible things, and I can understand auto-success for some things and some people, but ten minutes on an Internet forum should suffice to demonstrate that it is not enough to be correct--you have to be correct in a way that people can understand and which doesn't hurt their feel-bads to agree with.

[LaserFace]

"The GM sets all difficulties using themselves as the baseline" speaks to a very specific style and one I've never even seen anyone use. Most DMs I've played under seem to use some piece of fiction they're aiming to emulate as the yardstick. Like the guy who loved the lord of the rings movies is probably pretty open to making sure players can surf on shields while shooting arrows, but might be less inclined to make crazy parkour stunts easy to do than the dude who has spent hours playing Assassins Creed.

This is my viewpoint as well, and tried to argue it previously. The DMG explains there are many ways to look at the game. And, I think depending on what Flavor of Fantasy you're going with, the same skill-based task may have higher or lower DCs associated with it. No DM I've ever spoken to has taken "Easy DC" to mean "Easy for me", but they've all gone with "Easy for characters in the world I've made". I think that the game should be run differently depending on setting and tone, and I kinda like the idea of a system that gives me the freedom of using generic terms that can be applied in a broad range of games.

I can see potentially how an inexperienced DM might not come to that conclusion, although the DMG even recommends people new to the role aren't even ready for the book and should be examining the Starter Set. Maybe a "For Beginners" section could have come with the DMG, although I suppose there are a few arguments as to why it possibly wasn't included, none of which I really care to speculate.

[Pex]

I sucked at gym class and every time I've attempt to climb a rope I've barely managed to get my feet off the ground, certainly never even made it so much as a 1/5th of the way up. I'd probably still only call climbing up rope next to the wall as easy.

"The GM sets all difficulties using themselves as the baseline" speaks to a very specific style and one I've never even seen anyone use. Most DMs I've played under seem to use some piece of fiction they're aiming to emulate as the yardstick. Like the guy who loved the lord of the rings movies is probably pretty open to making sure players can surf on shields while shooting arrows, but might be less inclined to make crazy parkour stunts easy to do than the dude who has spent hours playing Assassins Creed.

I've played with people prone to breaking into humming the Indiana Jones theme when traps are sprung and wanting "run away from it" to be the best solution to a big boulder. Never seen anyone go "Sprinting after all that is gonna be really tough, not the best way to get away from the boulder DC 20 at this point".

But that still leaves the possibility some other DM who sucked at gym class (raises hand :smallbiggrin:) would say climbing a rope is hard. That's the issue. My character's ability to climb a rope is dependent on who is DM, not whatever game mechanics I use to create the character who likes to climb ropes. Having the game rules define what is easy and what is hard weeds out DM bias. A player has his own bias on how easy or hard something is. The game rules become the arbiter. The DM can run the game instead of having to think up DCs every 5 minutes, and the player has a defined benchmark to gauge his character's abilities.

[Easy_Lee]

This is my viewpoint as well, and tried to argue it previously. The DMG explains there are many ways to look at the game. And, I think depending on what Flavor of Fantasy you're going with, the same skill-based task may have higher or lower DCs associated with it. No DM I've ever spoken to has taken "Easy DC" to mean "Easy for me", but they've all gone with "Easy for characters in the world I've made". I think that the game should be run differently depending on setting and tone, and I kinda like the idea of a system that gives me the freedom of using generic terms that can be applied in a broad range of games.

I can see potentially how an inexperienced DM might not come to that conclusion, although the DMG even recommends people new to the role aren't even ready for the book and should be examining the Starter Set. Maybe a "For Beginners" section could have come with the DMG, although I suppose there are a few arguments as to why it possibly wasn't included, none of which I really care to speculate.

Hey, I'm cool with that when the DCs are consistent. The problem is that DCs, rulings, and those things which are and are not possible are far less consistent now that we don't have baselines.

As I've said, I'm in favor of WotC releasing a set of approved, "official" rulings and common DCs. These official rulings would be used for AL, and would be out there for DMs who want to use them. That way, before the game, a DM who didn't want to use them could just tell the players, "Hey, I'm not using the AL rulings, I'm emulating system X which places an emphasis on Y and Z."

If WotC would do that, there would be far fewer problems with inconsistent DMs.

[Blarmb]

But that still leaves the possibility some other DM who sucked at gym class (raises hand :smallbiggrin:) would say climbing a rope is hard. That's the issue. My character's ability to climb a rope is dependent on who is DM, not whatever game mechanics I use to create the character who likes to climb ropes. Having the game rules define what is easy and what is hard weeds out DM bias. A player has his own bias on how easy or hard something is. The game rules become the arbiter. The DM can run the game instead of having to think up DCs every 5 minutes, and the player has a defined benchmark to gauge his character's abilities.

One man's "DM Bias" is another man's "DM Sound Judgement". You say "weeds out DM bias", I say "leaves too little room for context" or "can't account for tone". I don't want the rules as Arbiter I want the DM to be the arbiter, no matter if I'm in that role or playing under them. I don't want the DM thinking up DCs every 5 minutes I want them doing so for every action based on the specific circumstances of the game world at that moment and the overall context of our campaign. I don't want a defined benchmark to gauge my character's abilities by, I want to discover their place in the world and how the stack up against it in real time, as result of the game playing out.

Everything you see as negative or a problem, I see as positive. For every door more rules open, they close many others. It's just a matter of how many doors you like open to be left open. I'd wager you just like a more tightly-bounded play space than I do.

[Segev]

I sucked at gym class and every time I've attempt to climb a rope I've barely managed to get my feet off the ground, certainly never even made it so much as a 1/5th of the way up. I'd probably still only call climbing up rope next to the wall as easy.

"The GM sets all difficulties using themselves as the baseline" speaks to a very specific style and one I've never even seen anyone use. Most DMs I've played under seem to use some piece of fiction they're aiming to emulate as the yardstick. Like the guy who loved the lord of the rings movies is probably pretty open to making sure players can surf on shields while shooting arrows, but might be less inclined to make crazy parkour stunts easy to do than the dude who has spent hours playing Assassins Creed.

I've played with people prone to breaking into humming the Indiana Jones theme when traps are sprung and wanting "run away from it" to be the best solution to a big boulder. Never seen anyone go "Sprinting after all that is gonna be really tough, not the best way to get away from the boulder DC 20 at this point".


This is my viewpoint as well, and tried to argue it previously. The DMG explains there are many ways to look at the game. And, I think depending on what Flavor of Fantasy you're going with, the same skill-based task may have higher or lower DCs associated with it. No DM I've ever spoken to has taken "Easy DC" to mean "Easy for me", but they've all gone with "Easy for characters in the world I've made". I think that the game should be run differently depending on setting and tone, and I kinda like the idea of a system that gives me the freedom of using generic terms that can be applied in a broad range of games.

I can see potentially how an inexperienced DM might not come to that conclusion, although the DMG even recommends people new to the role aren't even ready for the book and should be examining the Starter Set. Maybe a "For Beginners" section could have come with the DMG, although I suppose there are a few arguments as to why it possibly wasn't included, none of which I really care to speculate.

The issue is that while he might be "open" to shield-surfing, he might also think that that's ludicrously hard.

I am not suggesting the DM does this consciously. He's not saying, "well, I can't do it, so nobody can." He's using the only benchmarks he has: his own experiences.

It's getting way too technical for most RPGs, but if you're going to use fuzzy logic adjective/number translations, you really should provide the membership functions.

BESM 3e did a better job of handling the "well, we have this geared for different kinds of settings" angle when they had their multi-genre pricing for skills. If 5e's goal in having ill-defined, vague terms like "easy tasks" as the guidelines, they should provide examples of "easy tasks."

If the intent is for that to vary based on setting convention, then examples of what kinds of tasks are easy, medium, and hard difficulty in various genres should have been given.

[Blarmb]

The issue is that while he might be "open" to shield-surfing, he might also think that that's ludicrously hard.

I am not suggesting the DM does this consciously. He's not saying, "well, I can't do it, so nobody can." He's using the only benchmarks he has: his own experiences.

I'm saying that the GM who loved the lords of the rings movies and wants to see lord of the rings stuff happen at table is likely going to make shield surfing a ready occurance and reward folks who attempt.
I'm saying that the GM who loved Assassin's Creed is going likely to make the DCs for slick parkour moves readily accessible from the get-go so that the game will have the rooftop chase sequence he likes
I'm saying that the GM who loves Star Wars is likely to put in a glowing magical sword that makes a "Vroosh, Vroosh" sound effect when it swings.


If the intent is for that to vary based on setting convention, then examples of what kinds of tasks are easy, medium, and hard difficulty in various genres should have been given.

I don't think they intended for it to change based on setting convention, rather overall table taste. Which is a combination of setting convention, tone, desired difficulty level (in the metagame sense) and table mood. That's a lot of variables and I think it would tough to even nail down examples for all the combinations even more so trying to fit them all in one book in way that felt cohesive. Heck some of these aren't even constants across an entire campaign.

[georgie_leech]

There are a few examples in the DMG for more codified DC'S, but they're few and far between. I'm on mobile and linking is a pain as a result, but there was a brief discussion about them nearish the end of the 'dealing with small bonuses' thread a while back.

[LaserFace]

BESM 3e did a better job of handling the "well, we have this geared for different kinds of settings" angle when they had their multi-genre pricing for skills. If 5e's goal in having ill-defined, vague terms like "easy tasks" as the guidelines, they should provide examples of "easy tasks."

If the intent is for that to vary based on setting convention, then examples of what kinds of tasks are easy, medium, and hard difficulty in various genres should have been given.

Conceptually speaking I don't think it would have necessarily been a bad idea to give examples, in the event DMs didn't know how to define difficulty. But, maybe you could offer an example of what they should have proposed?

