Why the hate on 5e?

[EggKookoo]

So we both agree that the WotC version needs work. Good. That's the main point here. And you'll notice that we both agree about not providing a page number for everything every time.

Yes. My only concern as I said about the page numbers is that doing that all over can get heavy. I saw that you didn't do it for both references to charmed in Create Thrall, but you'd have to do it the first time something like that's mentioned in a feature.

I seem to remember one edition doing the thing where any bold word in the body of a description was an indication that the word was in the index in the back. I thought was 3e but a quick glance through my old PHB isn't providing examples. But that would be a good compromise once the reader got the concept. You could highlight the word and let the reader know they can go look up more, without bulking out all the descriptions with page number references.


Otherwise the new player has no idea what "as an action" means, since action is not even defined as technical jargon until a later chapter of the PHB.

I think we have to expect the reader to try to meet us halfway with these things. If they come across a term the don't know, they should apply some basic initiative and go figure it out. Of course, if action was bold they might learn that it's something they can go look up in the index.


"No saving throw" avoids the situation where a somewhat-more-experienced DM scratches his head, not finding a saving throw listed for Create Thrall, then makes one up based on text elsewhere in the PHB. You want to make it very clear that this powerful aspect of the ability is deliberate, not an oversight.

I mean I guess. I see where you're coming from. I just feel like you could always voice that concern with any set of instructions. Especially something like this that has some level of hierarchical structure (needing to know what an action is before understanding that a feature uses it, for example). If there's a clear introduction section to the book, and these kinds of things are laid out, it should suffice. The PHB does have things on stuff like "specific beats general" and definitions of terms like action, round, and the dice. If I were advocating an editorial cleanup of the 5e books, I'd focus on that first.


Overall do you feel that a new player is more likely to understand WotC's Create Thrall correctly than the revised Create Thrall?

I don't know. I'm way too experienced with how D&D rules are written to be able to judge that. Your version feels very "3e" to me. Which isn't a complaint really. The 3e books are mostly fine if a little crunchy-cluttered. For example, I find the constant in-copy page number references distracting. I just want to get a sense of what the feature does. I'll go look up the related terms as I need to. I find the 5e books more comfy.

I do some tech instructional writing for my job, at least from time to time. I've found it's very easy to confuse even highly competent people if you don't stay focused on what you're trying to communicate. I screw it up more often than I'd like but I also get a sense of how people read and digest these kinds of things (hint: they typically don't -- demonstrations work best).

[EggKookoo]

As noted earlier, that is not the approach that all GMs take.

But that's how it works in 5e.

[MaxWilson]

Yes. My only concern as I said about the page numbers is that doing that all over can get heavy. I saw that you didn't do it for both references to charmed in Create Thrall, but you'd have to do it the first time something like that's mentioned in a feature.

I think you could do it the first time a condition is mentioned and it wouldn't hurt page count much, but I'll also note that it would become much less important if they renamed charmed condition something less misleading, like mesmerized, because of historical connotations like Charm Person (which historically compelled obedience). If you did that and just had a good index with charmed as entry, that would probably be enough even without the page numbers to prevent Create Thrall from being misleading.

On the other hand, you said that already--


I seem to remember one edition doing the thing where any bold word in the body of a description was an indication that the word was in the index in the back. I thought was 3e but a quick glance through my old PHB isn't providing examples. But that would be a good compromise once the reader got the concept. You could highlight the word and let the reader know they can go look up more, without bulking out all the descriptions with page number references.

That's teach me to start writing before I finish reading. Yes, I agree.


I think we have to expect the reader to try to meet us halfway with these things. If they come across a term the don't know, they should apply some basic initiative and go figure it out. Of course, if action was bold they might learn that it's something they can go look up in the index.

Sure. That works.


I mean I guess. I see where you're coming from. I just feel like you could always voice that concern with any set of instructions. Especially something like this that has some level of hierarchical structure (needing to know what an action is before understanding that a feature uses it, for example). If there's a clear introduction section to the book, and these kinds of things are laid out, it should suffice. The PHB does have things on stuff like "specific beats general" and definitions of terms like action, round, and the dice. If I were advocating an editorial cleanup of the 5e books, I'd focus on that first.

I can't think of any other abilities like Create Thrall that don't grant even a single a saving throw, so in this case I think it's worth calling out explicitly. Compare to Command Undead (Necromancer 14) which grants an initial saving throw and additional saving throws every hour if the undead's Intelligence is high enough. What I'm trying to avoid here is a DM who says, "Okay, make a Wisdom save I guess against the warlock's spell DC." I agree that you could word it better than I did.


I don't know. I'm way too experienced with how D&D rules are written to be able to judge that. Your version feels very "3e" to me. Which isn't a complaint really. The 3e books are mostly fine if a little crunchy-cluttered. For example, I find the constant in-copy page number references distracting. I just want to get a sense of what the feature does. I'll go look up the related terms as I need to. I find the 5e books more comfy.

Huh, interesting. I've never had any interest in learning 3E so I'll take your word for it.


I do some tech instructional writing for my job, at least from time to time. I've found it's very easy to confuse even highly competent people if you don't stay focused on what you're trying to communicate. I screw it up more often than I'd like but I also get a sense of how people read and digest these kinds of things (hint: they typically don't -- demonstrations work best).

I agree--I just don't think WotC thought about what they were trying to communicate.

[Mongobear]

Climbing an easy tree is easy. The DM doesn't create a tree to put into the game. They create an easy tree, or a medium tree, or a hard tree, and so on. The difficulty is baked into the tree.


What we want, is a basic framework the explain WHY an Easy Tree is Easy, and why a Hard Tree is Hard.

So that when a PC fails, and is asking me why, I can say, "The trunk and bark was slippery from rain this morning, and the branches were very spaced out and narrow." Instead of just "Because it's a Hard Tree."

[Max_Killjoy]

But that's how it works in 5e.

If true, that would mean that for a sizeable number of gamers, 5e would not work at all.

[EggKookoo]

What we want, is a basic framework the explain WHY an Easy Tree is Easy, and why a Hard Tree is Hard.

So that when a PC fails, and is asking me why, I can say, "The trunk and bark was slippery from rain this morning, and the branches were very spaced out and narrow." Instead of just "Because it's a Hard Tree."

You want a chart that provides narrative fluff descriptions?

[Mongobear]

You want a chart that provides narrative fluff descriptions?

Sort of.

A list of different scenarios/features that differentiate the DC Categories, sort of like 3.5e's tables, but lighter in scope.

I'll try and find an SRD entry of what I'm talking about for clarity if needed.

[EggKookoo]

I can't think of any other abilities like Create Thrall that don't grant even a single a saving throw, so in this case I think it's worth calling out explicitly. Compare to Command Undead (Necromancer 14) which grants an initial saving throw and additional saving throws every hour if the undead's Intelligence is high enough. What I'm trying to avoid here is a DM who says, "Okay, make a Wisdom save I guess against the warlock's spell DC." I agree that you could word it better than I did.

Well, if I'm being facetious, I could say most don't. Like attack rolls and such. But yes, most non-attacks provide the opportunity for a save. There are some exceptions, like magic missile.

[KorvinStarmast]

So that when a PC fails, and is asking me why, I can say, "The trunk and bark was slippery from rain this morning, and the branches were very spaced out and narrow." Instead of just "Because it's a Hard Tree." From the Basic Rules and the PHB:

How to Play
The play of the Dungeons & Dragons game unfolds according to this basic pattern.
The DM describes the environment.
The players describe what they want to do. (sometimes, roll a die or some dice)
The DM narrates the results of the adventurers’ actions.



The DM narrates the outcome. So, narrate it.
You don't need a DC table to do that.

let me illustrate:
DM: It's been raining, and the bark of the tree is slippery(sets a DC of 11)
Player: I want to climb it so I can see farther
(rolls a 4)
DM: You slipped down, it's too slippery for you to climb

DM: It's been raining, and the bark of the tree is slippery(sets a DC of 11)
Player: I want to climb it so I can see farther
(rolls a 14)
DM: It was kind of tough but you managed to get up high in the tree and look around ....

Or, not roll required.
DM: It's a clear day, light breeze from the southeast. You are standing in a copse of trees
Player: I want to climb a tree so I can see farther
DM: You climb up the tree and see approaching ... seven mounted humanoids carrying spears and shields about a quarter of a mile away ...

[Max_Killjoy]

You want a chart that provides narrative fluff descriptions?

I would want a "chart" that forms a baseline / framework for translating fiction-level details into DCs.

[KorvinStarmast]

I would want a "chart" that forms a baseline / framework for translating fiction-level details into DCs. You already have two, one in the PHB for the 5/10/15 scheme, and in the DMG.

You seem to be calling for more verisimilitude ... and they got away from that due to experience in previous editions. Or so it seems.

At the risk of wandering off topic, I'd rather see them put effort into producing a few more settings, and some more adventures. We don't need the Wilderness Adventurer's Handbook like we had in AD&D 1e.

[EggKookoo]

You already have two, one in the PHB for the 5/10/15 scheme, and in the DMG.

You seem to be calling for more verisimilitude ... and they got away from that due to experience in previous editions. Or so it seems.

I can see it now with 6e. "I can't climb that. That's a level 13 tree (gnarled 6 / slick 7 multiclass)! With +3 bark!"

[Mongobear]

I'll try and find an SRD entry of what I'm talking about for clarity if needed.

Copy/Paste directly from 3.5 phb...

Climb DC Example Surface or Activity

0 A slope too steep to walk up, or a knotted rope with a wall
to brace against.

5 A rope with a wall to brace against, or a knotted rope, or a
rope affected by the rope trick spell.

10 A surface with ledges to hold on to and stand on, such as a
very rough wall or a ship’s rigging.

15 Any surface with adequate handholds and footholds
(natural or artificial), such as a very rough natural rock
surface or a tree, or an unknotted rope, or pulling yourself
up when dangling by your hands.

20 An uneven surface with some narrow handholds and
footholds, such as a typical wall in a dungeon or ruins.

25 A rough surface, such as a natural rock wall or a brick wall.

25 An overhang or ceiling with handholds but no footholds.

— A perfectly smooth, flat, vertical surface cannot be climbed.


Oddly enough, a Tree was DC 15 in this edition, assuming it was a class skill and you had a decent Strength, a 1st level Adventurer of reasonable skill would fail roughly 50% of the time.

I almost want to go back through the 3.5e skills and see how reasonable just porting the DCs directly would work for 5e.

[MaxWilson]

From the Basic Rules and the PHB:

How to Play
The play of the Dungeons & Dragons game unfolds according to this basic pattern.
1. The DM describes the environment.
2. The players describe what they want to do. (sometimes, roll a die or some dice)
3. The DM narrates the results of the adventurers’ actions.



The DM narrates the outcome. So, narrate it.

In practice of course this is never how it works.

DM: "You're standing outside the dungeon. There are goblins and treasure inside."
Players: "We want to kill all of the monsters inside and take their treasure."

In real life, the DM never responds by rolling some dice and narrating the result of that action. (E.g. "roll a DC 20 Dungeoneering check." "I pass." "Okay, you kill a tribe of goblins and earn 317 in silver plus a small dog.")

In all likelihood, the DM responds by saying, in effect, "You can't do that. You have to declare a different action at a lower level of granularity" and the players gradually adjust their expectations for what actions they are allowed to declare until they match whatever the DM had in mind.

So in practice, it's more like:

How to Play (Dungeon Crawling game structure)
The play of the Dungeons & Dragons game unfolds according to this basic pattern.

The DM describes the environment including any exits or notable features of the room.
The players describe some specific actions they want to take within the room, including examing some of the room's features or leaving through one of the exits. (sometimes, roll a die or some dice)
The DM narrates the results of the adventurers’ actions, which could include traps going off or secret doors/treasure being discovered or switching to a new mode of play such as Parlaying or Combat game structures.

At any given time, players can really only declare actions of certain types that the DM is prepared to support, or the DM will refuse to execute those actions. It is somewhat unfortunate that WotC's basic rules never actually outline the dungeon crawling procedures so that new DMs can learn them. They just assume that DMs already know how to run dungeon crawls.

[noob]

(E.g. "roll a DC 20 Dungeoneering check." "I pass." "Okay, you kill a tribe of goblins and earn 317 in silver plus a small dog.")

I want loot lists that includes small dogs now.

[Max_Killjoy]

You already have two, one in the PHB for the 5/10/15 scheme, and in the DMG.

You seem to be calling for more verisimilitude ... and they got away from that due to experience in previous editions. Or so it seems.


I'll look for that "scheme" in the PHB when I get home.

[KorvinStarmast]

I'll look for that "scheme" in the PHB when I get home.Chapter 7 Using Ability Scores. the table is called "Typical Difficulty Classes"

I have discovered that in the past six months, a very worthy contributor got tired of the 5e hate and no longer contributes here. He pointed to the DMG table and I'll try to find that post.

[EggKookoo]

Chapter 7 Using Ability Scores. the table is called "Typical Difficulty Classes"

I have discovered that in the past six months, a very worthy contributor got tired of the 5e hate and no longer contributes here. He pointed to the DMG table and I'll try to find that post.

Just FYI, I don't think that's what Max_Killjoy is looking for. This is just the same easy/medium/hard/etc. chart.

[Segev]

Chapter 7 Using Ability Scores. the table is called "Typical Difficulty Classes"

I have discovered that in the past six months, a very worthy contributor got tired of the 5e hate and no longer contributes here. He pointed to the DMG table and I'll try to find that post.

It's not even 5e hate. It's frustration that the rules presented mostly stop at the self-referential layer. Where there are examples presented, I'm largely happy.

The notion that you start by deciding how hard you, the DM, want a task to be is a little backwards, especially for determining those corner cases that actually are most likely to run up against the skill system. Just how hard should it be to use a skill check to bypass a combat encounter? Sure, it's within the rules for a DM to simply rule that climbing this wall or picking this lock or jumping this chasm or persuading this hobgoblin is impossible, because the DM wants the party to approach the problem not by picking/jumping/persuading/climbing their way past it, but but fighting their way through it. But doesn't that smack of railroading?

And before you say, "But that's just a single case; obviously you don't railroad there, and judge it to be possible," the fact that there's no guidelines for how possible it should be based on the scenario established is the problem. Are you a railroading jerk for setting the DC at 25? Too nice for setting it at 15? Just right at either?

I've heard tales of this table in the DMG, though I don't remember ever finding it and finding it to answer my questions. I'd be interested in seeing one that did.

[Max_Killjoy]

I can see it now with 6e. "I can't climb that. That's a level 13 tree (gnarled 6 / slick 7 multiclass)! With +3 bark!"

Are you just being funny here, or are you actually trying to depict what some of us are wishing 5e included as being that sort of thing?

Either way, one could just as easily depict the "challenge level first" approach as "Look, there's a 10 DC Tree over there they haven't cut down, which we could climb instead of trying to climb the 20 DC Wall or fight through several 15 DC Guards."




It's not even 5e hate. It's frustration that the rules presented mostly stop at the self-referential layer. Where there are examples presented, I'm largely happy.


Or 5e disappointment.

But yes, it's largely frustration that certain parts of the rules are stunted and self-referential.

[MaxWilson]

I want loot lists that includes small dogs now.

I once found an interesting one which had memorable items like "a lovingly-rendered sketch of a goblin female, captioned 'Mom'" and a note that says, in childish scrawl, "I love you Daddy! XXXOOO" but I cannot find it now. Or at least, it had items which inspired me to create those items in-game, and I think the originals were something close to that. It was probably somewhere in this list of tables: http://hackslashmaster.blogspot.com/2011/03/on-never-being-able-to-find-table-when.html

[FringeJacket]

5e murdered my family

[EggKookoo]

Are you just being funny here, or are you actually trying to depict what some of us are wishing 5e included as being that sort of thing?

I guess if you have to ask, I only thought I was being funny.


Either way, one could just as easily depict the "challenge level first" approach as "Look, there's a 10 DC Tree over there they haven't cut down, which we could climb instead of trying to climb the 20 DC Wall or fight through several 15 DC Guards."

That is (almost) exactly how I envision it to work in 5e. Getting into from the fiction/narrative side... The party gets close enough to get a good look a the scene. They see a wall that looks pretty smooth and well-maintained, and some alert but bored guards over by a gate. But one party member sees an old (but thick and strong-looking) gnarled tree at the other end of the wall, which looks like it leads right up to the top of it.

"Hey," says Ol' Eagle Eyes. "We could probably get up that tree easier than the wall, and we could bypass the guards to boot."

I mean the only thing odd is that the guards wouldn't have a DC, but I guess you could use their CR as a kind of stand-in.

Edit: Unless you meant my (attempt at) humor was in the PCs using game mechanics terms. No, it was poking fun at 3e's tendency to present NPCs using PC rules, with monster levels and such. So the extrapolation was that even trees have levels and +3 to its Bark Class. Basically, if 3e -> 5e represented a swing in one direction, what would an extreme swing back look like?

[Kane0]

Chapter 7 Using Ability Scores. the table is called "Typical Difficulty Classes"

I have discovered that in the past six months, a very worthy contributor got tired of the 5e hate and no longer contributes here. He pointed to the DMG table and I'll try to find that post.

DMG page 237?

[Pelle]

This sounds right in theory, but almost Everytime I've seen a DM try it, or used it myself, the player starts an argument about the DM taking away their agency to do things, or railroading them towards the given story, or in extreme cases, accusing them of singling them out and metagaming.

Maybe it's just my local players, but I suspect this isn't a unique scenario since I'm not the only one asking for this type of change.

I think it's your former, but maybe not considering this discussion.

IME, it's not a problem when you follow this approach:
Describe situation (Ex. "The trunk and bark was slippery from rain this morning, and the branches were very spaced out and narrow.")
Suggest difficulty based on that ("You want to try climbing that, that sounds like a Hard task to me..."
See if everyone is onboard, and not puzzled by it
Clear up any misunderstandings, on either side of the table
If necessary, add extra description and reset the difficulty to something everyone thinks is suitable

It doesn't matter that it's not a universal baseline. What matters is that it's a table consensus about what is Hard, Medium etc. Which you come to by providing more description of the shared fiction, which is a win-win. It requires both GMs and players acting in good faith though, which is a design assumption in 5e. For good reasons IMO.



(Never mind that personally I've never seen the sort of framework most of us on the "give some details" side are asking for actually taken as hard rules...)

Well, I think Pex would like them to be followed as hard rules, otherwise he can't keep complaining about different tables being different. :smalltongue:

[Kane0]

Damnit I wish we had a polling option here, I really want to know how everybody thinks of climbing in 5e. Is it more like BotW or Uncharted?

[AdAstra]

Damnit I wish we had a polling option here, I really want to know how everybody thinks of climbing in 5e. Is it more like BotW or Uncharted?

I see it as more or less something you can do on most surfaces BotW style, with particularly difficult surfaces, speedy climbs, and long climbs needing a check. The thing is that most video games don’t use luck-based outcomes for these sorts of actions, since they have things like player skill, stamina bars, and highly variable climbing speeds as factors instead, things not easily implemented in tabletop games.

[diplomancer]

Oddly enough, a Tree was DC 15 in this edition, assuming it was a class skill and you had a decent Strength, a 1st level Adventurer of reasonable skill would fail roughly 50% of the time.

Which is enough to show how horribly unbalanced and unrealistic it was. To think that a skilled and strong adventurer would fail to climb regular trees half the time tells me that whoever wrote that table was thinking of how hard it was for HIM. I can only suppose that a similar design philosophy was followed for other skills. I'm happy to play a more realistic game like 5e.

[Pelle]

Just to check, here's Call of Cthulhu 7th difficulty descriptions for Climb:

Regular: Plenty of handholds, perhaps a rope or drainpipe to climb.
Hard: Few handholds, or surfaces slick with rain.
And there's some more text on what factors might affect it, possible consequences etc.

Would something like that be sufficient for you, or do you prefer it even more extensive?

[KorvinStarmast]

DMG page 237? That, or the one on page 271. When I get to the DMG later I may edit this.
Damnit I wish we had a polling option here, I really want to know how everybody thinks of climbing in 5e. Is it more like BotW or Uncharted?
Climbing costs an extra foot of movement. If your move is 30', you can climb 15' (though if you are a rogue/thief, second story work means that you can climb 30')

That's a rule. :smallcool:

I went back to one of the threads that saw this same tired tree climbing argument go on for some pates, with the usual disagreement to agree.
Some highlights:

I am every bit as unpersuaded there is a problem as you are unpersuaded there isn't one. I dont think either side will ever change the view of the other.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23379467&postcount=213

In this post, the published adventure DCs are summarized. Popular numbers are 10, 12, 15, 20, 22 25. Who saw that coming? :smalleek:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23383365&postcount=1

This post was kina funny:

We need skill DCs described in the same manner as attributes!

Crush a green tomato: Strength DC 5
Dodge a handful of falling tomatoes: Dexterity DC 10
Eat a rotten tomato: Constitution DC 15
Accurately recall the correct species and origins of tomatoes: DC 20
Spot a tomato hidden in a Where's Wally drawing: Wisdom DC 25
Convince airport security to let you pass with an undeclared tomato: Charisma DC 30

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23388660&postcount=447

From Tanarii, about a DMG discussion on skills/DCs.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23389564&postcount=458

You means DMG pages 271-272?
It's only one page, split over two. But they put combat applicable options in the appropriate location. The DMs guide, optional rules (dungeon masters workshop) section.
The social bribing one already exists in social table in the DMG. (This is one where they set some hard numbers to use, but with caveats in the text.)
The idea that you can palm things is listed under Sleight of Hand. No DC suggested ... thankfully.
The tailing one uses the wrong ability score and skill proficiency. It should be Dexterity (Stealth).
Furthermore, in addition to prompting players with fun ideas of what they can do under each skill proficiency, the ability checks each have a little list of ideas for things you can do with a straight ability check.
Again no DCs, thankfully.

Thank you for reinforcing to me that they did the right thing by putting suggestions in the PHB, but leaving out example DCs, putting them in the hands of the DM. Most of those I wouldn't set the same DC (tailing, palming). And others I don't even want in my game at all (reducing damage from a fall, disarming, and DMG combat options). But that may lose a bit of context.

Some other fun lposts:

I would never claim to have intricate knowledge of the system. Yet I seem to have no problem deciding if a task succeeds, fails, or call for a DC 10 or 15 check, and maybe assign Advantage or Disadvantage all based on what the character decides to do in the situation.

It's the same process i would use for running Dread plus exactly 2 more thoughts.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23400900&postcount=754

From Unoriginal:

Picking a DC only requires you to be willing to count up to 30. It's not Mearls' fault if you're not willing to go further than 3.5.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23401118&postcount=769

And appropos of this thread, in a prescient post, I return to old reliable, Sigreid:

I can't believe this discussion is still going on. It's pretty clear everyone participating has metaphorically claimed the ground they'll die on.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=23401137&postcount=771

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm off to drive for a while, when I'm looking at the section in the PHB noted upthread, I'll also see if there's maybe a better Skill and situation to use as a specific example, since people keeping missing the forest for the trees on the "climbing a tree" metaphor.

[Knaight]

Is your criticism 3E-specific, or do you feel that AD&D would have been better off without the climbing rules in the 2nd edition PHB? For reference:

...

Was it the idea of predefined rules that made hard rules problematic for you, or just WotC's execution of 3E DCs?

I think AD&D would have been much better off if they'd just formalized the roll under ability score system a bit more, and instead of that ridiculous climbing table interfacing with thief specific climb ratings just given an effect to the thief where their dexterity counts as higher than it is for climbing purposes. It's not 3e specific.

That said, the specific cultural things that tend to make examples ironclad were far more prevalent in 3e D&D than AD&D, and harmed it more. Of course, that still doesn't make it 3e specific; I'd cite this exact same modifier heavy approach as one of the reasons I'm unwilling to GM GURPS. At least 3e D&D doesn't have hundreds of skills, all of which have tables for what other skills can substitute for them at what penalty.

On the other hand, GURPS had the good sense not to use a penalty by linear distance skill for perception skills, which tends to keep my criticism of it more on the "I don't want to deal with your massive pile of accounting" side and not the "above and beyond the use of specific numbers, your specific numbers are terrible" side.

[ad_hoc]

Chapter 7 Using Ability Scores. the table is called "Typical Difficulty Classes"

I have discovered that in the past six months, a very worthy contributor got tired of the 5e hate and no longer contributes here. He pointed to the DMG table and I'll try to find that post.

This is how communities tend to self select and reinforce. I have noticed certain issues crop up again and again on this board that don't exist elsewhere or in the community at large.

Group think is another way to put it. Everyone around thinks a certain way so the group doesn't think it is possible to think a different way.

At some point it's healthy to realize that you can only lead the horse to water.

[KorvinStarmast]

This is how communities tend to self select and reinforce. I have noticed certain issues crop up again and again on this board that don't exist elsewhere or in the community at large.

Group think is another way to put it. Everyone around thinks a certain way so the group doesn't think it is possible to think a different way.

At some point it's healthy to realize that you can only lead the horse to water. The echo chamber effect is something I've been watching on internet forums and pre forum internet discourse for about 20 years. There are now studies at Yale about how it's getting worse, not better. There's a link to some of those studies NPR's web page under the topic of outrage on Twitter posts. Very interesting stuff that sociologists and psychologists are picking up on.

[Kane0]

Group think is another way to put it. Everyone around thinks a certain way so the group doesn't think it is possible to think a different way.


Like an echo chamber?

https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/fallout_gamepedia/3/30/Think_tanks_line_up.jpg?version=569c6b2e72cb478a7d 66a789bfa0273b

[noob]

Just to check, here's Call of Cthulhu 7th difficulty descriptions for Climb:

Regular: Plenty of handholds, perhaps a rope or drainpipe to climb.
Hard: Few handholds, or surfaces slick with rain.
And there's some more text on what factors might affect it, possible consequences etc.

Would something like that be sufficient for you, or do you prefer it even more extensive?

I think something like that would work.

[Mongobear]

Which is enough to show how horribly unbalanced and unrealistic it was. To think that a skilled and strong adventurer would fail to climb regular trees half the time tells me that whoever wrote that table was thinking of how hard it was for HIM. I can only suppose that a similar design philosophy was followed for other skills. I'm happy to play a more realistic game like 5e.

Or, they didn't differentiate the hundreds of types of trees, and just used a standard DC for all versions. The example I listed also had various incremental modifiers, which would just qualify as (Dis)Advantage in 5e, but it could also be variations on a normal case such as different tree species.

Also, criticizing the table writer could be used from my side as well, since 5e is so vague, it's like the author(s) have no life experiences at all. But I'm not going to make up a straw man about something neither of us has no knowledge about. Unless you're secretly the former head dev of 3.5e?


Just to check, here's Call of Cthulhu 7th difficulty descriptions for Climb:

Regular: Plenty of handholds, perhaps a rope or drainpipe to climb.
Hard: Few handholds, or surfaces slick with rain.
And there's some more text on what factors might affect it, possible consequences etc.

Would something like that be sufficient for you, or do you prefer it even more extensive?


I think something like that would work.

That's closer to what I'm talking about, could probably use a tad more difference than just 2 examples.

[diplomancer]

Or, they didn't differentiate the hundreds of types of trees, and just used a standard DC for all versions. The example I listed also had various incremental modifiers, which would just qualify as (Dis)Advantage in 5e, but it could also be variations on a normal case such as different tree species.

Also, criticizing the table writer could be used from my side as well, since 5e is so vague, it's like the author(s) have no life experiences at all.

They have enough life experience to know that climbing an average tree is not hard at all for an adventurer. Which is more than can be said of whomever wrote that table.

Which brings us to my point: not only would those DC tables slow down the game considerably and give overload to the DMs, but they would be hotly contested by everyone (or do you really think that they would nail all DCs perfectly so as to satisfy everyone?). DC 15 to climb an average tree? Only possibility I can imagine, apart from the designer taking himself as the standard for adventurers, is that he had only seen palm or pine trees.

[Segev]

Given that I haven't seen people shouted out of the forums with admins called in to silence the argument and hand out "even-handed" punishments that always just happen to find one side more at fault than the other... no, I don't think we really have too much of a problem with an echo-chamber here.

Nobody is calling others "Evil" for disagreeing. They're just adamantly upholding their positions.

Dismissing disagreement as "groupthink" is no more valid an argument than reliance on a consensus. Often, it's less of one, as a consensus is less likely to be wrong...though it's hardly guaranteed that a consensus will be right.


I find the claims that it's players who want protection from the DM who want examples of what kinds of tasks are easy/medium/hard/impossible to be particularly :smallconfused: because I'm asking as a DM who keeps running into "and how I have to make up a DC for how hard this is" situations. And the truth is, I don't really care beyond verisimilitude whetehr they succeed or fail, and/or if I do care, I have to double-check myself that I'm not just setting a DC to railroad a result. Because if I'm going to do that, I just won't let them roll.

[Mongobear]

They have enough life experience to know that climbing an average tree is not hard at all for an adventurer. Which is more than can be said of whomever wrote that table.

Which brings us to my point: not only would those DC tables slow down the game considerably and give overload to the DMs, but they would be hotly contested by everyone (or do you really think that they would nail all DCs perfectly so as to satisfy everyone?). DC 15 to climb an average tree? Only possibility I can imagine, apart from the designer taking himself as the standard for adventurers, is that he had only seen palm or pine trees.

Those DCs don't state what kind of tree, it the baseline for every single tree in a world.

And who is to say all adventurers are as equally skilled at tree climbing? Bookworm Wizards who have never left their city metropolis might never have even seen a real tree, outside of a picture book. But the first time they see one, they can just immediately climb it like a squirrel?

I seriously doubt it slows down games in any meaningful way, moreso as compared to the time it takes for a DM to decide whether it would be easy/medium/hard. Especially if you're prepared and have a DM screen or the book open to that section already, and prepared the setting fully and have notes for every tree in the relevant area and know the DCs ahead of time.

The only time I can ever see it actually slowing down a session, is if you never prepare ANYTHING ahead of time and completely wing everything the moment it happens. Which isn't necessarily a wrong way to play, but certainly a minority I doubt the devs take into account.

[Tallyn]

I'll just reitterate my frustration that the game stops short of tying examples to the difficulties.

I honestly don't know if "doing a pullup" should be considered medium or hard difficulty. I just know that I have never, in my entire life, managed to do one. Maybe that means they're "nigh impossible" and should be DC 30?

Hah! That's difficult to equate into game mechanics. Technically wouldn't that be a strength check with the DC set by your character's weight? Probably with some modifiers based on how often you do pullups, if ever, etc.

Sorry had a geeky moment there

[diplomancer]

Adventurers are not bookworms (bookworms dump str, dex and, most likely, con. Not many of those running around in my experience in 5e). They are adventurers. The most domestic of all adventurers, Bilbo Baggins, climbs, with no great difficulty, a very tall tree in Mirkwood, despite being half the size of a human (and therefore having access to fewer handholds).

Now, you can say, "screw that, my character is a bookworm, regular rules for adventurers don't apply to him, I can't climb if my life depends on it, and if ever I ford a river and don't have somewhere to stand I panic and sink like a ton of bricks". To which the DM will probably answer "ok, but you are weird"

[Max_Killjoy]

Given that I haven't seen people shouted out of the forums with admins called in to silence the argument and hand out "even-handed" punishments that always just happen to find one side more at fault than the other... no, I don't think we really have too much of a problem with an echo-chamber here.

Nobody is calling others "Evil" for disagreeing. They're just adamantly upholding their positions.

Dismissing disagreement as "groupthink" is no more valid an argument than reliance on a consensus. Often, it's less of one, as a consensus is less likely to be wrong...though it's hardly guaranteed that a consensus will be right.


I keep seeing the "if you have an issue with how 5e does something, you're obviously a 3.x advocate" assertion stated or implied by a number of posters, along with a few other presumptions, or there's the one you mention:




I find the claims that it's players who want protection from the DM who want examples of what kinds of tasks are easy/medium/hard/impossible to be particularly :smallconfused: because I'm asking as a DM who keeps running into "and how I have to make up a DC for how hard this is" situations. And the truth is, I don't really care beyond verisimilitude whether they succeed or fail, and/or if I do care, I have to double-check myself that I'm not just setting a DC to railroad a result. Because if I'm going to do that, I just won't let them roll.


Indeed, I'm looking at this mainly from a GM's perspective, so being accused of wanting to "protect myself from the GM" is just silly.

So the irony of seeing "groupthink" as the latest accusation just makes me chuckle.

[EggKookoo]

So simple question, I guess. How is the DM setting the DC for a skill/ability check based on a desired level of challenge any different than the DM building an encounter around CR?

Longer explanation:

If I'm planning a session for a 1st level party and there's a good chance they'll run into a band of ruffians, I'm going to try to balance that encounter as roughly CR 1, or at least no more than that. I can justify it in the fiction by working out that because of where the PCs are, those are the kinds of baddies they'll run into. Does anyone consider this railroading or playing "mother may I?"

