Why is long jump distance so short?

[Darth Credence]

Sure, but that's not the actual ask. What if fútbol had a rule in which the team who had possession of the ball in the other teams half the most (something easily tracked these days), was the tie-breaker, instead of getting 1 point each (or going to penalty kicks)? This is basically what the 'complex skills' folk are asking for, in a pretty bad sports analogy. Possession requires a hell of a lot more general team skill than passing the ball forward to your striker to try to get a gol. And keeping the ball in the other teams half even more so. (Personally, I think such a rule would end up generating more gols, since both teams would be pressing forward more often than just passing it in the backfield hoping to open up defense.)

The closest any version of D&D got to skills as combat, was 4Es badly executed and badly received Skill Challenges. It was a subsystem that didn't get enough love, but the IDEA of it is definitely in the right direction. Now, is it still D&D? Much like fútbol with a modified skill rule... yes, I believe it would be (certainly more so than going in the opposite direction and everything is a single roll of the die).

I'm sorry, but I have no idea what you are trying to say here. I was responding to the idea that you can make combat work like skills currently work, with the DM deciding on a DC and having a roll to determine who wins. This idea was brought up to say that those who think skills should work the way they do would be fine with that because it is making them do the same thing. The important part is that the game is about combat, so abstracting combat that much would make it not the same game, in the same way that changing fútbol to just a series of penalty kicks would work but not be the same game.

I was not saying that it would not be D&D if you beefed up the skill complexity. I was saying that it would not be D&D if you removed the combat complexity, which is a completely different thing.

[Telok]

No, it's a false equivalence (or more precisely a category error) no matter what.

Combat is not in the same class of references as ability checks. Abiliity checks are atomic units used to resolve specific uncertainty about specific tasks. It's one of the basic primitives of the game. Combat is a scenario, not a mechanical unit and includes ability checks, attack rolls, and saving throws, definitionally (because everything is built out of those units).

Nonsense. You say it yourself later on in the post, you can make a multi-check scenario for skills. That's all combat is right now, a group multi-check scenario.

Break it down:
1. Roll to see what order characters go in
Then for each actor in the scenario:
2. Roll to see if the character affecs the status quo or cast a spell and do that bundle of special exception rules.
3. Update the scenario and check win/loss conditions
Repeat 2 & 3 until finished.

Combat is literally just a bunch of characters doing ability checks vs dcs until you reach a win/loss condition. There's no mechanical difference between a strength+athletic prof check vs dc 18 and a strength+weapon prof check vs plate.

The big smoke & mirrors is the hit point mechanic, having a bunch of predefined actions & tools, and combat having preset dcs & win/loss states. To make a skill encounter have that all you need to do is add hit points, define which tools reduce hit points by how much, define dcs for the pcs to affect the status, and predefine what actions are allowed so the players can't just try anything they want. To make a combat into an extended skill check you just remove hit points, ignore damage differences between the tools, define the default win/loss condition, you don't have to define dcs because saves and ac are those dc charts and formulas, and throw out the predefined combat actions to allow the players the freedom to try anything they want.

Any time you collapse a complex task into a single ability check you can do the same for a similarly complex combat. Hitting up a bunch of taverns to get rumors and maybe find someone? Lots of different checks from the whole party making incremental progress & setbacks like a combat, or one charisma ability check from the sorcerer? Twenty kobolds attacking a 15th level party? Lots of different checks from the whole party making incremental progress & setbacks like a combat, or one spell slot from the sorcerer? You can just change the fluff description of a dragon and its stuff, change the hp gain/loss into statuses or other effects, and run that encounter as a heist, or schmoozing at a party, or surviving a desert trek, or some other skill challenge. Either way it works and its D&D.

[NichG]

Nonsense. You say it yourself later on in the post, you can make a multi-check scenario for skills. That's all combat is right now, a group multi-check scenario.

Break it down:
1. Roll to see what order characters go in
Then for each actor in the scenario:
2. Roll to see if the character affecs the status quo or cast a spell and do that bundle of special exception rules.
3. Update the scenario and check win/loss conditions
Repeat 2 & 3 until finished.

Combat is literally just a bunch of characters doing ability checks vs dcs until you reach a win/loss condition. There's no mechanical difference between a strength+athletic prof check vs dc 18 and a strength+weapon prof check vs plate.

The big smoke & mirrors is the hit point mechanic, having a bunch of predefined actions & tools, and combat having preset dcs & win/loss states. To make a skill encounter have that all you need to do is add hit points, define which tools reduce hit points by how much, define dcs for the pcs to affect the status, and predefine what actions are allowed so the players can't just try anything they want. To make a combat into an extended skill check you just remove hit points, ignore damage differences between the tools, define the default win/loss condition, you don't have to define dcs because saves and ac are those dc charts and formulas, and throw out the predefined combat actions to allow the players the freedom to try anything they want.

Any time you collapse a complex task into a single ability check you can do the same for a similarly complex combat. Hitting up a bunch of taverns to get rumors and maybe find someone? Lots of different checks from the whole party making incremental progress & setbacks like a combat, or one charisma ability check from the sorcerer? Twenty kobolds attacking a 15th level party? Lots of different checks from the whole party making incremental progress & setbacks like a combat, or one spell slot from the sorcerer? You can just change the fluff description of a dragon and its stuff, change the hp gain/loss into statuses or other effects, and run that encounter as a heist, or schmoozing at a party, or surviving a desert trek, or some other skill challenge. Either way it works and its D&D.

Individual statuses (and in general, having individuals in a scenario responsible for maintaining their own ability to act and having that ability to act be in peril) would definitely be a good design element in expanding one-shot resolution elsewhere.

It's not just 'you need 5 gather information checks at 5 different taverns', its 'whoever you send to gather information or spread rumors will start to get noticed, and counter rumors will spread which might make it impossible for them to be the one to do some later stage of the process - so if your best guy at gathering information is also your best guy at deception and also your best guy at persuasion, do you burn them on the information gathering stage or do you reserve them for conning their way into your target's organization once you've found them, or do you reserve them to play a more persuasive role? If you try to do all three with one character, the DCs will be 10 or even 15 points higher by the end.'

Just having a list of 'non-combat status conditions or status trackers' might be good inspiration here. Things like 'Under Suspicion' or 'Fugitive' or 'Social Upkeep' (how much of this character's time is needed to maintain current connections, relationships, facades, etc? - chance that when they urgently need to do X at a specific time, there's some Y that they have to sacrifice to do it), etc.

[schm0]

Any time you collapse a complex task into a single ability check you can do the same for a similarly complex combat.

There is no ability check in the game that is in the same universe of complexity as a combat encounter. They are simply not comparable.

[JNAProductions]

There is no ability check in the game that is in the same universe of complexity as a combat encounter. They are simply not comparable.

A 20th level party finds a single hostile goblin.
A 4th level party has to climb a magical tower, with shifting walls and built-in wards, where the only entrance is 200' up and partially hidden.

[schm0]

A 20th level party finds a single hostile goblin.
A 4th level party has to climb a magical tower, with shifting walls and built-in wards, where the only entrance is 200' up and partially hidden.

Your second example is an entire exploration encounter, not a single ability check.

[JNAProductions]

You second example is an entire exploration encounter, not a single ability check.

Then would you also say "There is no attack roll in the game that is in the same universe of complexity as an exploration encounter."?

[schm0]

Then would you also say "There is no attack roll in the game that is in the same universe of complexity as an exploration encounter."?

I would if that were what was being compared, but it wasn't.

[Segev]

The flaw with this argument is obvious, though.

Combat encounters are the medium through which a significant portion of unique character abilities and mechanics are expressed. It can take hours to resolve a single encounter. They involves hundreds of rules, which are entirely objective. They are crucial to the adventuring day and the depletion of resources. They are incredibly impactful, with the capability to the kill the PCs, hand out status effects, and generally challenge them in a tactical, strategic sense. They represent a significant portion of the adventure, often taking up the majority of a session.