It obviously would just have been redundant to say something really simple like "Easy tasks are what we find easy in everyday life", and in contrast, listing all the ways in which difficulties could compound on one-another might invite rules bloat that slows down the game. The simple method of considering an untrained, average person accomplishing an easy task 50% of the time (DC10), or less when it requires training or talent (DC15) or both (DC20) is usually a good indicator to me of how to set a DC.

Would you have preferred something like this (with adapted numbers)? http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/climb.htm

[Cybren]

I don't think they intended for it to change based on setting convention, rather overall table taste. Which is a combination of setting convention, tone, desired difficulty level (in the metagame sense) and table mood. That's a lot of variables and I think it would tough to even nail down examples for all the combinations even more so trying to fit them all in one book in way that felt cohesive. Heck some of these aren't even constants across an entire campaign.

Yeah, exactly. They went for a generic DC table saying what easy/medium/hard DCs are, but to particularly define what those are for every ability check and skill, for each of the different genres the DMG suggests, would have been a significant page count increase.

[MaxWilson]

Conceptually speaking I don't think it would have necessarily been a bad idea to give examples, in the event DMs didn't know how to define difficulty. But, maybe you could offer an example of what they should have proposed?



DMG page 114: [I]In a standard game, reflective of real-world physics, it is a DC 10 task to use your action to increase your standard jump distance by 10% horiztontally or vertically, DC 20 to increase it by 25%, and impossible to increase it by more than that. In a wuxia-styled game where crazy jumps are a standard part of play, extraordinary jumps do not cost an action, just standard movement, and you can jump to anywhere in-scene with a difficulty based on narrative coolness as much as physical constraints, ranging from DC 10 (jump on top of a house) to DC 30 (jump to the point of a spear balanced on top of Big Ben from a standing start on the ground below).

[Cybren]

DMG page 114: [I]In a standard game, reflective of real-world physics, it is a DC 10 task to use your action to increase your standard jump distance by 10% horiztontally or vertically, DC 20 to increase it by 25%, and impossible to increase it by more than that. In a wuxia-styled game where crazy jumps are a standard part of play, extraordinary jumps do not cost an action, just standard movement, and you can jump to anywhere in-scene with a difficulty based on narrative coolness as much as physical constraints, ranging from DC 10 (jump on top of a house) to DC 30 (jump to the point of a spear balanced on top of Big Ben from a standing start on the ground below).

That both presumes that each of those genres have uniform tonal possibilities (they do not) and a universal perception of progression of difficulty (they do not), and would have significantly added to the page count of whatever book they put it in. What someone may want even a level 1 character to do in a wuxia game may not be something another DM would want really possible until higher levels.
To say the least, claiming something as 'reflective of real world physics' opens all sorts of cans of worms with regard to how reality tested any given rule is ("by these rules my highschool longjumper either has n strength or an absurd proficiency bonus!").

[LaserFace]

DMG page 114: [I]In a standard game, reflective of real-world physics, it is a DC 10 task to use your action to increase your standard jump distance by 10% horiztontally or vertically, DC 20 to increase it by 25%, and impossible to increase it by more than that. In a wuxia-styled game where crazy jumps are a standard part of play, extraordinary jumps do not cost an action, just standard movement, and you can jump to anywhere in-scene with a difficulty based on narrative coolness as much as physical constraints, ranging from DC 10 (jump on top of a house) to DC 30 (jump to the point of a spear balanced on top of Big Ben from a standing start on the ground below).

I want to play

[MaxWilson]

That both presumes that each of those genres have uniform tonal possibilities (they do not) and a universal perception of progression of difficulty (they do not), and would have significantly added to the page count of whatever book they put it in. What someone may want even a level 1 character to do in a wuxia game may not be something another DM would want really possible until higher levels.
To say the least, claiming something as 'reflective of real world physics' opens all sorts of cans of worms with regard to how reality tested any given rule is ("by these rules my highschool longjumper either has n strength or an absurd proficiency bonus!").

"Reflective of" doesn't mean "accurately models." It's an aspiration.

GURPS used to do this same kind of splitting between cinematic/realistic rules. I quite liked it, and since the DMG is the hacker's manual to 5E, I feel that it would have been appropriate (in that alternate universe) for the various genre discussions to have included crunchy bits. Skill DCs needn't be the only change; perhaps the Raise Dead spell and its ilk are unknown in Sword and Sorcery, whereas Animate Dead may have a 10% chance per cast of changing your alignment closer to Evil, and forces a Horror check to boot.

Such guidelines might make a fine DMsGuild product.

[Cybren]

GURPS also did most of that sort of splitting of rules in special genre books, however. They certainly present some options in the basic set, but it's by no means exhaustive, and the tags of "cinematic"/"exotic"/"supernatural" on advantages in the 4E basic set aren't even really relevant to anything in 4E post GURPS Powers, since that establishes a framework for using the entire advantage system to build abilities

[Pex]

Yeah, exactly. They went for a generic DC table saying what easy/medium/hard DCs are, but to particularly define what those are for every ability check and skill, for each of the different genres the DMG suggests, would have been a significant page count increase.

3E Player's Handbook, 317 pages
5E Player's Handbook, 316 pages

3E Player's Handbook has 25 pages for describing skills. 5E Player's Handbook has 7 pages for ability checks, 5E's equivalent of skill use. 3E uses 18 more pages than 5E for skill DCs and descriptions. 2 pages can be saved by getting rid of skill ranks description, 5E skill proficiency covered in character creation, and the Class-Cross Class table. 3E uses 16 more pages. 3E uses 20 pages for specific skill descriptions. 5E condenses and eliminates skills. Ballpark, but let's say the joining and elimination cuts down the need of skill descriptions 25%, 5 pages. 3E uses 11 more pages. Add in the extra page in general above. 3E Player's Handbook uses 12 more pages total. It was a 5E design choice to put some details about different pantheons and the outer planes in the PHB. For the sake of having defined DCs and descriptions, I'm willing to sacrifice this information from the PHB. Skill use PCs use all the time is more pertinent for players. Pantheons and Planes are suitable for the DMG as that's the DM's purview of world building. Pantheons and planes takes up 11 pages in the 5E Player's Handbook which can now be used instead for more skill defined DCs and descriptions. 3E Player's Handbook uses one more page than 5E Player's Handbook, the same as before of 317 to 316 only now with defined skill DCs and descriptions.

Edit: Upon second reading I see I missed that you're talking about separate skill descriptions for each skill depending on game genre, not just having particular defined skill descriptions for use of general play. Apologies. I'll keep the post to extrapolate page count concerns for general use anyway, but I acquiesce it's not directly relevant to your point.

[Blarmb]

3E Player's Handbook, 317 pages
5E Player's Handbook, 316 pages

3E Player's Handbook has 25 pages for describing skills. 5E Player's Handbook has 7 pages for ability checks, 5E's equivalent of skill use. 3E uses 18 more pages than 5E for skill DCs and descriptions. 2 pages can be saved by getting rid of skill ranks description, 5E skill proficiency covered in character creation, and the Class-Cross Class table. 3E uses 16 more pages. 3E uses 20 pages for specific skill descriptions. 5E condenses and eliminates skills. Ballpark, but let's say the joining and elimination cuts down the need of skill descriptions 25%, 5 pages. 3E uses 11 more pages. Add in the extra page in general above. 3E Player's Handbook uses 12 more pages total. It was a 5E design choice to put some details about different pantheons and the outer planes in the PHB. For the sake of having defined DCs and descriptions, I'm willing to sacrifice this information from the PHB. Skill use PCs use all the time is more pertinent for players. Pantheons and Planes are suitable for the DMG as that's the DM's purview of world building. Pantheons and planes takes up 11 pages in the 5E Player's Handbook which can now be used instead for more skill defined DCs and descriptions. 3E Player's Handbook uses one more page than 5E Player's Handbook, the same as before of 317 to 316 only now with defined skill DCs and descriptions.

Edit: Upon second reading I see I missed that you're talking about separate skill descriptions for each skill depending on game genre, not just having particular defined skill descriptions for use of general play. Apologies. I'll keep the post to extrapolate page count concerns for general use anyway, but I acquiesce it's not directly relevant to your point.

It's not just page count it's information density. 3.P has much higher information density using constructs like tables with foot notes and cross-references to other tables to present lots of complex rules using comparatively less text. Seriously look at these jump rules:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/jump.htm

3 Tables, one of which references the more general "Vertical Reach" rules.
Rules for how fast you moved in the round affecting your jump DC
Rules for how fast you are generally (but without respect to how fast you moved that round) affect your check.
At least 4 different case call outs about reflex saves, pulling your self up and the prone condition.
Exceptions for how many feet you, and a special case for short jumps.

It's super dense and filled with tons of little chewy bits. It's a Christmas fruitcake of rules. It also covers so many cases one can't help but ask the question "Well, what if I'm jumping into an extremely strong headwind?" or any number of other such things. Does nothing happen because the rules are silent on the matter? Does it fall under the general circumstance modifier rules? Why does it call out so many things, but not that especially when the flight rule call out interactions with wind?


In 5e generally speaking not just for skills but any rules entries of that complexity have probably been pared down to a paragraph and a picture. 5e simply contains much less information per page than 3.P does, so page counts are deceptive. Given the same page counts for the two games, the person reading 3.P is going to have take in and process a lot more information.

[Strill]

It's well documented that humans are awful at making an accurate assessment of their own performance. This phenomena is more extreme in those who are unskilled at a task, they vastly overestimate their own capabilities. It's also affected by gender (men often over-rate themselves, women often under-rate themselves), although if that's purely a consequence of social norms is not something I've come across as as yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb03/overestimate.aspx
http://www.businessinsider.com/overconfidence-and-bad-reasoning-2015-5
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131125-why-the-stupid-say-theyre-smart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_fallacy
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/110201_throwing
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/06/24/study-men-think-they-are-better-math-they-are
http://www.cnet.com/news/men-think-theyre-smarter-than-they-so-they-study-science-says-researcher/


That's referring to people assessing their overall performance relative to others. It's not talking about assessing their ability to perform a given task right now.