But say I'm planning a session for a 1st level party and they start off trapped in a room, and there's a chain dangling from the ceiling by a small opening that could be used to escape (perhaps among other options). I decide to make the chain easy to climb and therefore DC 10, so it's feasible these beginners could use it. I work out an in-fiction explanation, like the chain might have once been part of a chain ladder of some sort, and the other chain is missing, but there are still remnants of steps connected to it. Is that a problem? Is that railroading?

[Max_Killjoy]

Chapter 7 Using Ability Scores. the table is called "Typical Difficulty Classes".


OK, looked it up, it's exactly the largely abstract and meaningless self-referential thing I've been talking about. It is literally a list of tagwords and DC numbers, 5 to 30 in increments of 5.

What does "hard" mean in the context of the implied setting of 5e D&D? What makes a lock "hard" instead of "easy" or "medium"?

With just this table, it means nothing, beyond "an Ability check that the DM decided to assign a 20 DC to"... it's entirely circular.

[Kane0]

So simple question, I guess. How is the DM setting the DC for a skill/ability check based on a desired level of challenge any different than the DM building an encounter around CR?

Longer explanation:

If I'm planning a session for a 1st level party and there's a good chance they'll run into a band of ruffians, I'm going to try to balance that encounter as roughly CR 1, or at least no more than that. I can justify it in the fiction by working out that because of where the PCs are, those are the kinds of baddies they'll run into. Does anyone consider this railroading or playing "mother may I?"

But say I'm planning a session for a 1st level party and they start off trapped in a room, and there's a chain dangling from the ceiling by a small opening that could be used to escape (perhaps among other options). I decide to make the chain easy to climb and therefore DC 10, so it's feasible these beginners could use it. I work out an in-fiction explanation, like the chain might have once been part of a chain ladder of some sort, and the other chain is missing, but there are still remnants of steps connected to it. Is that a problem? Is that railroading?

Forgive me if i'm reading wrong but is this the skill check equivalent of CAW vs CAS?

[EggKookoo]

Forgive me if i'm reading wrong but is this the skill check equivalent of CAW vs CAS?

It might be the migraine postdrome but I'm blanking on those. Checks As... Written?

[MaxWilson]

Forgive me if i'm reading wrong but is this the skill check equivalent of CAW vs CAS?

There are some similarities, but I'd say it's closer to the distinction between linear adventures and sandboxing. After all you can theoretically run a linear adventure in Combat As War mode, even though CAW-preference and appreciation for sandboxing sometimes seem to be correlated.


It might be the migraine postdrome but I'm blanking on those. Checks As... Written?

Combat As War vs. Combat As Sport. See this thread for explanation, especially posts #1, #5, and #9:

https://www.enworld.org/threads/very-long-combat-as-sport-vs-combat-as-war-a-key-difference-in-d-d-play-styles.317715/

Basically CAW = adventure as the unit of play, and CAS = encounter as unit of play.

Note further that 5E's game balance breaks completely in half if you play CAW, leaving you with the choice between abandoning CAW for CAS (e.g. stop scouting ahead), radically increasing the difficulty and probably getting your DM to invent a bunch of new rules, or switching game systems. Even something as simple as just bringing along a ton of caltrops and fighting cautiously from chokepoints can turn a lot of 5E fights into virtual turkey-shoots.

[Mongobear]

Adventurers are not bookworms (bookworms dump str, dex and, most likely, con. Not many of those running around in my experience in 5e). They are adventurers. The most domestic of all adventurers, Bilbo Baggins, climbs, with no great difficulty, a very tall tree in Mirkwood, despite being half the size of a human (and therefore having access to fewer handholds).

Now, you can say, "screw that, my character is a bookworm, regular rules for adventurers don't apply to him, I can't climb if my life depends on it, and if ever I ford a river and don't have somewhere to stand I panic and sink like a ton of bricks". To which the DM will probably answer "ok, but you are weird"

Bilbo also wasn't level 1 when that occured, as he had already helped fight and defeat trolls, orcs, Gollum's riddle encounter, and numerous Goblins, which depending on JRR Tolkien's DM style, he may have gotten a cut of the entire Goblin city's XP.

By the time Mirkwood happened, he was likely atleast 5th level, if not higher, and likely had the Thief archetype (Burglar), which actually gives a Pseudo climb speed, Second Story Work.

A typical level 1 wizard likely is a bookwork. Sage/Cloistered Scholar background, home city of a large metropolis and recent graduate of the Mage's Academy he has likely spent his entire life there, and not seen a tree. Is this no more typical of an Adventurer than anything else?

It could also be numerous other examples, a Triton that's lived underwater his whole life, a Drow recently escaped from the Underdark, a Dwarf that's lived in his clans cavernous chamber in a mountain, etc.

It's entirely plausible a level 1 green adventurer has zero experience climbing a tree, there isn't some uniform metric defining what being an Adventurer means or a skill set they all possess.

[stoutstien]

Hah! That's difficult to equate into game mechanics. Technically wouldn't that be a strength check with the DC set by your character's weight? Probably with some modifiers based on how often you do pullups, if ever, etc.

Sorry had a geeky moment there

I think this does pose the question on why the guy that the guy at the gym fallacy does show up so much. Skill checks that have more real world references might be easier compared to something that is completely fantasy or meta.

I know roughly how much u can lift and how far I can leap but how can I tell how easy it is to to persuade one guard to the next?

[Segev]

So simple question, I guess. How is the DM setting the DC for a skill/ability check based on a desired level of challenge any different than the DM building an encounter around CR?


For one thing, the DCs are supposed to be level agnostic. But if I tried to follow your advice for challenge design, I’d only put easy to medium challenges in for low level parties, and hard to impossible challenges in for high level parties.

Moreover, I’m not talking about predesigned challenges. I’m talking about challenges the players invent on the fly because I didn’t foresee how they’d think to approach a given problem. Do I just decide these based on party level? No, can’t be, these are supposed to be level agnostic. So on what do I even base the decision of how hard I want this to be? What if all I care about is verisimilitude? Combat-as-War rather than -as-sport? How do I use the dice as impartial judges when I have no impartial scale to measure them against?

[Mongobear]

But say I'm planning a session for a 1st level party and they start off trapped in a room, and there's a chain dangling from the ceiling by a small opening that could be used to escape (perhaps among other options). I decide to make the chain easy to climb and therefore DC 10, so it's feasible these beginners could use it. I work out an in-fiction explanation, like the chain might have once been part of a chain ladder of some sort, and the other chain is missing, but there are still remnants of steps connected to it. Is that a problem? Is that railroading?

I've had a similar situation and very much been accused of railroading. PCs nearly TPKd by hobgoblins due to bad rolls and surprise round. Instead of ending them, I captured them and they awoke naked (no armor/weapons, not birthday suits) in a cell in a ruined fortress the Hobs were occupying. I placed a few improvised items they could use to escape, and a secret door that led to an escape tunnle like in the beginning of ES IV:Oblivion. When the party regained their equipment and discovered the tunnel, they started a huge scene about me railroading them and instead barged out into the courtyard surrounded by a Legion of hobgoblins and died again, this time for real.

[MaxWilson]

I've had a similar situation and very much been accused of railroading. PCs nearly TPKd by hobgoblins due to bad rolls and surprise round. Instead of ending them, I captured them and they awoke naked (no armor/weapons, not birthday suits) in a cell in a ruined fortress the Hobs were occupying. I placed a few improvised items they could use to escape, and a secret door that led to an escape tunnle like in the beginning of ES IV:Oblivion. When the party regained their equipment and discovered the tunnel, they started a huge scene about me railroading them and instead barged out into the courtyard surrounded by a Legion of hobgoblins and died again, this time for real.

Did they not believe you when you told them, "This wasn't the original plan?" If not that seems like a trust issue.

One way to avoid such trust issues is to make them subject to random adjudication. PCs defeated by hobgoblins, then the DM says, "Okay, let's see if they execute you or keep you as slaves. I'm going to roll this d6 and on 1-4 they keep you as slaves, 5-6 they execute you." That is one way of making it clear that no, the DM is not committed to the idea of the PCs all winding up as slaves. He's perfectly okay with the possibility of them just dying.

[Mongobear]

Did they not believe you when you told them, "This wasn't the original plan?" If not that seems like a trust issue.


Them getting captured was their idea!!

In the break between the two sessions where they were TPK'd and woke up in the cells, I had them all vote for how they wanted to continue, and all but one of them chose to continue as prisoners, with the other guy as a "IDC, I just want to play." response.

So, I designed the fortress they were in, staffed it with an entire command structure of Hobgoblins, including non-combatants, several connectionans to the previous storyline to give reasoning to why they kept them alive, and put in multiple ways they could have gotten out. They encountered the most direct way, and instead of taking it, 3 of them almost in unison, confronted me about railroading them back to the original storyline and marched out into the training grounds where half of the entire force was currently drilling and training.

Suffice to say, 50 Hobgoblins + another dozen officers quickly ended their lives for a second time in as many sessions, this time I didn't bother trying to keep them alive, I ended the game and found new players. The only person who survived was "IDC guy" because he had the wherewithal to actually leave when the rest of them to March out. I still have him as a player, the rest have been replaced.

[MaxWilson]

Them getting captured was their idea!!

In the break between the two sessions where they were TPK'd and woke up in the cells, I had them all vote for how they wanted to continue, and all but one of them chose to continue as prisoners, with the other guy as a "IDC, I just want to play." response.

So, I designed the fortress they were in, staffed it with an entire command structure of Hobgoblins, including non-combatants, several connectionans to the previous storyline to give reasoning to why they kept them alive, and put in multiple ways they could have gotten out. They encountered the most direct way, and instead of taking it, 3 of them almost in unison, confronted me about railroading them back to the original storyline and marched out into the training grounds where half of the entire force was currently drilling and training.

Suffice to say, 50 Hobgoblins + another dozen officers quickly ended their lives for a second time in as many sessions, this time I didn't bother trying to keep them alive, I ended the game and found new players. The only person who survived was "IDC guy" because he had the wherewithal to actually leave when the rest of them to March out. I still have him as a player, the rest have been replaced.

Heh. Well, they certainly got what they asked for.

[EggKookoo]

Combat As War vs. Combat As Sport. See this thread for explanation, especially posts #1, #5, and #9:

https://www.enworld.org/threads/very-long-combat-as-sport-vs-combat-as-war-a-key-difference-in-d-d-play-styles.317715/

Basically CAW = adventure as the unit of play, and CAS = encounter as unit of play.

Ok, got it. I'm familiar with the concepts but not well versed in them. From what I understand I lean strongly toward CAS. CAW feels like the players should be moving around in formation or something. But I'm not sure how that relates to Kane0's question.


For one thing, the DCs are supposed to be level agnostic. But if I tried to follow your advice for challenge design, I’d only put easy to medium challenges in for low level parties, and hard to impossible challenges in for high level parties.

Right, but since in 5e there's no standard for climbing DCs, and the DM is allowed to decide that climbing something is easy or hard depending on circumstances, you can set the DCs to be appropriate for what your PCs should be able to do.

The same reasoning that prevents a DM from sicking the Terrasque on a 1st level party prevents the DM from putting that 1st level party in a situation where they need to make DC 30 checks to survive.


Moreover, I’m not talking about predesigned challenges. I’m talking about challenges the players invent on the fly because I didn’t foresee how they’d think to approach a given problem. Do I just decide these based on party level? No, can’t be, these are supposed to be level agnostic. So on what do I even base the decision of how hard I want this to be? What if all I care about is verisimilitude? Combat-as-War rather than -as-sport? How do I use the dice as impartial judges when I have no impartial scale to measure them against?

I can't help you here because I don't accept that DCs are supposed to be level agnostic. I don't think that's the intent of the rules in 5e. The DMG says:

If you find yourself thinking, "This task is especially hard," you can use a higher DC, but do so with caution and consider the level of the characters. A DC 25 task is very hard for low-level characters to accomplish, but becomes more reasonable after 10th level or so. A DC 30 check is nearly impossible for most low-level characters. A 20th-level character with proficiency and a relevant ability score of 20 still needs a 19 or 20 on the die roll to succeed at a task of this difficulty.

While this is a warning about setting the DC too high, it does carry the note that level should be a consideration when setting them.


So, I designed the fortress they were in, staffed it with an entire command structure of Hobgoblins, including non-combatants, several connectionans to the previous storyline to give reasoning to why they kept them alive, and put in multiple ways they could have gotten out. They encountered the most direct way, and instead of taking it, 3 of them almost in unison, confronted me about railroading them back to the original storyline and marched out into the training grounds where half of the entire force was currently drilling and training.

Ok, so the accusations of railroading were more about their feeling that you were steering them back toward your original plotline. That's unfortunate but it sounds like you moved on. Hopefully games are better now.

I was asking in the context of is it railroading (or making the players ask "mother may I?") to make sure the DCs presented to the players are something they could actually beat with their checks? Specifically in regards to the escape chain I mentioned. If the answer is yes, then why isn't it playing "mother may I?" to manage the CRs of the encounters they... er... encounter? If the answer is no, then I'm not sure what I understand the objection to the DM setting the DCs as they see fit. I mean, trust issues with your DM aside...

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm saying "World-building logic says a lock on the king's secret vault in the basement of his castle should be very hard to pick. I mean, the king would make sure of that. 'Very hard' is DC 25 according to the 5e rules. Therefore the lock's pick DC is 25."

Or, "A lock you find on an old, probably abandoned door in a slum in the depths of the city is not going to be well-maintained and probably easy to pick. 'Easy' is DC 10 according to the 5e rules. Therefore this lock's pick DC is 10."

I could be saying, "Oh, whoops, somehow I mentioned a lock that I hadn't prepared for. Now the rogue wants to pick it. I need to figure out the DC. I can apply some quick world-building logic to decide what makes sense for this lock. I could also just do something like roll 1d10 + 10 to get a DC between 11 and 20 out of desperation because I don't have time to do that..."

I'm not sure what you're thinking I'm saying otherwise.

WAIT!

I think I understand. Tell me if I'm off. You're saying my approach is to decide "I want a DC 25 lock here" because I want the encounter to have a certain level of challenge or difficulty, and then I come up with the world-building logic to justify it? Is that right?

Because if so, yes. I do that. I design the setting I put my players through with various degrees of challenge. That kind of thinking gets laid down pretty early on so I know there's a progression they can take through my content without feeling too stalled out (or if they do get stalled, it's because it makes sense in the context of the campaign and I'm doing it for a purpose). It's not that simple, there's a lot of back and forth where I adjust the game logic to match the challenge I want, or adjust the challenge to fit the game logic I came up with. But they go hand-in-hand. That's how I know not to send my 1st level PCs after CR 10 creatures, or at least I know that there should be some warning embedded in the game somehow so that the players get a sense of that power discrepancy.

In the end, though, every "challenge" element is backed up by world-building logic, even if during my development phase that logic came afterward.


That is exactly what it has seemed you were saying.

And it's largely orthogonal to how I'd approach the situation. If the fiction layer circumstances dictate nothing but crappy locks, then it's crappy locks, from there determine how hard the crappy locks are to open, and a particularly good picker of locks character might only end up rolling for how long it takes on each lock, or whether they can do so quietly, or whatever, with no chance of actual failure. In 5e terms, I don't care if the PC has 20 DEX, Expertise with the Tools, etc, I'm not going to start dropping DC 25+ locks in just "for challenge" -- I detest narrative causality AND treadmill progression.

[EggKookoo]

I detest narrative causality AND treadmill progression.

Treadmills are easily avoided. It just takes some tonal shifts as the PCs gain levels. The encounters are less easily resolved via combat and more easily resolved via indirect means.

I'm not sure I get what you really mean by narrative causality. Do you mean the scenarios are steered by the story rather than the PC's actions? I mean you have to be applying some considerations toward the power levels of your players. You don't just dump a group of lowbies into the lap of some CR 10 terror, right? You provide something in your setting that gives the PCs some kind of hint that they should steer clear of things. Here be dragons, etc.?

[AdAstra]

I can agree on treadmill progression being the wrong way to go, but I’m not sure if this is intended to be tied into the larger point, because if it is it doesn’t track. Treadmill progression can happen regardless of whether you have DC tables or not. A DC table is no barrier when your DM can determine all the aspects of the world, including say, what doors are made of, and what the trees look like.

[Kane0]

Ok, got it. I'm familiar with the concepts but not well versed in them. From what I understand I lean strongly toward CAS. CAW feels like the players should be moving around in formation or something. But I'm not sure how that relates to Kane0's question.


'Do I set DCs based on what is challenging' versus 'Do I set DCs based on what makes sense in-world'
appears quite similar to
'Do I craft encounters based on what is challenging' versus 'Do I craft encounters based on what makes sense in-world'

Which I imagine would go a long way to explain the positions people have taken up and aren't budging on. Both are valid but don't blend together very well.

[Mongobear]

I was asking in the context of is it railroading (or making the players ask "mother may I?") to make sure the DCs presented to the players are something they could actually beat with their checks? Specifically in regards to the escape chain I mentioned. If the answer is yes, then why isn't it playing "mother may I?" to manage the CRs of the encounters they... er... encounter? If the answer is no, then I'm not sure what I understand the objection to the DM setting the DCs as they see fit. I mean, trust issues with your DM aside...

That entirely depends on the style of game you run.

If it's a CAW world, then you can set the DC as high or low as you want, it was there long before the PCs got locked up.

If its CAS, then it should be scaled appropriate to them, so that they have a reasonable chance to reach and climb it.

If you run a more Narrative game, then they auto-pass because ofcourse the heroes can climb it.

I run somewhere between CAW and CAS. Most things I scale to them, but random encounters, and places off the beaten path are whatever I roll, whether it's a mob of Orcs or an Adult Red Dragon. If I predesign an entire location, there is going to be a few elements--whether combat encounters, locks, or other skill relevant checks that are well beyond normal means, and require Inspiration, Guidance, etc to have any chance.

I don't advocate against other styles, I play in a few games of each srltyle, and enjoy them. I just have my own preferences.

[Kane0]

I run somewhere between CAW and CAS. Most things I scale to them, but random encounters, and places off the beaten path are whatever I roll, whether it's a mob of Orcs or an Adult Red Dragon. If I predesign an entire location, there is going to be a few elements--whether combat encounters, locks, or other skill relevant checks that are well beyond normal means, and require Inspiration, Guidance, etc to have any chance.


Actually I think Extra Credits covered this from a slightly different angle, like, today.

[Mongobear]

Actually I think Extra Credits covered this from a slightly different angle, like, today.

Covered what? A difference between CAW and CAS?

[Kane0]

Covered what? A difference between CAW and CAS?

Balancing scaling difficulty.
Oblivion is the poster-child for doing it badly and can be seen as CAS taken too far where everything scaled with you, Bethesda learned their lesson in time for Skyrim so it's more balanced between CAS scaling and more traditional CAW RPG (like how infinity engine games didn't scale, areas and opponents didn't scale and if you weren't prepared then get ready to be minced).

[KorvinStarmast]

Confusion between Max and Max.

[Max_Killjoy]

Treadmills are easily avoided. It just takes some tonal shifts as the PCs gain levels. The encounters are less easily resolved via combat and more easily resolved via indirect means.

I'm not sure I get what you really mean by narrative causality. Do you mean the scenarios are steered by the story rather than the PC's actions? I mean you have to be applying some considerations toward the power levels of your players. You don't just dump a group of lowbies into the lap of some CR 10 terror, right? You provide something in your setting that gives the PCs some kind of hint that they should steer clear of things. Here be dragons, etc.?


If running a system with a steep power scale and using that progression scale, the setting will give plenty of integrated appropriate indicators of that sort of thing, from the lore to the locals.

However, I'd be more likely, if using 5e, to start the PCs at an appropriate level for the setting and campaign, and then have much slower progression than standard.




I can agree on treadmill progression being the wrong way to go, but I’m not sure if this is intended to be tied into the larger point, because if it is it doesn’t track. Treadmill progression can happen regardless of whether you have DC tables or not. A DC table is no barrier when your DM can determine all the aspects of the world, including say, what doors are made of, and what the trees look like.


Difficulty set by degree of level-appropriate challenge first, and then wrapped in fluff detail to justify it, is a form of treadmill progression.

[KorvinStarmast]

Confusion between Max and Max

[MaxWilson]

Sorry, you are wrong to assert what you assert about how it works beyond your own table.

I don't believe you, and the proof is that your next paragraph after the one I quoted winds up agreeing with me.

[KorvinStarmast]

Confusion between Max and Max.

[Max_Killjoy]

If you can't decide, you may not want to be a DM in this edition. Being a DM requires you to make a ruling, to make a decision. If that isn't for you, maybe DM isn't for you.

But if you DM'd in previous editions, particularly AD&D (1e or 2e) then you know that making a decision is part of what being a DM is all about. So I doubt your sincerity in this discussion, somewhat.


Did you really just conflate "I'd like something to base my decisions on" with "I'm incapable of making a decision"?

And then play the "you're still disagreeing with me, so your sincerity is in doubt" card at me?

I think I'm going to have to break out my "ironically bad argument" bingo card for this thread.

[EggKookoo]

If running a system with a steep power scale and using that progression scale, the setting will give plenty of integrated appropriate indicators of that sort of thing, from the lore to the locals.

To me, those indicators serve both an in-fiction purpose and a narrative purpose, and it doesn't particularly matter which purpose came first. I mean, if I as the DM think "hm, I better make sure I have some in-fiction indicators to help the PCs make informed decisions" what I'm really doing in actual reality is putting in some narrative indicators to help the players make informed decisions. I'm just wrapping them in an in-fiction context so that the players have a good sense of in-fiction integrity. I.E. that the PCs are acting on in-fiction knowledge.

I mean these in-fiction indicators don't actually just happen. The setting designer/DM specifically puts them there, ultimately for the benefit of the players.

[Mongobear]

If you can't decide, you may not want to be a DM in this edition. Being a DM requires you to make a ruling, to make a decision. If that isn't for you, maybe DM isn't for you.


If Making a ruling in 5e is such a core concept of the design, then why didn't the DMG have a chapter that actually HELPS DMs decide on making those rulings? We have literally zero tools outside of a vague circular table of tag-words and numbers. We can't narrate why a lock is DC 5(eye hook) or DC 25 (steel padlock), unless we happen to have real world experience as a Locksmith.

We get detailed and extensive tables and tools, almost too extensively in fact, for designing combat encounters and reward treasure, and even to create entirely custom monsters not in the MM, but to actually help design a world and set DCs, were left with a small table that takes up like half a column on a single page. What?

[KorvinStarmast]

Confusion between Max and Max.

[Max_Killjoy]

Pro tip for Max: don't write posts like this
What kind of a response did you expect from that? Seriously.


I expect you to be able to tell the difference between two posters, Max_Killjoy and MaxWilson, and not attribute our words or our posts to each other. :confused:

ProTip, indeed.

(Hint -- I'm not the one who said "I don't believe you".)

[KorvinStarmast]

If Making a ruling in 5e is such a core concept of the design, then why didn't the DMG have a chapter that actually HELPS DMs decide on making those rulings? I am not sure how to answer this question. You really need to write a letter to the devs and ask them that.

The reason I am the wrong person to ask this question is that I do not have problems making a decision. I also learned a long time ago that keeping the play going is important, and you have to build trust with your players. This was a hard learned lesson that I don't think any book learning can help.

When a disagreement comes up 'wait, I thought Major Image worked like this!' the best way to deal with that is either"yes, it works like that" or "no, it works like this; we can discuss this later. Next person, what is your action/decision."

The other players came to play, not to watch an argument.

And then, in good faith, Discuss It Later. Work together to make an acceptable at table solution. No amount of text in a book can make you a better person, or better at resolving a disagreement.

That requires simply working at it. So, work together.

[MaxWilson]

Try playing some 5e

I have, for years. I think you're confused about whom you're talking to.


I don't believe you've played in this edition.
I don't believe that you've DM'd this edition.

If I am guessing incorrectly, so be it. How did you solve these horribly dreadful problems at the table, Max?

By inventing my own game structures, until I eventually realized that I was just reinventing the wheel over and over and not really using very much of the base 5E ruleset except in combat, and that 5E was best suited for CRPGs and combat challenges, not TTRPGing.

[KorvinStarmast]

Confusion between Max and max.

[MaxWilson]

Then what, I wonder, is your purpose in participating in 5e threads if you no longer care to play it?

It's still a pretty interesting combat minigame that I"ve been working on computerizing for a while, and participating in occasional 5E threads keeps me entertained. But yeah, for TTRPG play right now I'm more into AD&D 2nd edition. There are some 5E ideas that are worth stealing--e.g. some of 5E's feats make nice alternatives to treasure. E.g. instead of giving out magic sword, you could let a Fighter get trained as a Polearm Master and get a free extra Stop Thrust attack on any monster who charges him.

[Max_Killjoy]

That's how people get confused -- the other Max said that second part, not me.

[EggKookoo]

If Making a ruling in 5e is such a core concept of the design, then why didn't the DMG have a chapter that actually HELPS DMs decide on making those rulings? We have literally zero tools outside of a vague circular table of tag-words and numbers. We can't narrate why a lock is DC 5(eye hook) or DC 25 (steel padlock), unless we happen to have real world experience as a Locksmith.

I think you may be asking too much of the mechanics. You don't ask why a +1 sword is 5% more likely to hit, right? The +1 is its own explanation. It's just better. I mean you can come up with some fun fantasy explanation but in my experience no one really ever does. It's just +1. That's all you need to know.

And before you say it's magic, back in older editions we had masterwork items that could be +1 without needing to be magical (in fact I'm not sure there's any rule in 5e that says a +1 weapon must be magical). No one lost their mind because the +1 was just abstracted away.

[KorvinStarmast]

I have, for years. I think you're confused about whom you're talking to.

That's how people get confused -- the other Max said that second part, not me.
Oh, crap, my apologies to you both.
Arrrrggh.
:smallfrown:

Came back after a few hours and lost track of who I was discussing this with. I still need to sit down with either, or both, of you and a few pints. This medium has it's limitations.

Page 237-240 of DMG is what I was remembering earlier today.

[MaxWilson]

That's how people get confused -- the other Max said that second part, not me.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is your name even Max, or is the "Max" in your handle short for Maximum?

Please indulge my curiosity: all of my life, people have been accidentally calling me Sam. Lots of people, many of whom should know better (old roommates, co-workers, etc.). This happens about once or maybe twice a year. I speculate that it could be because "Max" and "Sam" are almost the same sounds, reversed, so tell me: do people call you Sam a lot?

[Max_Killjoy]

If Making a ruling in 5e is such a core concept of the design, then why didn't the DMG have a chapter that actually HELPS DMs decide on making those rulings? We have literally zero tools outside of a vague circular table of tag-words and numbers. We can't narrate why a lock is DC 5 (eye hook) or DC 25 (steel padlock), unless we happen to have real world experience as a Locksmith.

We get detailed and extensive tables and tools, almost too extensively in fact, for designing combat encounters and reward treasure, and even to create entirely custom monsters not in the MM, but to actually help design a world and set DCs, were left with a small table that takes up like half a column on a single page. What?


Well said, given the page count lavished on other aspects, some sort of help on setting DCs in the context of the system would be nice, including a breakdown of the underlying math and probabilities. The latter breakdown has been done several different ways by people in this thread alone, shame it couldn't have been in the PHB or at least DMG.

[ad_hoc]

To answer the OP, I think some people hate 5e because they can't grok it.

I think this is more prevalent among 3e players (or maybe hobby gamers in general minus D&D 2e and earlier players). There is an idea that 3e/hobby games are harder to learn and so if a person can understand them they must also be able to understand 5e.

Then when they have a hard time with 5e they say the game is broken rather than looking for ways to better understand it (or moving on).

Some people find math easy to learn. Some people find language easy to learn. Some find some things hard, others easy, and vice versa. There is no shame in it.

I think something that exacerbates this is that the amount of people having a hard time learning 5e are in the minority.

It is by far the most popular edition because people are finding it intuitive and easy to pick up. Most of those same people would probably find 3e much less intuitive and difficult to learn. Neither group is more skilled or smart.

The important thing here is that 5e does work quite well. There is something in the realm of 20 000 000 5e players who are having a great time with the game. It works. Saying otherwise is disingenuous.

[MaxWilson]

I have found this editions approach very refreshing by simply going back to those three basics:
DM describes X
Player say Y (roll only when necessary)
DM narrates the results

Works with the group I've been playing with lately who I started the hobby with in the 70's,
and
works with a group I met a few years ago and we still play together.

I think you missed my point here, which is that only certain Y's accepted, and players gradually over time figure out which Y's those are. New players are more likely to declare Y's that the DM outright refuses, and that implicit dance of what the players (including the DM) do and how they do it--that's what game structure is all about. The more game structures you know, the more kinds of Y you can support, and the richer your game can be, but 5E doesn't teach very many.

You told me I didn't know what I'm talking about because I haven't seen your table, and as proof you offered the fact that your table sticks mostly to the supported 5E actions... which proves that I do indeed know what I'm talking about. If you'd instead said, "Actually I do allow Dungeoneering checks to bypass whole dungeons if the players want that," that would have been evidence I don't know what I'm talking about, but instead you just agreed with me.

[Max_Killjoy]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is your name even Max, or is the "Max" in your handle short for Maximum?

Please indulge my curiosity: all of my life, people have been accidentally calling me Sam. Lots of people, many of whom should know better (old roommates, co-workers, etc.). This happens about once or maybe twice a year. I speculate that it could be because "Max" and "Sam" are almost the same sounds, reversed, so tell me: do people call you Sam a lot?

My handle comes from an old PC, from the Battletech tabletop miniatures and TTRPG games.

Col. Max "Killjoy" Cutter, CO of the Cutting Crew. The Cutting Crew, your aggressive salvage experts!

[Kane0]

My handle comes from an old PC, from the Battletech tabletop miniatures and TTRPG games.

Col. Max "Killjoy" Cutter, CO of the Cutting Crew. The Cutting Crew, your aggressive salvage experts!

Oh, well there you go. Always happy to hear of another BT/D&D crossover case.

[Mongobear]

I am not sure how to answer this question. You really need to write a letter to the devs and ask them that.


I've tried Twitter/Sage Advice, but have never actually gotten a response, other than other people chiming in asking similar things.



The reason I am the wrong person to ask this question is that I do not have problems making a decision. I also learned a long time ago that keeping the play going is important, and you have to build trust with your players. This was a hard learned lesson that I don't think any book learning can help.


Are you implying I can't make a decision? I never said I had issues with this, I have repeatedly stated, my intent is to have a basis for example when I inevitably do get approached on why I made something a specific DC.



When a disagreement comes up 'wait, I thought Major Image worked like this!' the best way to deal with that is either"yes, it works like that" or "no, it works like this; we can discuss this later. Next person, what is your action/decision."

The other players came to play, not to watch an argument.

And then, in good faith, Discuss It Later. Work together to make an acceptable at table solution. No amount of text in a book can make you a better person, or better at resolving a disagreement.

That requires simply working at it. So, work together.


I shouldn't have to rely on "I'm the DM, know your role and sit down" or building trust with people I've known for years, if questioned, preferably between sessions, I should be able to tell them "the tree was smooth, it rained, and there were many well spaced branches, that's why it was DC 25.". Not have to send them on a circular argument about Hard Trees are DC 25 because they're Hard.

I have DM'd since early 3.0e, and really got the hang of it with 3.5e, which we stuck with until 5e came out and switched during the Playtest becoming available. I have had 3 instances in however many years that's been that one or more players have interrupted the flow of a game to argue a Ruling or Decision I've made, once in 3.5e because I didn't know how something worked from a book I didn't own yet, and twice in 5e.

The 3.5e was a quick fix, the player showed me the entry in his book, I read it quick and fixed my error.

The 5e ones were much more severe. I mentioned the one already, the other was similar but over a much more trivial matter, I killed, through no fault of my own, a Ranger's Animal Companion 5 times in as many sessions, because he kept telling it to charge into melee and then got obliterated by the melee derps who couldn't reach any other target.

Both instances in 5e resulted in the group dissolving and me replacing the problem players. Two of my players are friends I literally grew up with, we've known each other since we were like 4 years old, and we're in our 30s now, trust isn't an issue. The rest are friends and acquaintances we all know from work/local game stores.

[Mutazoia]

If Making a ruling in 5e is such a core concept of the design, then why didn't the DMG have a chapter that actually HELPS DMs decide on making those rulings? We have literally zero tools outside of a vague circular table of tag-words and numbers. We can't narrate why a lock is DC 5(eye hook) or DC 25 (steel padlock), unless we happen to have real world experience as a Locksmith.

We get detailed and extensive tables and tools, almost too extensively in fact, for designing combat encounters and reward treasure, and even to create entirely custom monsters not in the MM, but to actually help design a world and set DCs, were left with a small table that takes up like half a column on a single page. What?

...so....you're saying that a game, played entirely in your imagination, doesn't have enough rules and tables that keep you from having to use your imagination?

Here's the thing. Or rather, a handfull of things, in no particular order. You can't have rules for everything. It's completely impossible, and impractical. Your basic rulebook would take up enough volumes to fill the library of Congress, and you still wouldn't have everything covered. As a DM, you are expected to have to rule some things on the fly. You don't NEED to know anything about being a locksmith to narrate why one lock is harder to pick that another. "This seems to be a higher quality lock that what you are use to." There. All done. No special chart or tables needed.

