Rhedyn
2019-02-07, 10:14 AM
We know Monte Cook did work on 5e and Numenera is basically his brain child.
Numenera has 10 difficulties (3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30) where 15 is difficulty 5 (medium) and 30 is difficulty 10 (nearly impossible). You roll a d20 higher than those values to pass the check. Difficulties higher than 20 can only be overcome by lowering the difficulty (effectively +3 bonuses). So effectively, you can get +3-6 from Skill training, +3-6 from items, and +3-18 from expending "effort" (a resource with cost that can be mitigated so that you can get +6 for free).
So for those keeping track, you get up to a +12 bonus with just training and level while you can get up to a +18 effective bonus with more investment (you could also mix and match to get +12 in different ways). That eerily lines up with the +11 5e characters get up to in skills they are proficient with that aligns with their main stat and the +17 Bards and Rogues get up to in specialized skills of their main stat.
Why care? Well Numenera is entirely based around this system and I think gives a lot of insight into how the 5e skill system could be ran. So first off, you have fixed difficulties that are the same for everyone. There is a nice little table that describes what each difficulty means in-narrative terms but I can at least list the names for each difficulty: Routine (0), Simple (3), Standard (6), Demanding (9), Difficult (12), Challenging (15), Intimidating (18), Formidable (21), Heroic (24), Immortal (27), Impossible (30).
Still plenty left up to GM interpretation, but I find the definitions in this table easier to square with narrative than Very Easy (5), Easy (10), Medium (15), Hard (20), Very Hard (25), and Nearly Impossible (30).
Just stealing that idea alone can make the skill system in 5e a lot clearer and easier for both the DM and players to have similar understanding on how skills work.
But then you can translate player skill bonuses to relative difficulty. Someone with a +9 to a check would find Demanding tasks to be Routine and Heroic tasks to be merely Challenging for them.
If you veer off into House Rules (because I don't consider how the GM determines DCs to be House Rules) you could let people expend HD or HP to put more effort behind a skill check to have a higher bonus, this has ups and downs. A lot of people do not like expending effective HP to do things, but it adds resource management to out of combat skill checks which creates a bigger dynamic than "did anyone pass the check or not?". Imagine a Fighter trying to jump over a chasm with a rope for the party to cross. He has +6 and the check is DC 15 athletics since it is over his regular jump distance and would be something that even trained people often fail at. Does he burn 2 recovery die to get another +6 bonus or does he risk falling and taking more damage to do the task for free? I think that adds an interesting dynamic to skill checks that the original "coin flip" does not.
Numenera has 10 difficulties (3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30) where 15 is difficulty 5 (medium) and 30 is difficulty 10 (nearly impossible). You roll a d20 higher than those values to pass the check. Difficulties higher than 20 can only be overcome by lowering the difficulty (effectively +3 bonuses). So effectively, you can get +3-6 from Skill training, +3-6 from items, and +3-18 from expending "effort" (a resource with cost that can be mitigated so that you can get +6 for free).
So for those keeping track, you get up to a +12 bonus with just training and level while you can get up to a +18 effective bonus with more investment (you could also mix and match to get +12 in different ways). That eerily lines up with the +11 5e characters get up to in skills they are proficient with that aligns with their main stat and the +17 Bards and Rogues get up to in specialized skills of their main stat.
Why care? Well Numenera is entirely based around this system and I think gives a lot of insight into how the 5e skill system could be ran. So first off, you have fixed difficulties that are the same for everyone. There is a nice little table that describes what each difficulty means in-narrative terms but I can at least list the names for each difficulty: Routine (0), Simple (3), Standard (6), Demanding (9), Difficult (12), Challenging (15), Intimidating (18), Formidable (21), Heroic (24), Immortal (27), Impossible (30).
Still plenty left up to GM interpretation, but I find the definitions in this table easier to square with narrative than Very Easy (5), Easy (10), Medium (15), Hard (20), Very Hard (25), and Nearly Impossible (30).
Just stealing that idea alone can make the skill system in 5e a lot clearer and easier for both the DM and players to have similar understanding on how skills work.
But then you can translate player skill bonuses to relative difficulty. Someone with a +9 to a check would find Demanding tasks to be Routine and Heroic tasks to be merely Challenging for them.
If you veer off into House Rules (because I don't consider how the GM determines DCs to be House Rules) you could let people expend HD or HP to put more effort behind a skill check to have a higher bonus, this has ups and downs. A lot of people do not like expending effective HP to do things, but it adds resource management to out of combat skill checks which creates a bigger dynamic than "did anyone pass the check or not?". Imagine a Fighter trying to jump over a chasm with a rope for the party to cross. He has +6 and the check is DC 15 athletics since it is over his regular jump distance and would be something that even trained people often fail at. Does he burn 2 recovery die to get another +6 bonus or does he risk falling and taking more damage to do the task for free? I think that adds an interesting dynamic to skill checks that the original "coin flip" does not.