[georgie_leech]

That's referring to people assessing their overall performance relative to others. It's not talking about assessing their ability to perform a given task right now.

It's also about the tendency to view fields or tasks you know little about as much simpler than they really are.

[Strill]

It's also about the tendency to view fields or tasks you know little about as much simpler than they really are.

That still has nothing to do with assessing a specific problem in front of you.

[smcmike]

That still has nothing to do with assessing a specific problem in front of you.

If you'd like to see evidence of people assessing specific physical problems in front of them poorly, there is this site called YouTube that should be able to help you out.

[Knaight]

In 5e, there's no default. You have to invent your own rule, want it or not. And removing the rule you don't like is much easier than inserting one where there's none in the first place

You don't have to invent your own rule, you have to apply a broader rule. Yes, doing so does involve actually thinking and isn't a completely mechanistic process, but that doesn't mean there is no rule.


The DM can run the game instead of having to think up DCs every 5 minutes, and the player has a defined benchmark to gauge his character's abilities.

Evaluating DCs for a task is a nothing job for a lot of people - looking up the tables is vastly more intrusive for what I strongly suspect is the vast majority of people, and trying to spin a long list of defined DCs as reducing the effort it takes to DM is dubious at best.

[Tehnar]

You don't have to invent your own rule, you have to apply a broader rule. Yes, doing so does involve actually thinking and isn't a completely mechanistic process, but that doesn't mean there is no rule.

Evaluating DCs for a task is a nothing job for a lot of people - looking up the tables is vastly more intrusive for what I strongly suspect is the vast majority of people, and trying to spin a long list of defined DCs as reducing the effort it takes to DM is dubious at best.

The issue is that the broader rule says: "We the designers were too lazy to make anything up, so its up to you to do our jobs for us." DMs could change or add rules since the dawn of TTRPGs, you never needed a rule to allow you to do so.

On the contrary the lack of rules for certain aspects of the game that come up often is detrimental. At the very least your rulings are not consistent. Its not just between different DMs, rulings not rules, makes a single DM inconsistent as well. Are you telling me that the same DM will make the same ruling on a issue that came up 2 months ago, after he had a few beers, its late and after a long workweek? The player will remember though, especially if its a life or death situation.

What I find especially ironic is how no one is objecting to the comparatively ironclad set of spell rules that stretch on a 100+ tables, but having defined skill and ability checks is a affront to their creativity and ability to run the game the way they want. The rules of which can fit on about 20 pages, give or take.

[CantigThimble]

The issue is that the broader rule says: "We the designers were too lazy to make anything up, so its up to you to do our jobs for us." DMs could change or add rules since the dawn of TTRPGs, you never needed a rule to allow you to do so.

One reason they might not add something like that, even though some people would find helpful, is that some portion of the playerbase will argue to the death and even leave games over some general guidelines that were mentioned in the rules not being followed to the letter. Even if the rules explicitly state 'only use these rules if they work for you and your group, otherwise change them' some players just can't stand to see those rules changed if they were printed. By not printing them they're saving DMs who wouldn't want to use the rules as written from some massive headaches.

P.S. I'm not saying it was the right decision, just that there are other potential motivations than laziness.

[Tehnar]

One reason they might not add something like that, even though some people would find helpful, is that some portion of the playerbase will argue to the death and even leave games over some general guidelines that were mentioned in the rules not being followed to the letter. Even if the rules explicitly state 'only use these rules if they work for you and your group, otherwise change them' some players just can't stand to see those rules changed if they were printed. By not printing them they're saving DMs who wouldn't want to use the rules as written from some massive headaches.

P.S. I'm not saying it was the right decision, just that there are other potential motivations than laziness.

It looks to me that way. There seem to be snippets of rules scattered about the PHB and DMG that indicate that there are some ideas for a working ability and skill system. To me it appears they were working on it, and then abandoned it.

Making a skill system work well is hard, especially since you don't really have examples of a great skill system in previous editions.

[Segev]

It looks to me that way. There seem to be snippets of rules scattered about the PHB and DMG that indicate that there are some ideas for a working ability and skill system. To me it appears they were working on it, and then abandoned it.

Can you give examples of snippets that hint at this to you? I am curious what sort of shape you think you see faintly outlined.

[Tehnar]

Can you give examples of snippets that hint at this to you? I am curious what sort of shape you think you see faintly outlined.

I am away from the books, but going from memory there are some rudimentary tracking and social systems with stated DCs. Why do those checks have stated DCs, while others don't?

When I get back to the books, Ill be able to scrounge a bit more and show more concrete examples.

[pwykersotz]

What I find especially ironic is how no one is objecting to the comparatively ironclad set of spell rules that stretch on a 100+ tables, but having defined skill and ability checks is a affront to their creativity and ability to run the game the way they want. The rules of which can fit on about 20 pages, give or take.

It's not ironic, it's just not the point. The spells are my biggest issue with 5e, but it's tolerable due to giving me almost everything else I want and taking spells from being an impenetrable mess across 80 splatbooks to a much more consolidated amount. I would prefer the magic system look more like the skill system than the other way around.

[Vogonjeltz]

That still has nothing to do with assessing a specific problem in front of you.

Yes, it does. The whole point is that people look at problems and then make wrong estimates of their ability to solve those problems.

That is inclusive of things like making long jumps or doing the Ninja Warrior obstacle course.

[Knaight]

The issue is that the broader rule says: "We the designers were too lazy to make anything up, so its up to you to do our jobs for us." DMs could change or add rules since the dawn of TTRPGs, you never needed a rule to allow you to do so.

I'm not talking about rule 0 here - I'm talking about actual defined rules that still require a judgement call. There's a major difference between designing a skill system and picking how hard a task is within a completely designed skill system.

As for the 'irony' of the spell system, I'll go right ahead and say that Vancian magic is one of the reasons I almost never DM D&D, and almost never play casters. I don't like dealing with it, I'm totally on board with a system that has more room for judgement, etc. That's besides the point though - magic, not being real, can work in just about any way. The skills represent mundane actions, and while magic can be defined by a list of specific tasks that is everything that can be done, that's not viable for a skill system.

[Tehnar]

I'm not talking about rule 0 here - I'm talking about actual defined rules that still require a judgement call. There's a major difference between designing a skill system and picking how hard a task is within a completely designed skill system.

Bolded for emphasis. When nearly everything you do when using the skill system requires a conversation with the DM, then I fail to see how that is a completely designed skill system. The actual defined rules don't require only a judgement call, they require the DM to create his own system to make things work.

Compare the difference in the work required by the DM between those two statements:

"I walk up to Bob and cast Cure wounds."
"I want to jump 5 ft further then the maximum guaranteed distance."


Which one is prone to start a discussion at the table that breaks the action? Which one requires DM adjucation? Which takes up the DM's time when he could be using that to do anything else that actually contributes to the story?



As for the 'irony' of the spell system, I'll go right ahead and say that Vancian magic is one of the reasons I almost never DM D&D, and almost never play casters. I don't like dealing with it, I'm totally on board with a system that has more room for judgement, etc. That's besides the point though - magic, not being real, can work in just about any way. The skills represent mundane actions, and while magic can be defined by a list of specific tasks that is everything that can be done, that's not viable for a skill system.


It's not ironic, it's just not the point. The spells are my biggest issue with 5e, but it's tolerable due to giving me almost everything else I want and taking spells from being an impenetrable mess across 80 splatbooks to a much more consolidated amount. I would prefer the magic system look more like the skill system than the other way around.

And yet there are no threads on spells that are complaining about spells having too much clarity or being too specific. If anything there are threads about certain spells whose spell descriptions are not specific enough and the lack of clarity brings out arguments at the table.

[Knaight]

Bolded for emphasis. When nearly everything you do when using the skill system requires a conversation with the DM, then I fail to see how that is a completely designed skill system. The actual defined rules don't require only a judgement call, they require the DM to create his own system to make things work.

They require the DM to pick a DC, and that's literally it. That's not creating a system.

[Gwendol]

Agreed. And in the end you (maybe) still have to roll the d20 which in most cases will be the greatest factor of determining success or failure. I can understand that some feel more comfortable with DC lists, but know that they don't offer the solution. The DM still has to make a call if circumstances call for additional penalties or bonuses, and if the listed situation even applies to the task at hand. It is no more onerous than simply giving the DC. Listing tasks in terms of Trivial - Easy - Difficult - Hard - Impossible is a relatively simple matter.
I find that the discussions on this topic here have a tendency to disregard the fact that the tasks and situations across gaming tables are likely not always the same, then why should he DC's be assumed to be? A bad DM will be bad no matter the rules.

[pwykersotz]

And yet there are no threads on spells that are complaining about spells having too much clarity or being too specific. If anything there are threads about certain spells whose spell descriptions are not specific enough and the lack of clarity brings out arguments at the table.

Which proves what, exactly? People engage on the system that is for the most part. Even the system retoolings are fairly simplistic. To rework the magic system you would need to fundamentally rework most of the classes as well. Ain't nobody got time for that.

And with regards to your skill example, work required by the DM is not a negative factor when it provides narrative flexibility. Heck, in your exact example I take that flexibility sometimes in spite of the rules. I'll say that the spell cures the maximum amount or that the nature of the wound requires a great deal of time to heal.

How boring would it have been in Lord of the Rings if getting the Athelas and curing Frodo just required 1 round and then he popped up with no trouble and was ready to go? My players initiate this sort of thing too. We have a shared fiction at the table that is more important than the rules, but it is VERY nice when the rules provide the inherent flexibility to allow us to operate within them. The skill system does this nicely.

[Segev]

At least 80% of this discussion wouldn't be happening if there were actual examples of "easy," "medium," and "hard" tasks for each of the listed skills.

1-3 examples of each, for each skill, would be a table that takes, at most, one page. Or one could replace the prose description with "examples of tasks done with this skill are:" tables that would be just about as long.