We have rules for making your own monsters, because most people need some kind of guildelines, so that they don't end up creating the killer rabbit from "The Holy Grail" when they are trying to design an actual harmless rabbit. We have rules for assigning rewards and treasure, so that we don't have level 1 characters parading around with a full set of +5 everything under the sun. (Those treasure tables are for guidelines, BTW, for people just starting out in their DM careers. Once you get some experience, you shouldn't really need them.)

The basic essence of any Role Playing Game, is imagination and creativity. Anybody can sit down and read a module word for word, roll some dice, and consult a chart that tells them everything. But to make your games fun and enjoyable, you are going to have to dust off the old brain, get your creative hat on, and make up a bunch of stuff all by yourself. I know...it's daunting. There is a lot of stuff that you are going to want to include, that you know very little, to nothing about. But the kicker is, it doesn't matter. 99% of players are not going to care WHY one lock is harder to pick than another. They are not going to ask for the manufacturer and model number of every lock they encounter. That level of detail just isn't important (unless you are SUPER anal retentive).

(raises Grognard flag) When I started playing D&D, we didn't have skills, or feats. If we wanted to do something, we said "We want to do this" and the DM had to make a ruling on the fly. And we were fine with it. So don't come crawling to me, complaining that there isn't a rule for something. We had to walk up hill both ways, in 20 feet of snow, with no shoes, and a DMG that had less pages than your average copy of Time Magazine, and we were happy, gal dagnit.


To answer the OP, I think some people hate 5e because they can't grok it.

I think this is more prevalent among 3e players (or maybe hobby gamers in general minus D&D 2e and earlier players). There is an idea that 3e/hobby games are harder to learn and so if a person can understand them they must also be able to understand 5e.

Then when they have a hard time with 5e they say the game is broken rather than looking for ways to better understand it (or moving on).

Some people find math easy to learn. Some people find language easy to learn. Some find some things hard, others easy, and vice versa. There is no shame in it.

I think something that exacerbates this is that the amount of people having a hard time learning 5e are in the minority.

It is by far the most popular edition because people are finding it intuitive and easy to pick up. Most of those same people would probably find 3e much less intuitive and difficult to learn. Neither group is more skilled or smart.

The important thing here is that 5e does work quite well. There is something in the realm of 20 000 000 5e players who are having a great time with the game. It works. Saying otherwise is disingenuous.

I think a lot of this boils down to my earlier post. People who started with 3.X find 5e to be too different. They are use to having unlimited magic items, and being able to multi-class at will, with out giving up a stat increase (as well as getting free feats every few levels, instead of having to choose between a feat or a stat boost).

They cut their teeth on 3.X and didn't really know how broken it was. They thought that was how the game should be. When WOTC changed 5e to be a bit more balanced and streamlined, the change was traumatic. "If I can't have 5 levels in 4 different classes, with out giving up my stat boosts and feats, and sixty-nine bajillion spalt books, then this just sucks."

They don't like anything that came before 3.X because it doesn't have all the unlimited borkness of 3.X. They don't like anything that came after 3.X because it dosen't have the unlimited borkness of 3.X. 3.X is "their game", and all else is to be shunned.

[Max_Killjoy]

...so....you're saying that a game, played entirely in your imagination, doesn't have enough rules and tables that keep you from having to use your imagination?


No, that's not what they're saying, that's not what any of us are saying, and it's getting old that people keep trying to say we're saying it -- especially after it's been made clear repeatedly that it's not what we're saying.

[Mutazoia]

No, that's not what they're saying, that's not what any of us are saying, and it's getting old that people keep trying to say we're saying it.

People(Paraphrase): "There are not enough tables/rules that tell me what to do/why X exists."

Me: Make it up as you go. You don't need tables/rules for everything.

People (Paraphrase):"I'm not complaing about lack of tables/rules. I'm just complaining that there's no rule ,for example, about why lock X is harder to pick that lock Y."

Me: ...

The table's and tools referenced in the quoted posts, are guidelines. Exampls that you can use to determine, all by yourself, what DC's to assign to various tasks. As I stated earlier, it would be impossible to list a DC for every conceivable action that a player may decide to attempt in a game. Ergo, the rules give you a few examples, and trust that you have the creative muscle to do a little heavy lifting on your own, and make stuff up.

[MaxWilson]

(raises Grognard flag) When I started playing D&D, we didn't have skills, or feats. If we wanted to do something, we said "We want to do this" and the DM had to make a ruling on the fly. And we were fine with it. So don't come crawling to me, complaining that there isn't a rule for something. We had to walk up hill both ways, in 20 feet of snow, with no shoes, and a DMG that had less pages than your average copy of Time Magazine, and we were happy, gal dagnit.

This illustrates how the 5E skill system can be actively harmful. If you have no skill system, then DMs and players fall back to the grognard way: is it plausible that you could probably climb the tree with the approach you're using?

But if you offer a resolution mechanic (Strength (Athletics) checks), players expect to use that resolution mechanic... somehow. If you just ignore ability checks and use the grognard way, players will be unhappy and may be feel cheated, especially if they invested in having a high Athletics proficiency via Champion subclass or Skilled feat/Prodigy or Bardic Inspiration or Guidance, etc.

In many ways 5E would be better off if it had no skill system at all.

[Mutazoia]

This illustrates how the 5E skill system can be actively harmful. If you have no skill system, then DMs and players fall back to the grognard way: is it plausible that you could probably climb the tree with the approach you're using?

But if you offer a resolution mechanic (Strength (Athletics) checks), players expect to use that resolution mechanic... somehow. If you just ignore ability checks and use the grognard way, players will be unhappy and may be feel cheated, especially if they invested in having a high Athletics proficiency via Champion subclass or Skilled feat/Prodigy or Bardic Inspiration or Guidance, etc.

In many ways 5E would be better off if it had no skill system at all.

Unless I miss my guess, 5e has an Athletics skill. It's a general skill that covers a wide variety of things, such as climbing trees/ropes/rock walls, etc. 5e trimmed down the rather exhaustive skill list from3.X, and grouped a lot of the redundant skills into more generalized categories.

In the olden days, we still used ability checks. Want to slide down a banister, while swinging your sword, make a dex check and make your attack roll, you have an -X penalty to both. We didn't need a skill list.

Now, it seems, that some people think that, because there isn't a specific skill for a thing, you therefore cannot attempt said thing.

But again, this goes back to my other point. Some people started playing with Edition X. Any other edition is different from Edition X, and so they don't like it. "Change is bad. Anybody who likes [New Edition] (Not the band...well, yeah, them too) is crazy and must be shunned."

[Kane0]

Unless I miss my guess, 5e has an Athletics skill. It's a general skill that covers a wide variety of things, such as climbing trees/ropes/rock walls, etc. 5e trimmed down the rather exhaustive skill list from3.X, and grouped a lot of the redundant skills into more generalized categories.

In the olden days, we still used ability checks. Want to slide down a banister, while swinging your sword, make a dex check and make your attack roll, you have an -X penalty to both. We didn't need a skill list.

Now, it seems, that some people think that, because there isn't a specific skill for a thing, you therefore cannot attempt said thing.


That's... how 5e handles it? It doesn't have skill checks. It has ability checks. There are some subsets of ability check that allows you to add your proficiency bonus to that, and everybody can pick a few of those to get.

[Mongobear]

The table's and tools referenced in the quoted posts, are guidelines. Exampls that you can use to determine, all by yourself, what DC's to assign to various tasks. As I stated earlier, it would be impossible to list a DC for every conceivable action that a player may decide to attempt in a game. Ergo, the rules give you a few examples, and trust that you have the creative muscle to do a little heavy lifting on your own, and make stuff up.


And that's what I'm asking for, a table/tool to gauge how difficult something is, to have a basis to compare similar, but different events. I've been making decisions, for the entire length of 5e's lifespan now. It just requires more effort than before to design environments and explain things consistently.

I don't want an exhaustive table for every possible DC, I want a simple one with 2 or 3 examples of what each level of DC are for each skill, so that if something vague comes up I didn't prepare for, I have a basis for comparison, and don't totally under/over estimate the challenge.

The current rules give exactly zero examples of DCs. All we have is the accursed table of easy/medium/hard/etc DCs and no guide on how to appropriately assign them to a task. It is ENTIRELY up to DM Fiat, all I want is a cheatsheet to help come to an informed decision, not an AI script that makes the decisions for me, and I just have to roll dice like a good little monkey.

[Kane0]

Well, Korvin dug up one of my old posts that I'd forgotten about on just that, how's this as a starting point?


We need skill DCs described in the same manner as attributes!

Crush a green tomato: Strength DC 5
Dodge a handful of falling tomatoes: Dexterity DC 10
Eat a rotten tomato: Constitution DC 15
Accurately recall the correct species and origins of tomatoes: Intelligence DC 20
Spot a tomato hidden in a Where's Wally drawing: Wisdom DC 25
Convince airport security to let you pass with an undeclared tomato: Charisma DC 30

[AdAstra]

This illustrates how the 5E skill system can be actively harmful. If you have no skill system, then DMs and players fall back to the grognard way: is it plausible that you could probably climb the tree with the approach you're using?

But if you offer a resolution mechanic (Strength (Athletics) checks), players expect to use that resolution mechanic... somehow. If you just ignore ability checks and use the grognard way, players will be unhappy and may be feel cheated, especially if they invested in having a high Athletics proficiency via Champion subclass or Skilled feat/Prodigy or Bardic Inspiration or Guidance, etc.

In many ways 5E would be better off if it had no skill system at all.

First off, accusing 5e's approach to skills as being "actively harmful" is basically the same sorta argument as people claiming that 3e turns people into powergaming munchkins who will always abuse a rule given the chance. AKA extremely patronizing and rather dismissive of other people's choices.

Also, there is nothing preventing you from mixing the grognard way and the mechanistic methods of resolution. If a game's skill tables told you that an electrician only has a 50% chance of successfully wiring a house without frying himself? I'm pretty sure most people would realize how stupid that is and just ignore the check, or set the DC low enough that it's nearly an auto-pass. There are clearly instances where a DM should decide "yeah that? No check, you just succeed/fail". And here's the thing. Most actions where success should actually be in doubt are fuzzy enough that getting a DC off by 1-5 isn't going to ruin anything. Either from a skill chart or a DM's head. Even if you never use the grognard method, as long as you use the whole of the DC chart (IE things adventurers should be able to do with little risk are DC 5-10) you should be fine. A character only needs a +4 to auto-succeed a DC 5, or a +9 to auto succeed a DC 10, less than that with Guidance. The first is easy to achieve at level 1, though the second won't be an auto-pass until level 9 at the earliest (barring expertise). Rogues and Bards will usually be auto-passing DC 10s by level 5 as long as they have decent stats for the skills with Expertise.

[Mutazoia]

The current rules give exactly zero examples of DCs. All we have is the accursed table of easy/medium/hard/etc DCs and no guide on how to appropriately assign them to a task. It is ENTIRELY up to DM Fiat, all I want is a cheatsheet to help come to an informed decision, not an AI script that makes the decisions for me, and I just have to roll dice like a good little monkey.

Yup. DM Fiat. As in, play the game the way that YOU want to play it. Not the way someone that you are never going to meet, in an office you are never going to visit, decides that it should be played.

If you decide that a lock with one tumbler is a hard DC check, so be it. The problem with a cheatsheet, is that you are expecting someone else to sit down and think of all of the examples for you. The problem with this, is basically what we have now. "X thing is not on the list, what the hell DC do I assign this?" I know this isn't YOUR specific reaction, but believe me when I say that there ARE people THAT uncreative. That means that if you can't have a massive list, have little to no list at all, and trust people to think for themselves.

I mean, come on...your creating an entire world from scratch. Is creating a few DC's on the fly really that much harder? You assign your DC checks based on A) your PC's current power/ability level and B) how hard/easy you want it to be for your players to succeed. There is no need to have a list of DC's or a comprehensive list of DC examples. You assign a DC to a task based soley on your need at the time.

[JoeJ]

Are you suggesting that the DM let them climb a slippery overhang cliff while in combat without a check then? 'cause there are absolutely no guidelines for the DCs whatsoever there. Just to give you an example of what I'd like to have here, 3e version of Climb has pretty damn good guidelines for what kind of surface is what DC and how environmental factors affect it (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/climb.htm) with the added +2/-2 option for minor extra variables. That's about 100 times easier for the DM.

For the situation that I was talking about - a hypothetical DM who has absolutely no idea how hard climbing anything is, why not? The game doesn't break if the DM chooses not to exercise their option to require a check to climb a slippery surface. If you, as a DM who does have some idea about climbing, think that climbing a slippery overhang would be hard, then use the DC for hard tasks.



Or can you honestly claim having a 3e style list of climb DCs would somehow make the game worse for you to DM/play?

Yes, it absolutely would make it worse for me as a DM, because players would expect me to use that list, and I am not able to. Several people here have repeatedly said they don't want a 300 page list of tree or cliff attributes, but that's exactly what it would have to be in order for me to find it at all useful. Saying a "typical tree" is like saying a "grlwizels tree." It's not a phrase that means anything to me, so I have no idea whether the tree I'm imagining in the game world should be harder or easier to climb. So yeah, not having a list of DCs means there's no grounds for players to resent me not being able to use a list of DCs.

[Mutazoia]

So yeah, not having a list of DCs means there's no grounds for players to resent me not being able to use a list of DCs.

Player: But the rules say it's only a DC 5 to shove a carrot up someones backside!

DM: Yes, but said person is wearing full plate armor. That raises the DC considerably.

Player: But the rules don't say anything about backsides being covered in steel plate making anything more difficult!

[Mongobear]

Yup. DM Fiat. As in, play the game the way that YOU want to play it. Not the way someone that you are never going to meet, in an office you are never going to visit, decides that it should be played.

I mean, come on...your creating an entire world from scratch. Is creating a few DC's on the fly really that much harder? You assign your DC checks based on A) your PC's current power/ability level and B) how hard/easy you want it to be for your players to succeed. There is no need to have a list of DC's or a comprehensive list of DC examples. You assign a DC to a task based soley on your need at the time.

You realize we're playing a game that was entirely designed by a group of *some guys we will never meet" in an office, right? AND they have made equally useful/useless tables for even less used things. Remember the "this is your life" table and the Cultural Name Generators in XGTE? I would gladly trade both of those, in totality, for a small entry for skill DC guidelines.

Earlier in the thread, I posted word for word, the text from 3.5s tables, which differentiates different traits that make different Climb DCs harder than others, that's what I want. It would take up at most one page for each skill, most often less, similar to the Tool Proficiency entry in XGtE.



Yes, it absolutely would make it worse for me as a DM, because players would expect me to use that list, and I am not able to. Several people here have repeatedly said they don't want a 300 page list of tree or cliff attributes, but that's exactly what it would have to be in order for me to find it at all useful. Saying a "typical tree" is like saying a "grlwizels tree." It's not a phrase that means anything to me, so I have no idea whether the tree I'm imagining in the game world should be harder or easier to climb. So yeah, not having a list of DCs means there's no grounds for players to resent me not being able to use a list of DCs.

See above.

I absolutely don't believe that such tables would make a game harder. That's like saying suddenly, tool proficiencies became harder with XGtE.

[Pex]

5e's skill system is about as bare-bones as DnD has ever gotten. Here's a question, where would you actually put a tree-climbing table? In the Athletics section? Would you have a section of the book dedicated to DC tables? 3e's easy because Climb is a separate skill, and it doesn't even explain trees in any meaningful detail (which among many other reasons is why I find it a rather crappy table).

Also your examples are both incredibly flawed. There are a lot of benefits and very few downsides to having a universal Plate armor. There are a ton of downsides to making a universal tree (I would put most trees anywhere from DC 5 for one with large low-hanging branches that go all the way up, to DC 20 for a Redwood, which is functionally like climbing a wooden cliff). Guidance does literally one very abstract thing, and note that 1d4 does not always have the same output. Guidance could be legitimately described as a random +1 to 4 on a skill check.

For me, it's not that continuity and comprehensiveness are flawed, it's that most of the people in this thread who support DC tables don't go far enough. If 5e's to have skill tables, they better have some actual work put into them, and be a lot more comprehensive than "oh yeah a tree is usually DC 15".

A small table where each skill is described giving the examples, like how it was done in Xanathar book for tool use.


Also, since this went mostly unaddressed:
This can also be a result of mistrust between the players and DM in either or both directions, so it's not entirely about lack of skill DCs. I experience it as a problem when playing different games with different DMs because they differ on what makes something easy or hard and neither are doing it wrong and there's trust. It's a frustration for me to be playing one game where I can do something just because I want to but in a different game wanting to do the same thing I have to roll, exacerbated by failing to meet the DC of what the DM made up and can't do it at all. People here can claim all they want you shouldn't have to roll for something. Another DM will say yes you do roll and that DM is not playing the game wrong.
A DM is not wrong for calling a check. However, a check is an explicit statement to your players that the action could succeed, or it could fail. Regardless of what the DM actually means, that is what calling for an ability check says. Roll the d20, add the modifier, and the result determines whether it works. If the DM intends for the action to be impossible or impossible to fail, then either they are deceiving the players and the result will always be the same (perfect valid in some cases imo), or they are incorrectly implementing their intent by asking for a check. And if your DM believes that climbing a tree is a risky action, then yeah, power to them, I don't see the issue.

The issue is the rules changing because of who is DM that day. Every game any DM I can cast Guidance and give someone +1d4 to an ability check. Every game any DM I can attack with a long sword and do 1d8 + ST modifier damage. Every game any DM I can wear plate armor and have AC 18. I want to climb a tree, know something about a monster I'm fighting, calm a bear into not attacking, suddenly the game math and how it resolves don't exist, the DM has to make it up. That's the problem.


But that's how it works in 5e.

And that is what we're criticizing. We know how it works. We don't like it that it is that way, hence the thread.

[MaxWilson]

First off, accusing 5e's approach to skills as being "actively harmful" is basically the same sorta argument as people claiming that 3e turns people into powergaming munchkins who will always abuse a rule given the chance.

Whoa, that escalated quickly. Hyperbole much?

[Pex]

Chapter 7 Using Ability Scores. the table is called "Typical Difficulty Classes"

I have discovered that in the past six months, a very worthy contributor got tired of the 5e hate and no longer contributes here. He pointed to the DMG table and I'll try to find that post.

It is not enough to say Hard is DC 15. What makes the task Hard? What one DM says is Hard another DM says is Easy so the DC is different for the exact same task. The rules change.

[Mongobear]

It is not enough to say Hard is DC 15. What makes the task Hard? What one DM says is Hard another DM says is Easy so the DC is different for the exact same task. The rules change.

Very much this. It's the Matt Mercer/Critical Role Effect.

DM: "It's a DC 20 to climb this tree."
PC: "But, Matt Mercer makes his trees DC 10!"

DM: "To convince this Guard to let you pass without papers, it'll be DC 25, but I'll give you advantage for your conversation earlier."
PC: "But when [CR PC] did this exact situation on the new episode, Matt let him auto succeed! Why do I even have to roll?"

DM: "This is a bit of an abstract subject, I'll say it's DC 25 Arcana to remember the proper arcane phrase you read in your masters spellbook before he disappeared."
PC: "What? The Wizard on CR didn't have to roll to remember this, Matt just let her do it, and I'm higher level than she was in that episode!"

Now, don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Matt's gaming sessions, and believe they're part of the reason D&D is so popular nowadays. But it has also caused a bad wave of new players expecting EVERYTHING to work like their method of things.

[Knaight]

I seriously doubt it slows down games in any meaningful way, moreso as compared to the time it takes for a DM to decide whether it would be easy/medium/hard. Especially if you're prepared and have a DM screen or the book open to that section already, and prepared the setting fully and have notes for every tree in the relevant area and know the DCs ahead of time.
In my experience the time it takes for a DM to decide whether it would be easy/medium/hard is exceedingly negligible - we're talking times best measured in milliseconds. That's one of the fundamental disconnects here; the amount of effort it takes to use a bunch of tables vs. make a judgment call varies. That's fine, and I'm glad we have games for both approaches, but the people for whom the former is easier acting like it's just easier for everyone and making a game for the people for whom the latter is easier means making a game which doesn't function gets really old, really fast.

[Pex]

Which is enough to show how horribly unbalanced and unrealistic it was. To think that a skilled and strong adventurer would fail to climb regular trees half the time tells me that whoever wrote that table was thinking of how hard it was for HIM. I can only suppose that a similar design philosophy was followed for other skills. I'm happy to play a more realistic game like 5e.

Perhaps. I'm not going to quibble on whether the game math of 3E is realistic enough, but I like the method. I'm not saying 5E needs skill points now. It's about the listed DC tables. 5E tables could have had lower DCs to reflect Bounded Accuracy and take the opportunity to be more realistic. I know I climbed trees in my backyard when I was 4 years old, so yeah, DC 15 seems wrong. Whatever the more accurate number could have been, at least there would have been a number instead of my 10 ST non-Athletics proficient Warlock being Tarzan while my 18 ST proficient in Athletics Paladin being George of the Jungle.


This is how communities tend to self select and reinforce. I have noticed certain issues crop up again and again on this board that don't exist elsewhere or in the community at large.

Group think is another way to put it. Everyone around thinks a certain way so the group doesn't think it is possible to think a different way.

At some point it's healthy to realize that you can only lead the horse to water.

Personally I'm glad for once I'm not the only one on my side of this particular argument in a thread even if our opinions aren't matching exactly, but the differences are minute it's not significant between us. At least I don't think so. :smallbiggrin:


So simple question, I guess. How is the DM setting the DC for a skill/ability check based on a desired level of challenge any different than the DM building an encounter around CR?

Longer explanation:

If I'm planning a session for a 1st level party and there's a good chance they'll run into a band of ruffians, I'm going to try to balance that encounter as roughly CR 1, or at least no more than that. I can justify it in the fiction by working out that because of where the PCs are, those are the kinds of baddies they'll run into. Does anyone consider this railroading or playing "mother may I?"

But say I'm planning a session for a 1st level party and they start off trapped in a room, and there's a chain dangling from the ceiling by a small opening that could be used to escape (perhaps among other options). I decide to make the chain easy to climb and therefore DC 10, so it's feasible these beginners could use it. I work out an in-fiction explanation, like the chain might have once been part of a chain ladder of some sort, and the other chain is missing, but there are still remnants of steps connected to it. Is that a problem? Is that railroading?

You don't need rules at all. You can run a game at full improv, make up everything on the spot. When there are rules I expect to play by them. There are rules for how a bugbear works. There are rules for how casting the spell Fireball works. Why can't there be rules for how to determine what my character knows about a monster I'm facing?

This is not to say a DM is forbidden from changing things. Give the bugbear better armor. A particular NPC bad guy casts Coldball. There are still rules for how they function. The bugbear wearing plate armor has AC 18. Coldball does 8d6 cold damage and has a DX save of 8 + ability modifier + proficiency. A DM can deviate further but then we're getting closer to full improv. At some point there are rules to be played. With skills it's full improv. It's that full improv that's being objected to.

[JoeJ]

I absolutely don't believe that such tables would make a game harder. That's like saying suddenly, tool proficiencies became harder with XGtE.

I didn't say harder, I said worse. But if you're not going to believe what I say about my experience, then there's no point in carrying this any further.

[Mongobear]

I didn't say harder, I said worse. But if you're not going to believe what I say about my experience, then there's no point in carrying this any further.

My mistake switching the two, but even with the right word subbed in, my point stands. How can a tool, which already has similar versions in the game, that does nothing but help a DM do his job make a game worse? Especially when, like nearly every other new rule outside of the 3 core books, is completely optional?

If you want to use them, there they are. I'd you don't, flip the page. It's no different than Feats, or Multiclassing, or any of the umpteen variants in the DMG. I just want them so I have the OPTION to use them, I'm not wishing for them to be forced upon everyone without the option to use the RAW method.

[AdAstra]

A small table where each skill is described giving the examples, like how it was done in Xanathar book for tool use.



The issue is the rules changing because of who is DM that day. Every game any DM I can cast Guidance and give someone +1d4 to an ability check. Every game any DM I can attack with a long sword and do 1d8 + ST modifier damage. Every game any DM I can wear plate armor and have AC 18. I want to climb a tree, know something about a monster I'm fighting, calm a bear into not attacking, suddenly the game math and how it resolves don't exist, the DM has to make it up. That's the problem.



And that is what we're criticizing. We know how it works. We don't like it that it is that way, hence the thread.

Again, my contention is that if you're going to have an optional skill table, you should make something that actually quantifies these things comprehensively. None of this "most trees are a DC 10 Str (Athletics) check to climb", I want actual tables and modifiers. Give me a tool to model a spruce tree, or a redwood, or a mangrove. You set your sights too low, and end up with the disadvantages of both systems (DCs are too vague AND they put an arbitrary number on a complex thing)

Some DMs will make things harder than others. Some play monsters as pointy meat sacks, others play them as war game units, others play them as they feel such a monster should act, etc. Some DMs have monsters surrender, or flee, or regroup and plan ambushes and set traps and encircle the players. Just as a cunning player can dramatically increase the effectiveness of the same character, an tactical DM can make the same monsters far more effective than their CR would suggest. Certainly more effective than one that just feeds them towards the party beatsticks.

This example is not perfect, as one can and often does use differing monster composition to vary difficulty, but again, simple tactics can make one fight vastly more difficult than another, even when all the numbers are the same. So there's your DM-dependent variance in combat irrespective of numbers.

[Mongobear]

This example is not perfect, as one can and often does use differing monster composition to vary difficulty, but again, simple tactics can make one fight vastly more difficult than another, even when all the numbers are the same. So there's your DM-dependent variance in combat irrespective of numbers.

This has existed since the dawn of d&d, and likely TTRPGs themselves. What hasn't existed, for the most part, is a system puts literally everything in the world, every activity, every skill check on the shoulders of a DM being able to improv it on the spot.

AFAIK, 1e had tables for various skills like climbing that was mentioned earlier, searching for stuff was a d6 roll, various other things were as simple as "roll under your relevant ability score, opening doors or bending bars was a dice range based on strength.

2e I didn't play, but it most mostly the same from what I read.

3.Xe fleshed out the entire system, every skill had tables upon tables of examples, modifiers, and even entire books that expanded upon it even further so that you could math it out to a precise DC if you wanted.

We don't talk about 4e... *shudders*

5e? Here's an extremely vague table of generic DCs and ~15 Skills, GOOD LUCK!!! Literally nothing to help a DM design or improv something. They're literally told in the book to wing every skill check as they happen. The, 2 years later, print tables for a very specific niche od skill use, but don't help with the base system. And you say this is ok, and easier than having a baseline to go by/modify ourselves?

[MaxWilson]

This has existed since the dawn of d&d, and likely TTRPGs themselves. What hasn't existed, for the most part, is a system puts literally everything in the world, every activity, every skill check on the shoulders of a DM being able to improv it on the spot.

...while at the same time, outlawing many sensible improvs. We've talked previously in this thread about how the d20 probability distribution is inappropriate for many problem domains because it makes chance far more important than skill. What if the right probability distribution is exponentially-decreasing failure chances with level? What if I want an untrained individual to have an 80% chance of failing, a modestly-skilled individual to have 40%, a skilled and talented individual to have 20% chance of failing, and a talented and highly-trained individual to have only a 10% chance of failing? That's already something which cannot be modeled by an ability check, so no singular DC that you can pick is ever appropriate.

[AdAstra]

This has existed since the dawn of d&d, and likely TTRPGs themselves. What hasn't existed, for the most part, is a system puts literally everything in the world, every activity, every skill check on the shoulders of a DM being able to improv it on the spot.

AFAIK, 1e had tables for various skills like climbing that was mentioned earlier, searching for stuff was a d6 roll, various other things were as simple as "roll under your relevant ability score, opening doors or bending bars was a dice range based on strength.

2e I didn't play, but it most mostly the same from what I read.

3.Xe fleshed out the entire system, every skill had tables upon tables of examples, modifiers, and even entire books that expanded upon it even further so that you could math it out to a precise DC if you wanted.

We don't talk about 4e... *shudders*

5e? Here's an extremely vague table of generic DCs and ~15 Skills, GOOD LUCK!!! Literally nothing to help a DM design or improv something. They're literally told in the book to wing every skill check as they happen. The, 2 years later, print tables for a very specific niche od skill use, but don't help with the base system. And you say this is ok, and easier than having a baseline to go by/modify ourselves?

Not easier, but better and usually faster. The same way that very few tables ban "optional" rules like feats and multiclassing, the very nature of skill tables means that they will be far from optional for most players and DMs. Suggestion quickly becomes convention, convention quickly becomes de facto law. That's kinda the point of having DC suggestions in the first place, most players are expected to use them.

If a designer wants to have the advantages of a consistent set of Skill DCs, then they better damn well put actual work into the tables. My opinion is that you should either have genuinely comprehensive guides for setting DCs, or go as bare-bones as practical. The solution posited by most people in favor of DC suggestions is the worst of both worlds.

EDIT: Also, I'm not sure where you read that I consider this method easier. Probably somewhere? But considering you've also accused someone else of saying the same thing makes me dubious.

[Mongobear]

@MaxWilson

That's getting into an entirely different game system. D20 will never have that sort of breakdown, you would need either a d100 system like Dark Heresy, or a Fallout TTRPG with the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Attributes tied directly to your skills, but also likely d100 based, which I don't think actually exists yet.

Maybe something else, like FATE, or something would pull that off, but I've mainly stuck to d20 game systems.

[diplomancer]

...while at the same time, outlawing many sensible improvs. We've talked previously in this thread about how the d20 probability distribution is inappropriate for many problem domains because it makes chance far more important than skill. What if the right probability distribution is exponentially-decreasing failure chances with level? What if I want an untrained individual to have an 80% chance of failing, a modestly-skilled individual to have 40%, a skilled and talented individual to have 20% chance of failing, and a talented and highly-trained individual to have only a 10% chance of failing? That's already something which cannot be modeled by an ability check, so no singular DC that you can pick is ever appropriate.

It can't be modeled to precision with the 5e ruleset, with no margin of error, true, but nothing in the rules stops the DM, for a particular check, to:
-Give automatic success to someone skilled in it
-Give automatic failure for someone unskilled in it
(Languages already work that way in the game, even though, if you ever tried to learn a second language, you know it's not as simple as all that. There is a case to be made that some activities with tools also work the same way)
-Give advantage for someone skilled in it
-Give disadvantage for someone unskilled in it

Get all those things together and the DM can model anything quite well, apart from setting any DC.

[MaxWilson]

Not easier, but better. The same way that very few tables ban "optional" rules like feats and multiclassing, the very nature of skill tables means that they will be far from optional for most players and DMs. Suggestion quickly becomes convention, convention quickly becomes de facto law. That's kinda the point of having DC suggestions in the first place, most players are expected to use them.

If a designer wants to have the advantages of a consistent set of Skill DCs, then they better damn well put actual work into the tables. My opinion is that you should either have genuinely comprehensive guides for setting DCs, or go as bare-bones as practical. The solution posited by most people in favor of DC suggestions is the worst of both worlds.

That's kind of the problem--the current 5E design is already the worst of both worlds, because players expect to do things via ability checks even though d20 rolls don't model most things very well, and yet DMs are expected to invent all of the necessary preconditions/effects on failure or success/DCs, while still being (effectively) constrained to use d20 checks as the resolution mechanic. You get all the problems of the d20 system but none of the benefits. It is the worst of both worlds already.


@MaxWilson

That's getting into an entirely different game system. D20 will never have that sort of breakdown, you would need either a d100 system like Dark Heresy, or a Fallout TTRPG with the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Attributes tied directly to your skills, but also likely d100 based, which I don't think actually exists yet.

Maybe something else, like FATE, or something would pull that off, but I've mainly stuck to d20 game systems.

It's actually not an inherently different game system, or at least, 5E already uses exponentially-decreasing failure chances in combat (higher level = higher HP = more failed rolls allowed before actual failure). You can model the same thing in 5E by requiring repeated ability checks instead of increasing the DCs: e.g. one DC 10 check for every 10' of wall or tree climbed. But 5E doesn't teach you to do this by default.


It can't be modeled to precision with the 5e ruleset, with no margin of error, true, but nothing in the rules stops the DM, for a particular check, to:
-Give automatic success to someone skilled in it
-Give automatic failure for someone unskilled in it
-Give advantage for someone skilled in it
-Give disadvantage for someone unskilled in it

Get all those things together and the DM can model anything quite well, apart from setting any DC.

If you do the math you will discover that this claim is false. None of the things you describe result in the desired probability distribution.

[AdAstra]

Difficulty set by degree of level-appropriate challenge first, and then wrapped in fluff detail to justify it, is a form of treadmill progression.

That's exactly my point. Treadmill progression exists with both systems, so it's not a useful argument.

[AdAstra]

That's kind of the problem--the current 5E design is already the worst of both worlds, because players expect to do things via ability checks even though d20 rolls don't model most things very well, and yet DMs are expected to invent all of the necessary preconditions/effects on failure or success/DCs, while still being (effectively) constrained to use d20 checks as the resolution mechanic. You get all the problems of the d20 system but none of the benefits. It is the worst of both worlds already.