In other words, they're complex.

Skill checks are universal and work the same way for everyone. They are resolved in seconds. They involve only a handful of rules, and are largely subjective. They are entirely resourceless and don't impact the adventuring day. The maximum impact of a skill check will only ever affect a single attempt to complete a single task. They represent small moments in the adventure.

In other words, they're simple.

This is a classic false equivalence.

One is difficult to determine at a glance.

The other is not (or at least, it shouldn't be.)

The complexity of these systems is largely proportional to their overall importance and impact on the game. If you want to make skill checks more complicated, the impact will be relatively small. If you want to make combat more abstract, then the impact is a fundamental change to the entire game.
Thing is, the part I bolded here need not be true. You could have a game where combat is poorly defined and exploration abilities are what most character abilities express themselves as.

Or, as I think most people on the "Give us more than combat" side of this would request, you could have more abilities that express themselves in pillars other than combat (or at least in more pillars than JUST combat).

All of that said, we still have the juxtaposition of a hard-and-fast rule for jumping distance minima next to the utter lack of any guidance on how much further one can jump than that with a Strenght(Athletics) roll. And for those who say, "Well, each jump is different; how slick is the floor or whatnot?" I have to ask, "Why is the minimum distance the same regardless of these factors, and why does whatever answer you have not apply if a formula is given for that roll to extend the distance?"

[Theodoxus]

There is no ability check in the game that is in the same universe of complexity as a combat encounter. They are simply not comparable.

Uh, for the umpteenth time, we know. Which is why we're not talking about the current game. We're talking about how to make it so there is a simple comparison between a complex ability check routine and a complex combat encounter.


All of that said, we still have the juxtaposition of a hard-and-fast rule for jumping distance minima next to the utter lack of any guidance on how much further one can jump than that with a Strength (Athletics) roll. And for those who say, "Well, each jump is different; how slick is the floor or whatnot?" I have to ask, "Why is the minimum distance the same regardless of these factors, and why does whatever answer you have not apply if a formula is given for that roll to extend the distance?"

OTOH, we don't have combat rules that allow you to just deal more damage if you 'roll well enough' oh wait, criticals... so I guess allow critical rolls to double jump distance? It's not an auto success... even if you crit your jump, you're not jumping to the moon... Not sure what criting on a Persuasion check does, or any of the Int skills... so, maybe that's not a great idea...

Of course, no one is going to be happy if it's not officially sanctioned by WotC, so /shrug.

[schm0]

Thing is, the part I bolded here need not be true. You could have a game where combat is poorly defined and exploration abilities are what most character abilities express themselves as

Or, as I think most people on the "Give us more than combat" side of this would request, you could have more abilities that express themselves in pillars other than combat (or at least in more pillars than JUST combat).

All of that said, we still have the juxtaposition of a hard-and-fast rule for jumping distance minima next to the utter lack of any guidance on how much further one can jump than that with a Strenght(Athletics) roll. And for those who say, "Well, each jump is different; how slick is the floor or whatnot?" I have to ask, "Why is the minimum distance the same regardless of these factors, and why does whatever answer you have not apply if a formula is given for that roll to extend the distance?"

Nobody is arguing you can't make whatever game you want with whatever rules you want. But at a certain point that game stops being D&D, which, in my opinion, a game without a sophisticated tactical combat pillar would no longer be.

You also claim there is a lack of guidance when it comes to extraordinary jumps, but that is also not true (it's found on DMG 238). It's just that some people (I assume yourself included) don't prefer the subjective nature of establishing DCs and want something with more crunch.

And to answer your question, the reason for the formula is to establish a floor for all PCs based on a common ability, and to allow those who invested in Athletics to more confidently risk jumping to extraordinary lengths and heights.

[Deepbluediver]

Holy heck, how did this thread reach 18 pages?!?!?

I want to comment on the OP's post, but I also don't want to repeat something that's already been discussed to death. Can anyone summarize what's been covered or finalized, already?

[GloatingSwine]

Holy heck, how did this thread reach 18 pages?!?!?

I want to comment on the OP's post, but I also don't want to repeat something that's already been discussed to death. Can anyone summarize what's been covered or finalized, already?

When a thread like this reaches 18 pages it is because the only thing anyone can agree on is that the other guy is wrong.

[Segev]

Nobody is arguing you can't make whatever game you want with whatever rules you want. But at a certain point that game stops being D&D, which, in my opinion, a game without a sophisticated tactical combat pillar would no longer be.Given that my point was that the argument for why there "can't" be sophisticated exploration and social pillars doesn't hold water, I have no problem agreeing with you, here. It doesn't really bear on what I was getting at, though, which is that we could ALSO have features and abilities that express themselves in the other two pillars, adding (or inspiring the addition of) depth to them.


You also claim there is a lack of guidance when it comes to extraordinary jumps, but that is also not true (it's found on DMG 238). It's just that some people (I assume yourself included) don't prefer the subjective nature of establishing DCs and want something with more crunch.Nobody has yet been able to explain to me how I judge whether it is easy, hard, or nigh impossible to jump an extra five feet over that minimum.


And to answer your question, the reason for the formula is to establish a floor for all PCs based on a common ability, and to allow those who invested in Athletics to more confidently risk jumping to extraordinary lengths and heights.Except that the latter isn't actually present, as investment in Athletics has no conception of just how much more than that minimum it can buy you.

Also, once again, the context I thought I was careful to lay out was the argument that we can't possibly have a formula or any guidance because all possible flooring and jumping conditions can't be accounted for, so the DC could be anything and is too case-specific to have a formula. In that context, the fixed hard-and-fast minimum also should be impossible, and yet, there it sits, in black and white.

[Aimeryan]

Nobody has yet been able to explain to me how I judge whether it is easy, hard, or nigh impossible to jump an extra five feet over that minimum.

It isn't even clear WHO these are meant to be easy, hard, or nigh impossible for. Such terms are relative, yet no subject is given. Is it for a middle-aged dad who other than running around after his children all day doesn't get to do much exercise? Is a teenage athlete competing at school events? Is it an olympian long jumper? Is it the character themselves?

The last one has some quite... odd results. As they get a higher proficiency bonus and better stats the task would become easier, no? So you also... lower the DC? So, it double dips?

The thing is, I'm not an olympian long jumper. I'm not a character with 18 strength and +4 proficiency bonus in a game world with magic. Where exactly am I drawing on the knowledge to base how difficult doing things as these entities would be? Is that not the designers job? Is every DM meant to be able to do this at the drop of a hat?

[Lucas Yew]

Holy heck, how did this thread reach 18 pages?!?!?

I want to comment on the OP's post, but I also don't want to repeat something that's already been discussed to death. Can anyone summarize what's been covered or finalized, already?

The degrees for Simulationism and DM Empowerment, which this thread brims with, were classically infernally fought topics in D&D-ism. Not a big surprise, really.

[GooeyChewie]

Nobody has yet been able to explain to me how I judge whether it is easy, hard, or nigh impossible to jump an extra five feet over that minimum.
That's because the system is not designed for the DM to determine some objective difficulty of various tasks. The "easy/hard/nigh impossible" categories are the answer to the question "how much of a challenge do I want this obstacle to be to the party?", not "how objectively difficult is this task?".

Yes, that does mean that different DMs might use different DCs for jumping an extra five feet over the minimum. That's a good thing, because it allows different DMs (or even the same DM in running different adventures) to run different styles of play to suit their individual table in their particular adventure.

I will admit the books do a very poor job of explaining how DCs are supposed to work. I hope the 2024 rulebooks improve that section of the rules. But "what exact DC is this exact task" is not something that the system is trying to answer, nor is it something I hope to see the system try to answer. I appreciate the flexibility of not having to adjust my world to make the DCs turn out the way I want them.