It still wouldn't be a huge investment of word count, and a lot more depth could be given to a skill system, but this would solve the usability problems of THIS skill system.

An additional paragraph or two, perhaps in the DMG under worldbuilding, about how one might change the categories to shift genres (e.g. making climbing and jumping easier in wuxia), and you get back the flexibility we're supposedly getting by the lack of clarity that exists now.

[pwykersotz]

An additional paragraph or two, perhaps in the DMG under worldbuilding, about how one might change the categories to shift genres (e.g. making climbing and jumping easier in wuxia), and you get back the flexibility we're supposedly getting by the lack of clarity that exists now.

This part is a good idea. A default rule in the PHB sets a norm that I view as a bad idea because it actively discourages DM's like me from creating the world we want as opposed to allowing the rules to conform to the world. But a series of possible "hack your game" examples that set understanding for how tweaking your DC's in certain ways affect the game is solid.

[Fwiffo86]

An additional paragraph or two, perhaps in the DMG under worldbuilding, about how one might change the categories to shift genres (e.g. making climbing and jumping easier in wuxia), and you get back the flexibility we're supposedly getting by the lack of clarity that exists now.

How is this different than what is already stated? If a genre/setting has a different DC for jumping, how is that different than a table having a different DC for jumping?

Basically, if the genre/setting is mutable from table to table, why are we expecting hard DCs for skills when they may or may not match what is being aimed for at the table? Why are we arguing to enforce the inability for DMS to custom out their world in this way?

Why is there a need for additional paragraphs for something that is already stated elsewhere?

[pwykersotz]

How is this different than what is already stated? If a genre/setting has a different DC for jumping, how is that different than a table having a different DC for jumping?

Basically, if the genre/setting is mutable from table to table, why are we expecting hard DCs for skills when they may or may not match what is being aimed for at the table? Why are we arguing to enforce the inability for DMS to custom out their world in this way?

Why is there a need for additional paragraphs for something that is already stated elsewhere?

It's to set a codified guideline. Imagine how many people would have trouble with magic if the spell level were up to the DM and winged without recommendations for how to do it. Do you weight combat spells higher? Utility? What are your thresholds for level 4 versus level 5? I would find that difficult to use without some examples. Some people feel the same way about skills. It's pretty reasonable in my mind, even if I personally don't think it's necessary.

[georgie_leech]

How is this different than what is already stated? If a genre/setting has a different DC for jumping, how is that different than a table having a different DC for jumping?

Basically, if the genre/setting is mutable from table to table, why are we expecting hard DCs for skills when they may or may not match what is being aimed for at the table? Why are we arguing to enforce the inability for DMS to custom out their world in this way?

Why is there a need for additional paragraphs for something that is already stated elsewhere?

Same reason you used three separate chunks of text when one would do: clarity. The strength of the 5e system is it's flexibility, but frankly the published materials do a terrible job of selling that point. Giving examples of how you can use different DC's to support different styles of play would both do a lot to help new DMs understand the nuances of the skill system, and give all DMs a way of communicating expectations more easily. At the least, it could help emphasize the need to communicate 'this is a gritty campaign, so skills will be difficult to use,' or 'this is a high fantasy campaign, so stunts like shield surfing down the stairs or swinging from the chandelier are expected and easy,' or similar. Not so much 'here are the DC's' as 'here's how to use this open system we've presented.' After all, 'pick a DC in these categories' is about as useful as teaching how to ride a bike by saying 'don't fall off.'

[Pex]

Agreed. And in the end you (maybe) still have to roll the d20 which in most cases will be the greatest factor of determining success or failure. I can understand that some feel more comfortable with DC lists, but know that they don't offer the solution. The DM still has to make a call if circumstances call for additional penalties or bonuses, and if the listed situation even applies to the task at hand. It is no more onerous than simply giving the DC. Listing tasks in terms of Trivial - Easy - Difficult - Hard - Impossible is a relatively simple matter.
I find that the discussions on this topic here have a tendency to disregard the fact that the tasks and situations across gaming tables are likely not always the same, then why should he DC's be assumed to be? A bad DM will be bad no matter the rules.

It's not only about bad DMing. Three DMs at three tables can all be Honest True Wonderful DMs, but because they each handle a particular skill use a different way my character's ability to do that skill has no relation to how I create it but who is DM. One DM says I don't need to roll, another DM says it's Easy so DC 10, and the third DM says it's Hard so DC 20. There's no base guideline, so I have to "relearn" how to play the game, i.e. what can my character do. With defined examples, given all three DMs are Honest True Wonderful DMs they'd have no reason to depart from the guidelines, so I know what it takes to make my character be able to do that skill. If the DM does have a reason to depart from the norm then it's an informed decision on his part to make that choice and can tell me what the house rule is. I can then make my character accordingly to account for that.

[KorvinStarmast]

Any situation that the rules don't cover is a hole in the rules.

False for a TTRPG.
(Decision making by meatware fills in gaps by a variety of processes)
True for a CRPG.
(Decision making by hardware-software requires rules statements)

There are enough pages of argument back and forth on the OP's risible premise that no further comment is offered.

[Segev]

This part is a good idea. A default rule in the PHB sets a norm that I view as a bad idea because it actively discourages DM's like me from creating the world we want as opposed to allowing the rules to conform to the world. But a series of possible "hack your game" examples that set understanding for how tweaking your DC's in certain ways affect the game is solid.The reason for the "default" rule in the PHB is simply to set a baseline expectation. The DMG is where the "hack the game" guidelines go. Add, if you feel it essential, a mention in the PHB that the DM may alter these based on the genre or kind of game he seeks to run, as an optional rule. (Just like feats are "an optional rule.")


How is this different than what is already stated? If a genre/setting has a different DC for jumping, how is that different than a table having a different DC for jumping?

Basically, if the genre/setting is mutable from table to table, why are we expecting hard DCs for skills when they may or may not match what is being aimed for at the table? Why are we arguing to enforce the inability for DMS to custom out their world in this way? Answered by others, and done well, but since this was addressed to me, I'll say that it's for the same reason that we have any default vs. optional rules. If simply leaving it unstated, without a baseline, is sufficient, then why do we have ANY optional rules or guidelines in the PHB or the DMG? All of those should be left out, and the defaults from which they vary should be silent, as well. That way it can vary from table to table and it'll be just fine, right?

We could leave out feats and ASIs, just mentioning that some classes get one or the other at some levels, and to ask the DM.


Why is there a need for additional paragraphs for something that is already stated elsewhere?Because it isn't stated elsewhere. What you're pointing at isn't what I'm suggesting.


After all, 'pick a DC in these categories' is about as useful as teaching how to ride a bike by saying 'don't fall off.'I love this analogy. Good job! :smallsmile:

[Z3ro]

It's not only about bad DMing. Three DMs at three tables can all be Honest True Wonderful DMs, but because they each handle a particular skill use a different way my character's ability to do that skill has no relation to how I create it but who is DM.

But this has always been true. D&D has never had a well thought out, codified skill system. Heck, it didn't have a skill system at all until well into 2E.

Here's an example I like to bring up because it shows exactly this problem: in 3.5, what's the DC to jump from a staircase, grab a chandelier, and swing to another staircase, based only on strict RAW?

This isn't some far off, inconceivable scenario, it's a fairly staple fantasy trope, and yet the 3.5 rules give absolutely zero guidance on how to handle it. The jump rules give you distance, ok, but there's no rules for grabbing or leap assistance. The situation is exactly the same as 5E, but without even the basic guidance of easy, medium, or hard.

[Segev]

Here's an example I like to bring up because it shows exactly this problem: in 3.5, what's the DC to jump from a staircase, grab a chandelier, and swing to another staircase, based only on strict RAW?

This isn't some far off, inconceivable scenario, it's a fairly staple fantasy trope, and yet the 3.5 rules give absolutely zero guidance on how to handle it. The jump rules give you distance, ok, but there's no rules for grabbing or leap assistance. The situation is exactly the same as 5E, but without even the basic guidance of easy, medium, or hard.

ER... there are absolutely guidelines. No, this specific thing isn't spelled out in detail. But there are DCs for jumping certain distances. There are DCs for climbing ropes. Using these as guidelines, you can at least figure out what he needs to roll to leap the distance to the rope, and the lowest climb DC for a rope might be all he needs to hold on to it. Or you could invoke grapple rules (touch attack to grab the rope, strength to hold on).

But rules exist that can be brought to bear. Guidelines for DCs exist.

In 5e, you could argue that the rules are "complete!" All the DM has to do is decide if it's easy, medium, or hard!

But in truth, there's less guidance as to what should qualify as each of those difficulties than there is for what kinds of values are associated with similar tasks in 3.5.

[Z3ro]

ER... there are absolutely guidelines. No, this specific thing isn't spelled out in detail. But there are DCs for jumping certain distances. There are DCs for climbing ropes. Using these as guidelines, you can at least figure out what he needs to roll to leap the distance to the rope, and the lowest climb DC for a rope might be all he needs to hold on to it. Or you could invoke grapple rules (touch attack to grab the rope, strength to hold on).

But rules exist that can be brought to bear. Guidelines for DCs exist.

Thank you for proving my point. In order to get a DC for grabbing a chandelier, you had to look to grabbing a rope, something completely different from the task at hand. You aren't climbing the chandelier, you're grabbing it. There's no DC for grabbing a rope, only climbing one.


In 5e, you could argue that the rules are "complete!" All the DM has to do is decide if it's easy, medium, or hard!

But in truth, there's less guidance as to what should qualify as each of those difficulties than there is for what kinds of values are associated with similar tasks in 3.5.

Sometimes less is better! Look at my example; I haven't done much hanging by chandeliers, but I imagine different ones wold present different difficulties, maybe depending on how many hand-holds they had, what type of material, etc. It seems to me that, rather than trying to extrapolate an example from something almost completely unrelated, it'd be easier just to give a table with generic difficulties, then deciding how hard the task is.