You're not getting rid of d20s as the basic resolution die in a DnD game. Not for another few editions at least.
You're not supposed to use ability checks for every action the player takes. You use them when the outcome is notably risky or in doubt. People have said this over and over again. The climb system is evidence of this. Most clearly climbable things, anyone can climb just fine at half-speed. Particularly difficult things to climb, or trying to climb at full speed, are what you would use checks for. These things map far better to a d20, because by nature they're a lot more variable and risky. Ask a person to walk a foot-wide platform? Most people can probably do it with minimal training, especially if they say, crawl while clinging to the platform. Ask a person to run across, while people are shooting arrows at them? That's up in the air, even if they're competent gymnasts.

[diplomancer]

If you do the math you will discover that this claim is false. None of the things you describe result in the desired probability distribution.

DC 11, first guy makes roll with disadvantage, that makes it 75% chance of failure, close enough to the 80 % that you want, second guy adds his proficiency bonus (+2) and has a regular roll, 40% chance of failure, as you want, third guy has the same proficiency bonus but makes it with advantage, so has 16% chance of failure, also close to the 20 % you want, fourth guy has expertise and advantage, 9% chance of failure.

As I said, within a reasonable margin of error (really, 5% on a d20 system is as good as it gets), the rule set allows you to do what you want (even though you invented a 4th category that is not in the game rules, which foresee non-proficient, proficient, expert)

Those probabilities are so close to what you want, that the characters, in-game, would not be able to tell the difference, at least until they create the Statistician class. Remember that probabilities were discovered by Pascal and Fermat, in the 17th century. It's reasonable to think that, in faux-medieval D&D, people thought of those things as "I don't think it will work", "It could work", "it should work", "unless the gods are against it, it will work".

[Mongobear]

Not easier, but better and usually faster. The same way that very few tables ban "optional" rules like feats and multiclassing, the very nature of skill tables means that they will be far from optional for most players and DMs. Suggestion quickly becomes convention, convention quickly becomes de facto law. That's kinda the point of having DC suggestions in the first place, most players are expected to use them.

If a designer wants to have the advantages of a consistent set of Skill DCs, then they better damn well put actual work into the tables. My opinion is that you should either have genuinely comprehensive guides for setting DCs, or go as bare-bones as practical. The solution posited by most people in favor of DC suggestions is the worst of both worlds.

EDIT: Also, I'm not sure where you read that I consider this method easier. Probably somewhere? But considering you've also accused someone else of saying the same thing makes me dubious.

Maybe my local groups are unique, but hardly any of them use much of the Optional Rules and UAs that exist. I'm by far the most experienced DM, and I've used very little UA content, and only use Feats/MC, and Battle Grid Maps from the optional rules in the printed books. I know a few other groups who run Featless, a few that don't allow MCing, and maybe one that actively uses UA constantly.

I know, small sample size, but I don't believe that introducing something like tables, whether slightly vague like I would like, or so comprehensive that it makes 3.5e look skeletal would have much of an impact on 5e as a whole. It certainly wouldn't be AL legal, if they did it via a UA article, and unless I'm mistaken, a DM can't run optional rules in AL unless they adopt it for everything, like Feats/MCing?

Outside of my local towns "gamer meta" I've only been to one small convention that ran a large dnd event with maybe 200 people, and even they didn't allow optional rules. This was likely for ease of managing the 30+ DMs in attendance, but I talked with most of them afterwards and most said it was how they normally did things.

I honestly don't know why you think an optional skill expansion for those of us who want it would ruin the game for people who don't want it. Just like literally every other new resource outside of the core books, you don't have to buy/download it, you can ignore it and keep playing your way as though it never happened, and let those of us asking for it rejoice with our new found toys.

As far as misinterpreting the reasoning behind arguments, probably just mixing up names and not fully catching some meanings in certain things. It's been over 10 pages of back and forth since I joined the topic, so I've probably mixxed people around. (I only just realized MaxWilson and Max_Killjoy were different people, I thought it was the same guy for 10+ pages.

[AdAstra]

Maybe my local groups are unique, but hardly any of them use much of the Optional Rules and UAs that exist. I'm by far the most experienced DM, and I've used very little UA content, and only use Feats/MC, and Battle Grid Maps from the optional rules in the printed books. I know a few other groups who run Featless, a few that don't allow MCing, and maybe one that actively uses UA constantly.

I know, small sample size, but I don't believe that introducing something like tables, whether slightly vague like I would like, or so comprehensive that it makes 3.5e look skeletal would have much of an impact on 5e as a whole. It certainly wouldn't be AL legal, if they did it via a UA article, and unless I'm mistaken, a DM can't run optional rules in AL unless they adopt it for everything, like Feats/MCing?

Outside of my local towns "gamer meta" I've only been to one small convention that ran a large dnd event with maybe 200 people, and even they didn't allow optional rules. This was likely for ease of managing the 30+ DMs in attendance, but I talked with most of them afterwards and most said it was how they normally did things.

I honestly don't know why you think an optional skill expansion for those of us who want it would ruin the game for people who don't want it. Just like literally every other new resource outside of the core books, you don't have to buy/download it, you can ignore it and keep playing your way as though it never happened, and let those of us asking for it rejoice with our new found toys.


I consider UA to be way different from feats and MC. They're not in the core books, and they're explicitly playtest content with a lot less attention to balance, rather than variant rules.

If we're going by anecdotes, my local tables have never had a problem with feats or multiclassing to my knowledge. In most cases multiclassing and feats are absent not because they're banned, but because the players aren't interested or lack the system mastery to successfully pursue them of their own initiative. There are only a few instances where taking levels in a different class is viable before level 5 or later(Starting fighter for armor/Action Surge or dipping warlock mainly, and even those lose out on vital progression early on). I get the feeling that most of the tables that don't use multiclassing/feats would probably allow them on a case by case basis. Probably no Xbow Expert/Sharpshooter cheese, but I don't think most DMs would object to someone getting Keen Mind or Magic Initiate. Multiclassing's probably more dicey, but there will be plenty of tables that would shun a Hexblade dip, but wouldn't mind a fighter-rogue. Feel free to ask if you feel comfortable, I'd be interested in knowing.

My worry is that it'll be half-assed like the 3e jump tables were (one of the instances where I think 5e manages to be nearly as comprehensive and a lot more accurate to how jumping actually works). A whole lotta text that basically exists to give people a bad method of doing things. I would be interested in those tables. I also think that if those tables weren't good it would be actively harmful to the game, and I would rather not have them than have lazily-written ones.

I would also like to look at this for a moment:

Very much this. It's the Matt Mercer/Critical Role Effect.

DM: "It's a DC 20 to climb this tree."
PC: "But, Matt Mercer makes his trees DC 10!"

DM: "To convince this Guard to let you pass without papers, it'll be DC 25, but I'll give you advantage for your conversation earlier."
PC: "But when [CR PC] did this exact situation on the new episode, Matt let him auto succeed! Why do I even have to roll?"

DM: "This is a bit of an abstract subject, I'll say it's DC 25 Arcana to remember the proper arcane phrase you read in your masters spellbook before he disappeared."
PC: "What? The Wizard on CR didn't have to roll to remember this, Matt just let her do it, and I'm higher level than she was in that episode!"

Now, don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Matt's gaming sessions, and believe they're part of the reason D&D is so popular nowadays. But it has also caused a bad wave of new players expecting EVERYTHING to work like their method of things.

This is exactly the worry that a lot of people have expressed about suggested skill DCs. The presence of an example creates a precedent, where DMs who do not follow are likely to receive complaints by players. Only here, it's not just a famous DM, it's the designers of the game themselves. That carries even more weight, and thus potentially more conflict if a DM does not use the "suggested" DCs.

[Mongobear]

My worry is that it'll be half-assed like the 3e jump tables were (one of the instances where I think 5e manages to be nearly as comprehensive and a lot more accurate to how jumping actually works). A whole lotta text that basically exists to give people a bad method of doing things. I would be interested in those tables. I also think that if those tables weren't good it would be actively harmful to the game, and I would rather not have them than have lazily-written ones.

My opinion on the entirety of 5e's Skill system is that it's already half-assed. I want these tables to make up for a missing cheek, or atleast act as a cushion so we aren't sitting so crooked all the time.

[AdAstra]

My opinion on the entirety of 5e's Skill system is that it's already half-assed. I want these tables to make up for a missing cheek, or atleast act as a cushion so we aren't sitting so crooked all the time.

I think that 5e's skill system isn't half-assed, just as bare-bones as a DnD-style skill system can get. To me, it's like a metal folding chair: not the most comfortable, but (comparatively) lightweight and easy to deploy wherever or stow as needed. I see the 3e skill system like a lumpy cushion nailed to the floor: theoretically useable, but too shoddy to be comfortable, and too integrated to toss to the side. I'm sure you'll have disagreements to my choice of metaphors, same as I have with yours, so I think another avenue of discussion is probably better.

[ad_hoc]

My opinion on the entirety of 5e's Skill system is that it's already half-assed. I want these tables to make up for a missing cheek, or atleast act as a cushion so we aren't sitting so crooked all the time.

The skill system is intentionally designed the way it is.

The vast majority of people like it and it clearly works.

It not being for you doesn't mean that the designers were lazy or did things half way.

[diplomancer]

The skill system is intentionally designed the way it is.

The vast majority of people like it and it clearly works.

It not being for you doesn't mean that the designers were lazy or did things half way.

This is a good point. If there are far more people playing D&D today than in the past, that means that the system works better than other systems.

You are free to say "it's not for me", "I would prefer it to be like this", or other similar expressions but it makes no sense to say "it's broken and doesn't work" when there is empirical evidence that it works BETTER than other editions.

[AdAstra]

This is a good point. If there are far more people playing D&D today than in the past, that means that the system works better than other systems.

You are free to say "it's not for me", "I would prefer it to be like this", or other similar expressions but it makes no sense to say "it's broken and doesn't work" when there is empirical evidence that it works BETTER than other editions.

Eh you could chalk that down to market and cultural trends. Plus even if the system as a whole is good, its parts can still be of varying quality. Bandwagon reasoning really isn't viable here.

[diplomancer]

Eh you could chalk that down to market and cultural trends. Plus even if the system as a whole is good, its parts can still be of varying quality. Bandwagon reasoning really isn't viable here.

Not really. A game exists to be played (a controversial claim, I know, some people think that a game exists to simulate reality) If a lot of people play it, it works. If it was as bad as some people claim "it's unusable and needs extensive reworking" there would be some market-response to that problem.

Honestly, I think a lot of the players and DMs couldn't care less about getting the probabilities precisely right. If you do, though, the system gives you tools with reasonable approximations.

[AdAstra]

Not really. If it was as bad as some people claim "it's unusable and needs extensive reworking" there would be some market-response to that problem.

Honestly, I think a lot of the players and DMs couldn't care less about getting the probabilities precisely right. If you do, though, the system gives you tools with reasonable approximations.

The problem is that there are very few players of notable size in the same market as DnD. Even in the overall market of TTRPGs DnD is dominant (though apparently not so much outside the US). Fantasy-wise, the only other big player is Paizo with Pathfinder 2e, which had mixed reception at best. Plus, the market is usually a lot less rational than most give it credit for.

On the second point I couldn't agree more.

[diplomancer]

The problem is that there are very few players of notable size in the same market as DnD. Even in the overall market of TTRPGs DnD is dominant (though apparently not so much outside the US). Fantasy-wise, the only other big player is Paizo with Pathfinder 2e, which had mixed reception at best. The market is usually a lot less rational than most give it credit for.

I'm comparing 5e to other D&D editions, not to other games, though. Are there more people playing 5e than they were playing the other editions? If yes, that probably shows it works "as D&D" better than the previous editions (though cultural trends might explain otherwise), and definitely shows it's not broken or unworkable.

[AdAstra]

I'm comparing 5e to other D&D editions, not to other games, though. Are there more people playing 5e than they were playing the other editions? If yes, that shows it works "as D&D" better than the previous editions

You're probably never going to see a huge influx of DnD 2e players no matter how badly WOTC screws up. People tend to stay in the legacy edition, not go further back. I do think that 5e is an excellent game and deserves its market position, but there's more at work here than just game quality.

In response to your edit, I don't think anyone's argued that 5e is inherently unworkable (ok actually second thought that might not be true). At least a few people pretty much only have an issue with the skill system, and their proposed solutions aren't inherent redesigns.

[Knaight]

I'm comparing 5e to other D&D editions, not to other games, though. Are there more people playing 5e than they were playing the other editions? If yes, that probably shows it works "as D&D" better than the previous editions (though cultural trends might explain otherwise), and definitely shows it's not broken or unworkable.

It definitely shows it's not broken or unworkable (D&D only ever really needs to be barely good enough, with what it has going for it in terms of brand recognition). In terms of how many people are playing though, there's enough going on around it to make quality a pretty minor factor. Is it getting free advertising in the satanic panic (the TSR spike)? Is there a vastly popular actual play video series providing free advertising (the 5e spike)? Has free media provided by controversy faded, but there's no other source (3e, 4e)? Did mismanagement of marketing inhibit adaptation by the existing fanbase (4e)?

That's not to say quality (or even continuity of expectations) doesn't play a factor, just that it gets drowned out - and I say this as someone who considers 5e the best edition of D&D to date.

[ad_hoc]

Eh you could chalk that down to market and cultural trends. Plus even if the system as a whole is good, its parts can still be of varying quality. Bandwagon reasoning really isn't viable here.

We're talking about people playing the game over 5 years and enjoying it so much as to spread it to other people at an amazing rate (D&D sales rate continues to climb). If a large and fundamental part of the game (ability checks - one of 3 resolution mechanics) was 'half-assed' or 'broken' we'd see the effect of that.


The problem is that there are very few players of notable size in the same market as DnD. Even in the overall market of TTRPGs DnD is dominant (though apparently not so much outside the US). Fantasy-wise, the only other big player is Paizo with Pathfinder 2e, which had mixed reception at best.

5e is by far the most successful edition of D&D. There are a lot more people playing now than there have ever been before.



Plus, the market is usually a lot less rational than most give it credit for.


What are you saying here? Please tell me you're not saying that you're better than other people and/or they're too dumb to see how broken the game they like to play is.

There are many people with extensive experience with games including highly competitive ones who don't think that 5e is broken. There are also many people with high levels of education who play who also don't feel that 5e is broken. Understanding a game really isn't that hard or that much of an accomplishment compared to what many have discovered in their research.

D&D itself is just scratching the surface of how deep games can go too. High level competitive gaming is much more deep than a cooperative game will be.


You're probably never going to see a huge influx of DnD 2e players no matter how badly WOTC screws up. People tend to stay in the legacy edition, not go further back. I do think that 5e is an excellent game and deserves its market position, but there's more at work here than just game quality.

What are you saying here? If the game didn't work few people would play it. A game working is not enough for it to be popular, but it does have to work.




In response to your edit, I don't think anyone's argued that 5e is inherently unworkable (ok actually second thought that might not be true). At least a few people pretty much only have an issue with the skill system, and their proposed solutions aren't inherent redesigns.

People have said everything from it being 'broken' to the designers 'half-assing' their design.

The thing is, many people here don't understand the design behind the ability check system in 5e probably looking at it through the framing of a different game, or maybe just their own preference. Their proposed 'solutions' are an inherent redesign they just don't know it because they don't know why it was designed the way it was in the first place.

It's one thing to see the design and say 'it's not for me'. It's another to see it and come to the conclusion that the designers didn't bother to put much work into it because it isn't the way the person wants it to be/conforms to their notion of what a game should be.

We can see from its immense popularity that a lot of people actually do think it is designed well for a lot of people.

The design is intentional and the designers have succeeded at creating what they set out to create. Not creating something that everyone wants doesn't mean they failed.

[EggKookoo]

You don't need rules at all. You can run a game at full improv, make up everything on the spot. When there are rules I expect to play by them. There are rules for how a bugbear works. There are rules for how casting the spell Fireball works. Why can't there be rules for how to determine what my character knows about a monster I'm facing?

I'm not saying there shouldn't be or aren't. Your PC knows stuff about the monster he's facing about as much as he'd know about anything in his world. If you make an attack against one of my monsters, I'm probably going to tell you the AC right then because frankly it's easier for me. If I tell you the AC, you know as soon as you roll if you hit or miss. Same thing for any ability check.


This is not to say a DM is forbidden from changing things. Give the bugbear better armor. A particular NPC bad guy casts Coldball. There are still rules for how they function. The bugbear wearing plate armor has AC 18. Coldball does 8d6 cold damage and has a DX save of 8 + ability modifier + proficiency. A DM can deviate further but then we're getting closer to full improv. At some point there are rules to be played. With skills it's full improv. It's that full improv that's being objected to.

Still, though, I think you view DCs as these static things that just exist in the world. Climbing a tree is X, picking a lock is Y. But that wasn't even how it was in 3e. Look at 3e's door DCs:

10 or lower: A door just about anyone can break open.
11 to 15: A door that a strong person could break with one try and an average person might break with one try.
13: Typical DC for a simple wooden door.
16 to 20: A door that almost anyone could break, given time.
18: Typical DC for a good wooden door.
21 to 25: A door that only a strong or very strong person has a hope of breaking, and probably not on the first try.
23: Typical DC for a strong wooden door.
25: Typical DC for an iron-barred wooden door.
26 or higher: A door that only an exceptionally strong person has a hope of breaking.
28: Typical DC for an iron door.

Now, aside from the problem that it's fraught with subjectivity (what do "given time" and "probably not on the first try" mean in game mechanics terms?) and conditionals (what's the probability distribution of "typical" doors?), this list is largely identical in concept to how DCs are presented in 5e. The 5e version just skips the flavor text and arranges them in a kind of easy/medium/hard pattern, and also consolidates them a bit.

10 or lower: A door just about anyone can break open (5e: very easy; well 10 itself is easy)
11 to 15: A door that a strong person could break with one try and an average person might break with one try. (5e: easy)
13: Typical DC for a simple wooden door. (5e: easy)
16 to 20: A door that almost anyone could break, given time. (5e: medium)
18: Typical DC for a good wooden door. (5e: medium)
21 to 25: A door that only a strong or very strong person has a hope of breaking, and probably not on the first try. (5e: hard)
23: Typical DC for a strong wooden door. (5e: hard)
25: Typical DC for an iron-barred wooden door. (5e: very hard)
26 or higher: A door that only an exceptionally strong person has a hope of breaking. (5e: very hard unless "or higher" reaches 30, where it becomes nearly impossible)
28: Typical DC for an iron door. (5e: very hard)

So in both editions, the DM picks the kind (i.e. difficulty) of door that's put in front of the players. The 3e DM probably thinks "I want a strong wooden door here for [in-fiction reason]" and sets the DC to be around 23. In 5e, the DM thinks "I want busting this door down to be hard," sets the DC to somewhere between 20 and 24, and then works out some justification to make it that strong ("It's a strong wooden door for [in-fiction reason]" perhaps).

Now you might say there's the difference. In 3e, the DM is choosing the kind of door that makes sense for the in-fiction logic and then assigning the DC, while in 5e the DM is picking a door based on its degree of challenge and assigning the in-fiction justification afterward. My argument is that the DM is basically doing the same thing in both cases. I mean a good DM is, anyway. The 5e DM has an in-fiction reason why he wants that door to be a certain degree of challenge. "It makes sense that the door to this particular chamber would be hard to bust down." That's the exact same mental process the 3e DM would go through. The PCs are encountering that door at this particular time because of [in-fiction reason] in both editions.

In both editions, the DM has a reason why or a process for how the PCs got themselves in front of that particular door. That reason needs to satisfy in-fiction logic as well as at-table gameplay.

Addendum: Also, there's nothing about the 3e DC list that prevents a DM from assigning the DC first for "challenge" reasons. It just gives the DM a pre-packaged fluff description.

[AdAstra]

We're talking about people playing the game over 5 years and enjoying it so much as to spread it to other people at an amazing rate (D&D sales rate continues to climb). If a large and fundamental part of the game (ability checks - one of 3 resolution mechanics) was 'half-assed' or 'broken' we'd see the effect of that.

5e is by far the most successful edition of D&D. There are a lot more people playing now than there have ever been before.

What are you saying here? Please tell me you're not saying that you're better than other people and/or they're too dumb to see how broken the game they like to play is.

There are many people with extensive experience with games including highly competitive ones who don't think that 5e is broken. There are also many people with high levels of education who play who also don't feel that 5e is broken. Understanding a game really isn't that hard or that much of an accomplishment compared to what many have discovered in their research.

D&D itself is just scratching the surface of how deep games can go too. High level competitive gaming is much more deep than a cooperative game will be.

What are you saying here? If the game didn't work few people would play it. A game working is not enough for it to be popular, but it does have to work.

People have said everything from it being 'broken' to the designers 'half-assing' their design.

The thing is, many people here don't understand the design behind the ability check system in 5e probably looking at it through the framing of a different game, or maybe just their own preference. Their proposed 'solutions' are an inherent redesign they just don't know it because they don't know why it was designed the way it was in the first place.

It's one thing to see the design and say 'it's not for me'. It's another to see it and come to the conclusion that the designers didn't bother to put much work into it because it isn't the way the person wants it to be/conforms to their notion of what a game should be.

We can see from its immense popularity that a lot of people actually do think it is designed well for a lot of people.

The design is intentional and the designers have succeeded at creating what they set out to create. Not creating something that everyone wants doesn't mean they failed.

You seem to think I dislike 5e’s skill system when in fact I think it’s perfectly fine. I’ve stated before that my preferences are either for comprehensive well-thought-out tables, or lightweight speedy systems. 5e accomplishes the latter. I love 5e and have no major problems with the game, and if you read my earlier posts in the thread that should be apparent, considering I’ve spent most of my time on it defending the existing skill system.

When I say the market is not rational, I’m not saying that individual people are stupid, I’m saying that there are a lot of instances where the individually smartest action is not always the best for the group. Prisoner’s dilemma and all that. People are rational, but groups of people behave in completely different, if still often predictable, ways. When it comes to games, popularity is a bit of a self-reinforcing state, especially for games that require multiple people. After all, can’t run a game system if you can’t get a group together, no matter how good it is. Not to mention the influence of marketing, which is itself a massive industry because it does indeed work well enough to usually be worth it. And it’s tricks work on all of us, with a high enough frequency for companies to pay big bucks for despite it not making the product any better. Of course, DnD now mostly relies on free marketing through its significant cultural presence and shows like Critical Role. On the other hand, 5e is a great game and people like it for a reason. But 5e’s quality is not the ONLY factor in its success

And yeah, the design of 5e’s DCs is 100% intentional, and achieves what it sets out to do very well. The designers were successful at their goal and it has indeed paid off. A lot of people don’t appreciate that. This has been discussed before in this thread, and chances are will be discussed again later by others.

[Max_Killjoy]

The Skill system in 5e comes across as something a designer didn't want to include at all, but was told he had to.

[Knaight]

Now you might say there's the difference. In 3e, the DM is choosing the kind of door that makes sense for the in-fiction logic and then assigning the DC, while in 5e the DM is picking a door based on its degree of challenge and assigning the in-fiction justification afterward.

There's no particular reason to think this - the 3e DM could easily be picking the door from the DC, the 5e picking the door in fiction and judging it.

[diplomancer]

The Skill system in 5e comes across as something a designer didn't want to include at all, but was told he had to.

Just because you would have designed it differently, doesn't mean that this is true. If it is true, lucky bastard, he just wrote something random and it came out as something that works perfectly fine.

This thread actually helped me realize how well it works. Before thinking about giving out advantage/disadvantage/automatic (success/failure) as necessary to tinker with the math, I thought that we needed a more normal distribution like 3d6. However, I also knew that this would take extensive re-working, as well as calculating how to module advantage/disadvantage with 3d6, and maybe needing to rework bardic inspiration and guidance as well, so it was too much trouble for me to go through revising the system. Now I see that the system works perfectly fine as is, and DM's who feel they need greater differences between skilled/unskilled already have all the tools they need.

[EggKookoo]

There's no particular reason to think this - the 3e DM could easily be picking the door from the DC, the 5e picking the door in fiction and judging it.

Right, actually. I had just edited my post to include that. :smallbiggrin:

[Max_Killjoy]

Just because you would have designed it differently, doesn't mean that this is true.

Differently? I'd have completed it.

It's mismatched with the other things that get space on the character sheet and/or are used by the PC to "do stuff" -- most of that material gets far more detail, or far less ambiguity.

It's hard to see the mismatch as a deliberate willing design choice.

Again, the trees are just a tiny and unfortunate example. I don't think a detailed breakdown of tree types and bark and weather modifiers are needed. Any sort of baseline for setting DCs for Ability checks or otherwise would have been a huge improvement, some sort of breakdown of actual odds, a discussion of how trending low or high on DC affects the feel of the game, etc.

For Skills, what does having a +1 mean, or a +10 -- both for the odds, and for what it tells us about the character's competence and place in the world compared to others with that Skill, and without it.

[diplomancer]

Differently? I'd have completed it.

It's mismatched with the other things that get space on the character sheet and/or are used by the PC to "do stuff" -- most of that material gets far more detail, or far less ambiguity.

It's hard to see the mismatch as a deliberate willing design choice.

Again, the trees are just a tiny and unfortunate example. I don't think a detailed breakdown of tree types and bark and weather modifiers are needed. Any sort of baseline for setting DCs for Ability checks or otherwise would have been a huge improvement, some sort of breakdown of actual odds, a discussion of how trending low or high on DC affects the feel of the game, etc.

For Skills, what does having a +1 mean, or a +10 -- both for the odds, and for what it tells us about the character's competence and place in the world compared to others with that Skill, and without it.

I don't need mathematical dissertations to play D&D. As a matter of fact, when I said "Get all those things together and the DM can model anything quite well, apart from setting any DC.", that was a gut feeling without doing any math. When challenged to do to the math, I did it and showed that it is actually true. But I knew it was mostly true without needing to do any math.

[EggKookoo]

Any sort of baseline for setting DCs for Ability checks or otherwise would have been a huge improvement, some sort of breakdown of actual odds, a discussion of how trending low or high on DC affects the feel of the game, etc.

Baseline: A creature with no proficiency and no relevant ability bonus will succeed with an easy task 50% of the time.

Which the game doesn't even have to tell you, since it's derived from the basic d20 mechanic. But it does, and from there you can calculate the actual odds of how high and low DCs affect the game. There is a related (but separate) criticism that this system produces unexpected and maybe unsatisfactory results, but the 5e ability check system doesn't operate in a vacuum, and some of those concerns are addressed when you remember the DM doesn't always need to call for a roll, and is allowed to apply advantage or disadvantage as needed. Also, bounded accuracy means some granularity is sacrificed for gameplay ease. That's an essential element of 5e and it impacts more than skills.


For Skills, what does having a +1 mean, or a +10 -- both for the odds, and for what it tells us about the character's competence and place in the world compared to others with that Skill, and without it.

I mean this is simple and I've described it before. A +1 means you're 5% more likely to succeed than you would without the +1. A PC that is proficient in, say, acrobatics, is at least 10% more likely to pull off such feats than one that is not so proficient. That increases to at least 30% more likely at +6. Whether or not that's impressive is up to you, but them's the numbers.

Edit: As was pointed out upthread somewhere, these % are really understating the impact of proficiency. While a +2 equals +10% on the d20, it can amount to a higher relative increase.

For example, if a +2 DEX creature tries to pull off a DC 15 check, he succeeds on a roll of 13 or better, or 35% of the time. If you give him +2 for his Prof Bonus, he succeeds on a roll of 11 or better, or 45% of the time. But going from 35 to 45 is a relative boost of over 28%.

Change the DC to 20 and he succeeds on a roll of 18 or better without proficiency (15%). With proficiency, he succeeds on a roll of 16 or better (25%). That's more than a 66% relative improvement.

And that's just the baseline +2 Proficiency Bonus.

(Someone please vet my math here...)

[stoutstien]

Baseline: A creature with no proficiency and no relevant ability bonus will succeed with an easy task 50% of the time.

Which the game doesn't even have to tell you, since it's derived from the basic d20 mechanic. But it does, and from there you can calculate the actual odds of how high and low DCs affect the game. There is a related (but separate) criticism that this system produces unexpected and maybe unsatisfactory results, but the 5e ability check system doesn't operate in a vacuum, and some of those concerns are addressed when you remember the DM doesn't always need to call for a roll, and is allowed to apply advantage or disadvantage as needed. Also, bounded accuracy means some granularity is sacrificed for gameplay ease. That's an essential element of 5e and it impacts more than skills.



I mean this is simple and I've described it before. A +1 means you're 5% more likely to succeed than you would without the +1. A PC that is proficient in, say, acrobatics, is at least 10% more likely to pull off such feats than one that is not so proficient. That increases to at least 30% more likely at +6. Whether or not that's impressive is up to you, but them's the numbers.

Edit: As was pointed out upthread somewhere, these % are really understating the impact of proficiency. While a +2 equals +10% on the d20, it can amount to a higher relative increase.

For example, if a +2 DEX creature tries to pull off a DC 15 check, he succeeds on a roll of 13 or better, or 35% of the time. If you give him +2 for his Prof Bonus, he succeeds on a roll of 11 or better, or 45% of the time. But going from 35 to 45 is a relative boost of over 28%.

Change the DC to 20 and he succeeds on a roll of 18 or better without proficiency (15%). With proficiency, he succeeds on a roll of 16 or better (25%). That's more than a 66% relative improvement.

And that's just the baseline +2 Proficiency Bonus.

(Someone please vet my math here...)

The question stands why the DMG didn't do this. I would like to see their work so the saying goes.
A section that goes into ablity checks the same way they broke down how factors effected CR or combat encounter math. Id like a little more crunch presentation as a DM.
This I think is the core complaint, the action resolution system is amazing but they did little to explain it from a crunch point of view.
If a new DM asks if they should factor in the existence of expertise into settings ablity DCs there isn't a page number or rule that can be pointed out but rather you do have to crunch the numbers to determine the impact.

[Xervous]

On the topic of the skill system appearing unfinished the comparisons to the consistency of the combat rules have been quite helpful. Those are rules functions with examples and guidelines that make it clear to players how things will perform in the absence of the GM overruling individual facets. The player gets to know what their character is capable of in various instances and has a dialect for conversing with all involved to more readily translate player desires into character actions. Similarly the GM can benefit from players being able to arrive already knowing this dialect as the learning of it is not exclusively gated behind interactions with the GM. Leaving holes in the guidelines shifts the dynamic from players being able arrive all conversation ready to players knowing they’ll have to learn this GM and the GM (hopefully) understanding that it is always, immediately and solely their job to set all these expectations before players can reliably begin to interact with this section of the game.

In a campaign of respectable length the differences between a good GM running the baseline-dialect system and the baseline-absent system will disappear in the long run. It’s the region leading up to that point in time where the GM will have to devote more session time explaining how things work for the b-a system, it’s only the b-d system that allows players to shift some of the learning to out of session to increase the amount of time in session where the game dialogue flows and things aren’t getting stopped so frequently for the players to learn the ‘right meaning’ of a ‘word’ they wanted to use.

[diplomancer]

On the topic of the skill system appearing unfinished the comparisons to the consistency of the combat rules have been quite helpful. Those are rules functions with examples and guidelines that make it clear to players how things will perform in the absence of the GM overruling individual facets. The player gets to know what their character is capable of in various instances and has a dialect for conversing with all involved to more readily translate player desires into character actions. Similarly the GM can benefit from players being able to arrive already knowing this dialect as the learning of it is not exclusively gated behind interactions with the GM. Leaving holes in the guidelines shifts the dynamic from players being able arrive ready all conversation ready to players knowing they’ll have to learn this GM and the GM (hopefully) understanding that it is always, immediately and solely their job to set all these expectations before players can reliably begin to interact with this section of the game.

In a campaign of respectable length the differences between a good GM running the baseline-dialect system and the baseline-absent system will disappear in the long run. It’s the region leading up to that point in time where the GM will have to devote more session time explaining how things work for the b-a system, it’s only the b-d system that allows players to shift some of the learning to out of session to increase the amount of time in session where the game dialogue flows and things aren’t getting stopped so frequently for the players to learn the ‘right meaning’ of a ‘word’ they wanted to use.

No one finds it "weird" when the 20th level fighter misses his attack (heck, even his 4 attacks if he's unlucky and the creature he's fighting has a very high AC) while the 0th level commoner crits. It's just that the number of attack rolls to resolve a full combat is so much greater than the number of skill rolls to resolve a particular situation that people feel that "the math is out of whack" for skills.

You could develop a "skill combat system" where the challenge has a number of "hit points" that needs to be surpassed for the adventurer to suceed. A more skilled character would definitely succeed far more often than an unskilled character. It would be more realistic. It would also slow down the game to a crawl (especially if the "skill combat" happens inside a "regular combat").

As it is, advantage/disadvantage/automatic success or failure is a quick and easy way to resolve all the skill differences between characters.