[Deepbluediver]

When a thread like this reaches 18 pages it is because the only thing anyone can agree on is that the other guy is wrong.

The degrees for Simulationism and DM Empowerment, which this thread brims with, were classically infernally fought topics in D&D-ism. Not a big surprise, really.
Lol, thanks y'all- I appreciate it. OK let me take a swing at adding my 2 cents, then, because I really like discussing game design and what people aim to get out of it.




@OP: The short answer to "why so short, etc" is that it seems the designers wanted to keep all skill-checks within the realm of realistic human possibility (I'm not familiar with balance in all of 5E to say if they achieved this consistently), and the designers wanted to reserve the super-human stuff for things like Spells, Class Features, or Feats.

For perspective, also compare 5E to 3.5, which absolutely did add EPIC-level skill checks later in the cycle, things like: Balance on a Cloud - DC 120.
At that point though the roll on your d20 is much less relevant than "can you cheese your bonus to be triple digits?".

Also in 3.5, it wasn't uncommon to end up in situations where, just by mid levels, you would have a DC that some members of your party couldn't possibly succeed at while other members couldn't possible fail. So in 5E the designers basically capped all the bonuses at much lower levels, that way there's always overlap between the best and worst members of a party. Unfortunately when you have much less range to play with, what your high-level players can do consistently is still in reach of low-level players. So if you don't want lowbies to accidentally make legendary world-record-breaking jumps, you might end up eliminating that possibility entirely, even for high-level players.

At this point it kinda becomes a breakdown between roleplay and roll-play: characters that are described at "superhuman" in the text don't act that way when the dice come out, and aren't nearly as rare as you would expect. Whether it was a stat of 20 in 5E or 18 in 3.5, these things are DESCRIBED as being practically unheard, once-in-a-century type of stats, but it's relatively trivial for the party to achieve them. And if your millions of nameless humanoid NPCs are all rolling 3d6 for stats, in a world of a few million people then a few thousand of them would have a max-stat in at least 1 ability score. So it's basically a case of "writers can't do statistics".
The only way you end up with that "unheard of ability score" is if the PCs are the only humanoids rolls for stats, and every single other character just takes the ****** peasant ability-array, or something like that.

This basically came up in another thread I was reading recently- what not to do when designing a game-world. And to paraphrase it was basically "don't describe common or mundane things as legendary or mythic, etc". So a Feat that increases your jump-distance (called, oh, lets just say "Legendary Athlete") by 5ft. might be enough to break the world-record IRL, but is it impressive in the context of a standard D&D campaign? Not so much.


So to conclude, (1) if this really bothers you then I would go back to the beginning, look at where the distribution of ability scores falls for your world falls, and decide what you want the breakpoints for various categories to be: crippled, normal, heroic, legendary, etc. And if to many people are going to fall in the "legendary" category, then maybe just remove that from the language of your system reference document until you find a way to make it actually legendary. Which bring us to (2) also sit down and consider how to rescale the DC's or add more room for growth or to let characters to outperform the described limits. Something like a "critical success" or a feat that lets you jump TWICE AS FAR as normal, swim for hours in heavy armor, etc etc etc. I'd be perfectly OK with that- IMO we chucked realism out the window a long ago enough time that it should barely be visible in the rearview mirror as we ramp our car off a giant cliff labeled "fun" and "awesome".

[schm0]

Nobody has yet been able to explain to me how I judge whether it is easy, hard, or nigh impossible to jump an extra five feet over that minimum.

That advice is in the section I cited, but if you are insisting on an objective method for doing so, you won't find it. 5e DCs are subjective. And that's the philosophical divide. How you judge is how you judge. That's the answer.


Except that the latter isn't actually present, as investment in Athletics has no conception of just how much more than that minimum it can buy you.

Sure it does, it's just not quantifiable. It is designed this way to allow DMs to tailor the game the way they see fit.


Also, once again, the context I thought I was careful to lay out was the argument that we can't possibly have a formula or any guidance because all possible flooring and jumping conditions can't be accounted for, so the DC could be anything and is too case-specific to have a formula. In that context, the fixed hard-and-fast minimum also should be impossible, and yet, there it sits, in black and white.

The distance required for a running jump, hurdle height and the minimum distance leapt are the only aspects covered by the jumping rules. You can absolutely account for such conditions by applying skill checks to the other portions of the jump. For example, you could call for a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to make the leap off of a narrow precipice, or if the leap distance is just shy of the amount needed, a Strength check to grab the ledge and pull yourself up.


It isn't even clear WHO these are meant to be easy, hard, or nigh impossible for. Such terms are relative, yet no subject is given.

The DCs are meant for PCs. How is that not clear? The advice the DMG gives is to keep in mind the level of the players:


DMG 238-9: If you've decided that an ability check is called for, then most likely the task at hand isn't a very easy one. Most people can accomplish a DC 5 task with little chance of failure. Unless circumstances are unusual, let characters succeed at such a task without making a check.

Then ask yourself, "Is this task's difficulty easy, moderate, or hard?" If the only DCs you ever use are 10, 15, and 20, your game will run just fine. Keep in mind that a character with a 10 in the associated ability and no proficiency will succeed at an easy task around 50 percent of the time. A moderate task requires a higher score or proficiency for success, whereas a hard task typically requires both. A big dose of luck with the d20 also doesn't hurt.

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 it 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.


The thing is, I'm not an olympian long jumper. I'm not a character with 18 strength and +4 proficiency bonus in a game world with magic. Where exactly am I drawing on the knowledge to base how difficult doing things as these entities would be? Is that not the designers job? Is every DM meant to be able to do this at the drop of a hat?

You're not meant or required to adjudicate a game with precise verisimilitude. There's no such thing. It's a fantasy game. You should be drawing from your intuition, not personal expertise. And yes, you should be able to do this in a few seconds. Any more than that and you're probably overthinking it.

[Segev]

That's because the system is not designed for the DM to determine some objective difficulty of various tasks. The "easy/hard/nigh impossible" categories are the answer to the question "how much of a challenge do I want this obstacle to be to the party?", not "how objectively difficult is this task?".

Yes, that does mean that different DMs might use different DCs for jumping an extra five feet over the minimum. That's a good thing, because it allows different DMs (or even the same DM in running different adventures) to run different styles of play to suit their individual table in their particular adventure.


The distance required for a running jump, hurdle height and the minimum distance leapt are the only aspects covered by the jumping rules. You can absolutely account for such conditions by applying skill checks to the other portions of the jump. For example, you could call for a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to make the leap off of a narrow precipice, or if the leap distance is just shy of the amount needed, a Strength check to grab the ledge and pull yourself up.

You both seem to be missing my point. My point is that nobody seems to be saying, "Woe is D&D 5e, for the designers gave a hard-and-fixed formula for determining minimum jumping distance. Now players will hold DMs to this value, and thus ruin the ability of DMs to run the game how they want to!" Yet, ask for a formula for how much further you can jump than that minimum with a Strength(Athletics) check, and suddenly we get this lamentation and admonition that we must not ever have any connection other than the DM's whimsy connected to ability checks.

GooeyChewie says the system is designed for DMs to determine how hard they WANT a given challenge to be. Not only does this invite a five foot crack in the otherwise perfectly-navigable floor to have a DC 25 "nigh impossible" check because the DM wants it to be hard to cross, while a 30 foot gap that the DM put there for flavor in the lava-slick obsidian chamber is DC 10 because he didn't really want it to be all that hard to cross, but it flies in the face of the fact that we have hard-and-fast rules for that minimum distance. Why does the philosophy shift from "yes, your PC can definitely jump that far," to "well, maybe it's ludicrously hard to jump one additional foot, or maybe it's laughably easy to jump 100 additional feet," the moment that minimum is exceeded?