And while many argue that the DCs will be different across table, my response is well I hope so! No DMs world, or adventure, is going to be identical to anothers. That chandelier is going to be different in everyone's world; every DM will picture it differently. That's not a bad thing.

[Segev]

Thank you for proving my point. In order to get a DC for grabbing a chandelier, you had to look to grabbing a rope, something completely different from the task at hand. You aren't climbing the chandelier, you're grabbing it. There's no DC for grabbing a rope, only climbing one. But there IS something to compare it to. There is not, in your example. As you say:


I haven't done much hanging by chandeliers, but I imagine different ones wold present different difficulties, maybe depending on how many hand-holds they had, what type of material, etc. It seems to me that, rather than trying to extrapolate an example from something almost completely unrelated, it'd be easier just to give a table with generic difficulties, then deciding how hard the task is.

And while many argue that the DCs will be different across table, my response is well I hope so! No DMs world, or adventure, is going to be identical to anothers. That chandelier is going to be different in everyone's world; every DM will picture it differently. That's not a bad thing.You imagine.

But your imagination is, by your own admission, a complete guess.

Your players have absolutely no way of knowing whether they have a reasonable chance or not, unless you tell them ahead of time. And even then, they can't even decide on a course of actions without having to run every single step by you, breaking the action and grinding the game to a halt as they pre-negotiate the difficulty of every thing they want to do along the way.

Imagine if combat ran that way: every attack, with every weapon, they have to negotiate with you over the AC of their would-be target.

The player, in a system with some example numbers, can at least ball-park difficulty. Without it, they have to guess, and worse, they have to guess what YOU will think. So what if they think it's a medium task to swing from a chandelier? You think it's a hard one.

They can't make any assumptions, even in a rough range.

I have seen more people say, "Man, I can't believe [player] was so stupid as to think that would work!" or "Geeze, why didn't [player] try this obvious and easy task!?" because the player thought the task was entirely different in difficulty. So much so that he didn't think it worth asking about; he just assumed it would work.

In a system where there's more guidelines, he at least can say, "Well, I think it's akin to X task, so even with a +2 DC for these complications..." or "Hm. You know, while that SOUNDS easy to me, the DC of similar tasks is awfully high, so maybe I CAN'T do that."

Moreover, the DM can say, "Hm. I have no idea how hard swinging from a chandelier is. But the DC for climbing a rope is X, so that's a good ballpark figure." He doesn't have to just pull it out of thin air. It sounds like you're happy to do that. I know many GMs who are not. And many - some who are happy to and others who are annoyed by the lack of advice - who will guess wildly inappropriately (to my mind). At least with guidelines, we can agree that we're basing it on the same thing on which to make a judgment call.




But more to the point: less isn't more, here. It adds nothing to leave this undefined to this degree, and would take nothing away to provide default guidelines. You're still free to say, "No, I think those numbers are stupid; we're going with this DC instead because I think this task is different and more difficult/easier by that much." If we use my advice in the DMG about further suggestions for modifying DCs based on adventure genre, the DM can use those instead, if he prefers.

Having guidance isn't a straitjacket. You can still hop off the trail if you're comfortable with this stretch of the forest. But having none can leave you groping in the dark, hoping to find a path through the undergrowth.

[Knaight]

Imagine if combat ran that way: every attack, with every weapon, they have to negotiate with you over the AC of their would-be target.

A more accurate way of putting this would be that they get a description of the target, and that doesn't necessarily tell you the exact AC of the target. It's pretty easy to imagine too - I figure it would line up pretty well with systems which use something like an opposed combat roll (which you wouldn't necessarily know ahead of time). Fudge does this; it's what I play most by far, and there has never been any negotiating with me over the enemies combat skill. For other non-opposed skills, it comes up extremely infrequently.

This is why I'm not convinced - the claims about how these games are unplayable, and nothing is lost by having explicit lists, and that players can't act properly without explicit lists are directly contradicted by 17 years of RPG experience. 17 years of RPG experience is a bit more convincing.

[jas61292]

A more accurate way of putting this would be that they get a description of the target, and that doesn't necessarily tell you the exact AC of the target.

Isn't that exactly what you are supposed to do? I have never played a game of D&D where the DM did anything but give a description. Outright telling the AC (just like outright telling a DC) is not a part of the game, as far as I can tell, and completely breaks verisimilitude for me. Maybe some people do that, but that just seems weird to me.

[Cybren]

Isn't that exactly what you are supposed to do? I have never played a game of D&D where the DM did anything but give a description. Outright telling the AC (just like outright telling a DC) is not a part of the game, as far as I can tell, and completely breaks verisimilitude for me. Maybe some people do that, but that just seems weird to me.

I've had DM's tell everyone the DC for some checks just to speed things up, and give out the AC number after a few rounds of combat and arguably a savvy player could have sussed it out based on the dice already.

[Vogonjeltz]

But that still leaves the possibility some other DM who sucked at gym class (raises hand ) would say climbing a rope is hard.

This is not a proper criticism. Every possible action that would not automatically succeed in a given circumstance or be impossible in that same circumstance would have to be codified with DCs in order to avoid this on some topic.

Every DM who is or could be will be in error at some point about how difficult a task is. If they don't have the wherewithal to recognize when a task they found difficult was not universally difficult then no amount of codification or examples are going to save them.


At least 80% of this discussion wouldn't be happening if there were actual examples of "easy," "medium," and "hard" tasks for each of the listed skills.

The clear statement that the assignment of the difficulty of any given task is the responsibility of the DM should also prevent this discussion from taking place, and yet here we are.

No amount of text repeating the exact same guidelines will change that as, even where the rules have total clarity there are routinely questions and confusion where there ought to be none.


Any situation that the rules don't cover is a hole in the rules.

False for a TTRPG.
(Decision making by meatware fills in gaps by a variety of processes)
True for a CRPG.
(Decision making by hardware-software requires rules statements)

There are enough pages of argument back and forth on the OP's risible premise that no further comment is offered.

Agreed, I'd go further and posit that CRPGs have a slight advantage here in that rules questions are typically resolved by players simply seeing the outcome of whatever they want to try.

The "downside" of the TTRPG is the same as its strength, it relies on the DM to act as ultimate adjudicator.


After all, 'pick a DC in these categories' is about as useful as teaching how to ride a bike by saying 'don't fall off.'

This puts me in mind more of the Farnsworth-Munsell 100 HueColor Vision test. It's all about placing tasks relative to the other possibilities.


But in truth, there's less guidance as to what should qualify as each of those difficulties than there is for what kinds of values are associated with similar tasks in 3.5.

The guidance in the DMG is fairly explicit.

[Segev]

A more accurate way of putting this would be that they get a description of the target, and that doesn't necessarily tell you the exact AC of the target. It's pretty easy to imagine too - I figure it would line up pretty well with systems which use something like an opposed combat roll (which you wouldn't necessarily know ahead of time). Fudge does this; it's what I play most by far, and there has never been any negotiating with me over the enemies combat skill. For other non-opposed skills, it comes up extremely infrequently.

This is why I'm not convinced - the claims about how these games are unplayable, and nothing is lost by having explicit lists, and that players can't act properly without explicit lists are directly contradicted by 17 years of RPG experience. 17 years of RPG experience is a bit more convincing.Nonsense. Nobody's saying it's unplayable. Just that it's poor design. And while you can, indeed, not know what the AC of a monster is...the DM doesn't have to divine what it "should" be. He has the number in front of him, provided by the book.

The analogous situation would be "just eyeball each monster and determine if it should be easy, medium, hard, or nearly impossible to hit." Heck, while they're at it, why not eyeball them and decide if it should take a few hits or a lot of hits to kill them?



The clear statement that the assignment of the difficulty of any given task is the responsibility of the DM should also prevent this discussion from taking place, and yet here we are.How should it prevent such discussion? "I don't know what the difficulty should be, because I have no guidelines" is hardly prevented by being told "just make it up."

"I don't know how to make a cake, because I have no recipe." "Just make a cake; why are we even having


No amount of text repeating the exact same guidelines will change that as, even where the rules have total clarity there are routinely questions and confusion where there ought to be none.What would it be repeating? There are no guidelines as of yet. Printing them is hardly repeating anything.

"Make it up" isn't a guideline. What's being asked for isn't a repetition of "make it up." Your statement is based on a false premise.

[huttj509]

Nonsense. Nobody's saying it's unplayable. Just that it's poor design. And while you can, indeed, not know what the AC of a monster is...the DM doesn't have to divine what it "should" be. He has the number in front of him, provided by the book.

The analogous situation would be "just eyeball each monster and determine if it should be easy, medium, hard, or nearly impossible to hit." Heck, while they're at it, why not eyeball them and decide if it should take a few hits or a lot of hits to kill them?

How should it prevent such discussion? "I don't know what the difficulty should be, because I have no guidelines" is hardly prevented by being told "just make it up."

"I don't know how to make a cake, because I have no recipe." "Just make a cake; why are we even having

What would it be repeating? There are no guidelines as of yet. Printing them is hardly repeating anything.

"Make it up" isn't a guideline. What's being asked for isn't a repetition of "make it up." Your statement is based on a false premise.

But there is a guideline. "Is it easy, moderate, hard, or very hard?" If you reply "I don't know," all I can say is "neither do I, I don't know your game, I don't know the circumstances, I don't know the activity, I don't know the literally countless influences that might apply in that situation. You have access to information that I don't, and cannot, have." It's not "make it up," it's "in your immediate reaction, do you think it's easy, moderate, hard, or very hard?" Is climbing a rope easy? Depends on the rope!

Maybe I just got used to the idea in the XD20 (from Xtreme Dungeon Mastery) simplified system which had a difficulty chart ranging from Like Breathing (seriously. We mean like breathing. If someone in your game is going to try and use gravity on Earth, this modifier would apply) to Clown Shoes Ridiculous.