[EggKookoo]

The question stands why the DMG didn't do this. I would like to see their work so the saying goes.
A section that goes into ablity checks the same way they broke down how factors effected CR or combat encounter math. Id like a little more crunch presentation as a DM.
This I think is the core complaint, the action resolution system is amazing but they did little to explain it from a crunch point of view.
If a new DM asks if they should factor in the existence of expertise into settings ablity DCs there isn't a page number or rule that can be pointed out but rather you do have to crunch the numbers to determine the impact.

So at the same time I find the monster CR calculation/creation rules overly complicated. It took me more than a few creature-creation sessions to realize that 90% of the time I don't need to run through the calculation steps. I now just take the CR I'm going for and assign the HP, AC, and attack bonus to that creature, and fluff everything else. It works wonderfully and my players don't care that I didn't do it step-by-step.

Once in a while, mainly for the BBEG types, it's fun and satisfying to build from the ground up and apply monster features (the stuff on DMG p280) and all that. But that's not that often.

Same thing with ability "skill" checks and DCs. 90% of the time I just rough out the DC for what seems sensible for a given situation. The players don't care as long as the game feels fair, fun, challenging, and satisfying. Once in a while, sure, it might be worth it to crunch out the exact probabilities, but then the dice come along and mess that up anyway. :smallsmile:

[Max_Killjoy]

I don't need mathematical dissertations to play D&D.


Good thing, then, that no one is asking for math dissertations.

This thing with someone saying "X would be nice" and the response being "Geez you don't need X100 to play an RPG" gets old.




Baseline: A creature with no proficiency and no relevant ability bonus will succeed with an easy task 50% of the time.

Which the game doesn't even have to tell you, since it's derived from the basic d20 mechanic. But it does, and from there you can calculate the actual odds of how high and low DCs affect the game. There is a related (but separate) criticism that this system produces unexpected and maybe unsatisfactory results, but the 5e ability check system doesn't operate in a vacuum, and some of those concerns are addressed when you remember the DM doesn't always need to call for a roll, and is allowed to apply advantage or disadvantage as needed. Also, bounded accuracy means some granularity is sacrificed for gameplay ease. That's an essential element of 5e and it impacts more than skills.



I mean this is simple and I've described it before. A +1 means you're 5% more likely to succeed than you would without the +1. A PC that is proficient in, say, acrobatics, is at least 10% more likely to pull off such feats than one that is not so proficient. That increases to at least 30% more likely at +6. Whether or not that's impressive is up to you, but them's the numbers.

Edit: As was pointed out upthread somewhere, these % are really understating the impact of proficiency. While a +2 equals +10% on the d20, it can amount to a higher relative increase.

For example, if a +2 DEX creature tries to pull off a DC 15 check, he succeeds on a roll of 13 or better, or 35% of the time. If you give him +2 for his Prof Bonus, he succeeds on a roll of 11 or better, or 45% of the time. But going from 35 to 45 is a relative boost of over 28%.

Change the DC to 20 and he succeeds on a roll of 18 or better without proficiency (15%). With proficiency, he succeeds on a roll of 16 or better (25%). That's more than a 66% relative improvement.

And that's just the baseline +2 Proficiency Bonus.

(Someone please vet my math here...)


I would hazard an assumption that most players don't come into RPGs with a well-developed sense of probability and odds, at least based on my experiences over the years.

I recall playing WEG d6 Star Wars in the mid 80s and having to explain to the GM that his target numbers were consistently too high for us to have much chance of passing, because the characters were still new and had a lot of 2d6 to 4d6 rolls. He'd never stopped to consider the 3d6 is an average result of 10.5 total, and often setting TNs at 15 or higher meant that we'd be failing a lot. He was just looking at the descriptors for the TNs and thinking "that sounds right".

And that sort of thing happened to me over the years many times after that.

There was the guy trying to homebrew a system who couldn't understand why his testers were complaining about the lethality until I broke down the number of hits to reduce a character to negative health based on health pool, odds of a successful strike, average damage, and armor soak ratings.

In my experience, simply having that list of descriptors and DCs in the PHB is woefully inadequate.

Based on my experience, it would be better if somewhere in the PHB or DMG there was just one page going into the sorts of things you touch on in your post above, AND laying out what it really means for the character (not the math, not the rules, the CHARACTER) in their world to have a +2 or +5 or +9 on an Ability roll with a certain Skill. (To be clear, the character, as in the fictional person, in their fictional world, not the rules and numbers used to represent them within the rules and mechanics).

[stoutstien]

So at the same time I find the monster CR calculation/creation rules overly complicated. It took me more than a few creature-creation sessions to realize that 90% of the time I don't need to run through the calculation steps. I now just take the CR I'm going for and assign the HP, AC, and attack bonus to that creature, and fluff everything else. It works wonderfully and my players don't care that I didn't do it step-by-step.

Once in a while, mainly for the BBEG types, it's fun and satisfying to build from the ground up and apply monster features (the stuff on DMG p280) and all that. But that's not that often.

Same thing with ability "skill" checks and DCs. 90% of the time I just rough out the DC for what seems sensible for a given situation. The players don't care as long as the game feels fair, fun, challenging, and satisfying. Once in a while, sure, it might be worth it to crunch out the exact probabilities, but then the dice come along and mess that up anyway. :smallsmile:

That's my point. I find a CR system personally inaccurate and over-complicated for it's intended goals but it is there. The existence of it doesn't change any relationship between the players, the GM, and the system.
In the same sense that there was a section that broke down how ability checks work there's nothing forcing anybody to even look at it but it would still be there for those who aren't as familiar with the system and aren't as confident that they're setting proper DCs. I think the fears that a section going more in-depth of the math and core mechanics of skill would somehow remove the DM ability to run the game are unfounded.

The fact that some people would be more comfortable with a little bit more crunch to reference, especially if they are not familiar with the system, are looked down on and ridiculed for that inherently having mastery of a new system is disappointing.

I was just like the publishers to support the people running the game 10% as much as they like supporting the people who are playing.

[Max_Killjoy]

On the topic of the skill system appearing unfinished the comparisons to the consistency of the combat rules have been quite helpful. Those are rules functions with examples and guidelines that make it clear to players how things will perform in the absence of the GM overruling individual facets. The player gets to know what their character is capable of in various instances and has a dialect for conversing with all involved to more readily translate player desires into character actions. Similarly the GM can benefit from players being able to arrive already knowing this dialect as the learning of it is not exclusively gated behind interactions with the GM. Leaving holes in the guidelines shifts the dynamic from players being able arrive all conversation ready to players knowing they’ll have to learn this GM and the GM (hopefully) understanding that it is always, immediately and solely their job to set all these expectations before players can reliably begin to interact with this section of the game.

In a campaign of respectable length the differences between a good GM running the baseline-dialect system and the baseline-absent system will disappear in the long run. It’s the region leading up to that point in time where the GM will have to devote more session time explaining how things work for the b-a system, it’s only the b-d system that allows players to shift some of the learning to out of session to increase the amount of time in session where the game dialogue flows and things aren’t getting stopped so frequently for the players to learn the ‘right meaning’ of a ‘word’ they wanted to use.

How do you even create a character when you have no baseline for what +X in a Skill means or when that Skill will even apply to an Ability check?

[diplomancer]

Good thing, then, that no one is asking for math dissertations.

This thing with someone saying "X would be nice" and the response being "Geez you don't need X100 to play an RPG" gets old.




I would hazard an assumption that most players don't come into RPGs with a well-developed sense of probability and odds, at least based on my experiences over the years.

I recall playing WEG d6 Star Wars in the mid 80s and having to explain to the GM that his target numbers were consistently too high for us to have much chance of passing, because the characters were still new and had a lot of 2d6 to 4d6 rolls. He'd never stopped to consider the 3d6 is an average result of 10.5 total, and often setting TNs at 15 or higher meant that we'd be failing a lot. He was just looking at the descriptors for the TNs and thinking "that sounds right".

And that sort of thing happened to me over the years many times after that.

There was the guy trying to homebrew a system who couldn't understand why his testers were complaining about the lethality until I broke down the number of hits to reduce a character to negative health based on health pool, odds of a successful strike, average damage, and armor soak ratings.

In my experience, simply having that list of descriptors and DCs in the PHB is woefully inadequate.

Based on my experience, it would be better if somewhere in the PHB or DMG there was just one page going into the sorts of things you touch on in your post above, AND laying out what it really means for the character (not the math, not the rules, the CHARACTER) in their world to have a +2 or +5 or +9 on an Ability roll with a certain Skill. (To be clear, the character, as in the fictional person, in their fictional world, not the rules and numbers used to represent them within the rules and mechanics).

I don't need to know how to build or to program a computer to use one. If the game math works (and it does), why is it necessary, in the game rules, to explain to players or to DMs the probability math involved in the game?

I don't know, this really looks to me more like a "hey, it's fun to discuss math, here is an explanation of the game math. You can find it on this optional PDF for U$5.00" than something that needs to be in the rulebooks in order to make the game work.


How do you even create a character when you have no baseline for what +X in a Skill means or when that Skill will even apply to an Ability check?

I choose a race, a class, a background, and the standard array. Boom! I have a character. Game even comes with "quick build" suggestions to make it even easier.

By the way, this is a good example of a claim that 5e is inherently broken. In a game where you play a character, if you are INCAPABLE of creating a character, the game is unplayable.

[EggKookoo]

I would hazard an assumption that most players don't come into RPGs with a well-developed sense of probability and odds, at least based on my experiences over the years.

You will not get an argument out of me there. In fact, I think that any real comprehension I have of how probability works has come from me working out stuff as DM.


Based on my experience, it would be better if somewhere in the PHB or DMG there was just one page going into the sorts of things you touch on in your post above, AND laying out what it really means for the character (not the math, not the rules, the CHARACTER) in their world to have a +2 or +5 or +9 on an Ability roll with a certain Skill. (To be clear, the character, as in the fictional person, in their fictional world, not the rules and numbers used to represent them within the rules and mechanics).

So just a fleshing out or expansion on the couple of paragraphs in the DMG on page 238? I'd quote those two paragraphs here but I've done some of that already. Basically it's where it says the non-proficient no-bonus creature will succeed a DC 10 check about half the time. It also says +6 Prof +5 ability mod char will only succeed a DC 30 check 10% of the time.

I do think if you're taking it on yourself to homebrew a setting and a campaign, you should first teach yourself the basic math behind how a d20 works, and how each +1 equates to an additional 5% chance to succeed. I mean this is light stuff compared to creating encounters and even custom monsters, and it's something you should really grok as a player after a few sessions. If you're not willing to do that, you should probably stick to published content, which tends to give you the DCs.


I was just like the publishers to support the people running the game 10% as much as they like supporting the people who are playing.

I think it would be great if WotC took Chapter 9 from the DMG and fleshed it out into its own book. I'd buy that for a dollar.

I also just want to say this thread is awesome, or at least the parts of it I've been participating are.

[stoutstien]

I don't need to know how to build or to program a computer to use one. If the game math works (and it does), why is it necessary, in the game rules, to explain to players or to DMs the probability math involved in the game?

I don't know, this really looks to me more like a "hey, it's fun to discuss math, here is an explanation of the game math. You can find it on this optional PDF for U$5.00" than something that needs to be in the rulebooks in order to make the game work.



I choose a race, a class, a background, and the standard array. Boom! I have a character.

You mean the dungeon master manual? The book supposedly written to help people who want to run the game run the game better? The book that has 80% of the text dedicated to players that are not the dungeon master?

*ability checks are the one part of the game that flat out doesn't work with the rest of the game. The idea that bounded accuracy will always maintain that less challenging encounters or factors will always be relevant falls apart with ability check.

Even discounting rogues reliable talent, the way ablity DC and how easy it is to stack bonuses to them means that relatively low level the players can have hundred percent chance to succeed certain thresholds.

The minimum DC to maintain a chance of failure for one player is not the same that it is for another.

Was it intentional? I don't know but it's never mentioned in any of the books. That is where I have an issue.

Does a rogue with expertise in perception and the observant feat break the game or just sits at a different mathematical range of outcomes different the rest of the party?

[Max_Killjoy]

I don't need to know how to build or to program a computer to use one. If the game math works (and it does), why is it necessary, in the game rules, to explain to players or to DMs the probability math involved in the game?

I don't know, this really looks to me more like a "hey, it's fun to discuss math, here is an explanation of the game math. You can find it on this optional PDF for U$5.00" than something that needs to be in the rulebooks in order to make the game work.


I've seen too many examples of players, GM or otherwise, who never bothered to understand the underlying math, for whom that lack of understanding was detrimental to the actual gaming at the table for everyone involved, to ever think that understanding the math carries no benefit or importance.




I choose a race, a class, a background, and the standard array. Boom! I have a character. Game even comes with "quick build" suggestions to make it even easier.

By the way, this is a good example of a claim that 5e is inherently broken. In a game where you play a character, if you are INCAPABLE of creating a character, the game is unplayable.


More like it's a good example of how little thought is given to Skills or skill/knowledge based characters, and how the game (or at least the general culture of the playerbase) is still stuck in defining characters by Race Class Level first, everything else a distant second.

[FilthyLucre]

Look, I think we can all agree that 3.x was the greatest there ever was or will be, amirite?

[MaxWilson]

I don't need mathematical dissertations to play D&D. As a matter of fact, when I said "Get all those things together and the DM can model anything quite well, apart from setting any DC.", that was a gut feeling without doing any math. When challenged to do to the math, I did it and showed that it is actually true. But I knew it was mostly true without needing to do any math.

No you didn't. Your proposed solution doesn't fulfill the requirements: exponentially-decreasing chance of failure. Instead you gave us multiple solutions, none of which work individually, told us you'd kludge them together on a case by case basis, and declared yourself done. That's a declation of failure, not success.

[diplomancer]

No you didn't. Your proposed solution doesn't fulfill the requirements: exponentially-decreasing chance of failure. Instead you gave us multiple solutions, told us you'd kludge them together on a case by case basis, and declared yourself done. That's a failure, not a success.

"I want an 80-40-20-10" % of failure" depending on differing skill levelz
"Well, the math of the game allows, with very little thought, for a 75-40-16-9"% chance of failure depending on differing skill levels;that difference between what you want and what the game allows for is small enough that no character, in-game, would be able to notice it. Is that sufficient?"
"Nah, haha, you failed"
"Ok then, I guess I did. I'm going to go play this fun game and let you keep arguing about mathematics"

[MaxWilson]

"I want an 80-40-20-10" % of failure" depending on differing skill levelz
"Well, the math of the game allows, with very little thought, for a 75-40-16-9"% chance of failure depending on differing skill levels that difference between what you want and what the game allows for is small enough that no character, in-game, would be able to notice it. Is that sufficient?"

No, because you're getting those probabilities from four separate places connected only by DM fiat, which is the opposite of what I asked for.

[diplomancer]

No, because you're getting those probabilities from four separate places connected only by DM fiat, which is the opposite of what I asked for.

DC is 11 for all four cases you know. That's what connects them. You know, the actual difficulty of the task versus the actual skill (and the actual relevance of knowing the skill for this particulat task, which is what determines advantage/disadvantage) of the characters.

[Eldariel]

People are rational...

Even this is a contested claim. Most economical theories have assumed such and said theories have repeatedly failed to predict crashes and shifts in finance. It seems individuals are actually not rational agents but mostly emotional agents whose primary interest is in group membership. This is apparent in the effectiveness of advertisement, the subconscious preferences that manifest as fashion (on all fields of human selection, it seems to play a part), etc.

[Xervous]

No one finds it "weird" when the 20th level fighter misses his attack (heck, even his 4 attacks if he's unlucky and the creature he's fighting has a very high AC) while the 0th level commoner crits. It's just that the number of attack rolls to resolve a full combat is so much greater than the number of skill rolls to resolve a particular situation that people feel that "the math is out of whack" for skills.

I’m not commenting on the math so much as the lack of a foundation for player expectations to some extent in skills. You know explicit AC values and you are aware of clear and potentially veiled facets of the situation at hand that may nudge things in one direction or the other. Skills, well all that a player knows initially for some cases is a number and an abstract concept until the gm puts details to it.


How do you even create a character when you have no baseline for what +X in a Skill means or when that Skill will even apply to an Ability check?

By following the guidelines for character creation either supplied by the game or the GMs rulings that alter such base assumptions? You’re quite free to make decisions in building your character, nothing mandates they be informed decisions. How much of it should fall on the GM to ensure the players are given the means by which they can gauge the impact of their choices? How much should a system be providing as a baseline without becoming a statistical look up table? 5e could try just a little bit harder in putting a face to a Hard lock for example. If a GM wants to overrule that example and set a new baseline sure, that’s what GMs do. It’s still a useful tool to be able confront players with a lockbox and have both players and GM operate on similar expectations for this first lock of the campaign, an hour after they started playing, simply based off a sufficient description of the lock with no/minimal meta nudging.

[MaxWilson]

DC is 11 for all four cases you know. That's what connects them. You know, the actual difficulty of the task versus the actual skill of the characters.

(Counts to ten...)

Before we go any further, let me check if I misunderstood your original claim. Are you arguing for ad hoc case-by-case advantage/disadvantage from the DM to fit individual probabilities, or are you proposing a general rule that being unskilled imposes disadvantage, being proficient removes that disadvantage and also adds proficiency bonus, and Expertise gives advantage and also doubles your proficiency bonus?

[stoutstien]

Even this is a contested claim. Most economical theories have assumed such and said theories have repeatedly failed to predict crashes and shifts in finance. It seems individuals are actually not rational agents but mostly emotional agents whose primary interest is in group membership. This is apparent in the effectiveness of advertisement, the subconscious preferences that manifest as fashion (on all fields of human selection, it seems to play a part), etc.

It gets even better. There's been a few studies involving people within economical systems that point out not only are they largely irrational and emotionally driven but that it spreads like a virus. there are some people that are looking at treating economical problems like biological epidemics.
good book out there, I believe it's titled the origins of financial crisis.

[diplomancer]

(Counts to ten...)

Before we go any further, let me check if I misunderstood your original claim. Are you arguing for ad hoc case-by-case advantage/disadvantage from the DM to fit individual probabilities, or are you proposing a general rule that being unskilled imposes disadvantage, being proficient removes that disadvantage and also adds proficiency bonus, and Expertise gives advantage and also doubles your proficiency bonus?

The first one. If the DM believes, for a particular check, that knowing the skill is specially relevant, so that, for that check, he wants something approximating an 80-40-20-10 distribution (which is what you said you wanted the game math to do) he assigns advantage to knowing it, disadvantage for not knowing it, neither, or both.

Not all checks will have such a big difference between being skilled or unskilled. For those checks, don't give advantage or disadvantage.

[Segev]

Right, but since in 5e there's no standard for climbing DCs, and the DM is allowed to decide that climbing something is easy or hard depending on circumstances, you can set the DCs to be appropriate for what your PCs should be able to do.

The same reasoning that prevents a DM from sicking the Terrasque on a 1st level party prevents the DM from putting that 1st level party in a situation where they need to make DC 30 checks to survive.
Responding to the bolded part: Should a level 5 PC with proficiency be able to weave a waterproof bag in one hour 50% of the time? 80% of the time? 20% of the time? I don't know; I am not sure how hard weaving a waterproof bag is. I'm not even sure how hard weaving a bag is. Guidelines such as, "We expect a character with proficiency to be able to craft basic items from raw materials in about an hour 40% of the time at low tier, 50% of the time at mid tier, and 60% of the time at high tier," would be helpful. I'm not sure that's even accurate; maybe characters WITHOUT proficiency should be able to do it 50% of the time!

You don't even really need to talk about tiers, though it helps. You could talk about first level characters with proficiency and without. The scaling proficeincy bonus would tell you how that improves.

The CR system explicitly ties to level. But by bringing it up, you're revealing that you're still stuck on the notion that the DM will have come up with every DC for every possible roll before the players sit down. This is silly. "Okay, I want them to be able to survive this, so the DC for every check needs to be 15" leads to ridiculous results. But is, if I follow the advice you seem to me to be giving, exactly what you're recommending. Because DC 15 is the 'right' DC for the level of challenge a party of X level can handle. ("DC 15" may change from example to example.)


If I don't follow the advice as you seem to me to be giving it, and haven't provided a DC for every task the PCs set for themselves, because they came up with an approach I didn't think of, how do I set that DC? If you say, "well, set it according to what they should be able to do; remember, you wouldn't pit the Terrasque against a level 1 party," that comes right back to "anything they try to do obviously must be DC 15." (Or whatever I've determined is "the right DC to challenge a party of their level.")

But that's not how I want to run games. You're right: I've designed the encounter, the dungeon crawl, etc., for their level. I picked monsters of CRs that theoretically challenge without being unfairly devastating. But when they decide they want to leap from vine to vine across a chasm rather than fighting the troll guarding the rickety rope bridge, and I didn't even think of whether the overhanging canopy would have vines (but it makes sense, upon reflection, that it might, given the jungle environment), how do I set the Athletics DC?

Choosing it based on "how much do I want them to make it across?" is essentially the same as railroading OR just letting them skip encounters and get the rewards anyway, depending on how hard I make it. I'd much rather choose it based on how difficult such a task should be. But without any guidelines, I'm left scratching my head trying to guestimate whether it's easy, medium, hard, or nigh impossible. Or even trivial or truly impossible, either of which obviate a need to roll.

Which is why I'm nto asking for complete tables of every possible scenario. I'm asking for 1-2 examples of what a task for each Skill would be at each difficulty.

To use another metaphor: I don't have perfect pitch. I can't give you a D# above middle C, nor identify it, with just being asked/hearing the tone. I have pretty good relative pitch, however: give me anything from a middle C to an F, and I can probably come close to giving you back a D# if you tell me what you gave me and ask me for that note.

Give me a couple of baselines, and I can not only determine whether other tasks fall in the same bins, but I can figure out how many bins away they fall, and even interpolate between them!



I can't help you here because I don't accept that DCs are supposed to be level agnostic. I don't think that's the intent of the rules in 5e. The DMG says:

If you find yourself thinking, "This task is especially hard," you can use a higher DC, but do so with caution and consider the level of the characters. A DC 25 task is very hard for low-level characters to accomplish, but becomes more reasonable after 10th level or so. A DC 30 check is nearly impossible for most low-level characters. A 20th-level character with proficiency and a relevant ability score of 20 still needs a 19 or 20 on the die roll to succeed at a task of this difficulty.

While this is a warning about setting the DC too high, it does carry the note that level should be a consideration when setting them.This is badly-written advice, is what it is. In context, to me, it's clear that it means you shouldn't set DCs impossibly high if you need the party to have a chance at success. If I tried to take it in the context of what I'm talking about, though, it would be "put them on a treadmill" advice. But I don't think either it or you mean that; this is more of you failing to grasp that I'm talking about incidental things that are not crucial to success at an encounter, but which need adjudication because they influence how the encounter is resolved.

They don't NEED to drive the hobgoblin champion into a fury to progress, but it will aid their tactics and strategy. Do I set the Persuasion DC to be his Insight check? To be a Hard roll? To be Medium? I don't have a particular plan for him being a hothead or being level-headed, but he's a hobgoblin, so discipline is a thing...but is discipline enough to make it Nigh Impossible? I don't know!




I was asking in the context of is it railroading (or making the players ask "mother may I?") to make sure the DCs presented to the players are something they could actually beat with their checks? Specifically in regards to the escape chain I mentioned. If the answer is yes, then why isn't it playing "mother may I?" to manage the CRs of the encounters they... er... encounter? If the answer is no, then I'm not sure what I understand the objection to the DM setting the DCs as they see fit. I mean, trust issues with your DM aside...At some level, any game that isn't a pure railroad has sandbox elements. In a sandbox (pure or nearly so), the various dungeons and encounters out in the world are not set by the level of the party; they're just out there. The party goes and deals with them as they choose, and, if they bite off more than they can chew, either retreats or is captured or dies.

The DM doesn't calibrate encounters to a particular level, but builds a world that makes sense.

In a more tailored adventure, the DM designs encounters to fit the party's level, reserving "too high" CR things for worldbuilding and to create soft boundaries to help guide the party along. And ensures that random encounters are of an appropriate level, usually with limited excuse-making as to why the random encounters are getting stronger.

But even in a well-tailored adventure where the PCs are in a dungeon for their specific level, there are sandbox elements if the DM isn't forcing them to play "use the solution I planned for or you fail." Those sandbox elements are all the reasons to play a TTRPG rather than a cRPG. They're the interaction with the environment on a level that can't be planned for, because no designer comes up with every detail and every possible interaction. Hence the DM and his presence to adjudicate.

These are usually where the skill system, catch-all that it is, will come up. If the DM just assumes that all things in the dungeon can be done with the same CR-appropriate DC, then it's as easy to kick down a door as it is to bust through a wall. Now, relatively, I know this is silly. If, for example, busting down a door is Hard, then busting through a wall must be either Night Impossible or actually Impossible. (There also are rules for damaging objects I could fall back on, thankfully.) But should the muscle-bound barbarian have a 50% chance of breaking open a door with a single kick or shoulder slam? A 20% chance? A 90% chance? I don't know!


How do you even create a character when you have no baseline for what +X in a Skill means or when that Skill will even apply to an Ability check?
To be fair, when you've got as low-granularity as 5e presents, you don't really ask when designing the character how good you need to be at a skill. You're not assigning skill points. Instead, you simply are asking, "Am I particularly good at THIS compared to other things I'm not as good at?"

Your burglar is good at sneaking around and picking locks, so you take proficiency (And probably expertise, if you're a rogue) in those.

Which is actually why my main complaint with 5e's skill system is on the DM side, since they removed the need to calculate carefully what each skill investment means from the player side. The DM, though, still needs to make sure he's not making a treadmill unrelated to the fiction layer, but also isn't unfairly making things too hard to add "challenge," nor making them easier than they should be.

The DM, when making an on-the-spot call for something the players sprang on him where success/failure is significant, but not required to keep the game going, shouldn't even be thinking about the PCs' numbers on their pages. He should only be giving as objective a consideration as possible to how hard a given task should be.

Pity he has no baseline to judge from.

[EggKookoo]

It gets even better. There's been a few studies involving people within economical systems that point out not only are they largely irrational and emotionally driven but that it spreads like a virus. there are some people that are looking at treating economical problems like biological epidemics.
good book out there, I believe it's titled the origins of financial crisis.

As I often say to my wife when she boggles at how people behave (typically responding to some Florida Man Variant shenanigans): "Humans don't think. We just think we think."

[Max_Killjoy]

I’m not commenting on the math so much as the lack of a foundation for player expectations to some extent in skills. You know explicit AC values and you are aware of clear and potentially veiled facets of the situation at hand that may nudge things in one direction or the other. Skills, well all that a player knows initially for some cases is a number and an abstract concept until the gm puts details to it.



By following the guidelines for character creation either supplied by the game or the GMs rulings that alter such base assumptions? You’re quite free to make decisions in building your character, nothing mandates they be informed decisions. How much of it should fall on the GM to ensure the players are given the means by which they can gauge the impact of their choices? How much should a system be providing as a baseline without becoming a statistical look up table? 5e could try just a little bit harder in putting a face to a Hard lock for example. If a GM wants to overrule that example and set a new baseline sure, that’s what GMs do. It’s still a useful tool to be able confront players with a lockbox and have both players and GM operate on similar expectations for this first lock of the campaign, an hour after they started playing, simply based off a sufficient description of the lock with no/minimal meta nudging.

I think we're agreeing here, I'm just saying that the problem starts way back at character creation.

If I'm trying to make a character who is good at X, how do I know what it actually takes for that character to be as good at X as they're supposed to be, when there's zero baseline as to what the DCs mean beyond a short list of descriptors as a circular reference? How do I translate that character's fiction-level degree of competence into the mechanical/rule level?

As of right now, it's entirely dependent on who the DM is, and some posters are saying that's a great thing. :smalleek:

[Max_Killjoy]

Even this is a contested claim. Most economical theories have assumed such and said theories have repeatedly failed to predict crashes and shifts in finance. It seems individuals are actually not rational agents but mostly emotional agents whose primary interest is in group membership. This is apparent in the effectiveness of advertisement, the subconscious preferences that manifest as fashion (on all fields of human selection, it seems to play a part), etc.

This is why I say I might as well be another species, I really don't understand the things that most people seem to prioritize.

[KorvinStarmast]

Are you implying I can't make a decision? I never said I had issues with this, I have repeatedly stated, my intent is to have a basis for example when I inevitably do get approached on why I made something a specific DC. I didn't intend to, but going back the answer I can see how it came across that way. The answer to why is
"I thought it was hard, thus the 15 DC. That's why."
If they'd rather argue than play, the D&D skill system isn't the issue, at least not in my experience.

The role of the DM in this game since 1974 is that of a setting/situtatioon creator, and decision maker. The original term was Referee. D&D has returned to that in 5th edition, discarding the experiment with a departure from that after 2e AD&D. Some of the best advice I ever got on this set of forums for 5e was
"forget what you remember from previous editions, just play this one."
The bulk of my D&D experience was Original through 2e AD&D, and I initially felt awkward in 5e. But when I took a moment and walked through the basics, and let go of the previous edition instincts and minutae, I discovered that this edition was really enjoyable.

If the players have an expectation that the transactions at the table are about winning arguments, then IMO another session 0 is called for.


I shouldn't have to rely on "I'm the DM, know your role and sit down" Since I did not suggest that, not sure why you said that ...

or building trust with people IME, having a trusting relationship with the people you play RPG's with is important. YMMV. I don't care how many rules there are in a book - be it D&D, Role for SHoes, or GURPS - rules can't substitute for engagement with people. RPG's, and certainly D&D, are a social interaction.

[Protolisk]

The problem of set DCs is that they come across as unrealistic.

5e doesn't have set DCs for most skill checks, this we can all agree on.

What IS in 5e is the DCs for tool checks, as provided in Xanathar's guide. Unfortunately, they have... issues.

It is DC 10 to create a typical meal via cooking. That means people who aren't trained in cooking, assuming a commoner, fails at making a meal 50% of the time (okay, technically, it's 45%, since you just need to make a 10 on the roll). How do people even live when the chances to fail at cooking are that high? Half the time your meal is ruined? Is that how I am supposed to understand this DC? This isn't even a gourmet meal, this is a typical meal (gourmet is DC 15).

Yet the same DC, 10, is also how you can detect poison in a drink via Brewer's tools. But it's DC 15 for detecting poison in a food for cooks. Not even the same kind of check between tools is shared. It's still DC 10 for a poisoner to spot a poisoned item, but its the alchemist's kit that allows identification of a poison.

These checks are arbitrary. Even when they DO give you a general list to go from, the choices of where skills and DCs fall is arbitrary. That's my rub with having baseline choices: they are still arbitrary. Whether it is arbitrary in a book (for example DCs) or arbitrary from a DM, its all arbitrary. And it doesn't help when Xanathar's guide is also just one giant optional book anyway. On top of the fact that I still have met no one who actually USES Xanathar's guide, especially when, for the poison example, this is all covered by Investigation anyway (though Xanathar says if you had Investigation and the appropriate tool prof, the check could be at advantage. But, again, optional rule).

Edit for clarity: Xanathars extra spells, subclasses, and other rules, yes, people use. The tool proficiency additional rules, not so much.

[KorvinStarmast]

What IS in 5e is the DCs for tool checks, as provided in Xanathar's guide. Unfortunately, they have... issues. Which is why I don't use them.
FWIW: there is an example on page 5 of the DMG that describes how a DM assigns a DC.

[Xervous]

As of right now, it's entirely dependent on who the DM is, and some posters are saying that's a great thing. :smalleek:

I am not in a position to speculate on what the substance of that stance is. Without delving back to find the various instances the only thing sticking in my mind are snarky statements and questions to the tune of “I don’t need a book telling me what to do, my imagination is plenty strong and can bench press twelve unicorns even as I’m counting the sheep unable to leap over the fence on my way to sleep.” Perhaps I’m just inviting a refresher, but my hope is for some revelations in discussion.

The one thing that sticks out for me is consistency within the system. If everything else was similarly vague skills by definition wouldn’t be the outlier here. For those advocating for the benefits of a vague skill system, what is it about the vagueness for skills that doesn’t also make such vagueness a potential improvement for combat?

[Max_Killjoy]

The problem of set DCs is that they come across as unrealistic.

5e doesn't have set DCs for most skill checks, this we can all agree on.

What IS in 5e is the DCs for tool checks, as provided in Xanathar's guide. Unfortunately, they have... issues.

It is DC 10 to create a typical meal via cooking. That means people who aren't trained in cooking, assuming a commoner, fails at making a meal 50% of the time (okay, technically, it's 45%, since you just need to make a 10 on the roll). How do people even live when the chances to fail at cooking are that high? Half the time your meal is ruined? Is that how I am supposed to understand this DC? This isn't even a gourmet meal, this is a typical meal (gourmet is DC 15).

Yet the same DC, 10, is also how you can detect poison in a drink via Brewer's tools. But it's DC 15 for detecting poison in a food for cooks. Not even the same kind of check between tools is shared. It's still DC 10 for a poisoner to spot a poisoned item, but its the alchemist's kit that allows identification of a poison.