The arguments from philosophy-of-DCs make no sense for the jumping distance rules. They make perfect sense for all those complicating factors - the ground is shaking, the jump is from an uneven rope bridge, the landing point is slick mud sliding back into the pit, you're trying to jump to avoid getting stabbed by the poison spikes protruding from the ground - but they don't make a lot of sense for the rules for distance jumped, because if they did, then the philosophy has already been violated by the rules for minimum distance. Bob the fighter has a guarantee to jump across 3 squares with his 15 strength, period. John the wizard has only one square, not quite making it two with his 8 strength. Presumably, the DC for John to complete a two-square jump should be lower than Bob's to complete a four-square jump, though obviously Bob has an easier time making a higher DC than does John.

But the philosophical argument put forth is that the DC of an ability check should be "how hard does the DM want this to be?" What if the DM wanted it to be harder for Bob to jump 15 feet than it is? Why is it acceptable that the rules dictate that Bob can jump that far without a check, but not acceptable to ask for even a smidgen of guidance on how much harder it should be for Bob to jump 20 feet, instead, or how much harder it is for John to complete a 10 foot jump than it is for Bob to complete that 15 foot jump?

I am unmoved by "well, it's as hard as the DM wants it to be," because that is patently untrue about jumping in general. In this thread, I am not even really talking about nor asking for skill DC guidance for generalized ability checks. I am simply saying that they should have given a formula for translating how much further you could jump based on the result of that Strength(Athletics) check. If they'd made it look like the DC calculation rules tend to for saves, they would have needed at most three more lines. I'm sure they could find three lines in the book to make that room. I also am sure it could've been done in one if they really had to. So "bah, you want pages upon pages of tables" dismissals also do not apply, here.

This is poorly done, because the rules philosophies are contradictory and should not be juxtaposed in this fashion.

[schm0]

You both seem to be missing my point. My point is that nobody seems to be saying, "Woe is D&D 5e, for the designers gave a hard-and-fixed formula for determining minimum jumping distance. Now players will hold DMs to this value, and thus ruin the ability of DMs to run the game how they want to!" Yet, ask for a formula for how much further you can jump than that minimum with a Strength(Athletics) check, and suddenly we get this lamentation and admonition that we must not ever have any connection other than the DM's whimsy connected to ability checks.

I have no problem with you making up whatever formula you want. I'm just saying that doing so is missing the entire point of the ability check system. And when people say "there's no guidance", well, that is objectively false. The guidance is that DC's are subjective.

Subjective adjudication on behalf of the DM (or as it is otherwise known, "Rulings, not rules") is a core philosophy of the game. To me, trying to come up with dozens of tables defeats the point. It's like buying a truck and complaining that it doesn't go as fast a sports car. You can tear down the truck and retool it to be more like a sports car. Or... maybe just buy a sports car. I don't really have a problem with either approach, but the latter approach seems to make more sense to me.


Why does the philosophy shift from "yes, your PC can definitely jump that far," to "well, maybe it's ludicrously hard to jump one additional foot, or maybe it's laughably easy to jump 100 additional feet," the moment that minimum is exceeded?

If you want to hear it from the horse's mouth, here it is (from the Sage Advice Compendium):


The DM is key. Many unexpected things can happen in a D&D campaign, and no set of rules could reasonably account for every contingency. If the rules tried to do so, the game would become unplayable. An alternative would be for the rules to severely limit what characters can do, which would be counter to the open-endedness of D&D. The direction we chose for the current edition was to lay a foundation of rules that a DM could build on, and we embraced the DM’s role as the bridge between the things the rules address and the things they don’t.

In other words, they want the DM to decide the tone of their game. Maybe one DM wants anime/comic book levels of athleticism, so maybe doubling your jump distance is DC 10. Others may prefer a gritter, more realistic tone, and set the DC at 25.


They make perfect sense for all those complicating factors - the ground is shaking, the jump is from an uneven rope bridge, the landing point is slick mud sliding back into the pit, you're trying to jump to avoid getting stabbed by the poison spikes protruding from the ground

Again, you are free to inject a skill check into Bob's jump if the situation calls for it. These are all Dexterity (Acrobatics) checks and have nothing to do with jump distance, hurdle height, or the distance needed to get a running start.

As for the rest of your post, it sounds like you'd prefer Athletics not be a skill at all, which is fine. It's just not my preference.

[NichG]

I have no problem with you making up whatever formula you want. I'm just saying that doing so is missing the entire point of the ability check system. And when people say "there's no guidance", well, that is objectively false. The guidance is that DC's are subjective.

Subjective adjudication on behalf of the DM (or as it is otherwise known, "Rulings, not rules") is a core philosophy of the game. To me, trying to come up with dozens of tables defeats the point. It's like buying a truck and complaining that it doesn't go as fast a sports car. You can tear down the truck and retool it to be more like a sports car. Or... maybe just buy a sports car. I don't really have a problem with either approach, but the latter approach seems to make more sense to me.


So if someone posted a thread saying that the 'jump a distance equal to Strength in feet' formula is interfering with DM freedom and adjudication, and proposed that it should be deleted from the rules of 5e, what would be your position on that?

[Blatant Beast]

I
If you want to hear it from the horse's mouth, here it is (from the Sage Advice Compendium):


The DM is key. Many unexpected things can happen in a D&D campaign, and no set of rules could reasonably account for every contingency. If the rules tried to do so, the game would become unplayable. An alternative would be for the rules to severely limit what characters can do, which would be counter to the open-endedness of D&D. The direction we chose for the current edition was to lay a foundation of rules that a DM could build on, and we embraced the DM’s role as the bridge between the things the rules address and the things they don’t.


Mic drop.
Instead of trying to make or play 5e like it was 3e, and arguing with the people that have offered their advice on how to handle 5e; perhaps one should embrace the design of 5e and try to take the system on it’s own terms.

If you still dislike it, then you know it is not for you.

[Pex]

That's because the system is not designed for the DM to determine some objective difficulty of various tasks. The "easy/hard/nigh impossible" categories are the answer to the question "how much of a challenge do I want this obstacle to be to the party?", not "how objectively difficult is this task?".

Yes, that does mean that different DMs might use different DCs for jumping an extra five feet over the minimum. That's a good thing, because it allows different DMs (or even the same DM in running different adventures) to run different styles of play to suit their individual table in their particular adventure.

I will admit the books do a very poor job of explaining how DCs are supposed to work. I hope the 2024 rulebooks improve that section of the rules. But "what exact DC is this exact task" is not something that the system is trying to answer, nor is it something I hope to see the system try to answer. I appreciate the flexibility of not having to adjust my world to make the DCs turn out the way I want them.

That further makes player choice irrelevant. Doesn't matter what his plus modifier is, the DC will always be as hard as the DM wants it to be. This becomes "Mother May I" to reiterate a past same thread topic idiom.


Mic drop.
Instead of trying to make or play 5e like it was 3e, and arguing with the people that have offered their advice on how to handle 5e; perhaps one should embrace the design of 5e and try to take the system on it’s own terms.

If you still dislike it, then you know it is not for you.

Please do say that in all the repeated threads of people complaining about 5E magic on how spellcasters, especially wizards, need to be nerfed. Tell them to shut up about it because that was the 5E designers on purpose decision to do so. I'll wait.


I have no problem with you making up whatever formula you want. I'm just saying that doing so is missing the entire point of the ability check system. And when people say "there's no guidance", well, that is objectively false. The guidance is that DC's are subjective.

Subjective adjudication on behalf of the DM (or as it is otherwise known, "Rulings, not rules") is a core philosophy of the game. To me, trying to come up with dozens of tables defeats the point. It's like buying a truck and complaining that it doesn't go as fast a sports car. You can tear down the truck and retool it to be more like a sports car. Or... maybe just buy a sports car. I don't really have a problem with either approach, but the latter approach seems to make more sense to me.