[Pex]

But this has always been true. D&D has never had a well thought out, codified skill system. Heck, it didn't have a skill system at all until well into 2E.

Here's an example I like to bring up because it shows exactly this problem: in 3.5, what's the DC to jump from a staircase, grab a chandelier, and swing to another staircase, based only on strict RAW?

This isn't some far off, inconceivable scenario, it's a fairly staple fantasy trope, and yet the 3.5 rules give absolutely zero guidance on how to handle it. The jump rules give you distance, ok, but there's no rules for grabbing or leap assistance. The situation is exactly the same as 5E, but without even the basic guidance of easy, medium, or hard.

2E gave us proficiencies, which was a start. You could barely improve in your ability to do stuff, but you had a defined system on how to do them.

I forget what 4E had. I just remember the concept of skill challenges. I never played it.

3E/Pathfinder has the skill points system. It is not absolutely perfect in every way, but that lack of absolute perfection does not take away that it exists, it works, and gives defined values to use a guideline. It does not and could not give defined DCs for every possible skill use scenario in existence and imagination. It doesn't have to nor do I require one. What it does provide are the defined examples to allow for extrapolation for what they don't specifically say.

Use Jump skill to jump. To grab the chandelier is to hit so roll to hit. Here the DM does have to adjudicate. I have nothing against adjudication, just the lack of a baseline in 5E to adjudicate from. AC could be based on object size. AC could be just don't roll a 1. AC could be you grab it automatically as part of the jump. Swinging just works by natural momentum. 5E does happen to give defined values for jumping, so for this particular example 3E and 5E would behave almost the same. 3E would use roll to hit BAB where 5E would use skill DC. 3E has the advantage because there are guidelines for chandelier AC, object size, for a neutral baseline. Adjudication allows for don't roll a 1 or autograb as part of jump. In 5E, DC is whatever the DM feels like, or it may even be roll to hit instead of skill DC. The difference from 3E is the lack of defined baseline even if a 3E DM could ignore it.

For this particular example the difference between 3E and 5E would be minimal because 5E has defined values for jumping. For the now almost proverbial climbing a slippery rope the difference is more noticeable.

Edit: I take back this statement. 5E has it too. I plead late night/too tired.

[Segev]

But there is a guideline. "Is it easy, moderate, hard, or very hard?" If you reply "I don't know," all I can say is "neither do I, I don't know your game, I don't know the circumstances, I don't know the activity, I don't know the literally countless influences that might apply in that situation. You have access to information that I don't, and cannot, have." It's not "make it up," it's "in your immediate reaction, do you think it's easy, moderate, hard, or very hard?" Is climbing a rope easy? Depends on the rope!

So, "Bake a cake" is a guideline for how to bake a cake, to you. It is unreasonable for anybody to ask, "Okay, how? What ingredients? How hot should the oven be? How will I know when it's baked right?" because that's all just redundant information; clearly, they just need to bake a cake. I mean, how are you, the one telling them to do it, to know if they're in a high-altitude region, if they think "cake" means "sheet cake," "cupcake," or "layer cake," whether they're allergic to eggs or not, and what flavor they want? So telling them anything at all beyond "bake a cake" is totally wasted text, and all you could POSSIBLY do is repeat that three-word "guideline" and thus be wasting space.

Got it.

[sumg]

Take it with a grain of salt since this is coming from a newb DM.

I find 5e really, really liberating, but that's maybe because things aren't nailed to the floor. I had a really awesome DM in the past (okay, two if you count previous editions), and I'm trying to learn to DM it just like him. See, the way he presented the world was, would it make sense? He didn't care about the max height of a high jump if what you are doing is appropriately difficult and cool (rule of cool, rule of fun and a healthy dose of common sense) seems to be have been his pillors, and as players, my group had a blast). We'd just roll with the flow and then make it mechanically make sense after the game.

For the players that tried to powergame, he always used to reverse the role and put the player in the NPC's position. No rules citing, just a simple, would it make sense for a NPC to react the way the player would've wanted (this came up a LOT with our illusionist, and by the end of the campaign, he went from someone that tried to break the game within the rules to making truly creative actions.)

I think what 5e does is makes it a lot more flexible to try things, and well, to communicate. If the players and DM envision different style of games (super realistic vs fly-all-over-the-place bear bombing shenanigans), they should talk with one another and see what would work for both sides. Unlike the older editions, it's because it IS vague that compromise can be hammered out without the annoying lawyer ruling. We had a fullblown goliath wrestler (not grappler, wrestler) that were doing things like tossing people around for 1d4+str damage (tavern brawler) because the **** he did made sense and it was absolutely hilarious. No one had objections because well, it made sense. You've a max size goliath that's barehanded in both hands, succeeds the grapple, why can't he do a powerbomb, backdrop or a suplex on a medium creature if he wins the next athl check? Or spend his movement at half speed with to do a windmill swing with a creature and slam them into a wall? What happened was, because it made sense, it was fun and cool, DM allowed it for improvised damage (until he made his own little table for damage) for that session. Was it within the rules? I highly doubt it, but because it isn't within the rules that something stupid (not dumb stupid, like haha stupid) like this popped up for us.

We had a rogue that would regular wallrun just for the cool factor (and falling, failing the dex check = proning the character, but not ending its turn, just had to pay the usual 1/2 movement penalty with whatever movement was left) and stab mobs. It became second nature to the point that the DM didn't even have to ask him to roll.

My point is, 5e free the players into doing a lot of random ****, and because there IS such a vague ruling most of the time, a compromise can come easier as long as everyone communicates.

[pwykersotz]

So, "Bake a cake" is a guideline for how to bake a cake, to you. It is unreasonable for anybody to ask, "Okay, how? What ingredients? How hot should the oven be? How will I know when it's baked right?" because that's all just redundant information; clearly, they just need to bake a cake. I mean, how are you, the one telling them to do it, to know if they're in a high-altitude region, if they think "cake" means "sheet cake," "cupcake," or "layer cake," whether they're allergic to eggs or not, and what flavor they want? So telling them anything at all beyond "bake a cake" is totally wasted text, and all you could POSSIBLY do is repeat that three-word "guideline" and thus be wasting space.

Got it.

This skill system isn't "Bake a cake" by my view, that's 5e as a whole. The skill system is "Add sugar to taste" or "Frost as desired"

[Segev]

This skill system isn't "Bake a cake" by my view, that's 5e as a whole. The skill system is "Add sugar to taste" or "Frost as desired"

Unfortunately, it isn't. That would require a baseline amount of sugar to be added.

How much is "a small amount" of sugar? How much is "a medium amount?" How much is "a lot?"

"Add sugar to taste" to a cake with no clue how much the "baseline" amount is, and you will get a chemistry experiment that goes entirely wonky.

If the would-be baker asks the recipe writer how much sugar to add, and the recipe writer asks, "Well, do you like a lot of sugar, a medium amount, or a little bit? Add that much," it isn't helpful. The would-be baker doesn't even know what "a little bit" of sugar is! Is it a pinch? A teaspoon? A tablespoon? A cup? Should he add it until the crystals stop disappearing in the batter?

How long should he bake it? "A medium amount of time" isn't a helpful answer, on a number of levels.

That's what we get from the skill system. "If it's a hard task..."

Well, is it? What is a hard task?

Okay, "a lot" of sugar is 1 cup, and "a little" is 1 tsp? Well, how do I know how that will taste in the cake?

You're asking the would-be DM to decide that a task is "easy, medium, or hard" and do so "to taste" when he has no frame of reference other than his own experience. Which brings us right back to "do I think I would find it hard? Do I think the guy at the gym would?" And totally arbitrary, unguided decisions.

There is nothing wrong with DMs wanting a bit more of a guideline. An idea that "climb a cliff face" should be a "medium athletics" task. Or that it's a "hard" task, perhaps.

With literally no guidelines, all the DM has is an idea of what the PCs' bonuses are, and a temptation now to "make it a challenge" by ensuring they have a decent chance to fail even with high bonuses. Which is not how it's supposed to work, but when the "bounded accuracy" discussion is in a separate section of the DMG from the skills, and all the skills say is "easy, medium, or hard..."

[Cybren]

Unfortunately, it isn't. That would require a baseline amount of sugar to be added.

How much is "a small amount" of sugar? How much is "a medium amount?" How much is "a lot?"

You do not know what "to taste" means in recipes, do you?

[IShouldntBehere]

Unfortunately, it isn't. That would require a baseline amount of sugar to be added.

This isn't how "To taste" works. For example:
snapguide.com/guides/make-the-best-coffee-cake/


¾ Cups Butter
2 Cups Sugar
1 Tablespoon Vanilla extract
3 Cups Flour sifted
4 Teaspoons Baking powder
1 Teaspoon Salt
1⅓ Cups Buttermilk
3 Egg whites
Crumble topping:
¾ Cups Butter
1½ Cups Brown sugar
¾ Cups Flour
Cinnamon to taste


If you search other recipes you'll find the same structure. "To taste" is used to specify an ingredient as generally non-optional, where it having at least some present is an important of making the recipe what it is but where the correct amount is highly subjective and so no concrete guidelines or "baseline amounts" can be given. You need cinnamon but tolerances will vary. Someone will want a pinch, another wants the full cinnamon challenge it's a matter of taste. The ingredients list however remains totally silent on the matter beyond "put some amount of it in".

If the cake in this analysis is the final DC of check to "to taste" comparison is actually pretty apt. The system recognizes that you need DCs in the game they're a vital part of making the system what it is, but the exact specifics of what those DCs are left up to the subjective tastes of the creator.

[smcmike]

Baking is an exact science, and therefore a useful analogy for those arguing that the skills system should be an exact science.