These checks are arbitrary. Even when they DO give you a general list to go from, the choices of where skills and DCs fall is arbitrary. That's my rub with having baseline choices: they are still arbitrary. Whether it is arbitrary in a book (for example DCs) or arbitrary from a DM, its all arbitrary. And it doesn't help when Xanathar's guide is also just one giant optional book anyway. On top of the fact that I still have met no one who actually USES Xanathar's guide, especially when, for the poison example, this is all covered by Investigation anyway (though Xanathar says if you had Investigation and the appropriate tool prof, the check could be at advantage. But, again, optional rule).

Edit for clarity: Xanathars extra spells, subclasses, and other rules, yes, people use. The tool proficiency additional rules, not so much.

Why assume that "commoners" have no Skills? In the typical D&D quasi-medieveloid setting, a LOT of people will be able to do at least basic cooking for themselves. Is it the blinkered notion that "the rules are for adventurers, not NPCs?", or something else?

But yes, setting "cook a basic meal" and "detect poison in a drink" as the same DC might have been a bit slapdash.

In terms of "hard set" vs "utterly arbitrary", I'd again point out that this isn't an either-or binary choice, there's a ton of space and nuance between the two.

[diplomancer]

What's the DC of speaking Orc if you can speak Goblin, Elf, and Common?

What? You say that languages don't work like that, that they are either 100% pass, or 100% fail, depending on whether you know them or not?

Nothing stops you from doing similar things when appropriate for skills (though that would be rare, off the cuff maybe the knowledge skills) or tools (quite often, in fact)

Truth is, the d20 is a horrible mechanic for routine checks. If you are rolling at all, it means there is at least a 5% chance of failure Which is off by some orders of magnitude for simple routine checks (or 1 in 400 with advantage, which is still way too high for really routine tasks. A lot of population statistics use an X/100.000).

What does that mean? It means that if you make too many checks, the players are bound to fail at far greater rates than would be expected, and, unfortunately, DC tables tend to encourage the "let's make a check for it" mentality.


Which is why it's a good thing that the general recomendation for a routine task is "don't roll". Remembering always, of course, the immortal words of Elan and Vaarsuvius (though I grant their advice does not fit all play styles)

Elan: "A 10% chance is pretty unlikely, but everyone knows that a one-in-a-million chance is a sure thing! "

Vaarsuvius: *sigh* "And once again, Probability proves itself willing to sneak into a back alley and service Drama as would a copper-piece harlot"

[Mongobear]

10 or lower: A door just about anyone can break open.
11 to 15: A door that a strong person could break with one try and an average person might break with one try.
13: Typical DC for a simple wooden door.
16 to 20: A door that almost anyone could break, given time.
18: Typical DC for a good wooden door.
21 to 25: A door that only a strong or very strong person has a hope of breaking, and probably not on the first try.
23: Typical DC for a strong wooden door.
25: Typical DC for an iron-barred wooden door.
26 or higher: A door that only an exceptionally strong person has a hope of breaking.
28: Typical DC for an iron door.


This is exactly what I've been arguing over. Wishing for something like this, over the generic 5/10/15/etc table we have now.

Would it really have been so bad to have a small set of examples like this for each skill? The chapter describing Ability Scores already goes into a bit of detail on things you can do with each Skill, would have really lessened the quality to tack on a ballpark DC for sample activities?

As far as my half-assed comment--Im not saying 5e as a whole is bad, or unfinished, quite the contrary, with the exception of the Skill System I think it's the best edition to date. It just feels like I bought a brand new car and found out the AC doesn't work. Minor, but inconvenient.

Or, as an example that was used already, 5e is a clunky uncomfortable folding chair, and 3.5e is an uncomfortable cushion nailed onto the floor. What I want is something like a cheap recliner--rigid, but able to adjust to different people, and just enough cushion that the frame doesn't dig into your butt.

[Protolisk]

Why assume that "commoners" have no Skills? In the typical D&D quasi-medieveloid setting, a LOT of people will be able to do at least basic cooking for themselves. Is it the blinkered notion that "the rules are for adventurers, not NPCs?", or something else?

If they were proficient, it'd be a 35% chance to fail. One meal a day would still fail, on average. They only get a plus 2 proficiency bonus. What if they were an expert baker or a king's cook? Then it's a plus 4. Still a 25% chance to fail a meal. If it was a gourmet meal fit for a king, though, it'd be back at a 50% chance to fail for the king's cook. What a great chef. Better train that cook up to be a level 17 chef if you want the king to have gourmet meals everyday.


What's the DC of speaking Orc if you can speak Goblin, Elf, and Common?

What? You say that languages don't work like that, that they are either 100% pass, or 100% fail, depending on whether you know them or not?

Nothing stops you from doing similar things when appropriate for skills (though that would be rare, off the cuff maybe the knowledge skills) or tools (quite often, in fact)

Truth is, the d20 is a horrible mechanic for routine checks. If you are rolling at all, it means there is at least a 5% chance of failure. Which is off by some orders of magnitude for simple routine checks. Which is why it's a good thing that the general recomendation for a routine task is "don't roll"

This is actually my stance on the matter. Routine things shouldn't have much of a failure rate. But, yet, there they are in Xanathar's Guide, making a meal is a DC check now. I'd rather not have such a check, I'd rather it be automatic.

I actually completely agree with the idea of "nothing should stop you" for routine checks. A DM should only ask for a roll when there is doubt. What doubt is there in saying "hello" in Orcish, when you know Orcish? What reasonable doubt is there in cooking a leg haunch over a fireplace?

Lastly, during all of this talk of skill checks, I went a lookin' in the DMG for skill checks, and what did I find?

Sometimes the randomness of a d20 roll leads to ludicrous results. Let's say a door requires a successful DC 15 Strength check to be battered down. A fighter with a Strength of 20 might helplessly flail against the door because of bad die rolls. Meanwhile, the rogue with a Strength of 10 rolls a 20 and knocks the door from its hinges.

If such results bother you, consider allowing automatic success on certain checks. Under this optional rule, a character automatically succeeds on any ability check with a DC less than or equal to the relevant ability score minus 5. So in the example above, the fighter would automatically kick in the door. This rule doesn't apply to contests, saving throws, or attack rolls. Having proficiency with a skill or tool can also grant automatic success. If a character's proficiency bonus applies to his or her ability check, the character automatically succeeds if the DC is 10 or less. If that character is 11th level or higher, the check succeeds if the DC is 15 or less.

The downside of this whole approach is its predictability. For example, once a character's ability score reaches 20, checks of DC 15 and lower using that ability become automatic successes. Smart players will then always match the character with the highest ability score against any given check. If you want some risk of failure, you need to set higher DCs. Doing this, though, can aggravate the problem you're trying to solve: higher DCs require higher die rolls, and thus rely even more on luck.

Not only does the DMG address the some of the various issues in this thread, it has a written solution for automatic success, yet on the same page it brings forth the another issue we've touched on in this thread, and addresses it: if you keep forcing checks, these kind of rules generate treadmill progression, and makes it more luck based in the end instead of relying on proficiency.

Not saying it is a perfect fix, and neither does the DMG say it's a perfect fix (after all, it points out its own flaws), but I find it amusing that many of the talking points in this thread, are already in the DMG to begin with. However, even this automatic success rule still would bring us back to the central issue: the simple arbitrary 5-10-15-20-25-30 DC. I don't think both sides will ever be fully pleased with this outcome. Don't have set DCs, one side will be mad there is no framework (beyond the basic 5-10-25 thing). Have set DCs, it becomes rigid and strictly formulaic. I will advocate for having a framework for those who want it, but, much like looking at the cooking DC skill, I would ignore it and make my own, because that DC looks too high to me. And, that brings us right back to the DMG's way: I set my own arbitrary DC. There really is no way to win. There will always be critics of the system, with or without the set DCs.

Now a different issue I am coming up with is this: what stat should "cooking a meal" even use? Intelligence? Wisdom? Which one is better for cooking, the knowledge of how to bake a cake? Which ability should I base the automatic success on? Or is it Dexterity, to quickly cook a meal and balance pots and dishes? Interestingly, the game tells us the answer: the DM decides which to use based on the circumstance (using woodworking saying fine detail is dex, but hard wood is strength). Sound like the same issue with set DCs. Again, it is arbitrary.

Side edit: the variant rule essentially makes all skills have a passive level, instead of just as written having Perception have a passive level. Strangely, that level is not "10+ability mod+prof bonus", but instead "ability score-5". I don't know how it would include skills and tool proficiencies, that would require additional homebrew, which means more table-to-table variance, which means we arrive right back at the "the game is played differently at different tables" problem, and so on and so forth.

[EggKookoo]

Responding to the bolded part: Should a level 5 PC with proficiency be able to weave a waterproof bag in one hour 50% of the time? 80% of the time? 20% of the time? I don't know; I am not sure how hard weaving a waterproof bag is. I'm not even sure how hard weaving a bag is. Guidelines such as, "We expect a character with proficiency to be able to craft basic items from raw materials in about an hour 40% of the time at low tier, 50% of the time at mid tier, and 60% of the time at high tier," would be helpful. I'm not sure that's even accurate; maybe characters WITHOUT proficiency should be able to do it 50% of the time!

Generally I don't think you're expected to make a check when attempting something that you're proficient at with no time or resource constraints. If you're proficient in whatever skill applies to bag-weaving, and you have access to a weaver's kit and materials, you just make the bag in the time available as long as that time is reasonable. How long is reasonable for making a bag? Xanatha's says you can use the weaver's tools to create an entire outfit as part of a long rest. Since you're expected to sleep a few hours as well, I would say you can just make your bag during a short rest (probably a couple of them). No roll needed.

What you might do is make a check when the time comes to sell your bag. That's when the real craftsmanship comes into play. So both the +2 and +6 PCs make their bags. When the go to sell them, the +6 PC is likely to fetch a better price. That can be handled by some kind of check, perhaps.


The CR system explicitly ties to level. But by bringing it up, you're revealing that you're still stuck on the notion that the DM will have come up with every DC for every possible roll before the players sit down. This is silly. "Okay, I want them to be able to survive this, so the DC for every check needs to be 15" leads to ridiculous results. But is, if I follow the advice you seem to me to be giving, exactly what you're recommending. Because DC 15 is the 'right' DC for the level of challenge a party of X level can handle. ("DC 15" may change from example to example.)

Not stuck on it. It works both ways. I do try to note down DCs whenever possible during the creation process so I can refer to them later. Those DCs are based primarily on an in-fiction justification. So if we're talking about the king's vault, the lock's pick DC is going to be set based on what seems likely for that kind of barrier. But it's not that simple. Sometimes I'll mix it up just to create some variety, typically for things that might not get as much attention in-fiction as that vault.

So the PCs might be in low-level-ish area (defined at least partially by the CR of most of the opponents they'd likely get into a fight with) and still stumble across a DC 20 lock. But for the most part the DCs of things are going to reflect how hard they would be to bypass or deal with in the fiction for that overall "danger level," because the PCs are in that area for an in-fiction reason (i.e. they might likely be quickly killed if the hang out in a more dangerous area). The in-fiction conditions that cause that danger level to be low are also likely to cause (or be the result of) the DCs for the various things in that area to be low. Not all things, like I said. But most things.

Does this mean I'm saying "I want them to be able to survive this, so the DC is X"? It does, yes, from a certain point of view. But only if I want them to survive, which depends on if they've stayed in an area with a "danger level" that's appropriate for them. If they wander into a more dangerous area, I'm less concerned with making sure they survive, and so X can get bigger. But in the end, the (typical) DC of a task in an area depends on how hard it would likely actually be in that area, which in turn is only invoked if the PCs are really in that area, which then in turn follows from the players' decisions about where to go. Which then depends on the information they have, and that can include in-fiction hints, clues, signposts, and other indicators to help them stay in a place where they don't run the risk of sudden and startling death.

This is why I quote the great D&D player Forrest Gump: "Jenny, I don't know if Momma was right or if it's Lieutenant Dan. I don't know if the DM is tailoring DCs to our proficiency, or if we're all just ending up in areas where our proficiency remains relevant to the DCs, but I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happening at the same time."


If I don't follow the advice as you seem to me to be giving it, and haven't provided a DC for every task the PCs set for themselves, because they came up with an approach I didn't think of, how do I set that DC? If you say, "well, set it according to what they should be able to do; remember, you wouldn't pit the Terrasque against a level 1 party," that comes right back to "anything they try to do obviously must be DC 15." (Or whatever I've determined is "the right DC to challenge a party of their level.")

But that's not how I want to run games. You're right: I've designed the encounter, the dungeon crawl, etc., for their level. I picked monsters of CRs that theoretically challenge without being unfairly devastating. But when they decide they want to leap from vine to vine across a chasm rather than fighting the troll guarding the rickety rope bridge, and I didn't even think of whether the overhanging canopy would have vines (but it makes sense, upon reflection, that it might, given the jungle environment), how do I set the Athletics DC?

The other side is, yes, the players will take a course of action I didn't prepare for and suddenly I need to work out a DC on the fly. One basic way of handling that is to roll 1d10+10 to get a result from 11 to 20. Or just give it the average of 16. Since no two tasks are identical, it really doesn't matter. If the "danger level" increases, that +10 can change to +12, +14, etc. But if I'm writing down as many DCs as I can as I design the environment, I have a basis to work from when I have to wing it.

Dice are a great anti-railroad-accusation tool. You should even let the players make the roll. They ain't railroading themselves.


They don't NEED to drive the hobgoblin champion into a fury to progress, but it will aid their tactics and strategy. Do I set the Persuasion DC to be his Insight check? To be a Hard roll? To be Medium? I don't have a particular plan for him being a hothead or being level-headed, but he's a hobgoblin, so discipline is a thing...but is discipline enough to make it Nigh Impossible? I don't know!

DMG page 238:

"A contest is a kind of ability check that matches two creatures against each other. Use a contest if a character attempts something that either directly foils or is directly opposed by another creature's efforts. In a contest, the ability checks are compared to each other, rather than to a target number."

So you just have to determine which ability the hobgoblin would use to oppose persuasion. My vote would be WIS. Don't forget to use proficiency!


The DM doesn't calibrate encounters to a particular level, but builds a world that makes sense.

Yes, but the world has to also make sense as a game world. With characters in it of mechanically differing levels. Otherwise how do you know it's inappropriate to send your 1st level party into the lair of an angry ancient dragon? How to they know they shouldn't do that? The in-fiction cues ("That's a freaking DRAGON!") are also at-table cues ("Yeah, we're too low-level for that...").

[Max_Killjoy]

If they were proficient, it'd be a 35% chance to fail. One meal a day would still fail, on average. They only get a plus 2 proficiency bonus. What if they were an expert baker or a king's cook? Then it's a plus 4. Still a 25% chance to fail a meal. If it was a gourmet meal fit for a king, though, it'd be back at a 50% chance to fail for the king's cook. What a great chef. Better train that cook up to be a level 17 chef if you want the king to have gourmet meals everyday.



This is actually my stance on the matter. Routine things shouldn't have much of a failure rate. But, yet, there they are in Xanathar's Guide, making a meal is a DC check now. I'd rather not have such a check, I'd rather it be automatic.

I actually completely agree with the idea of "nothing should stop you" for routine checks. A DM should only ask for a roll when there is doubt. What doubt is there in saying "hello" in Orcish, when you know Orcish? What reasonable doubt is there in cooking a leg haunch over a fireplace?

Lastly, during all of this talk of skill checks, I went a lookin' in the DMG for skill checks, and what did I find?

Sometimes the randomness of a d20 roll leads to ludicrous results. Let's say a door requires a successful DC 15 Strength check to be battered down. A fighter with a Strength of 20 might helplessly flail against the door because of bad die rolls. Meanwhile, the rogue with a Strength of 10 rolls a 20 and knocks the door from its hinges.

If such results bother you, consider allowing automatic success on certain checks. Under this optional rule, a character automatically succeeds on any ability check with a DC less than or equal to the relevant ability score minus 5. So in the example above, the fighter would automatically kick in the door. This rule doesn't apply to contests, saving throws, or attack rolls. Having proficiency with a skill or tool can also grant automatic success. If a character's proficiency bonus applies to his or her ability check, the character automatically succeeds if the DC is 10 or less. If that character is 11th level or higher, the check succeeds if the DC is 15 or less.

The downside of this whole approach is its predictability. For example, once a character's ability score reaches 20, checks of DC 15 and lower using that ability become automatic successes. Smart players will then always match the character with the highest ability score against any given check. If you want some risk of failure, you need to set higher DCs. Doing this, though, can aggravate the problem you're trying to solve: higher DCs require higher die rolls, and thus rely even more on luck.

Not only does the DMG address the some of the various issues in this thread, it has a written solution for automatic success, yet on the same page it brings forth the another issue we've touched on in this thread, and addresses it: if you keep forcing checks, these kind of rules generate treadmill progression, and makes it more luck based in the end instead of relying on proficiency.

Not saying it is a perfect fix, and neither does the DMG say it's a perfect fix (after all, it points out its own flaws), but I find it amusing that many of the talking points in this thread, are already in the DMG to begin with. However, even this automatic success rule still would bring us back to the central issue: the simple arbitrary 5-10-15-20-25-30 DC. I don't think both sides will ever be fully pleased with this outcome. Don't have set DCs, one side will be mad there is no framework (beyond the basic 5-10-25 thing). Have set DCs, it becomes rigid and strictly formulaic. I will advocate for having a framework for those who want it, but, much like looking at the cooking DC skill, I would ignore it and make my own, because that DC looks too high to me. And, that brings us right back to the DMG's way: I set my own arbitrary DC. There really is no way to win. There will always be critics of the system, with or without the set DCs.

Now a different issue I am coming up with is this: what stat should "cooking a meal" even use? Intelligence? Wisdom? Which one is better for cooking, the knowledge of how to bake a cake? Which ability should I base the automatic success on? Or is it Dexterity, to quickly cook a meal and balance pots and dishes? Interestingly, the game tells us the answer: the DM decides which to use based on the circumstance (using woodworking saying fine detail is dex, but hard wood is strength). Sound like the same issue with set DCs. Again, it is arbitrary.

Side edit: the variant rule essentially makes all skills have a passive level, instead of just as written having Perception have a passive level.


So to me, it seems that XGTE did something in the direction of what we'd hoped for, but did it quite poorly at least in spots. (AFB at the moment, pesky job.)

But what we're looking for is not set DCs, and definitely not poorly set DCs. (Maybe some are asking for set DCs and I don't realize it.) What we're looking for is a starting point for DCs and other aspects of using Skills, what Skills mean in terms of competence, etc, and that would include those instances where a roll is not needed, or only needed for degree of success, or only needed for how long success takes, or...

[MaxWilson]

The first one. If the DM believes, for a particular check, that knowing the skill is specially relevant, so that, for that check, he wants something approximating an 80-40-20-10 distribution (which is what you said you wanted the game math to do) he assigns advantage to knowing it, disadvantage for not knowing it, neither, or both.

Not all checks will have such a big difference between being skilled or unskilled. For those checks, don't give advantage or disadvantage.

Looking at the specific example, it doesn't seem to match these rules you proposed:


DC 11, first guy makes roll with disadvantage, that makes it 75% chance of failure, close enough to the 80 % that you want, second guy adds his proficiency bonus (+2) and has a regular roll, 40% chance of failure, as you want, third guy has the same proficiency bonus but makes it with advantage, so has 16% chance of failure, also close to the 20 % you want, fourth guy has expertise and advantage, 9% chance of failure.

As I said, within a reasonable margin of error (really, 5% on a d20 system is as good as it gets), the rule set allows you to do what you want (even though you invented a 4th category that is not in the game rules, which foresee non-proficient, proficient, expert)

Those probabilities are so close to what you want, that the characters, in-game, would not be able to tell the difference, at least until they create the Statistician class. Remember that probabilities were discovered by Pascal and Fermat, in the 17th century. It's reasonable to think that, in faux-medieval D&D, people thought of those things as "I don't think it will work", "It could work", "it should work", "unless the gods are against it, it will work".

Why doesn't the second guy have advantage? You said he was proficient, so he should have advantage, giving him a 16% chance of failing. That yields a probability curve of 80%/16%/16%/9%. What am I missing?

============================================


This is why I say I might as well be another species, I really don't understand the things that most people seem to prioritize.

Far be it from me to tell you you're human, but I also want to note that the patterns behavioral psychologists are observing are not conscious patterns. People may claim to be rational while actually being influenced by seemingly-inconsequential things. Before concluding that advertising doesn't work on you, I'd recommend that you read the book Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini and consider whether the decisions you make ever vary based on your mood--are you the kind of guy who ever does favors more readily for some people than others, or is more generous under some circumstances than others? That variation is exactly what shows up in the studies cited in Pre-Suasion and is BTW probably a large part of what the die roll on a Persuasion check represents: when a PC pitches their best argument, how receptive is the current audience to that argument under the current circumstances?

[diplomancer]

Looking at the specific example, it doesn't seem to match these rules you proposed:



Why doesn't the second guy have advantage? You said he was proficient, so he should have advantage, giving him a 16% chance of failing. That yields a probability curve of 80%/16%/16%/9%. What am I missing?

The problem here is that YOU mentioned 4 different characters, when the game only allows for 3 different skill descriptions (unskilled-skilled-expert). Between the 2nd and 3 character, one is skilled, the other is skilled AND talented. Looks like advantage to me.

[MaxWilson]

The problem here is that YOU mentioned 4 different characters, when the game only allows for 3 different skill descriptions (unskilled-skilled-expert). Between the 2nd and 3 character, one is skilled, the other is skilled AND talented. Looks like advantage to me.

But the rules you gave imply that the example you gave is wrong.

If you're asking what I had in mind, when I said:


...while at the same time, outlawing many sensible improvs. We've talked previously in this thread about how the d20 probability distribution is inappropriate for many problem domains because it makes chance far more important than skill. What if the right probability distribution is exponentially-decreasing failure chances with level? What if I want an untrained individual to have an 80% chance of failing, a modestly-skilled individual to have 40%, a skilled and talented individual to have 20% chance of failing, and a talented and highly-trained individual to have only a 10% chance of failing? That's already something which cannot be modeled by an ability check, so no singular DC that you can pick is ever appropriate.

I was thinking of (1) bog-standard human, (2) low-level proficiency but not ability skill bonuses, (3) low-level proficiency and has relevant ability skill bonuses, (4) high-level proficiency and relevant ability score bonuses. (I didn't mention "world-class", but that would be high-level Expertise and relevant ability score bonuses.)

Since I didn't say so explicitly though, I was also willing to accept whatever interpretation you came up with, for the sake of argument, but even by that standard your answer doesn't work: the 2nd guy is proficient, so the curve is 80%/16%/16%/9%. Your proposed solution doesn't work, so how can you declare victory?

[Protolisk]

So to me, it seems that XGTE did something in the direction of what we'd hoped for, but did it quite poorly at least in spots. (AFB at the moment, pesky job.)

But what we're looking for is not set DCs, and definitely not poorly set DCs. (Maybe some are asking for set DCs and I don't realize it.) What we're looking for is a starting point for DCs and other aspects of using Skills, what Skills mean in terms of competence, etc, and that would include those instances where a roll is not needed, or only needed for degree of success, or only needed for how long success takes, or...

I agree, Xanathar's going of it was a little shoddy, although it did provide a framework.

Sorry, maybe our understanding of each other is different, but wouldn't "a starting point for DCs" be "a set DC"? That was how I interpreted it, and felt saying "set DC" was faster. If these mean different things to you then I'd like to clear the issue.

As for the rest:

The DM calls for an ability check when a character or monster attempts an action (other than an attack) that has a chance of failure. When the outcome is uncertain, the dice determine the results.

To me, that sounds like you roll when it's an "action", but even that is muddied. Actions usually mean its in combat. "Casting time is an action", or "as an action, you can [whatever]" and so on. So these kinds of checks should only be done in dangerous situations, i.e. in combat, such that attempting the action is risky, such that the "outcome is uncertain". But, yep, DMs can read this differently across tables, which I think is the main issue for those who want the set DCs. Starting points for DCs? What ever semantics we go with, that's what I am trying to say. The rules are fairly vague. I won't disagree with its vagueness. Do I like the level of vagueness? Yes, I do, but I am trying to not infringe on what you, or anyone else, want from or like about the system. To some end, there will be disagreement on the rules. But, what some see as a negative (lack of set/starting points) I see as a benefit (because I'd disagree with those starting/set points. 25% chance to fail cooking is... wrong.)

In a perfect world, they'd give us the full list that works completely and satisfies everyone. But 5e has done a lot to try and remove many situational modifiers and instead use advantage/disadvantage. The design philosophy has changed, and even then, it's DM based. It will almost always come down to that: these rules are more DM-decision based than before. I am not sure this will change any time soon.

[diplomancer]

But the rules you gave imply that the example you gave is wrong.

If you're asking what I had in mind, when I said:



I was thinking of (1) bog-standard human, (2) low-level proficiency but not ability skill bonuses, (3) low-level proficiency and has relevant ability skill bonuses, (4) high-level proficiency and relevant ability score bonuses. (I didn't mention "world-class", but that would be high-level Expertise and relevant ability score bonuses.)

Since I didn't say so explicitly though, I was also willing to accept whatever interpretation you came up with, for the sake of argument, but even by that standard your answer doesn't work: the 2nd guy is proficient, so the curve is 80%/16%/16%/9%. Your proposed solution doesn't work, so how can you declare victory?

What I had in mind was 4 characters of the same level and abilities, different skill levels, but some were arbitrarily defined by you as "talented", which I translated as "has advantage". (You can always lock advantage behind a "is skilled and has at least a +x to the roll" if that makes it feel less arbitrary to you. In this particular case, the math would still not be too off if you lock advantage behind a +2 to a skill and assume the "skilled but untalented" actually has a minus 1 on the relevant ability score. Now his probability of failure is 45% instead of 40, still a reasonable margin of error, still a "it could work" type of judgement)

Second guy is skilled, but not particularly talented. He's the baseline. That's why he has a regular roll (incidentally, it's also why his probability is the only one that matches perfectly what you want. He's from whom I started the calculation)

[MaxWilson]

The problem of set DCs is that they come across as unrealistic.

5e doesn't have set DCs for most skill checks, this we can all agree on.

What IS in 5e is the DCs for tool checks, as provided in Xanathar's guide. Unfortunately, they have... issues.

It is DC 10 to create a typical meal via cooking. That means people who aren't trained in cooking, assuming a commoner, fails at making a meal 50% of the time (okay, technically, it's 45%, since you just need to make a 10 on the roll). How do people even live when the chances to fail at cooking are that high? Half the time your meal is ruined? Is that how I am supposed to understand this DC? This isn't even a gourmet meal, this is a typical meal (gourmet is DC 15).

This comes back to the same old issue, which is that 5E doesn't really have any game structures outside of combat, just a resolution mechanic (ability checks). There's not necessarily anything wrong with the DC here per se, but the player (Protolisk) is left uncertain to the consequences of success or failure on the resolution mechanic.

In this case I'd suggest that a good rule would be that success on a meal means it tastes good, and failure means it's edible but not enjoyable (burned lasagna, soggy mashed potatoes, etc.). Does this imply that lots of peasants have unenjoyable meals, especially if they can't cook? Yes, but that's not objectionable in and of itself. That was the situation in the USA for centuries, until storebought processed food started becoming popular popular.

For gourmet meals for a king, a highly-skilled cook (say Wis 14 and +4 proficiency bonus) with assistants (Advantage from Help) can achieve a good-tasting gourmet meal (DC 15) 84% of the time. When the meal is bad, he can probably detect that it's not working (call that DC 10, 98% success rate with Advantage from Help) and attempt a new meal. This means that the king has good meals on time about 84% of the time. Another 14% or so of the time, dinner is late but is ultimately good, and 4% of the time it just isn't very good.

Within the constraints of the d20 ability check system, that seems about as close to reasonable as you're going to get. The key is to think beyond the DC to the surrounding context (what are the consequences to success/failure?) and if you think WotC doesn't do a good job of conveying that, well, I agree. But I don't think the fault lies with the specific DC that was chosen, in this case.

BTW, I also acknowledge your point that the DCs are haphazard and inconsistent between different tools. I'm only defending these specific Culinary Tools DCs, not the DCs for Brewer's Tools or Glassblower's Tools or whatnot.

=============================


What I had in mind was 4 characters of the same level and abilities, different skill levels, but some were arbitrarily defined by you as "talented", which I translated as "has advantage". (You can always lock advantage behind a "is skilled and has at least a +x to the roll" if that makes it feel less arbitrary to you. In this particular case, the math would still not be too off if you lock advantage behind a +2 to a skill and assume the "skilled but untalented" actually has a minus 1 on the relevant ability score. Now his chance of success is 55% instead of 60, still a reasonable margin of error, still a "it could work" type of judgement)

Second guy is skilled, but not particularly talented. He's the baseline. That's why he has a regular roll (incidentally, it's also why his probability is the only one that matches perfectly what you want. He's from whom I started the calculation)

But you yourself said that proficiency = advantage, and you gave 2nd guy proficiency, so he should have advantage. My point was that the d20-based ability check rules don't support this scenario, so if you're trying to give a counterexample by proposing a modification to the ability check rules and a worked example, and yet the example only works if you ignore the rules you just gave(!)... that's not a counterexample, and the point stands.

[diplomancer]

Poor king. Assuming 3 meals a day, he has late meals just about every other day (big problem if there are important guests), and bad meals about every week.

As to your example. I said the DM CAN give advantage for a talented, skilled character, not that he HAS to give it to any character because he's skilled.

[EggKookoo]

In this case I'd suggest that a good rule would be that success on a meal means it tastes good, and failure means it's edible but not enjoyable (burned lasagna, soggy mashed potatoes, etc.). Does this imply that lots of peasants have unenjoyable meals, especially if they can't cook? Yes, but that's not objectionable in and of itself. That was the situation in the USA for centuries, until storebought processed food started becoming popular popular.

Or in my house growing up...


BTW, I also acknowledge your point that the DCs are haphazard and inconsistent between different tools. I'm only defending these specific Culinary Tools DCs, not the DCs for Brewer's Tools or Glassblower's Tools or whatnot.

My only issue with the concept of skills is that they occupy so many different scopes. Many skills imply an amount of time spent, such as the earlier bag-weaving, or the meal-prep here. A single roll just doesn't feel right. You could model this with extended checks and an x-successes-before-y-failures system akin to death saves. That can work. But then the other problem is that such activity tends to focus on a single PC, and the other players are just sitting around. I think if 5e wanted to make any progress there, they would have at least created two main categories of skills -- those that are discrete, almost "single action" things like acrobatics, intimidation, maybe medicine (for stabilizing), and those that are extended stuff like performance, or any crafting-like tasks that don't just "happen" at a set moment in time. But that ship has sailed.

Combat lives in a different place. It's more easily broken down into quick actions that can build on one another, and it does so in a cyclical fashion that involves everyone. And even that has issues with some folks, hence the various "no initiative" and popcorn init stuff.

[EggKookoo]

Poor king. Assuming 3 meals a day, he has late meals just about every other day (big problem if there are important guests), and bad meals about every week.

Better than my house grow... Wait, I used that joke already, right?

[Protolisk]

*snip*

I agree with just about everything. I am more often a DM over a player, but either way, that DC confuses me, even as a DM. However, the main thing I disagree with is what failing a cooking check to mean. If the food is still edible, just not tasting great... that's barely a failure. Again, I see no reason to roll for something without any real consequences. However, I am now seeing why you all would enjoy having "what a DC means". If not the actual number "DC15", but the consequences of failure. Our ideas of failure differ, and yep, there is no book explanation of it. Again, back at "the game is different at different tables". But based on my idea of "barely a failure", then maybe failing the DC by certain increments should mean different things. I can see the need for better resolution.

But yeah, the king's cook could have sous chefs and so forth that grant advantage making it more simple. If it was just not tasting great, than even a 16% chance of failure is acceptable. If it was "we burned the food, it's inedible", then even a 16% chance of failure is pretty unacceptable. That's still a meal every 2-3 days that's failing.

Again, my solution is that for routine checks like cooking, there should be no roll for it unless there is real consequences. I guess if the players were trying to make a meal to impress the king, yeah they can roll for flavor, as in how well they flavored the meal, maybe it will get them in the kings good graces (or help disguise a poison, etc.) But if it was just trying to cook a meal because they are hungry, then just let em.

Overall, you've convinced me, at least. Although I am not super keen on DCs by the book directly, we should have more resolution mechanics. I know many systems with "degrees of success" mechanics that I have actually been so used to that it was basically how I've been running 5e anyway, even though there are no real rules around it.

[MaxWilson]

Poor king. Assuming 3 meals a day, he has late meals just about every other day (big problem if there are important guests), and bad meals about every week.

Welcome to the dark ages. It's better than being a peasant.

(Though actually he probably doesn't really have the chef try for gourmet meals 3 meals a day, nor does he have important guests at every single meal. The king can get a decent meal on the first try 98% of the time, which isn't bad really even by modern standards. If he wants to have two chefs he can bring those odds up even further but there will be friction between the chefs.)


As to your example. I said the DM CAN give advantage for a talented, skilled character, not that he HAS to.

I'm not going to beat this dead horse any longer. Anyone who wants to can review this thread and follow the claims and counterclaims--there's no point in repeating them yet again.