If you want to hear it from the horse's mouth, here it is (from the Sage Advice Compendium):


The DM is key. Many unexpected things can happen in a D&D campaign, and no set of rules could reasonably account for every contingency. If the rules tried to do so, the game would become unplayable. An alternative would be for the rules to severely limit what characters can do, which would be counter to the open-endedness of D&D. The direction we chose for the current edition was to lay a foundation of rules that a DM could build on, and we embraced the DM’s role as the bridge between the things the rules address and the things they don’t.

In other words, they want the DM to decide the tone of their game. Maybe one DM wants anime/comic book levels of athleticism, so maybe doubling your jump distance is DC 10. Others may prefer a gritter, more realistic tone, and set the DC at 25.



Again, you are free to inject a skill check into Bob's jump if the situation calls for it. These are all Dexterity (Acrobatics) checks and have nothing to do with jump distance, hurdle height, or the distance needed to get a running start.

As for the rest of your post, it sounds like you'd prefer Athletics not be a skill at all, which is fine. It's just not my preference.

We know already that it was their on purpose intent. That doesn't excuse it. We're saying that intent was the wrong decision to make in the first place. There should have been more guidance than just DM make it up.

[schm0]

So if someone posted a thread saying that the 'jump a distance equal to Strength in feet' formula is interfering with DM freedom and adjudication, and proposed that it should be deleted from the rules of 5e, what would be your position on that?

Depends entirely on what they replaced it with.

[Theodoxus]

Athletics is just bad, or at the very least, just unfinished.

No other attribute check provides a baseline. Int checks aren't "you know 1 thing about whatever you're looking at per point of intelligence modifier." Wis checks aren't "you automatically notice 1 thing about whatever room you're in per point of wisdom modifier." Neither of those things even make sense. So why are Str checks to jump distance equal to your Str score? Laziness, or different devs working on the skill system and coming up with different ideas and not communicating with each other... but Occam's Razor... laziness.

So, Athletics needs an update - either remove the formula and keep it basic: To jump, roll a Strength (Athletics) check against the DC provided by the DM. A success means you make the distance. A failure means you fall. The DM will determine if you land standing or prone - There, the ultimate 'Mother May I' for Pex.

Or add a formula: To jump, roll a Strength (Athletics) check. Whatever the modified roll is, is how many feet you jump.

Done.

[JNAProductions]

I will say, I like 5E. It’s my favorite D&D for sure, and my go-to system, though a lot of that is familiarity.

But! Just because “It was designed this way” is true, doesn’t make the design good.
Argue from and for merits of an implementation. Don’t appeal to authority.

[NichG]

Depends entirely on what they replaced it with.

If someone wants to jump, the DM sets a DC.

[schm0]

If someone wants to jump, the DM sets a DC.

I'd think it's a step in the wrong direction.

[NichG]

I'd think it's a step in the wrong direction.

So then you basically object to any change from what's written? Are all steps steps in the wrong direction? If removing the formula is a step in the wrong direction, why isn't it ever the case that adding more structure could be a step in the right direction?

[Sorinth]

The jump distances are absurdly high when you consider this hypothetical Str 20 character can make those jumps while carrying 300lbs of gear after being stabbed and then then set on fire.

So sure it might make sense to have a higher base jump distance if they are doing an Olympic style event, but do we need rules to cover that situation or should it stick to generic in combat with full gear ruleset which will be way more common situation when jumping is required? Like sure you can get a more realistic game if you increase the base jump distances but then add that for every 15lbs they are carrying their strength score is reduced by 1 when calculating jump distance, but I very much doubt that makes for a better game.

[Pex]

The jump distances are absurdly high when you consider this hypothetical Str 20 character can make those jumps while carrying 300lbs of gear after being stabbed and then then set on fire.

So sure it might make sense to have a higher base jump distance if they are doing an Olympic style event, but do we need rules to cover that situation or should it stick to generic in combat with full gear ruleset which will be way more common situation when jumping is required? Like sure you can get a more realistic game if you increase the base jump distances but then add that for every 15lbs they are carrying their strength score is reduced by 1 when calculating jump distance, but I very much doubt that makes for a better game.

The encumbrance rules cover this. By those rules, yes, a ST 20 character is just that good to be able to jump 20 ft with 300 lbs of gear. Use the variant rule if you want weight to be more impactful. Once a PC is encumbered then DM adjudication comes into play where you might want a check even from the 20 ST character to jump 20 ft. Great, do that. What's the DC? Gotcha! It's DM make it up, so we're right back where we started.

[schm0]

So then you basically object to any change from what's written? Are all steps steps in the wrong direction? If removing the formula is a step in the wrong direction, why isn't it ever the case that adding more structure could be a step in the right direction?

If you're going to make a straw man, at least have it resemble something I said. No. I do not "basically object to any change that is written." Personally speaking, any house rules/homebrew that replaces RAW has to be better than what is already available. Why else would I include it?

In my opinion, rolling for every jump (be it 1 foot or 100) is not better than the existing rules. It's that simple.

[NichG]

If you're going to make a straw man, at least have it resemble something I said. No. I do not "basically object to any change that is written." Personally speaking, any house rules/homebrew that replaces RAW has to be better than what is already available. Why else would I include it?

In my opinion, rolling for every jump (be it 1 foot or 100) is not better than the existing rules. It's that simple.

I'm trying to explain Segev's point here. If the argument is 'the design philosophy is to let the DM judge things, so you shouldn't make specific rules' then that's inconsistent with the fact that there are in fact specific rules. Even specific rules for the particular thing under discussion here. So the argument 'its the design philosophy' isn't sufficient to explain why you have to draw the line exactly where the line has been drawn. Why not draw it further in either direction? To justify it, you have to justify why *this particular line* at *this particular place*.

Or you can recognize that it wouldn't be automatically invalid to actually choose differently where that line belongs, it wouldn't go against the design philosophy or negate the essence of the game, any more than the compromises and nuances that were chosen by 5e's design team went against the design philosophy or negated the essence of the game. In which case, if someone thinks the line should be drawn a little differently, that's honestly no big deal to just do it. And it's no big deal if people decide to just do it. There's no need to defend 5e *exactly as it is* or trying to figure out exactly what this or that designer intended.

[Sorinth]

The encumbrance rules cover this. By those rules, yes, a ST 20 character is just that good to be able to jump 20 ft with 300 lbs of gear. Use the variant rule if you want weight to be more impactful. Once a PC is encumbered then DM adjudication comes into play where you might want a check even from the 20 ST character to jump 20 ft. Great, do that. What's the DC? Gotcha! It's DM make it up, so we're right back where we started.

The encumbrance rules don't cover it, they reduce the 300lb value to 199lbs and doesn't touch on the injury angle at all. So the D&D character is still making absurdly long jumps that a real world elite athlete has no chance of even being close to.

So the point still remains that, D&D characters have absurdly long jump ranges to start with when they are doing D&D things. I've yet to see a reason why we need a separate set of jump rules for competition style or non-combat jumping?

[GooeyChewie]

You both seem to be missing my point. My point is that nobody seems to be saying, "Woe is D&D 5e, for the designers gave a hard-and-fixed formula for determining minimum jumping distance. Now players will hold DMs to this value, and thus ruin the ability of DMs to run the game how they want to!" Yet, ask for a formula for how much further you can jump than that minimum with a Strength(Athletics) check, and suddenly we get this lamentation and admonition that we must not ever have any connection other than the DM's whimsy connected to ability checks.
I have a couple of issues with some of the language you've used here. First off, just because my opinion doesn't align with yours doesn't make mine "lamentation and admonition." Second, calling it "the DM's whimsy" makes it sound like DMs are these capricious creatures making rulings completely at random. My opinion is that DMs should be allowed, with the agreement of their players, to set the tone for their games, not that DMs should be setting DCs totally on whims.