Cooking, on the other hand, is not an exact science. Imagine that the rules are a recipe for steak. "Make a hot fire and grill to medium rare over direct heat." You could attempt to go into more detail, but those details are as likely to mislead as they are to be correct: there are too many variables that the writer of the rules does not know: how thick is the steak, how hot is the fire, did you swap in a different cut, is the grease causing a flare-up, how fatty is the steak, what if Johnny likes his medium well for some stupid reason?

[Segev]

You do not know what "to taste" means in recipes, do you?

I do. Have you genuinely ever seen it in a BAKING recipe?

I have only seen it in cooking recipes. The difference being that you aren't relying on chemistry to transform the ingredients (or at least, not in precise ratios), and you can add, taste, and add more, and expect the final result to be reflective.

But let's not let the analogy run away with us.

The point is that you can't "add difficulty to taste" when you don't know the baseline. If you think you can, then this analogy is simply a bad one to begin with, being not analogous at all.



So, tell me, is knitting a sweater an easy, medium, or hard task?

If you know that one because you've experience with it, great! How about swimming across a river?

Weaving through a room full of tripwires?

Finding a black marble in a bowl full of blue ones?

Noticing that the picture on the wall is of the room you're in, but lacks the one vase full of flowers that's on the coffee table (instead having a stack of books)?

Pulling a log out of a stack without disturbing the rest of it?

Discerning the right move to avoid checkmate in a chess puzzle?


If your answer is, in any form, "well, do you WANT it to be easy, medium, or hard," you've exposed the flaw in this lack-of-guideline. If you simply are basing it on what you "want" it to be, then it really isn't a test of any PCs' skills. It's just a dice-rolling game. The players' choices make no difference, and there's no actual connection between the task and the difficulty. It's just the DM deciding that climbing a wall is hard today because he wants a hard task. Not because it makes sense that this wall would be hard while the one yesterday was easy.

If you want to argue that, well, obviously he should judge the wall based on how hard it is in comparison to the previous one, you're still basically requiring him to make it up as he goes along, with no foothold for the players to make judgments in.


And that's the point of the OP's post: the players lack agency because they cannot make reasonable assessments of their options. They don't know how capable they are, because they don't know what they can and cannot expect to do successfully. Because they can't know if tasks are "easy" or not. They aren't mind-readers.

[IShouldntBehere]

I do. Have you genuinely ever seen it in a BAKING recipe?

Linked above.

With me as DM:


So, tell me, is knitting a sweater an easy, medium, or hard task?
Easy. Medium for a high-quality sweater that will last years. Hard for a sweater that would be considered an art piece in it's own right.


How about swimming across a river?
Lazy River-style stream: Trivial, no check!
Gentle: Medium
Rapids: Hard
Rapids with Sharp Rocks & Killer Pirhanas, and angry gorilla-men throwing rocks at you: Very Hard



Weaving through a room full of tripwires?
Medium to Hard, depending on the material of the wires and their density. Generally, medium.



Finding a black marble in a bowl full of blue ones?

Finger Bowl: Easy
Salad Bowl: Medium
Jumbo Punch Bowl: Hard

Checks assume you are given 1 minute to find the marble. 5 minutes bumps the difficulty down one notch. 30 minutes two notches. Advantage for pour the contents of the bowl onto a table or other contained surface that flattens them out into a later.



Noticing that the picture on the wall is of the room you're in, but lacks the one vase full of flowers that's on the coffee table (instead having a stack of books)?

Very Hard. Check is made once per hour observation. On a success against a Hard check, the difficulty drops to hard (can't drop further)


Pulling a log out of a stack without disturbing the rest of it?

Easy



Discerning the right move to avoid checkmate in a chess puzzle?

Medium



And that's the point of the OP's post: the players lack agency because they cannot make reasonable assessments of their options. They don't know how capable they are, because they don't know what they can and cannot expect to do successfully. Because they can't know if tasks are "easy" or not. They aren't mind-readers.

They don't have to read minds, they just have to play with me for a couple sessions. It's a social game and we learn each others approaches. DMs are not strange alien creates that change wildly session to session. My players probably know my style better than I do at this point. Whatever disorientation that results from being under a new DM with a new standard isn't going to last more than 2 sessions tops.

[pwykersotz]

If your answer is, in any form, "well, do you WANT it to be easy, medium, or hard," you've exposed the flaw in this lack-of-guideline. If you simply are basing it on what you "want" it to be, then it really isn't a test of any PCs' skills. It's just a dice-rolling game. The players' choices make no difference, and there's no actual connection between the task and the difficulty. It's just the DM deciding that climbing a wall is hard today because he wants a hard task. Not because it makes sense that this wall would be hard while the one yesterday was easy.

If you want to argue that, well, obviously he should judge the wall based on how hard it is in comparison to the previous one, you're still basically requiring him to make it up as he goes along, with no foothold for the players to make judgments in.

This is probably one of my main points of contention with your point. It's not about what you want, it's about what the fiction you are establishing wants. The DM may be the one who ultimately sets the rules, but the table agrees upon the style of shared fiction. A baseline set of DC's confuses this issue for those who want to work with an in-house system, because when there's a written baseline you generally need a good reason to depart from it. Having no baseline allows the world and style to come together and make something wonderful.

It's a test of PC skills versus the fiction, not versus the DM. That's a huge difference, because whether the player came to the table and was asked "Are you okay with a gritty post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland campaign?" or "Do you want to try and do Naruto with D&D?" or "What sort of game should we make?", if they are playing they bought in. They know the score.

To put something else out there, I've had my players successfully argue DC's with me before. It's rare (twice since 5e was released), but because they know the fiction too they can also make judgement calls. If they have a compelling case why they should have succeeded and why I set the DC too high, they can point out a flaw. This actually creates immersion for the world, as you're not arguing abstract tables that make something nonsensical (a common complaint about more codified skill systems), but you're arguing the shared fiction which improves everyone's understanding. I love this part of the game. Players and DM alike judge the world based on the world.

[Z3ro]

So, tell me, is knitting a sweater an easy, medium, or hard task?

Depends on the sweater. I really don't understand this need to have every task be exactly the same.



If you know that one because you've experience with it, great! How about swimming across a river?

Weaving through a room full of tripwires?

Finding a black marble in a bowl full of blue ones?

Noticing that the picture on the wall is of the room you're in, but lacks the one vase full of flowers that's on the coffee table (instead having a stack of books)?

Pulling a log out of a stack without disturbing the rest of it?

Discerning the right move to avoid checkmate in a chess puzzle?

Give me the DCs of most of these (except maybe the swimming) in 3.5. You'll find them no more precise than 5E



If your answer is, in any form, "well, do you WANT it to be easy, medium, or hard," you've exposed the flaw in this lack-of-guideline. If you simply are basing it on what you "want" it to be, then it really isn't a test of any PCs' skills. It's just a dice-rolling game. The players' choices make no difference, and there's no actual connection between the task and the difficulty. It's just the DM deciding that climbing a wall is hard today because he wants a hard task. Not because it makes sense that this wall would be hard while the one yesterday was easy.

But that's the central conceit of all TTRPGs; the world is what the DM wants it to be. If the DM wants a wall today to be easy and tomorrow to be hard, that's his perogotive. If it's a different wall, then he just describes it differently. If it's the same wall, and nothing's changed, he's just a jerk.

No amount of rules about the DCs of walls forces a DM to use a certain DC.

[Segev]

With me as DM:You clearly are more experienced at making up DCs than many I've met.


Easy. Medium for a high-quality sweater that will last years. Hard for a sweater that would be considered an art piece in it's own right.Really? I would've made it at least Medium. Knitting something more than a scarf isn't "easy."


Lazy River-style stream: Trivial, no check!
Gentle: Medium
Rapids: Hard
Rapids with Sharp Rocks & Killer Pirhanas, and angry gorilla-men throwing rocks at you: Very HardNonsense. That last one should be hard, with you rolling attack rolls for the other hazards. Deliberately being contrary, but not unreasonably so, here.


Medium to Hard, depending on the material of the wires and their density. Generally, medium. Really? Only medium?




They don't have to read minds, they just have to play with me for a couple sessions. It's a social game and we learn each others approaches. DMs are not strange alien creates that change wildly session to session. My players probably know my style better than I do at this point. Whatever disorientation that results from being under a new DM with a new standard isn't going to last more than 2 sessions tops.No, they still have to read minds. 2 sessions is never going to cover all of the above situations, nor even closely-analogous ones to get a read on what YOU consider easy, medium, or hard in them.

And I would posit that you may not, yourself, be as consistent as you might think. You will post-hoc be able to justify any deviations, I am certain, but your instinct will change from day to day, unless you're far more of a perfect estimation engine than most human beings.



This is probably one of my main points of contention with your point. It's not about what you want, it's about what the fiction you are establishing wants. The DM may be the one who ultimately sets the rules, but the table agrees upon the style of shared fiction. A baseline set of DC's confuses this issue for those who want to work with an in-house system, because when there's a written baseline you generally need a good reason to depart from it. Having no baseline allows the world and style to come together and make something wonderful.A baseline of DCs might do so, yes, but it also provides a point from which to deviate. Moreover, having examples of how to adjust them for various genres in the DMG would more than cover this concern.


It's a test of PC skills versus the fiction, not versus the DM. That's a huge difference, because whether the player came to the table and was asked "Are you okay with a gritty post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland campaign?" or "Do you want to try and do Naruto with D&D?" or "What sort of game should we make?", if they are playing they bought in. They know the score.No, they don't. Because unless the DM tells them what those things mean, they're guessing what they mean to the DM.

[huttj509]

So, "Bake a cake" is a guideline for how to bake a cake, to you. It is unreasonable for anybody to ask, "Okay, how? What ingredients? How hot should the oven be? How will I know when it's baked right?" because that's all just redundant information; clearly, they just need to bake a cake. I mean, how are you, the one telling them to do it, to know if they're in a high-altitude region, if they think "cake" means "sheet cake," "cupcake," or "layer cake," whether they're allergic to eggs or not, and what flavor they want? So telling them anything at all beyond "bake a cake" is totally wasted text, and all you could POSSIBLY do is repeat that three-word "guideline" and thus be wasting space.