[Max_Killjoy]

Far be it from me to tell you you're human, but I also want to note that the patterns behavioral psychologists are observing are not conscious patterns. People may claim to be rational while actually being influenced by seemingly-inconsequential things. Before concluding that advertising doesn't work on you, I'd recommend that you read the book Pre-Suasion by Robert Cialdini and consider whether the decisions you make ever vary based on your mood--are you the kind of guy who ever does favors more readily for some people than others, or is more generous under some circumstances than others? That variation is exactly what shows up in the studies cited in Pre-Suasion and is BTW probably a large part of what the die roll on a Persuasion check represents: when a PC pitches their best argument, how receptive is the current audience to that argument under the current circumstances?




All I can say is that appealing to the "desire to fit in a group", "belonging", "membership", or "identity" is about the most counter-productive way to try to persuade me, I loath anything that smacks of tribalism (see, political parties), I have no patience for ritual and ceremony, and that advertising ranges from mainly aggravating noise to the occasional short comedy bit (but that the commercials I hate are most likely to stick as a negative association for a product and push me away from it, while I rarely remember what the funny commercials were actually advertising beyond "it was for some car brand" or "one of those beers I don't like").

[MaxWilson]

My only issue with the concept of skills is that they occupy so many different scopes. Many skills imply an amount of time spent, such as the earlier bag-weaving, or the meal-prep here. A single roll just doesn't feel right. You could model this with extended checks and an x-successes-before-y-failures system akin to death saves. That can work. But then the other problem is that such activity tends to focus on a single PC, and the other players are just sitting around. I think if 5e wanted to make any progress there, they would have at least created two main categories of skills -- those that are discrete, almost "single action" things like acrobatics, intimidation, maybe medicine (for stabilizing), and those that are extended stuff like performance, or any crafting-like tasks that don't just "happen" at a set moment in time. But that ship has sailed.

I basically agree with you here, with the small nitpick that even if only a single PC is involved, that doesn't mean other players have to sit around for a long time. If the chef is a PC, he only has to roll three dice to determine if the king gets a good meal on time, and with practice he can actually roll all three dice simultaneously and read the result right off. Or the chef could roll two dice, with another PC as taste-tester rolling a third die--either way it only takes a few seconds. But yeah, that ship has sailed and 5E clearly is never going to take this approach for anything except combat.

That doesn't stop individual DMs from adopting such procedures, and my whole reason for being involved in this thread is to evangelize this option for DMs who are looking for exactly this kind of solution. But it's unfortunate that WotC didn't already spend half a page making a similar point in Xanathar's.


Combat lives in a different place. It's more easily broken down into quick actions that can build on one another, and it does so in a cyclical fashion that involves everyone. And even that has issues with some folks, hence the various "no initiative" and popcorn init stuff.

I don't think combat has to live in a different place. It's just a chicken-and-egg problem. People are used to lots of structure in combat in D&D, so they accept the need for lots of structure in the service of making combat more interesting; they are not used to structure outside of combat so they just wing it and see no need for more structure.

=============================================



All I can say is that appealing to the "desire to fit in a group", "belonging", "membership", or "identity" is about the most counter-productive way to try to persuade me, I loath anything that smacks of tribalism (see, political parties), I have no patience for ritual and ceremony, and that advertising ranges from mainly aggravating noise to the occasional short comedy bit (but that the commercials I hate are most likely to stick as a negative association for a product and push me away from it, while I rarely remember what the funny commercials were actually advertising beyond "it was for some car brand" or "one of those beers I don't like").


Oh yeah, I'm 100% with you there, and I have a certain amount of evidence that I'm not just fooling myself about my subconscious tendencies--I really do stand apart from most human tribal tendencies**. But from the standpoint of understanding how the world functions and making good predictions about it, it's still useful to understand the specific ways in which humans are nonrational, emotional actors.

** I do see some appeal in the idea of fellowship, and it would be nice to have kindred spirits instead of having to make everything up myself... but human beings do not qualify. Perhaps you are different in this respect and see no appeal at all in even the idea of having counterparts... if so, perhaps you are less human than me. If it's a contest perhaps you are winning. : ) However, I suspect that any rational entity who does not enjoy work for work's own sake would wind up seeing an appeal to fellowship, not just human beings, so if you don't like the thought of having counterparts I'll be surprised.

[Eldariel]

All I can say is that appealing to the "desire to fit in a group", "belonging", "membership", or "identity" is about the most counter-productive way to try to persuade me, I loath anything that smacks of tribalism (see, political parties), I have no patience for ritual and ceremony, and that advertising ranges from mainly aggravating noise to the occasional short comedy bit (but that the commercials I hate are most likely to stick as a negative association for a product and push me away from it, while I rarely remember what the funny commercials were actually advertising beyond "it was for some car brand" or "one of those beers I don't like").


You're probably in the tail of the normal distribution that acts counterculturally. That means you're equally influenced; your decisionmaking is based on the exact same things as everyone else's. The effect is just to the contrary.

[Willie the Duck]

The Skill system in 5e comes across as something a designer didn't want to include at all, but was told he had to.
If we’re going to go full on conjecture, my guess is that the skill system reflects the designers not wanting to take a stand on where on the scale of realistic vs. cinematic action the game should be. I mean, that seems to be the primary unresolved fan disagreement (to the point that we’ve repeatedly joked that the fanbase wants high level spellcasters to be able to move mountains, martials realistic enough that they can’t cleave said mountains in twain, yet the two character types be balanced, and to hell with the paradox that imposes). I can see the designers not wanting to touch that problem with a 10’ pole. Leaving the DCs tied to easy/moderate/difficult disappoints people that want a more substantive answer, but at least it doesn’t disenfranchise whatever side of the realism-vs.-cinematic/mythic divide they don’t choose to honor.

3e is actually a pretty good case for this possibility (at least being a plausible answer). It came down pretty heavily on the ‘fighters up to level 5 run and jump rather like a realistic person can, with only moderate improvement as you hit upper levels, but you can get a magic item which gives you +30(!) to jump relatively cheaply,’ and that just highlighted the magic/skill power discrepancy and made absolutely no one happy (except that yes indeed things like jumping and climbing had very solid, concrete DCs for various effects, regardless of whether people were happy with what those DCs actually are). And all that did was highlight how the new edition made everything worse for people who used real world logic in their actions (along with things like only getting 1 attack if you moved more than 5’, etc.), while those that broke the rules of physics had fewer constraints than before.



We're talking about people playing the game over 5 years and enjoying it so much as to spread it to other people at an amazing rate (D&D sales rate continues to climb). If a large and fundamental part of the game (ability checks - one of 3 resolution mechanics) was 'half-assed' or 'broken' we'd see the effect of that..

It is worthwhile at times to remember that most gamers are not on boards like these, and their complaints (or lack thereof) are often very different from people like us who are maybe more involved in analysis of the game. That said, it doesn’t mean that none of the issues we might find have no merit. It is a balancing act, like all things.


; I'd cite this exact same modifier heavy approach as one of the reasons I'm unwilling to GM GURPS. At least 3e D&D doesn't have hundreds of skills, all of which have tables for what other skills can substitute for them at what penalty.

Here's the thing. Or rather, a handfull of things, in no particular order. You can't have rules for everything. It's completely impossible, and impractical. Your basic rulebook would take up enough volumes to fill the library of Congress, and you still wouldn't have everything covered. As a DM, you are expected to have to rule some things on the fly. You don't NEED to know anything about being a locksmith to narrate why one lock is harder to pick that another. "This seems to.

...while at the same time, outlawing many sensible improvs. We've talked previously in this thread about how the d20 probability distribution is inappropriate for many problem domains because it makes chance far more important than skill. What if the right probability distribution is exponentially-decreasing failure chances with level? What if I want an untrained individual to have an 80% chance of failing, a modestly-skilled individual to have 40%, a skilled and talented individual to have 20% chance of failing, and a talented and highly-trained individual to have only a 10% chance of failing? That's already something which cannot be modeled by an ability check, so no singular DC that you can pick is ever appropriate.

That's getting into an entirely different game system. D20 will never have that sort of breakdown, you would need either a d100 system like Dark Heresy, or a Fallout TTRPG with the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Attributes tied directly to your skills, but also likely d100 based, which I don't think actually exists yet.

You could develop a "skill combat system" where the challenge has a number of "hit points" that needs to be surpassed for the adventurer to suceed. A more skilled character would definitely succeed far more often than an unskilled character. It would be more realistic. It would also slow down the game to a crawl (especially if the "skill combat" happens inside a "regular combat").

Honestly, when it comes to a generalized activity resolution mechanic system, I’ve found that no rolling scheme, much less ruleset, is really all that satisfactory (except narrative outcome ones like FATE… for that purpose). That’s because every skill or event really is quite different, and there are actions where someone trained to do it has a 99.99999% chance of success, and someone not trained well below 1%, and others where the novice and expert have 30% and 45%, respectively. A single mechanism to map that almost by definition has to be a gross simplification. Even moreso when the dice/rules mechanism also has to include penalty/bonus to success chance, and maybe also degree of success. Either the 100s of skills, each with tables that Knaight mentions (although GURPS skills actually are a great example of lots of complexity without a better result, in my mind), or a skill combat system like diplomancer mentions, really would be better ways of successfully modelling real world complexity. I know the guy who usually GMs when I play (mostly not D&D-esque games) has been working for years on a social resolution system, and a single simple die roll, regardless of the percentages, is never to his satisfaction.

[EggKookoo]

At the risk of sounding like a sycophant, I just want to say this has not only been a worthwhile and educational thread, it's actually remained mostly civil. Especially considering it strongly resembles an edition war thread.

Kudos!

[Eldariel]

It is worthwhile at times to remember that most gamers are not on boards like these, and their complaints (or lack thereof) are often very different from people like us who are maybe more involved in analysis of the game. That said, it doesn’t mean that none of the issues we might find have no merit. It is a balancing act, like all things.

Also, it's worth remembering that this ultimately is still at most a problem for the DM or problem with players' expectations not being matched. Thus it's not insurmountable and even people who do have a problem with it (such as I) will still be able to enjoy and play the edition just fine (just like I play 3e despite its flaws, AD&D 2e despite its flaws, Basic specifically for its flaws, etc.). Again, even a significant flaw does not make a product unplayable (indeed, 3e, in spite of its breadth of deep-rooted issues with scaling, class parity, caster multiclassing, basic combat mechanics, etc. still remains probably the most successful edition ever if we count the whole umbrella of "3e - 3.5e - PF 1e" together). These issues are often also only apparent to more experienced and analytical players; it takes rather deep understanding of the system to put your finger on what feels off at times.

[KorvinStarmast]

Baseline: A creature with no proficiency and no relevant ability bonus will succeed with an easy task 50% of the time. Your math is being vetted: on a d20 roll for an easy (DC 5) attempt, if you roll a 5-20 you succeed 80% of the time. And yes, that's easy or a bit harder than easy. Easy to me is "almost never fail" but this is close enough. For a routine task, a roll isn't even necessary. The task is simply completed, such as cooking dinner.
PHB Chapter 7: do not roll if the outcome is not in doubt.

[Max_Killjoy]

Sorry, maybe our understanding of each other is different, but wouldn't "a starting point for DCs" be "a set DC"? That was how I interpreted it, and felt saying "set DC" was faster. If these mean different things to you then I'd like to clear the issue.


A starting point doesn't have to be a simple set DC.

It can be a guideline for determining what the DC should be based on the circumstances / situation at hand for the character, or even if the roll is needed, or if the roll can be something other than pass/fail.

So using the horrible tree example, maybe it would say "Under normal circumstances with no pressure or complications, and assuming a fairly typical tree, any PC (and most NPCs) can climb the tree without a roll. However, when speed matters, or also avoiding attacks, or during a heavy storm, a roll might be needed, and then the DC would be in the X to Y range. If the tree is particularly challenging, maybe raise it this much. Etc."

[EggKookoo]

Your math is being vetted: on a d20 roll for an easy (DC 5) attempt, if you roll a 5-20 you succeed 80% of the time. And yes, that's easy or a bit harder than easy. Easy to me is "almost never fail" but this is close enough. For a routine task, a roll isn't even necessary. The task is simply completed, such as cooking dinner.
PHB Chapter 7: do not roll if the outcome is not in doubt.

Easy is 10.

Very easy is 5.

In fact, the DMG says if the task is very easy you really shouldn't ask for a roll.

[KorvinStarmast]

It is not enough to say Hard is DC 15. What makes the task Hard? What one DM says is Hard another DM says is Easy so the DC is different for the exact same task. The rules change. Pex, I simply don't have this problem at the table. But the fact is that the rules don't change; for each ability check the situation/setting/conditions changes from event to event. So I don't think I can be of any further help to you.

If someone asks me why in a case like that I never seem to have a problem offering an answer.
Never.
Maybe that's due to me being able to think on my feet or having been a wise-acre most of my life such that I almost always have a quick comeback as a reflex. I am not sure.

I also play with people who would rather play than argue; and that's something that not everyone has the good fortune to experience. I have to concede that at a table where people habitually argue with the DM, the point that you raise is bound to come up. We've had rules lawyers and arguers since the first published three books, and we got a rules explosion when AD&D 1e came out (and that rules explosion was somewhat driven by Gygax desire for more standardization at cons and the RPGA that was being formed, according to Lawrence Schick).

FWIW: you may be surprised to learn that as AD&D 1e got more play, a lot of us in the various groups that I played with(me included) recoiled at the mountain of added rules. We were used to a more wide open game. But we also liked the added monsters, and the much more organized PHB that had more detail on Character creation.
In time we adapted, and we all played with various optional rules that we either made up, got out of Dragon magazine, or that we stole from another game system. EGG's goal (as an old wargame rule writer) of the rules being closer to "sacred" was never accomplished, and yet the game kept growing.

If we’re going to go full on conjecture, my guess is that the skill system reflects the designers not wanting to take a stand on where on the scale of realistic vs. cinematic action the game should be. They trust the players and DM's to use their imaginations.

I can see the designers not wanting to touch that problem with a 10’ pole. Leaving the DCs tied to easy/moderate/difficult disappoints people that want a more substantive answer, but at least it doesn’t disenfranchise whatever side of the realism-vs.-cinematic/mythic divide they don’t choose to honor.
I wonder if they gave it that much thought.

Honestly, when it comes to a generalized activity resolution mechanic system, I’ve found that no rolling scheme, much less ruleset, is really all that satisfactory (except narrative outcome ones like FATE… for that purpose). I mentioned this a few pages back but choosing to be wedded to the d20 system and not explore different dice combinations to a certain extent limited what WoTC could achieve with this edition.

A single mechanism to map that almost by definition has to be a gross simplification. Yes, and then it has to be shoehorned into d20 system.
(Point of reference: Original D&D the Charisma-NPC "reaction" roll was 2d6, not a d20 result)

I know the guy who usually GMs when I play (mostly not D&D-esque games) has been working for years on a social resolution system, and a single simple die roll, regardless of the percentages, is never to his satisfaction. Which points to what is being asked for maybe being a bit harder than is assumed.
Especially considering it strongly resembles an edition war thread. Heh, it's an edition hate thread. :smallbiggrin: See the title.

[Squark]

What I like about D&D in general and 5e in particular is how it walks a quirky line between concrete nuts & bolts mechanics and quantum-mechanics-like abstraction. There are more grounded and logical systems out there but they lack sufficient gaps to stimulate my imagination. There are more abstract and pure "theater of the mind" systems but they feel loose and floaty. D&D has an alchemy that feels right for me.

I mean, just for an example, I love the ridiculous non-logic of how magic missile can unerringly strike a creature that the player selects even if the caster can't isolate it in a crowd. The player knowing that the creature is there is enough for the spell to work. That's insane, but it's also great. Few other systems would have the guts to do that.

And it's not just nostalgia. I played many hours of Villains & Vigilantes, World of Darkness (mostly Werewolf: The Apocalypse), DC Heroes, and probably some number of game-years (or at least many game-months) of Call of Cthulhu before I played more than a token session of D&D. Once I started with D&D in earnest back in the 2e days, I was hooked.

I'm actually the exact opposite. My frustration with 5e is that it isn't truly streamlined for improvisation the way something like FATE is, nor does it offer the wide array of customization options I'd come to expect rrom a D20 system.

One person's "just right" is another person's "uncanny valley" I guess.

After giving the game a try, though, I've found I actually do like 5e; just not love it, compared to, say, 3.5 or Star Wars Saga Edition. I remember someone in this thread called 5e, "Baby's First RPG," and from a hobby perspective, that feels about right. That middle of the road approach gives new DMs and Players a degree of training wheels before they branch out. Of course, many people don't, but even if they did I'd defend 5e's right to exist, I guess.

[Max_Killjoy]

If we’re going to go full on conjecture, my guess is that the skill system reflects the designers not wanting to take a stand on where on the scale of realistic vs. cinematic action the game should be. I mean, that seems to be the primary unresolved fan disagreement (to the point that we’ve repeatedly joked that the fanbase wants high level spellcasters to be able to move mountains, martials realistic enough that they can’t cleave said mountains in twain, yet the two character types be balanced, and to hell with the paradox that imposes). I can see the designers not wanting to touch that problem with a 10’ pole. Leaving the DCs tied to easy/moderate/difficult disappoints people that want a more substantive answer, but at least it doesn’t disenfranchise whatever side of the realism-vs.-cinematic/mythic divide they don’t choose to honor.

3e is actually a pretty good case for this possibility (at least being a plausible answer). It came down pretty heavily on the ‘fighters up to level 5 run and jump rather like a realistic person can, with only moderate improvement as you hit upper levels, but you can get a magic item which gives you +30(!) to jump relatively cheaply,’ and that just highlighted the magic/skill power discrepancy and made absolutely no one happy (except that yes indeed things like jumping and climbing had very solid, concrete DCs for various effects, regardless of whether people were happy with what those DCs actually are). And all that did was highlight how the new edition made everything worse for people who used real world logic in their actions (along with things like only getting 1 attack if you moved more than 5’, etc.), while those that broke the rules of physics had fewer constraints than before.


IF they wanted to accommodate both "realistic" and "cinematic", they should have just created two different character build setups, rather than deliberately baking vagueness into the rules.

[KorvinStarmast]

One person's "just right" is another person's "uncanny valley" I guess.

Tastes differ, to be sure. (And as I've mentioned before, we are fortunate to be gaming at a time where there are literally thousands of RPGs to choose from).

Easy is 10.
Very easy is 5.
In fact, the DMG says if the task is very easy you really shouldn't ask for a roll. ANd yet they give it a number in case someone has a 6 Dexterity, I guess?
Also, Easy being 10 and having a 55% chance of (10-20) success strikes me as harder than "easy" so perhaps I'll get up on a soap box and hate on the skill system now. :smallbiggrin:

[Segev]

Yeah, I knew I was using a bad example when I listed a hobgoblin. Contests are one of the areas that 5e is perfectly fine in. My bad there.

It just really wouldn't have been all that hard to close the loop they left open, but instead they spend several pages in the PHB and DMG talking about difficulty of checks...and somehow manage to never give an example, or touch on anything that could let people do more than spitball whether something is "easy" or "hard."

Even bad examples make it easier to calibrate around. If you know it's bad, then you can throw it out and adjust it to where you think it should be. If you dont' know it's bad, then it's not so bad that it's wrecking your verisimilitude and you can just go with it. If it's not there, however, the DM, who is already juggling umpteen things at once at the table, now has to make an on-the-fly judgment on a subject he doesn't know well enough to determine how well an expert vs. a novice should do at it.

Seriously, I am liable to default, under pressure, to how hard something is for me, and I am most definitely not an average person nor an average adventurer. I'm far less physically capable than most people, and even moreso when it comes to adventurers. I'm also far smarter and exceptionally better educated (esp. on computational intelligence, computer engineering, and physics and math) than the average person, and while I'm not the beyond-human-intelligence genius of certain high-end wizards, I'd probably be up there with the smart non-wizards in most parties.

Trying to develop a stat page for myself and then work backwards from what I think I could do to what the stats tell me an "average" person could do might work, but holy cow is that a lot of effort, especially since I haven't thought to try that approach before now. It also may not match what the game expects to be reasonable for PCs to do. When designing a game system, if you can't tell people who wish to use it what is typical performance, exceptional performance, or poor performance under the system, it's not a complete system.

[EggKookoo]

ANd yet they give it a number in case someone has a 6 Dexterity, I guess?

Damned if they do and damned if they don't, maybe. If they calibrated the DC scale so those really easy DCs fell off the bottom, they'd get complaints about how DCs don't line up properly with ability bonuses or something.


Also, Easy being 10 and having a 55% chance of (10-20) success strikes me as harder than "easy" so perhaps I'll get up on a soap box and hate on the skill system now. :smallbiggrin:

Remember, it's easy for a creature with no ability bonus and no proficiency. So take someone with no natural aptitude and who hasn't really performed the task much, and they can still succeed more than half the time. That sounds like an easy task to me.

I'm terrible at basketball. But if I could get the ball in the hoop 55% of the time, I'd think it's pretty darn easy to do (my real success rate is less than 10%).

[AdAstra]

Think I acted too defensively when accused of calling people stupid. Shows how human I am. If someone goes out of their way to tell you that they specifically are a wholly rational actor where others are not, they’re usually just fooling themselves, or trying to fool you, or both.

On an u related note, when the DC scale talks about things being Very Easy or Medium, it’s still talking about actual challenges. There needs to be some sort of factor that imposes a meaningful chance of failure. For people in their homes or a King’s chef, I don’t think there would be any such difficulties in most cases. However, making a meal using ingredients you found in the wild, or from whatever rations are available, using fairly minimal equipment over a sinple campfire, as an adventurer would? That’s a challenge. A fairly easy challenge, since food is food, but there are factors that could seriously mess things up. I think, or at least hope, that’s what they meant by cooking a normal meal being DC 10, though I could be wrong there.

[Mutazoia]

You realize we're playing a game that was entirely designed by a group of *some guys we will never meet" in an office, right? AND they have made equally useful/useless tables for even less used things. Remember the "this is your life" table and the Cultural Name Generators in XGTE? I would gladly trade both of those, in totality, for a small entry for skill DC guidelines.

Earlier in the thread, I posted word for word, the text from 3.5s tables, which differentiates different traits that make different Climb DCs harder than others, that's what I want. It would take up at most one page for each skill, most often less, similar to the Tool Proficiency entry in XGtE.


Yes. But in the beginnnig, there was the bit about the rules being guidelines, and encouragement to use as many or as few as you like, and to change them to meet the needs of your game.

IMHO, people have become too used to being spoon-fed DC's and have no idea how to make stuff up on their own any more.

[Mongobear]

On an u related note, when the DC scale talks about things being Very Easy or Medium, it’s still talking about actual challenges. There needs to be some sort of factor that imposes a meaningful chance of failure. For people in their homes or a King’s chef, I don’t think there would be any such difficulties in most cases. However, making a meal using ingredients you found in the wild, or from whatever rations are available, using fairly minimal equipment over a sinple campfire, as an adventurer would? That’s a challenge. A fairly easy challenge, since food is food, but there are factors that could seriously mess things up. I think, or at least hope, that’s what they meant by cooking a normal meal being DC 10, though I could be wrong there.

That's been the biggest misleading point in this thread, people using Counter-examples that likely fall under the "no roll, because you can take your time" range of skill useage.

For Climbing the trees, it needs to be framed like in the Hobbit, where they climb to evade the Wargs, before the Eagles save them.

For Cooking, it needs to be under duress like on the Chopped, Hell's Kitchen, or similar shows, or as you said, taking a pot some dirty water and a decayed rabit carcass and making Beef Wellington(obvious hyperbole).


Yes. But in the beginnnig, there was the bit about the rules being guidelines, and encouragement to use as many or as few as you like, and to change them to meet the needs of your game.

IMHO, people have become too used to being spoon-fed DC's and have no idea how to make stuff up on their own any more.

I don't know if spoon-fed is accurate. It feels a bit harsh, but we've gone from 20+ years of having some amount of help deciding, to suddenly having nothing to help figure it out and being told to "wing it".

It was too drastic a change, too quickly. Like revving up to 100 in a Ferrari, then slamming it in reverse/e-brake without slowing down.

From what little I know of it, I actually liked 4e's Skill Challenges, I thought it was a logical progression from 3.X. now, they completely made a new system that's just, "system shock" to some people.

[Pex]

What's the DC of speaking Orc if you can speak Goblin, Elf, and Common?

What? You say that languages don't work like that, that they are either 100% pass, or 100% fail, depending on whether you know them or not?

Nothing stops you from doing similar things when appropriate for skills (though that would be rare, off the cuff maybe the knowledge skills) or tools (quite often, in fact)

Truth is, the d20 is a horrible mechanic for routine checks. If you are rolling at all, it means there is at least a 5% chance of failure Which is off by some orders of magnitude for simple routine checks (or 1 in 400 with advantage, which is still way too high for really routine tasks. A lot of population statistics use an X/100.000).

What does that mean? It means that if you make too many checks, the players are bound to fail at far greater rates than would be expected, and, unfortunately, DC tables tend to encourage the "let's make a check for it" mentality.


Which is why it's a good thing that the general recomendation for a routine task is "don't roll". Remembering always, of course, the immortal words of Elan and Vaarsuvius (though I grant their advice does not fit all play styles)

Elan: "A 10% chance is pretty unlikely, but everyone knows that a one-in-a-million chance is a sure thing! "

Vaarsuvius: *sigh* "And once again, Probability proves itself willing to sneak into a back alley and service Drama as would a copper-piece harlot"

The problem remains not every DM agrees on what is routine so as not to need a roll, and once they decide a roll is needed they disagree on the difficulty of the task.

[AdAstra]

The problem remains not every DM agrees on what is routine so as not to need a roll, and once they decide a roll is needed they disagree on the difficulty of the task.

Why they disagree would be important for your argument though. If they disagree because they have different preferences for how difficult they want skill use to be in their games, then DC guides won't help much. The DM who wants easy checks will pick situations that offer easier checks, while the DM who wants things to be hard will create more difficult situations that have higher DCs.

Your argument only works if DMs are disagreeing purely on the grounds of verisimilitude. If one DM thinks a climbing a specific tree looks like a DC 10, while another DM thinking of the same tree decides it should be DC 15, and both DMs are running a game where the heroes are supposed to be mythical in nature, then that would be a case where DC tables could be helpful. This is certainly a thing that happens, but I think it's a much smaller subset of the overall issue you present: DMs not having the same DCs for skills.

[Pex]

I agree with just about everything. I am more often a DM over a player, but either way, that DC confuses me, even as a DM. However, the main thing I disagree with is what failing a cooking check to mean. If the food is still edible, just not tasting great... that's barely a failure. Again, I see no reason to roll for something without any real consequences. However, I am now seeing why you all would enjoy having "what a DC means". If not the actual number "DC15", but the consequences of failure. Our ideas of failure differ, and yep, there is no book explanation of it. Again, back at "the game is different at different tables". But based on my idea of "barely a failure", then maybe failing the DC by certain increments should mean different things. I can see the need for better resolution.

But yeah, the king's cook could have sous chefs and so forth that grant advantage making it more simple. If it was just not tasting great, than even a 16% chance of failure is acceptable. If it was "we burned the food, it's inedible", then even a 16% chance of failure is pretty unacceptable. That's still a meal every 2-3 days that's failing.

Again, my solution is that for routine checks like cooking, there should be no roll for it unless there is real consequences. I guess if the players were trying to make a meal to impress the king, yeah they can roll for flavor, as in how well they flavored the meal, maybe it will get them in the kings good graces (or help disguise a poison, etc.) But if it was just trying to cook a meal because they are hungry, then just let em.

Overall, you've convinced me, at least. Although I am not super keen on DCs by the book directly, we should have more resolution mechanics. I know many systems with "degrees of success" mechanics that I have actually been so used to that it was basically how I've been running 5e anyway, even though there are no real rules around it.

To be fair this wasn't my line of thinking. I was paying more attention to the raw number needed for success. However, this method still gives me what I want so if this is the Great Compromise I'm all for it.


Pex, I simply don't have this problem at the table. But the fact is that the rules don't change; for each ability check the situation/setting/conditions changes from event to event. So I don't think I can be of any further help to you.



But I do. I suffer in silence because it is not fun to argue with the DM, though I have spoken up when credulity is really strained. I sigh to myself when my character can't just do something another character in another game can. Even accepting I should roll I cringe when the DCs are different for the exact same thing I want to do. I look at my character sheet and privately weep (metaphorically) a skill proficiency is useless because I can autosucceed where I didn't in another game or lament not having a proficiency for the mirror reason or the DCs are higher. I have no guidance on what skill proficiencies to choose because it's always DC whatever the DM feels like. The only thing I can know for certain is to choose Athletics or Acrobatics because they're useful to get out of grapples, which is a combat thing which has defined rules. I have chosen neither, but I'm still thinking about the combat consequences. I may be playing a spellcaster willing to cast Misty Step or I just accept the weakness or something. Well, yeah, Perception too is important but I don't always select it, sometimes out of metagame spite of it being too important. However, that's a me thing, not an issue of lack of skill DC tables.

[AdAstra]

Pex It feels like you could probably benefit from actually talking to your DM out of game at some point. This feels more like a vent, or some really really indirect way of trying to change your DMs' behavior when you could just ask them about it. Ask for their reasoning, explain why you feel a certain way, go over the math if you have to, and discuss this with the people you actually play with, not just some forum.

I'm not trying to get you to stop posting about this, btw, it's interesting discussion. But this could probably help things a lot.

[diplomancer]

The problem remains not every DM agrees on what is routine so as not to need a roll, and once they decide a roll is needed they disagree on the difficulty of the task.

The problem is actually that most people are very bad at spitballing probabilities for things that are very rare.

The smallest probability that 5e allows for is 1 in 400.

If I told you that, if you go to a particular country, and stay there for 1 year, there is a 1 in 400 chance of you being killed, that might not sound too dangerous to you at first glance, but it actually means that this is the most dangerous country in the world by far. It's about your chance of death if you were a Brit, a French, or an Italian during WWII, though not as bad as if you were a German or a Russian. If you were Polish (the country with the worst death-rate during the war) your chances of being killed in an average year of the war was around 3%.

So, people who think "well, people fall from trees, so there should be a DC for checking whether someone will fall from a particular regular tree with handholds" are wrong by several orders of magnitude, even if they put the DC at "2 with advantage" (and we know perfectly well that this is not the DC they will put)

And if you don't realize that, it's no use having DC tables that state "success automatic", because those DMs will look at such tables and think "wait, this is wrong, people fail at those tasks some times", and then assign some arbitrary, too high DC... as already happens in the rules for climbing, where DMs put things like DC10 for climbing a regular tree (hey, that's easy, right?), even though the rules say specifically that success is automatic unless it's a slippery surface or one without sufficient handholds.

So, my point is this; a DC5 check to climb a tree means actually that this tree is a VERY HARD tree to climb, so that only trained athletes or very strong people can climb it safely and consistently. But if they put that in the rulebooks without going through these steps I just took to explain, just a naked DC table, people will look at it and think "this can't be right"

[AdAstra]

So, my point is this; a DC5 check to climb a tree means actually that this tree is a VERY HARD tree to climb, so that only trained athletes or very strong people can climb it safely and consistently. But if they put that in the rulebooks without going through these steps I just took to explain, just a naked DC table, people will look at it and think "this can't be right"

With the caveat of not having any particular time pressure or added risks. If it was stormy, or you were being shot at, or you had to climb the tree in six seconds, then there would be cause for a much higher DC.

[diplomancer]

With the caveat of not having any particular time pressure or added risks. If it was stormy, or you were being shot at, or you had to climb the tree in six seconds, then there would be cause for a much higher DC.

Climbing speed is, indeed, too fast. A quick solution is to suppose that the "standard" for climbing is a ladder and everything else is difficult terrain.

[AdAstra]

Climbing speed is, indeed, too fast. A quick solution is to suppose that the "standard" for climbing is a ladder and everything else is difficult terrain.

I mean 15 feet in 6 seconds isn't all that fast for a short climb. I would consider Dashing to fall under "trying to climb quickly". And it stands to reason that any swiftness given to you through class features could probably be just as applicable to climbing.

[Mongobear]

I mean 15 feet in 6 seconds isn't all that fast for a short climb. I would consider Dashing to fall under "trying to climb quickly". And it stands to reason that any swiftness given to you through class features could probably be just as applicable to climbing.

It's not just climbing in those 6 seconds. You can still reasonably make an attack with your one handed weapon, cast a spell, or use items, scamper 15ft up a tree, then do something as a bonus action.

Maybe if the ONLY thing you say you're doing is focusing on the climb, sure, autopass. But if someone tried to get as much out od their turn as possible, or Dashed up, they'd be rolling, even if I consider the tree DC 5 or 10.

[AdAstra]

It's not just climbing in those 6 seconds. You can still reasonably make an attack with your one handed weapon, cast a spell, or use items, scamper 15ft up a tree, then do something as a bonus action.