As for why it's okay to have a hard-and-fixed formula for determining standard maximum jump distance/height, that's because those are standard movement rules. If a PC wants to exceed their normal maximum jump distance/height, then they are inherently attempting to do something beyond what is usually allowed. The rules say the DM might allow the additional distance with an ability check. It would be really weird to have that extra distance be dependent on the DM deciding you can attempt it, but then also give hard-and-fixed rules for how the DM has to allow it if they decide to allow it.


GooeyChewie says the system is designed for DMs to determine how hard they WANT a given challenge to be. Not only does this invite a five foot crack in the otherwise perfectly-navigable floor to have a DC 25 "nigh impossible" check because the DM wants it to be hard to cross, while a 30 foot gap that the DM put there for flavor in the lava-slick obsidian chamber is DC 10 because he didn't really want it to be all that hard to cross, but it flies in the face of the fact that we have hard-and-fast rules for that minimum distance. Why does the philosophy shift from "yes, your PC can definitely jump that far," to "well, maybe it's ludicrously hard to jump one additional foot, or maybe it's laughably easy to jump 100 additional feet," the moment that minimum is exceeded?
You say that I am inviting one DM to adjudicate that it would be night impossible to jump one additional foot, while another DM adjudicates that it would be relatively easy to jump an additional 30 feet. To this I say, yes, absolutely, that's the point. Perhaps the first DM is running a "guy at the gym" style campaign, where jumping beyond the normal maximum is incredibly difficult or even impossible. Meanwhile the second DM may be running a "wuxia" style campaign where PCs are constantly bouncing off the walls. As long as the DM (a) is being consistent within the same adventures and (b) communicates well with their players, there's not a problem there.


That further makes player choice irrelevant. Doesn't matter what his plus modifier is, the DC will always be as hard as the DM wants it to be. This becomes "Mother May I" to reiterate a past same thread topic idiom.

That's not true at all. It very much matters what the PC's modifier is. For example, if the DM decides the obstacle should present a hard challenge, they set the DC at 20 as per the Difficulty Classes table, and it's a whole lot easier to hit a 20 with a +5 modifier than with a +0 modifier.

[Pex]

The encumbrance rules don't cover it, they reduce the 300lb value to 199lbs and doesn't touch on the injury angle at all. So the D&D character is still making absurdly long jumps that a real world elite athlete has no chance of even being close to.

So the point still remains that, D&D characters have absurdly long jump ranges to start with when they are doing D&D things. I've yet to see a reason why we need a separate set of jump rules for competition style or non-combat jumping?

The rules say you can jump your ST score. You don't have to like it. You want to argue it shouldn't be, fine. However, even if you want to force checks on jumping there are still no guidelines on what the DC is so worrying about encumbrance solves nothing about the lack of guidance on making Athletics checks to jump. Once there is actual guidance then you can get into more details about encumbrance, such as perhaps applying Disadvantage to the check. Whatever the hypothetical guidance rules might already include dealing with encumbrance so you wouldn't have to make that up either. If guidance is to exist might as well be thorough.

[Aimeryan]

That further makes player choice irrelevant. Doesn't matter what his plus modifier is, the DC will always be as hard as the DM wants it to be. This becomes "Mother May I" to reiterate a past same thread topic idiom.

Yeah, its pretty clear at this point that the position being taken by the free-form crowd is the DC is irrelevant; they as the DM decides whether the player's character does something or not in that moment, with the DC check being a smokescreen to give the illusion of it being fair and consistent and definitely not the DM deciding what the player character does at all. It is epitome of moving the goal posts to choose whether or not the player scores, rather than the player being responsible for whether or not they score (with some added RNG).

This goes contrary to every other part of the game, in which the DM controls the environment and the player controls their own character. DCs are meant to be consistent and precise, because otherwise the DM is calling the shots on everything and are the only ones truly playing the game.

---


The encumbrance rules don't cover it, they reduce the 300lb value to 199lbs and doesn't touch on the injury angle at all. So the D&D character is still making absurdly long jumps that a real world elite athlete has no chance of even being close to.

So the point still remains that, D&D characters have absurdly long jump ranges to start with when they are doing D&D things. I've yet to see a reason why we need a separate set of jump rules for competition style or non-combat jumping?

Your argument essentially boils down two fallacies: the Guy-at-the-gym fallacy and the Nirvana fallacy. The first is pointless in a world where people have literal giant's strength and magic, and really cripples martials. The second is a hang-up on saying that because the solution isn't perfect it doesn't work at all.

Personally, I would be fine with jump distance being equal to double your Strength score, minus 1ft for every 10lbs carried. 5e doesn't do injuries at all, so effectively the character cannot be injured while doing the jump (otherwise, I would include something for that too). The rules already require you know how much weight you are carrying - ignoring this is a houserule. Hence, it isn't terribly difficult to know how much weight you are carrying when you go to jump. Dividing by 10 is probably the easiest mathematic operation that humans do, next to doubling something.

Example: 15 Strength score, carrying 150lbs. So, 2x15 = 30ft, and 150lb/10 is 15ft. So, 30-15 = 15ft jump distance. Even more 'difficult' numbers like 17 Strength and 163lbs carried is easy: 34 - 16 = 18ft jump distance. That took me a couple of seconds, less than a dice roll. If you wanted to make multiple jumps in quick succession the number remains the same, so this is far better than doing a check each time. In fact, the number likely doesn't change that often at all unless your weight is changing significantly on a frequent basis.

What this would allow is that if I really need to make a long jump and I have time to do so, I could drop everything I'm carrying and then make a longer jump. Also, if I'm carrying a lot, it accounts for that too - so these anemic jump distances have greater verisimilitude.

[Hurrashane]

I assume the minimum jump distance formula is just for ease of use. Getting rid of it would cause the game to slow down a bit definitely in combat, where it might be necessary to leap over a puddle of grease or what have you.

It'd be like getting rid of carry weight, and making people roll athletics every time they wanted to pick up their gear. Pick up your sword? Roll. Don your armor? Roll. etc, etc.

Like, Jump distance is like carry weight in a lot of ways, both have a minimum determined by strength, but can be increased by an undefined amount with an athletics roll.

[schm0]

I'm trying to explain Segev's point here. If the argument is 'the design philosophy is to let the DM judge things, so you shouldn't make specific rules' then that's inconsistent with the fact that there are in fact specific rules. Even specific rules for the particular thing under discussion here. So the argument 'its the design philosophy' isn't sufficient to explain why you have to draw the line exactly where the line has been drawn. Why not draw it further in either direction? To justify it, you have to justify why *this particular line* at *this particular place*.

Or you can recognize that it wouldn't be automatically invalid to actually choose differently where that line belongs, it wouldn't go against the design philosophy or negate the essence of the game, any more than the compromises and nuances that were chosen by 5e's design team went against the design philosophy or negated the essence of the game. In which case, if someone thinks the line should be drawn a little differently, that's honestly no big deal to just do it. And it's no big deal if people decide to just do it. There's no need to defend 5e *exactly as it is* or trying to figure out exactly what this or that designer intended.

Who said anything about being "invalid"? If you want to homebrew several dozen tables or some new fandangled formula for jump distance, go for it. I've said this numerous times. Your table, your rules.

Several users posed questions along the lines of "Why are there subjective DCs at all?" and I provided the designers' answers, which amounts to a philosophy that permeates the entire edition. I happen to agree with them, and it's one of the reasons I enjoy 5e.

In my opinion, nobody has provided a satisfying argument that the existing rules (for jumping or ability checks in general) aren't sufficient enough to do what they were intended to do. That's pretty much it. The "justification" for these rules is that they make sense and work fine as written. You are free to disagree.

[NichG]

Who said anything about being "invalid"? If you want to homebrew several dozen tables or some new fandangled formula for jump distance, go for it. I've said this numerous times. Your table, your rules.

