DCs for A Cooking Challenge?

[Palanan]

Does Pathfinder have any rules on what the DCs should be for cooking various meals? Are there specific DCs for preparing fine meals, noble feasts, royal banquets?

If not, how would you go about pegging those values?

[icefractal]

Well, masterwork items are DC 20, so that seems like a good benchmark for notably gourmet meals. DC 10 would be an adequate but unremarkable meal, DC 15 could be a high-quality meal as one would expect a good restaurant to provide.

You could also base it on Perform, in which case:
10 - Routine meal
15 - Good meal
20 - Great meal; consistently hitting this could get you hired professionally and/or give you a local reputation
25 - Memorable meal; consistently hitting this could attract noble patrons and/or a national reputation
30 - Extraordinary meal; could attract major (possibly extradimensional) patrons and/or a worldwide reputation.

If it's a cooking competition though, the more important factor is how you compare to the other contestant's totals.

[BioCharge]

The d20PFSRD has rules for skill challenges if you want something more complex that a single roll. The rules are fairly decent, if complex. I've run them a couple times of various kinds (a couple chases, an influence challenge, some various other ones) and they tended to go well. The site even has one premade for cooking challenges already, to boot!

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/skill-challenges/#Cooking_Competition_Cooking_Competition

[NichG]

Is this meant to be a quick thing, or are you building a session around a cooking competition or something like that?

What I might do if this were for a cooking competition intended to be a big chunk of table time would be to say that each ingredient has a DC to prepare correctly, and is worth a certain number of points served alone but perhaps with tags that let the thing the judges ate previously or immediately afterwards modify those points. If you flub the DC on the ingredient, the points are subtracted rather than added. Then you and the opponent add one ingredient at a time to your first dish in alternating turns until each dish has three ingredients, judge that dish, iterate through the courses of a meal.

You could simplify it/abstract it to say, the two contestants are playing a game of chicken. They set the DCs that they're trying to hit, add the DC to their score if they hit it (no natural 20s = autosuccess here since its a skill check) or instead subtract a flat penalty if they miss it. They do three rounds of this (or five, or whatever), and are aware of each-others' scores when setting their next DC. Winner is the one with the highest accumulated score. Maybe setting the DC higher than a certain level requires they go and acquire special ingredients before-hand, so even if you do Surge of Fortune or something to hit a very high DC you'd still be capped by the DCs of normally available mundane ingredients capping out in the 20 range, and you'd have to bring in Dragon Steak or Myconid Truffle or some ridiculous thing to push it to 30 or 40.

Edit, because I might be a little obsessed...:

A Competition consists of three Dishes (Appetizer, Entree, and Desert), each with three Ingredients: a Main Element, an Accent, and a Seasoning. Each Ingredient requires a Craft(Cooking) check of an associated DC to incorporate it correctly (gaining its Success effects on the Dish), otherwise the Dish is modified according to its Failure effects. Ingredients have Tags such as <Salty>, <Sweet>, <Spicy>, etc which define interactions.

A Synergy means that if this ingredient appears in the same Dish as another ingredient with the appropriate tag, the score of the Dish is increased by 2 if the ingredient was used successfully.

A Clash means that if the next Dish the tasters consume has an ingredient with the associated tag, the score of that Dish is decreased by 2 if the Clashing ingredient was used successfully. If it occurs with the associated tag in the same Dish, the score of the Dish is decreased by 4 - this happens whether or not the Clashing ingredient was used successfully, so beware!

An Affinity means that this ingredient is highly appropriate for one of Appetizer, Entree, or Dessert; or for one of Main Element, Accent, or Seasoning, and increases the score of the Dish by 1 if used in that context successfully but decreases the score of the Dish by

A chef may opt to Transform an ingredient, removing one Tag or Property (such as Synergy, Clash, Affinity, or any single named effect) of the ingredient at the cost of increasing the DC by +4. This can be done at most once per ingredient.

A chef may opt to Elevate a single ingredient in each Dish, increasing its DC by +4 but doubling the effects of its Synergies and Clashes.

Judges each grant a score to the dish on the basis of points accumulated by the effects of the dish's ingredients. However, particular Judges may have preferences for certain tags, granting bonuses or penalties (ranging from -3 to +3 in normal circumstances) to their score on the basis of the presence of those tags. For example, a Judge may not like <Salty> Desserts and may subtract 2 points for such a combination. This can either be overtly advertised, or requires a Sense Motive check on the part of the chef to discover, depending on the nature of the competition. There may also be competition requirements such as using certain ingredients, using certain tags, etc, which may result in penalties or disqualification independently of judge preferences.

Sample Ingredients

Salt <Salty>
DC: 10
Affinity: Seasoning
Success: +2
Failure: -5

Chile Powder <Hot>
DC: 13
Affinity: Seasoning
Synergy: Sweet
Success: +4
Failure: -2

Chocolate <Bitter>
DC: 18
Affinity: Dessert
Synergy: Hot, Salty
Success: +5
Failure: -2

Bell Peppers <Sweet>
DC: 10
Synergy: Sour
Success: +3
Failure: 0

Phase Spider Web Gland <Sour>
DC: 30
Clash: Salty
Success: +5, removes the effects of a random ingredient of your opponent's next dish
Failure: -2

Green Dragon Steak <Umami>
DC: 25
Affinity: Entree
Synergy: Bitter
Success: +7
Failure: -3, resultant dish deals 1d3 acid damage on consumption.

... and so on

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by icefractal
You could also base it on Perform, in which case….

Excellent suggestion, thanks.


Originally Posted by BioCharge
The d20PFSRD has rules for skill challenges….

I appreciate it, but should’ve mentioned I’m looking for first-party material only.


Originally Posted by NichG
What I might do if this were for a cooking competition….

Did you come up with all that on the fly?

If so, very impressive—a subsystem for cooking challenges. My only question is what XP rewards would be involved.