Got it.

This is not "bake a cake."

This is "take the cake out of the oven."

Wait...how? Should I open the door first? Where should I put the cake when it's out? Which potholders should I use? Why aren't you telling me to not hit people in the face with the hot pan?

Edit: Also, my family pie recipe includes 'pinch', 'dash', 'little bit', 'some.' While it doesn't come out the same every time, it doesn't come out bad, because while things might be imprecise they don't matter to 2 decimal places.

[IShouldntBehere]

You clearly are more experienced at making up DCs than many I've met.

Really? I would've made it at least Medium. Knitting something more than a scarf isn't "easy."


Knitting doesn't translate easily into heroics but I'd say for a game about Hero-level knitters putting together a basic sweater represents the sort of baseline entry level of task you need to "make a check" for.





Really? Only medium?

Yeah. Assuming you're taking a reasonable careful "tip-toe" pace here, you know something like crossing a small room in 5 minutes. I'd probably call it hard, moving at something approaching combat speeds.

Quick Note: I don't really assign DCs in jumps of "5". The Easy/Hard/Very hard are just sign posts. To be specific tip-toeing through a wire room with reasonably spaced, easily visible wires is probably a DC 14 at my table. Going faster or hidden wires probably bumps it up to 16, with no higher than 20 for some gross combination of all those negative factors.

In general I tend to band checks between 8 and 20. In the scenarios I've run the vast majority of checks are easy-to-medium-ish mostly operated in the 8 to 16 band. If a player hits hard checks of 20+ it generally means they're taking some path of greater resistance.



No, they still have to read minds. 2 sessions is never going to cover all of the above situations, nor even closely-analogous ones to get a read on what YOU consider easy, medium, or hard in them.

I've never seen this be an issue. I've never seen players hem-and-haw over choices because they don't know what to do. I've never seen players express confusion or doubt at these things. Every time I've asked a group new or otherwise at the end of the session "Hey how did you feel about this?" I've not once gotten anything even close to "I had no idea what my character could do" or "I was confused about how you were assigning DCs" as feedback. Even when playing systems like 3.P that have hardline RAW DCs that I promptly throw out the window and disregard with reckless abandon.

If the lack of me following codified DCs is confusing and disorienting to players they're extremely good at hiding that in their at-table behavior and making quick, confident decisions regardless of it. They are also being intentionally deceptive when I ask for feedback.


And I would posit that you may not, yourself, be as consistent as you might think. You will post-hoc be able to justify any deviations, I am certain, but your instinct will change from day to day, unless you're far more of a perfect estimation engine than most human beings.

Whatever my level of consistency be it inevitable-level iron clad law, or slaad-level random chaos or anything in between it works. I only have my own experience to go on and I've just not seen any evidence my level of consistency is a problem.

I know that as a player I've rarely if ever made any serious consideration of DC lists in books. I just kind of take the game as it comes. I've rarely been confused or surprised by the overall capabilities of my character despite this.

[georgie_leech]

This is probably one of my main points of contention with your point. It's not about what you want, it's about what the fiction you are establishing wants. The DM may be the one who ultimately sets the rules, but the table agrees upon the style of shared fiction. A baseline set of DC's confuses this issue for those who want to work with an in-house system, because when there's a written baseline you generally need a good reason to depart from it. Having no baseline allows the world and style to come together and make something wonderful.

It's a test of PC skills versus the fiction, not versus the DM. That's a huge difference, because whether the player came to the table and was asked "Are you okay with a gritty post-apocalyptic zombie wasteland campaign?" or "Do you want to try and do Naruto with D&D?" or "What sort of game should we make?", if they are playing they bought in. They know the score.

To put something else out there, I've had my players successfully argue DC's with me before. It's rare (twice since 5e was released), but because they know the fiction too they can also make judgement calls. If they have a compelling case why they should have succeeded and why I set the DC too high, they can point out a flaw. This actually creates immersion for the world, as you're not arguing abstract tables that make something nonsensical (a common complaint about more codified skill systems), but you're arguing the shared fiction which improves everyone's understanding. I love this part of the game. Players and DM alike judge the world based on the world.

Agreed! The system works best when its flexibility is being used to enhance a shared fiction. Easy physical stunts contribute to a swashbuckling or wuxia style story. Difficult arcane knowledge checks reinforce the idea of a low magic world. Difficult tests in general with harsh failure consequences reflect a gritty or possibly even horror campaign.

My contention is that by failing to give examples to that effect, the system is failing to sell that aspect, implying that it's just whatever the DM thinks of the task. That's hardly unusual for D&D; the presentation for how Skill Challenges in 4e worked was awful, even if the tool was itself strong. Personally, I wouldn't want the game to have too many hard DC's per se. What I would like is more space being given for how to use that flexibility properly: explaining how different difficulties change the world, the importance of communicating task difficulty in advance, and when and where to use checks to avoid bogging the game down with pointless rolling. Sections like 'here's a few examples of the kind of checks you might use in a high fantasy campaign, here's some for a low magic campaign, etc.,' would do a lot to bring new DM's up to speed on how to use the system properly. Instead, it's currently left to trial and error, which contributes to discussions like this.

[Segev]

Whatever my level of consistency be it inevitable-level iron clad law, or slaad-level random chaos or anything in between it works. I only have my own experience to go on and I've just not seen any evidence my level of consistency is a problem.

I know that as a player I've rarely if ever made any serious consideration of DC lists in books. I just kind of take the game as it comes. I've rarely been confused or surprised by the overall capabilities of my character despite this.

So... you don't need guidelines, but having them wouldn't be a problem for you.

Which means that this isn't a reason NOT to have them. And it's already been discussed how they could have been included without making things much, if at all, more word-count intensive.

In short: my point stands. It would have been helpful to have such things, and wouldn't have hurt any of the "we like making it up ourselves" crowd.

[IShouldntBehere]

So... you don't need guidelines, but having them wouldn't be a problem for you.

Which means that this isn't a reason NOT to have them. And it's already been discussed how they could have been included without making things much, if at all, more word-count intensive.

In short: my point stands. It would have been helpful to have such things, and wouldn't have hurt any of the "we like making it up ourselves" crowd.

Having them wouldn't be a problem for me, personally no. I'm happy to chuck books out the window. Hell I even break what little formal rules 5e has on skills on occasion. The game could have 20,000 charts and not affect me as a DM.

However I'm not the only DM I've been at table with. In fact the next DM I'm going to play under is just the type the list would hinder. Where systems leave room for her to improvise and make her own decisions she does so wonderfully and in really clever and insightful ways that impress me. When the system lists a number or even kind of heavily suggestions this is the way it probably should be she insta-locks on that and does that.

If there is a chart for Jump DCs you can be sure she's going to buy the officially licensed DM screen with the chart on it, and check it for every jump to make sure she's doing things "correctly". If the rules don't cover something however, she's great at making something up. This means for any given game with her the bits where it outlines things for her tend to feel very inflexible and stale, but anywhere the rules don't cover she does a great job of making things flow naturally.

My next game is going to be my first 5e game under her and I'm really happy the DCs are so open. Since we'll get well fitted game that really comes from her strengths instead of "Yeah I know guys, it's kind of dumb but that's what the book says. Sorry :(. " With the occasional "*shrug* maybe we should house rule it next time? i dunno... ".

[Segev]

So why does that wonderful GM need a system at all? IF she's just going to "lock onto the numbers" and she does so much better with the freedom they deny her, why doesn't she just run free-form?


My complaint is that the skill system, as presented, is essentially free-form. Its lack of free-form nature is illusory, because it really is just the DM deciding whether he thinks you should succeed or fail. This may not be a problem for everybody, but it can be a problem.

And if the DMG provides the additional "here's how you adjust things for different genres" text, your DM can follow those "to taste," as you like to put it.

[georgie_leech]

Having them wouldn't be a problem for me, personally no. I'm happy to chuck books out the window. Hell I even break what little formal rules 5e has on skills on occasion. The game could have 20,000 charts and not affect me as a DM.

However I'm not the only DM I've been at table with. In fact the next DM I'm going to play under is just the type the list would hinder. Where systems leave room for her to improvise and make her own decisions she does so wonderfully and in really clever and insightful ways that impress me. When the system lists a number or even kind of heavily suggestions this is the way it probably should be she insta-locks on that and does that.

If there is a chart for Jump DCs you can be sure she's going to buy the officially licensed DM screen with the chart on it, and check it for every jump to make sure she's doing things "correctly". If the rules don't cover something however, she's great at making something up. This means for any given game with her the bits where it outlines things for her tend to feel very inflexible and stale, but anywhere the rules don't cover she does a great job of making things flow naturally.

My next game is going to be my first 5e game under her and I'm really happy the DCs are so open. Since we'll get well fitted game that really comes from her strengths instead of "Yeah I know guys, it's kind of dumb but that's what the book says. Sorry :(. " With the occasional "*shrug* maybe we should house rule it next time? i dunno... ".

The flip side is this comes along with DM's who aren't good at that aspect, and the game doesn't teach them how to be better at it. Thus, the OP and his Rule. I think that's taking it too far personally, but flexibility does come with costs. 5e buys that flexibility with clarity, which concerns me because it makes it harder for new DM's to learn and improve (absent a preexisting talent). I don't want WotC to sacrifice that flexibility, but I would like it if they could have added some Clarity by explaining their system a bit more. It doesn't even have to be in the form of example DC's, it could have just as easily been a discussion on world building or emphasizing the collaborative elements of DMing more.

Incidentally, text does have a few 'hard coded' DC's, they're just scattered and there aren't many. Near the end of the 'The ol' 5e problem: how to deal with Small bonuses' thread a while back, JoeJ listed all the examples they could find. Not linking because that's a pain to get working on mobile, but a quick Google search should bring it up.