You were arguing that people who wanted to bring the exploration and social pillars up to the same complexity as the combat pillar were misunderstanding the design philosophy, that they were 'buying a truck and expecting a sportscar', that it was a false equivalence because skills are simple and combat is complex. That sounds to me like declaring their wants to be misguided or invalid. That goes beyond 'well I like it this way better' to 'if you want it to be some other way, you're wrong; it has to be this way, and it makes sense that its this way because of an integral design philosophy'.

So people demonstrated that even in the case of these supposedly simple things, the 5e design team didn't just say 'subjective DCs for everything except combat!'. Instead there was a compromise between certain things the design team decided to detail (like how far Strength lets you jump if you do it as part of movement), and other things the design team decided not to detail (like how far Strength lets you jump if you do it via an Athletics check). So 'its the design philosophy to have the DM choose' is not the entirety of what lies behind those choices - they may be arbitrary or purposeful, but they're not explained just by 'do what the design philosophy says' - they're an intentional choice by the writers and designers about what they felt should be detailed and what they chose not to detail, and they don't fall on a hard line like 'a combat is complex, a check is simple'. Similarly look at the checks associated with Constitution to see more inconsistency between 'use a check' and 'use a formula' - under Constitution it says that holding your breath is a Constitution check, but under the section on suffocation it says that your Constitution modifier directly determines a number of minutes you can hold your breath after double of which the only checks you roll are death saves.

So a point is that choosing to have combat be complex and highly specified in the rules was a choice, not a necessary mandate due to the nature of what combat is. Similarly, having exploring a jungle or negotiating a business deal with a crime lord be reduced to simple checks was also a design choice. People can disagree with those design choices without failing to understand 'the design philosophy of 5e'. Adding complexity where the 5e design team didn't care to is not automatically going to make things worse than RAW any more than removing complexity in other places won't automatically make things worse than RAW, because RAW is not a perfect existence. It's just one out of an infinite number of possible presets tuned to a particular set of tastes. There are many, many possible variations that also 'run just fine' for their groups.

People are posting here because, for them, RAW does not run just fine. It isn't satisfying. But not in a 'throw the whole thing out, 5e sucks!' sense - in a 'I would like this even more if only this issue were addressed'.

[schm0]

You were arguing that people who wanted to bring the exploration and social pillars up to the same complexity as the combat pillar were misunderstanding the design philosophy, that they were 'buying a truck and expecting a sportscar', that it was a false equivalence because skills are simple and combat is complex. That sounds to me like declaring their wants to be misguided or invalid. That goes beyond 'well I like it this way better' to 'if you want it to be some other way, you're wrong; it has to be this way, and it makes sense that its this way because of an integral design philosophy'.

I don't think I used the words "misunderstand", "misguided" or "invalid", nor did I ever say "you're wrong" or "it has to be this way", so... in a word: no. This is a mischaracterization.


So people demonstrated that even in the case of these supposedly simple things, the 5e design team didn't just say 'subjective DCs for everything except combat!'. Instead there was a compromise between certain things the design team decided to detail (like how far Strength lets you jump if you do it as part of movement), and other things the design team decided not to detail (like how far Strength lets you jump if you do it via an Athletics check). So 'its the design philosophy to have the DM choose' is not the entirety of what lies behind those choices - they may be arbitrary or purposeful, but they're not explained just by 'do what the design philosophy says' - they're an intentional choice by the writers and designers about what they felt should be detailed and what they chose not to detail, and they don't fall on a hard line like 'a combat is complex, a check is simple'. Similarly look at the checks associated with Constitution to see more inconsistency between 'use a check' and 'use a formula' - under Constitution it says that holding your breath is a Constitution check, but under the section on suffocation it says that your Constitution modifier directly determines a number of minutes you can hold your breath after double of which the only checks you roll are death saves.

The quoted section reads: "we embraced the DM’s role as the bridge between the things the rules address and the things they don’t." The rules cover the minimum jump distance. The DM determines the DC to jump further. It's a literal example of "things the rules address" and "things they don't". All ability checks fall into this design paradigm. That was my point.

[JNAProductions]

I don't think I used the words "misunderstand", "misguided" or "invalid", nor did I ever say "you're wrong" or "it has to be this way", so... in a word: no. This is a mischaracterization.

You can imply things without literally stating them.


The quoted section reads: "we embraced the DM’s role as the bridge between the things the rules address and the things they don’t." The rules cover the minimum jump distance. The DM determines the DC to jump further. It's a literal example of "things the rules address" and "things they don't". All ability checks fall into this design paradigm. That was my point.

Sure, but you've not argued for why "Minimum jump is set, anything further is DM discretion," is the best way to do it.
Why draw the line there and nowhere else?

As I mentioned before, you can't just say "This is the way it was designed," and have that be the end. If your opinion is that 5E's skills are perfect and shouldn't be adjusted at all, either to be more or less codified, that's fine-but you don't need to keep reiterating that. If you want to argue that the current way is the best way, then argue that-but do so from its own merits.

My opinion on the skills is that they're perfectly functional. They're adequate for what I need to do as a DM and as a player, generally speaking. They have plenty of room for improvement, in terms of rules, guidance, and inspirations, but what's there works.

[NichG]

I don't think I used the words "misunderstand", "misguided" or "invalid", nor did I ever say "you're wrong" or "it has to be this way", so... in a word: no. This is a mischaracterization.

You said:


I have no problem with you making up whatever formula you want. I'm just saying that doing so is missing the entire point of the ability check system. And when people say "there's no guidance", well, that is objectively false. The guidance is that DC's are subjective.


The idea that the ability check mechanics need to change is not a forgone conclusion. It's a matter of preference at best and a misunderstanding of the design philosophy of 5e at worst.

I've been reading a lot of this thread and trying to understand where everyone is coming from, but to me it seems many of the folks yearning for complicated rules are just over-thinking the existing mechanics (and consequentially over-engineering a "solution").

You've also said just that your preference would be different. But you're spending a lot of time on this thread telling people not to try to do this thing they want to do, because they're over-thinking, misunderstanding, missing the point, etc.

Edit: Also, to be fair, and since I was thread diving for these posts anyhow, this I think is an answer you gave that is a reasonable starting point for discussion and actually does address Segev's point more so than talking about 5e design philosophy in the abstract:



Heroes are heroic, and movement is key to combat. There needs to be a floor that both allows players to know when they'll need to attempt a skill check, and when they can just automatically leap.


If you're really trying to understand where other posters are coming from, I think this is the point at which you're closest to it. The key point is that 'need' you talk about, and where it comes from. Players need to know when they can automatically do something or when they can attempt a skill check in order to come up with what actions to take when that choice matters in detail. Standing within an enemy's reach or just outside of it. Attacking when you've got a good chance of dropping your enemy, versus when they're likely going to get a round to react to you. Players and DMs who want to treat other pillars of play with the same degree of seriousness are finding that they need to know more things than what the system is currently telling them in order to make informed decisions as to their actions.

It's not really about the design philosophy of 5e giving the DM freedom. It's that to sustain a certain level of complex decision making, you need to know a certain amount about what you can and can't do before you try to do it. That knowledge is what creates the potential for complex decision making. Sure a player can just try stuff and trust the DM, but then they won't be trying stuff *because* it was a good or a bad idea. They'll just be trying stuff, and it might turn out to have been a good or a bad idea, like brute forcing your way through an easy fight.

[schm0]

You can imply things without literally stating them.

One can assume all they like. That does not make those assumptions true.


Sure, but you've not argued for why "Minimum jump is set, anything further is DM discretion," is the best way to do it.
Why draw the line there and nowhere else?

I did, actually. Several times. In my opinion, the rules work as intended and play just fine, and nobody has made a convincing argument to the contrary. So if it ain't broke...


As I mentioned before, you can't just say "This is the way it was designed," and have that be the end.