Maybe if the ONLY thing you say you're doing is focusing on the climb, sure, autopass. But if someone tried to get as much out od their turn as possible, or Dashed up, they'd be rolling, even if I consider the tree DC 5 or 10.

I would agree if they had started their turn climbing on a surface. For say, a 15 foot pile of rocks? I would see it as something more akin to a short running start, then a jump on to the surface, using your momentum to speed up climb before swinging your body up and scrambling to your feet. You are supposed to be adventurers after all, I don't mind having things be a little faster than is realistic for the sake of encouraging creative use of movement.

[Mongobear]

I would agree if they had started their turn climbing on a surface. For say, a 15 foot pile of rocks? I would see is as something more akin to a short running start, then a jump on to the surface, using your momentum to make the climb faster. You are supposed to be adventurers after all, I don't mind having things be a little faster than is realistic for the sake of encouraging creative use of movement.

Yeah, to this day I still get flustered when 3D movement becomes a thing. I try to design as 2d as possible, with the exception of walls, boulders, and trees to perch on or give cover, and without fail, I get atleast 1 person trying to turn the fight into a platformer game like Mario.

For 3D diagonal movement, I usually just subtract 5ft from their speed and that's how far you make it total, assuming high enough ability scores/running start. Probably not technically book adherent, but I don't actually know if 3d movement is accounted for in 5e.

[AdAstra]

Yeah, to this day I still get flustered when 3D movement becomes a thing. I try to design as 2d as possible, with the exception of walls, boulders, and trees to perch on or give cover, and without fail, I get atleast 1 person trying to turn the fight into a platformer game like Mario.

For 3D diagonal movement, I usually just subtract 5ft from their speed and that's how far you make it total, assuming high enough ability scores/running start. Probably not technically book adherent, but I don't actually know if 3d movement is accounted for in 5e.

One thing to remember is that a 6-foot-tall character with 8 Str can comfortably jump up and grab a ten-foot-high ledge (can jump 2 feet with a running start, and can reach up to 1.5 times their height, which adds up to 11 in this instance). A fifteen-foot ledge would require only 16 Str. If you're shorter, say 4 feet tall, then this becomes more difficult, but you could still grab the first ledge with 12 Str, though the second would be out of reach even with 20 Str. When you look at those numbers, climbing 15 feet in a round feels a lot more plausible.

Of course, then you look into the math and realize that gaining half your height by reaching up makes for some disturbingly long arms, but again, I can deal with the abstraction when it makes things simpler.

[EggKookoo]

But I do. I suffer in silence because it is not fun to argue with the DM, though I have spoken up when credulity is really strained. I sigh to myself when my character can't just do something another character in another game can. Even accepting I should roll I cringe when the DCs are different for the exact same thing I want to do. I look at my character sheet and privately weep (metaphorically) a skill proficiency is useless because I can autosucceed where I didn't in another game or lament not having a proficiency for the mirror reason or the DCs are higher. I have no guidance on what skill proficiencies to choose because it's always DC whatever the DM feels like. The only thing I can know for certain is to choose Athletics or Acrobatics because they're useful to get out of grapples, which is a combat thing which has defined rules. I have chosen neither, but I'm still thinking about the combat consequences. I may be playing a spellcaster willing to cast Misty Step or I just accept the weakness or something. Well, yeah, Perception too is important but I don't always select it, sometimes out of metagame spite of it being too important. However, that's a me thing, not an issue of lack of skill DC tables.

I'm still having trouble understanding this. Can you provide a real-world example of what you ran into and why it was a problem?

Why does knowing the DCs matter to which proficiencies you choose? Being proficient means you're better at X than you would otherwise be (or, ability mods being equal, better than someone who is not proficient), regardless of the DC. Nothing more. What's the additional information you're expecting to have?

Keep in mind letting you auto succeed because you have proficiency is the DM employing an optional rule from the DMG. That will vary across DMs even if all the DCs were identical.

[diplomancer]

One other things DM could do (and I think a lot of them already do instinctively), is to use the ability check not to see whether the character suceeded in the task, but how well they succeeded. This basically affects how they narrate what happened, but many times do not affect the game result.

[stoutstien]

Yeah, to this day I still get flustered when 3D movement becomes a thing. I try to design as 2d as possible, with the exception of walls, boulders, and trees to perch on or give cover, and without fail, I get atleast 1 person trying to turn the fight into a platformer game like Mario.

For 3D diagonal movement, I usually just subtract 5ft from their speed and that's how far you make it total, assuming high enough ability scores/running start. Probably not technically book adherent, but I don't actually know if 3d movement is accounted for in 5e.

Jumping at angles or to or from a surface is a great example of things that are covered in the rules just poorly.

The jumping up onto a surface at an angle rules are hiding in the long jump section. The total heights is equal to one-fourth (before the DM can add strength (athletic) checks) of the length of the jump distance so if you want to jump high you actually have to jump further.

Frankly the rules suggest that martial characters are jumping around like super Mario.

[KorvinStarmast]

Frankly the rules suggest that martial characters are jumping around like super Mario. Which is fine. :)

[Mongobear]

Jumping at angles or to or from a surface is a great example of things that are covered in the rules just poorly.

The jumping up onto a surface at an angle rules are hiding in the long jump section. The total heights is equal to one-fourth (before the DM can add strength (athletic) checks) of the length of the jump distance so if you want to jump high you actually have to jump further.

Frankly the rules suggest that martial characters are jumping around like super Mario.

Yeah, that combined with a 5ft grid is a weird combination.

Medium creatures (pretty much every PC Race, save Gnome and Halflings) are varied heights, including most of which that are categorically taller than 5ft, some pushing 7-8ft tall. Are they scrunched down and only in a single 5ft cube? Are they hear and shoulders poking above into a 2nd cube?

I've lost count how many times we've had a tall character trying to high jump to attack a flying enemy, and between height, natural reach, and a longer weapon like a greatsword, I just stop and try to do the geometry in my head, but give up and just let it work, assuming it's only a 15-20ft jump.

[stoutstien]

Which is fine. :)

Agreed, but it's a common complaint that a lot of tables treat non magical abilities like this as above normal standard so they apply arbitrary ability checks.
Why didn't the rules come out and just say that characters are performing beyond logical limits?
why there would be a check for climbing a surface when the same character can just run and jump on top of it?
Once a game is set at a certain level it's hard to move it out of it so if a DM opens up by having a prenotion of Martial prowess it could have lasting impacts on the game.

These are things the rules should have covered more blatantly instead of hiding bits and pieces here and there or in some cases you have to extrapolate them by yourself.

based on the rules on how far characters can jump with a full load and attack vs movement speed DND kind of plays out like a Bollywood movie. They are mighty fighters but for some reason it still takes 8 scenes to get across the battlefield.

[EggKookoo]

Why didn't the rules come out and just say that characters are performing beyond logical limits?

I encourage my players to not take the in-game units and distances too literally, which helps. Maybe it stems from playing 1e, with its "inches" unit system, enough to decouple the game-term distances from what would be real-world distances to the characters.

Not a perfect solution for sure but it's just a reminder not to take it too seriously.

[Ravinsild]

Think I acted too defensively when accused of calling people stupid. Shows how human I am. If someone goes out of their way to tell you that they specifically are a wholly rational actor where others are not, they’re usually just fooling themselves, or trying to fool you, or both.

On an u related note, when the DC scale talks about things being Very Easy or Medium, it’s still talking about actual challenges. There needs to be some sort of factor that imposes a meaningful chance of failure. For people in their homes or a King’s chef, I don’t think there would be any such difficulties in most cases. However, making a meal using ingredients you found in the wild, or from whatever rations are available, using fairly minimal equipment over a sinple campfire, as an adventurer would? That’s a challenge. A fairly easy challenge, since food is food, but there are factors that could seriously mess things up. I think, or at least hope, that’s what they meant by cooking a normal meal being DC 10, though I could be wrong there.

I think that's a great insight. It's like when they throw contestants in Master Chef out in a field and are like "MAKE 5 STAR GOURMET RESTAURANT FOOD FROM WHATEVER YOU CAN HUNT OUT HERE" and then somehow they do...or don't. Then Gordon Ramsay gets very upset. It's great. But yeah with your spin on it this makes waaaaaay more sense! Big ups for the big brain my friend.

[Max_Killjoy]

They trust the players and DM's to use their imaginations.


Do you realize how insulting the inverse implication of that statement is? That people who take a different approach "can't use their imagination"?

Never mind that setting difficulties is not about inherently about imagination in the first place, especially if you're a "fiction first" gamer -- for some of us, it's about translating what's already been imagined into a shared framework in the rules so it can be fairly adjudicated.




Yeah, that combined with a 5ft grid is a weird combination.

Medium creatures (pretty much every PC Race, save Gnome and Halflings) are varied heights, including most of which that are categorically taller than 5ft, some pushing 7-8ft tall. Are they scrunched down and only in a single 5ft cube? Are they hear and shoulders poking above into a 2nd cube?

I've lost count how many times we've had a tall character trying to high jump to attack a flying enemy, and between height, natural reach, and a longer weapon like a greatsword, I just stop and try to do the geometry in my head, but give up and just let it work, assuming it's only a 15-20ft jump.


The highly detailed rules for movement (whether they actually work or not) are an interesting counter-example to the "make it up as you go" rules for Ability checks, Skills, etc.

[EggKookoo]

Never mind that setting difficulties is not about inherently about imagination in the first place, especially if you're a "fiction first" gamer -- for some of us, it's about translating what's already been imagined into a shared framework in the rules so it can be fairly adjudicated.

I think the problem here is that none of the mechanics are really grounded in anything. There's little point in defining a concrete picture of what it means to pick a "hard" lock in a game where your relevant ability to do is just expressed as a (typically) single-digit number. Why provide a concrete example of what's involved in the task when the game doesn't provide a concrete example of what it means to accomplish that task? If we're both proficient with lockpicking tools and my Prof Bonus is +2 and yours is +6, what does that mean? I mean aside from you're just going to be able to add 4 more points to your check? The game doesn't explain what proficiency really even is, let alone provide examples for varying levels of it for each application. I don't blame it.

The same is true all over D&D. Why is your health and/or fighting capacity wrapped up in this weird abstraction called hit points? What does it mean in the fiction to add my Str mod to the attack roll for a sword hit? What the heck are spell slots, and why are higher level ones functionally bigger than lower level ones? These things all exist in this strange abstract relative game mechanic layer. Why can't DCs?

A DC of X just means there's a Y% chance of success for a creature with has a Proficiency Bonus of X. Just like an AC of X means a creature must meet X on an adjusted attack roll. We don't get a description of what different ACs mean. We get AC lists for armor and other features that provide or affect it, but that's just lists what that affect is on the stat, not what's actually happening in-fiction to provide it. You can derive it from the fluff, of course, but you can do the same thing with a skill DC.

5e fundamentally is not a fiction-first system. But it's not strictly the opposite (narrative-first?). It's kind of a blend. "Both is happening at the same time."

[Segev]

I just have to say, again, that a benchmark example for each skill at each of the DC thresholds would have been less than a page of text, and would have been more useful than the 2 pages of "just wing it" written half a dozen different ways that we have in the DMG. Moreover, if any DMs disagreed with the benchmarks, they already could ignore them. If the writers really wanted to emphasize how squishy their benchmarks were, they could even have said, "If in doubt, you can use these as a guide, but these are not definitive."

[Max_Killjoy]

I think the problem here is that none of the mechanics are really grounded in anything. There's little point in defining a concrete picture of what it means to pick a "hard" lock in a game where your relevant ability to do is just expressed as a (typically) single-digit number. Why provide a concrete example of what's involved in the task when the game doesn't provide a concrete example of what it means to accomplish that task? If we're both proficient with lockpicking tools and my Prof Bonus is +2 and yours is +6, what does that mean? I mean aside from you're just going to be able to add 4 more points to your check? The game doesn't explain what proficiency really even is, let alone provide examples for varying levels of it for each application. I don't blame it.

The same is true all over D&D. Why is your health and/or fighting capacity wrapped up in this weird abstraction called hit points? What does it mean in the fiction to add my Str mod to the attack roll for a sword hit? What the heck are spell slots, and why are higher level ones functionally bigger than lower level ones? These things all exist in this strange abstract relative game mechanic layer. Why can't DCs?

A DC of X just means there's a Y% chance of success for a creature with has a Proficiency Bonus of X. Just like an AC of X means a creature must meet X on an adjusted attack roll. We don't get a description of what different ACs mean. We get AC lists for armor and other features that provide or affect it, but that's just lists what that affect is on the stat, not what's actually happening in-fiction to provide it. You can derive it from the fluff, of course, but you can do the same thing with a skill DC.

5e fundamentally is not a fiction-first system. But it's not strictly the opposite (narrative-first?). It's kind of a blend. "Both is happening at the same time."

You've just hit the actual issue -- there's no grounding. It's just far more blatant with Ability checks / Skills.

[EggKookoo]

You've just hit the actual issue -- there's no grounding. It's just far more blatant with Ability checks / Skills.

I agree. I'm okay with it, but I agree with the statement.

[Ravinsild]

You've just hit the actual issue -- there's no grounding. It's just far more blatant with Ability checks / Skills.

I'm not sure I would say that. I just think it's subtext. All of the collective "meta" expectations from pop culture references and shared experience of what "D&D is." Which is something typically like medival europe with fairy tales and fantasy come to life where the adventurers are extraordinary heroes (eventually). I think it's an unspoken grounding. I could be wrong though. I think the grounding is whatever Forgotten Realms is like on default and those familiar with it.

[Pex]

The problem is actually that most people are very bad at spitballing probabilities for things that are very rare.

The smallest probability that 5e allows for is 1 in 400.

If I told you that, if you go to a particular country, and stay there for 1 year, there is a 1 in 400 chance of you being killed, that might not sound too dangerous to you at first glance, but it actually means that this is the most dangerous country in the world by far. It's about your chance of death if you were a Brit, a French, or an Italian during WWII, though not as bad as if you were a German or a Russian. If you were Polish (the country with the worst death-rate during the war) your chances of being killed in an average year of the war was around 3%.

So, people who think "well, people fall from trees, so there should be a DC for checking whether someone will fall from a particular regular tree with handholds" are wrong by several orders of magnitude, even if they put the DC at "2 with advantage" (and we know perfectly well that this is not the DC they will put)

And if you don't realize that, it's no use having DC tables that state "success automatic", because those DMs will look at such tables and think "wait, this is wrong, people fail at those tasks some times", and then assign some arbitrary, too high DC... as already happens in the rules for climbing, where DMs put things like DC10 for climbing a regular tree (hey, that's easy, right?), even though the rules say specifically that success is automatic unless it's a slippery surface or one without sufficient handholds.

So, my point is this; a DC5 check to climb a tree means actually that this tree is a VERY HARD tree to climb, so that only trained athletes or very strong people can climb it safely and consistently. But if they put that in the rulebooks without going through these steps I just took to explain, just a naked DC table, people will look at it and think "this can't be right"

If only there were example DC tables to help such people who are poor at coming up with probabilities and knowing when a roll isn't needed.


I'm still having trouble understanding this. Can you provide a real-world example of what you ran into and why it was a problem?

Why does knowing the DCs matter to which proficiencies you choose? Being proficient means you're better at X than you would otherwise be (or, ability mods being equal, better than someone who is not proficient), regardless of the DC. Nothing more. What's the additional information you're expecting to have?

Keep in mind letting you auto succeed because you have proficiency is the DM employing an optional rule from the DMG. That will vary across DMs even if all the DCs were identical.

My 10 ST non-proficient in Athletics warlock was able to climb a tree to observe the enemy, swim a castle moat (accepting I took off my armor), and climb a pile of big rocks without making one ability check. In another game my 18 ST paladin proficient in Athletics wanted to climb a tree to observe the enemy. I had to make a DC 15 check. I rolled low and failed. In another game my 12 ST proficient in Athletics monk wanted to climb a tree to observe the enemy. I had to make a DC 20 check. Fortunately I rolled high and succeeded.

I can guarantee not one of those DMs cared what type of tree it was.

[EggKookoo]

My 10 ST non-proficient in Athletics warlock was able to climb a tree to observe the enemy, swim a castle moat (accepting I took off my armor), and climb a pile of big rocks without making one ability check. In another game my 18 ST paladin proficient in Athletics wanted to climb a tree to observe the enemy. I had to make a DC 15 check. I rolled low and failed. In another game my 12 ST proficient in Athletics monk wanted to climb a tree to observe the enemy. I had to make a DC 20 check. Fortunately I rolled high and succeeded.

If you had the same exact gameplay experiences but each tree had an adjective in front of it (such as "dry and ladder-like" for the first, "wet and mossy" for the second, and "slick and pole-like" for the third), this wouldn't have been a problem?

You're not willing to deduce the (even relative) states of the trees from the DCs?


I can guarantee not one of those DMs cared what type of tree it was.

I bet your PCs cared.

[noob]

If you had the same exact gameplay experiences but each tree had an adjective in front of it (such as "dry and ladder-like" for the first, "wet and mossy" for the second, and "slick and pole-like" for the third), this wouldn't have been a problem?

You're not willing to deduce the (even relative) states of the trees from the DCs?



I bet your PCs cared.
Taking the effort to describe stuff is a great idea and saying "here is a tree roll dice to climb" then failing because it was dc 30 is quite annoying while "this perfectly smooth tree that looks like an utterly perfectly straight pillar with no branches is surrounded by a dreadful glow" is more acceptable

[Sigreid]

If only there were example DC tables to help such people who are poor at coming up with probabilities and knowing when a roll isn't needed.



My 10 ST non-proficient in Athletics warlock was able to climb a tree to observe the enemy, swim a castle moat (accepting I took off my armor), and climb a pile of big rocks without making one ability check. In another game my 18 ST paladin proficient in Athletics wanted to climb a tree to observe the enemy. I had to make a DC 15 check. I rolled low and failed. In another game my 12 ST proficient in Athletics monk wanted to climb a tree to observe the enemy. I had to make a DC 20 check. Fortunately I rolled high and succeeded.

I can guarantee not one of those DMs cared what type of tree it was.

I honestly dont think a table in a book would change this.

[AdAstra]

yeah, again, you should probably discuss this with your dm, Pex. You’ll likely get more benefit from that than talking on that forum.

[EggKookoo]

Taking the effort to describe stuff is a great idea and saying "here is a tree roll dice to climb" then failing because it was dc 30 is quite annoying while "this perfectly smooth tree that looks like an utterly perfectly straight pillar with no branches is surrounded by a dreadful glow" is more acceptable

Right, I think Pex wants these descriptions provided in the rules, which would then include a kind of average, unmodified tree as a baseline (with an associated DC).

My argument is that they're implicit in the DC, and the specific wording should be up to the DM and maybe the players, depending on table style. There is no (or need not be an) average baseline. Specifically, I think the average is something that emerges from play over time.

[Segev]

Right, I think Pex wants these descriptions provided in the rules, which would then include a kind of average, unmodified tree as a baseline (with an associated DC).

My argument is that they're implicit in the DC, and the specific wording should be up to the DM and maybe the players, depending on table style. There is no (or need not be an) average baseline. Specifically, I think the average is something that emerges from play over time.
You're making an assumption that the DM had particularly easy/difficult trees in mind, as opposed to just "a tree." This is a pretty big assumption to make if the DM didn't specify in any description.

To put it another way, Pex might infer from a DC 15 tree that it's particularly smooth and lacks branches in the lower reaches, while Pex's DM in the game where he set the DC to 30 is seeing this DC 15 tree and wondering at just how perfectly ladder-like its construction must be to be so easy to climb. In other words, inferring the state of the tree from the DC alone still leaves people picturing entirely different trees, even if we assume they all had baseline conceptions of what DC a "tree" would be to climb!

This isn't even like with hp, where the description after the fact can tell you what it is the hp in this case are abstractly representing. Here, each observer is "seeing" a totally different tree, because they have no baseline reference other than RL experience, and they each apparently have vastly different experiences with how difficult it is to climb trees.

You can really only infer that a DC 20 tree is "particularly smooth, with flimsy and sparse handholds" if you already have a notion that a more typical tree with gnarled bark and low, sturdy limbs is DC 10 or "trivial and automatic."

Essentially, all these "just infer it from the DC!" admonitions have a hidden assumption that everybody has a baseline to work from already, while trying to defend the lack of a baseline being provided.

[JoeJ]

My 10 ST non-proficient in Athletics warlock was able to climb a tree to observe the enemy, swim a castle moat (accepting I took off my armor), and climb a pile of big rocks without making one ability check. In another game my 18 ST paladin proficient in Athletics wanted to climb a tree to observe the enemy. I had to make a DC 15 check. I rolled low and failed. In another game my 12 ST proficient in Athletics monk wanted to climb a tree to observe the enemy. I had to make a DC 20 check. Fortunately I rolled high and succeeded.

And when you said to the second and third DMs, "That seems a little high. Why is this tree so hard to climb?" what did they tell you?

[Eldariel]

I honestly dont think a table in a book would change this.

I'm fairly certain it would, actually. DMs have wildly different ideas of how hard it is to climb a tree with a plenty of branches as most of them have never done so and some imagine armor gets in the way or whatever. If they had a book telling them approximately how hard it is and how much modifiers affect it, there's no reason they wouldn't just follow the rules instead of coming up with random numbers on the fly (which many DMs do, lacking information on the topic or just not thinking very hard about it). Indeed, the principal issue here are the random numbers that would be completely avoided if there was a guideline for the DMs so they wouldn't have to come up with random numbers. Not all DMs are the same and most are quite inexperienced - they have enough work thinking up encounters and NPC interactions and such without having to worry about all the DCs for the random stuff the PCs might attempt.

[JoeJ]

I'm fairly certain it would, actually. DMs have wildly different ideas of how hard it is to climb a tree with a plenty of branches as most of them have never done so and some imagine armor gets in the way or whatever. If they had a book telling them approximately how hard it is and how much modifiers affect it, there's no reason they wouldn't just follow the rules instead of coming up with random numbers on the fly (which many DMs do, lacking information on the topic or just not thinking very hard about it). Indeed, the principal issue here are the random numbers that would be completely avoided if there was a guideline for the DMs so they wouldn't have to come up with random numbers. Not all DMs are the same and most are quite inexperienced - they have enough work thinking up encounters and NPC interactions and such without having to worry about all the DCs for the random stuff the PCs might attempt.

So you're saying that if there was something in the PHB that said, for example, that the baseline for climbing (whether trees or anything else) is that it doesn't usually require a roll at all, the problem would be solved?

[KorvinStarmast]

Do you realize how insulting the inverse implication of that statement is? Did you ever read TSR's 80's era logo?
This is one example.
https://2warpstoneptune.com/2015/01/05/1983-tsr-products-of-your-imagination-catalog/

RPGs have been since their inception a game of make believe with some structure. (cf Arneson and numerous others who have studied the form seriously).
The amount of structure varies, the game of make believe at the core remains.

Max, it can be entertaining to discuss or argue about these game features away from the game table.

I have found that it is counterproductive, and sometimes toxic, to do so during play.
Goodness, there were a number of AD&D 1e era games that simply blew up due to argument being too much and play too little. Learned a few things there, yeah.
My son quit playing D&D in college (3.x era) due to the people at that table preferring to argue over rules than to actually play. His words, not mine.


it can be fairly adjudicated. That's the role of a referee. And in this edition of this game, that referee is the DM. You can look that up in both the PHB and the DMG. There are other games where that role isn't so codified. (Heck as I am sure you know, there are GMless RPGs). The time to clear up confusion or misunderstanding is outside of play: before or after. Discuss, arrive at a shared understanding.

What is the longest campaign that you've DM'd in D&D 5e?
I've been DMing for about 2.5 years, but that's spread over three different games. We have begun one from level 1 a few months ago and I hope it gets to 10 or 11 before we run out of steam. RL and adults and all that.

My first year was play only, no DM, since I spent so many years as the "go-to" DM. It was nice to just play again.
Another of the games I was playing in died to RL (Dm burnout, and RL with a family).
We maybe have a Star Wars RPG on tap with our core D&D group (where my brother and I share DM roles). GM is an old friend.

I find 5e very easy to DM with a table full of people who want to plan and have fun. None of these alleged problems crop up during play; these alleged problems strike me as hypothetical problems, not real ones.

I guess it depends on who you have at the table and what they bring with them.

[EggKookoo]

You're making an assumption that the DM had particularly easy/difficult trees in mind, as opposed to just "a tree." This is a pretty big assumption to make if the DM didn't specify in any description.

...snipping...

Essentially, all these "just infer it from the DC!" admonitions have a hidden assumption that everybody has a baseline to work from already, while trying to defend the lack of a baseline being provided.

The word for something in between "easy" and "hard" is "medium," which has an associated DC (15). I mean unless the argument being presented here is that "medium" isn't a good word to describe something that's typical, average, or middle-of-the-road in general characteristics. I'm not sure what to do with that.

If you put a tree in front of me and I ask "does this tree look easy or hard to climb?" I kind of expect an answer. Or at least some indication that I can't tell. If you say "it's just a tree" I'm going to assume it's medium. If you say it's DC 20 I'm going to understand that to mean the tree is hard to climb for some reason.

If you tell me it looks easy but then give it a DC of 20, I'm going to ask if you're aware that "easy" has an associated DC already, and that by setting the DC to 20 you're actually communicating that the tree looks very hard to climb. I mean you can call it "easy" all you want, but that DC 20 is what matters.

But I'm not sure Pex's issue is with the label/DC association. I think he just wants to know what the baseline average DC is. To which, if backed against a wall, I would say 15, since that's "medium." But I suspect that still won't satisfy.

[noob]

The word for something in between "easy" and "hard" is "medium," which has an associated DC (15). I mean unless the argument being presented here is that "medium" isn't a good word to describe something that's typical, average, or middle-of-the-road in general characteristics. I'm not sure what to do with that.

If you put a tree in front of me and I ask "does this tree look easy or hard to climb?" I kind of expect an answer. Or at least some indication that I can't tell. If you say "it's just a tree" I'm going to assume it's medium. If you say it's DC 20 I'm going to understand that to mean the tree is hard to climb for some reason.

If you tell me it looks easy but then give it a DC of 20, I'm going to ask if you're aware that "easy" has an associated DC already, and that by setting the DC to 20 you're actually communicating that the tree looks very hard to climb. I mean you can call it "easy" all you want, but that DC 20 is what matters.

But I'm not sure Pex's issue is with the label/DC association. I think he just wants to know what the baseline average DC is. To which, if backed against a wall, I would say 15, since that's "medium." But I suspect that still won't satisfy.
And 15 seems way too high for most trees in real life.
unless you are telling me that there is a surprisingly high number of people with both high str(14+) and proficiency in climbing.

[Max_Killjoy]

Did you ever read TSR's 80's era logo?
This is one example.
https://2warpstoneptune.com/2015/01/05/1983-tsr-products-of-your-imagination-catalog/

RPGs have been since their inception a game of make believe with some structure. (cf Arneson and numerous others who have studied the form seriously).
The amount of structure varies, the game of make believe at the core remains.

Max, it can be entertaining to discuss or argue about these game features away from the game table.

I have found that it is counterproductive, and sometimes toxic, to do so during play.
Goodness, there were a number of AD&D 1e era games that simply blew up due to argument being too much and play too little. Learned a few things there, yeah.
My son quit playing D&D in college (3.x era) due to the people at that table preferring to argue over rules than to actually play. His words, not mine.

That's the role of a referee. And in this edition of this game, that referee is the DM. You can look that up in both the PHB and the DMG. There are other games where that role isn't so codified. (Heck as I am sure you know, there are GMless RPGs). The time to clear up confusion or misunderstanding is outside of play: before or after. Discuss, arrive at a shared understanding.

What is the longest campaign that you've DM'd in D&D 5e?
I've been DMing for about 2.5 years, but that's spread over three different games. We have begun one from level 1 a few months ago and I hope it gets to 10 or 11 before we run out of steam. RL and adults and all that.

My first year was play only, no DM, since I spent so many years as the "go-to" DM. It was nice to just play again.
Another of the games I was playing in died to RL (Dm burnout, and RL with a family).
We maybe have a Star Wars RPG on tap with our core D&D group (where my brother and I share DM roles). GM is an old friend.

I find 5e very easy to DM with a table full of people who want to plan and have fun. None of these alleged problems crop up during play; these alleged problems strike me as hypothetical problems, not real ones.

I guess it depends on who you have at the table and what they bring with them.


So... what does any of that have to do with the fact that it's really damn insulting to even imply that people who don't agree with your position, or come at things like setting DCs vs describing the scene differently (than you do?), aren't able to think for themselves or lack imagination?

Your post strongly implied that people who can't come up with a *thing* to match the DC they have in mind, lack imagination or are experiencing a supposed failure of imagination -- when the fact is that they already have the *thing* in their imagination, and are looking for the DC that most faithfully captures the challenge presented to the character by *thing*, so that the situation can be fairly adjudicated within the game's mechanics / rules.

Generally but most especially for that approach, having a shared framework / baseline is a good way to avoid arguments...

[EggKookoo]

And 15 seems way too high for most trees in real life.
unless you are telling me that there is a surprisingly high number of people with both high str(14+) and proficiency in climbing.

You don't make a check to climb a tree.

You do make a check to climb that tree right there, right now, because that orc over there is running at you with his axe out.

I can swing a sword at a target dummy all day. Do I really need to make an attack roll for that?

Edit: Also, like mentioned earlier in the thread, the 15 is medium for a creature with no athletics proficiency and +0 STR. That creature, under duress like the orc coming at him, will still scamper up a tree more than half the time. Another way of putting it is, if you take that creature and put him into a forest, he can climb up more than half of the trees before him.

Edit 2: Ok, for a medium tree that's 25% of the time. I'll let you judge it that's more realistic. Just remember that "medium" isn't "easy."

[MaxWilson]

Edit: Also, like mentioned earlier in the thread, the 15 is medium for a creature with no athletics proficiency and +0 STR. That creature, under duress like the orc coming at him, will still scamper up a tree more than half the time. Another way of putting it is, if you take that creature and put him into a forest, he can climb up more than half of the trees before him.

Your math is wrong.

[EggKookoo]

Your math is wrong.

Oh, sorry, that was for easy. Thanks.

I'll edit.

Edit here: I know it sounds like I'm covering my ass, but honestly when I was typing it out with the wrong math I thought "wow, that seems easy (to climb)." Turns out I was right.

[Eldariel]

So you're saying that if there was something in the PHB that said, for example, that the baseline for climbing (whether trees or anything else) is that it doesn't usually require a roll at all, the problem would be solved?

A table of DCs is more compelling than a statement that there need be no DCs. Again, many DMs feel like this is something you should be able to fail so they want you to roll (as evident in Pex's experience for example; mine agrees to a degree - and no, I'm not quitting a game over a DM making bad calls with some checks). Of course, such statement in actual text is also easy to overlook so I'm not certain how many DMs have even read that part; tables are clear and you know where to look for what you're looking but if you're pressed for time, you'll probably skim over the text as unimportant. As such, yeah, I think if the game had a table instead the situation would've been different in all these cases. Never in my life have I had a 3.X DM vary the given DCs without giving some kind of descriptive text that predicts more or less difficulty. Establishing a numeric baseline but keeping it numeric is pretty important for a unified experience across the board because what people want out of the rules varies.

[KorvinStarmast]

So... what does any of that have to do with the fact that it's really damn insulting to even imply that people who don't agree with your position, or come at things like setting DCs vs describing the scene differently (than you do?), aren't able to think for themselves or lack imagination? From this I understand that you (1) have no experience running the system (if I misread this, please correct me) but that you are (2) looking for something to disagree with me about. No insult was intended.

The shared space during the gameplay of this edition of this RPG is in the imagination of the DM's and the Players. It was most forcefully brought home to me one night a couple of years ago when our DM had us do a chase scene in a city, with no board, no grid, just us, a die roll here and there, and loads of description and narration on both sides of the table.

It was great, and it really brought home the emphasis on primarily using one's imagination for play.

Here's a thing that really floored me: as I began to dig into this edition, and try and let go of my previous edition assumptions, was that this edition was built with theater of the mind as the base mode of play.

It took me quite a bit of effort to wrap my brain around that. (And it does not help that I played a few dungeon-crawl type CRPGs starting a few decades ago). I had to reach back to late 70's games with no board, a DM rolling all of the dice, and us running around a city campaign on hair raising adventures to re boot my play to ToTM. When you don't have a player versus dm climate at the table, these things work really well. (That's why I mentioned the trust thing a few pages back. I think it makes a big difference).

All those years I had spent playing using battle mats - hard to let go.

Which brings me to arguing about DCs with the DM: what's the point? My experience with this edition tells me as a player that there isn't one. d20 is swingy, so you'll either pass or fail. And then make the next decision as a consequence of that success or failure. What does it matter that I need to roll a 12, a 13, or a 19? I only get one roll, two if I have a way to make the roll with advantage, three if I have the lucky feat and advantage. Here comes the element of chance: roll and see.

PS: as I review a few other answers, I see that we seem to agree with EggKooKoo on something.

5e fundamentally is not a fiction-first system. But it's not strictly the opposite (narrative-first?). It's kind of a blend. "Both is happening at the same time." I think that's a pretty good observation.