If someone asks "why is this mechanic designed this way" and I provide an answer then, yes, that is the end of that query. You seem to be conflating someone asking this specific question with a defense of ability checks in general, but they were two distinct arguments.

[GloatingSwine]

The jump distances are absurdly high when you consider this hypothetical Str 20 character can make those jumps while carrying 300lbs of gear after being stabbed and then then set on fire.

Any character of any strength with no training can operate a heavy crossbow 10x faster than a trained professional would do so in a real battle. (one shot every six seconds rather than one every minute)

That's just the level of physicality that D&D characters of all stripes operate on.

[schm0]

You've also said just that your preference would be different. But you're spending a lot of time on this thread telling people not to try to do this thing they want to do, because they're over-thinking, misunderstanding, missing the point, etc.

How is sharing my opinion "telling people" what to do, exactly?

[NichG]

How is sharing my opinion "telling people" what to do, exactly?

Really want me to go thread diving for the specific quotes again?

[Sorinth]

Any character of any strength with no training can operate a heavy crossbow 10x faster than a trained professional would do so in a real battle. (one shot every six seconds rather than one every minute)

That's just the level of physicality that D&D characters of all stripes operate on.


The rules say you can jump your ST score. You don't have to like it. You want to argue it shouldn't be, fine. However, even if you want to force checks on jumping there are still no guidelines on what the DC is so worrying about encumbrance solves nothing about the lack of guidance on making Athletics checks to jump. Once there is actual guidance then you can get into more details about encumbrance, such as perhaps applying Disadvantage to the check. Whatever the hypothetical guidance rules might already include dealing with encumbrance so you wouldn't have to make that up either. If guidance is to exist might as well be thorough.


Your argument essentially boils down two fallacies: the Guy-at-the-gym fallacy and the Nirvana fallacy. The first is pointless in a world where people have literal giant's strength and magic, and really cripples martials. The second is a hang-up on saying that because the solution isn't perfect it doesn't work at all.

Personally, I would be fine with jump distance being equal to double your Strength score, minus 1ft for every 10lbs carried. 5e doesn't do injuries at all, so effectively the character cannot be injured while doing the jump (otherwise, I would include something for that too). The rules already require you know how much weight you are carrying - ignoring this is a houserule. Hence, it isn't terribly difficult to know how much weight you are carrying when you go to jump. Dividing by 10 is probably the easiest mathematic operation that humans do, next to doubling something.

Example: 15 Strength score, carrying 150lbs. So, 2x15 = 30ft, and 150lb/10 is 15ft. So, 30-15 = 15ft jump distance. Even more 'difficult' numbers like 17 Strength and 163lbs carried is easy: 34 - 16 = 18ft jump distance. That took me a couple of seconds, less than a dice roll. If you wanted to make multiple jumps in quick succession the number remains the same, so this is far better than doing a check each time. In fact, the number likely doesn't change that often at all unless your weight is changing significantly on a frequent basis.

What this would allow is that if I really need to make a long jump and I have time to do so, I could drop everything I'm carrying and then make a longer jump. Also, if I'm carrying a lot, it accounts for that too - so these anemic jump distances have greater verisimilitude.

My argument is that the the OP's premise of jump distance is too short is wrong and if anything they are absurdly high distances that no real world athlete can match. But I'm perfectly happy with the jump distances as they are because yes it's fantasy so I don't need to limit them by what a guy at the gym can do. I don't see any value in trying to add rules that give us a more realistic jump when not carrying anything because it's not a situation that matters. It has nothing to do with it's not perfect so therefore doesn't work at all but all about whether it makes the game better. Like your proposed rule (Which was basically what I put in my OP), it adds verisimilitude sure, but does it make the game better, I'd say no.

[schm0]

Really want me to go thread diving for the specific quotes again?

Yes, since you seem intent on mischaracterizing the words I've written.

[JNAProductions]

One can assume all they like. That does not make those assumptions true.



I did, actually. Several times. In my opinion, the rules work as intended and play just fine, and nobody has made a convincing argument to the contrary. So if it ain't broke...



If someone asks "why is this mechanic designed this way" and I provide an answer then, yes, that is the end of that query. You seem to be conflating someone asking this specific question with a defense of ability checks in general, but they were two distinct arguments.

If multiple people “misinterpret” your words in the same way, it’s a good idea to pick your words more clearly.

And “isn’t broken” is a low bar to clear. I agree that 5E’s skills work. But workable is all they are-I wouldn’t call them good, only good enough.
There’s a lot of room for improvement.

[NichG]

How is sharing my opinion "telling people" what to do, exactly?

Alright, here are the particular things which I think went beyond 'this is my opinion' to either telling people what to do.


That advice is in the section I cited, but if you are insisting on an objective method for doing so, you won't find it. 5e DCs are subjective. And that's the philosophical divide. How you judge is how you judge. That's the answer.

...

You're not meant or required to adjudicate a game with precise verisimilitude. There's no such thing. It's a fantasy game. You should be drawing from your intuition, not personal expertise. And yes, you should be able to do this in a few seconds. Any more than that and you're probably overthinking it.

That's the most explicit, but there's also more passive 'if you do X I think you're doing it wrong' stuff.


I have no problem with you making up whatever formula you want. I'm just saying that doing so is missing the entire point of the ability check system. And when people say "there's no guidance", well, that is objectively false. The guidance is that DC's are subjective.

Subjective adjudication on behalf of the DM (or as it is otherwise known, "Rulings, not rules") is a core philosophy of the game. To me, trying to come up with dozens of tables defeats the point. It's like buying a truck and complaining that it doesn't go as fast a sports car. You can tear down the truck and retool it to be more like a sports car. Or... maybe just buy a sports car. I don't really have a problem with either approach, but the latter approach seems to make more sense to me.

To me the above reads as insulting to people who do choose to do that. As much as you say that you could, you're belittling the desire of someone to do so.


The idea that the ability check mechanics need to change is not a forgone conclusion. It's a matter of preference at best and a misunderstanding of the design philosophy of 5e at worst.

I've been reading a lot of this thread and trying to understand where everyone is coming from, but to me it seems many of the folks yearning for complicated rules are just over-thinking the existing mechanics (and consequentially over-engineering a "solution").

It should not be hard to come up with a DC. Just pick a number and let the players roll. Trust your intuition. It doesn't need to be "accurate" or complicated or follow a formula.

[Blatant Beast]

Please do say that in all the repeated threads of people complaining about 5E magic on how spellcasters, especially wizards, need to be nerfed. Tell them to shut up about it because that was the 5E designers on purpose decision to do so.

No one has told anyone, anything remotely close to “shut up”.
People have shared how they handle the system, and provided quotes from the DMG, PHB, and Sage Compendium that document the design ethos.

Look, if you want to drive your sports car constantly in reverse, that is fine with me…especially if it doesn’t impact me directly.

Now, when you start complaining online that your sports car is broken, because it doesn’t seem to perform as promised, because you are constantly driving backwards…it seems entirely reasonable that one might receive some push back against the erroneous characterization.

I’ve lurked/posted her for around two years now, and have seen the same people raise the same complaints, so it would seem said folks are not even trying to change up how they approach the game.

Yes, I am fatigued of reading the same complaints by the same people, doing the same thing, ad nauseam….but I have not, nor expect to ever tell someone to “Shut Up”, here.

I’m content to merely point out your approach is suboptimal, and watch the fireworks go off.

[schm0]

If multiple people “misinterpret” your words in the same way, it’s a good idea to pick your words more clearly.

And “isn’t broken” is a low bar to clear. I agree that 5E’s skills work. But workable is all they are-I wouldn’t call them good, only good enough.
There’s a lot of room for improvement.

It would help if people read the words I've written instead of reading into them.

It's much more than the fact that they aren't "broken". I said that ability checks do what they are designed to do and work fine. I'll go further than that. I enjoy using them. They help the characters of my stories interact with the world in a meaningful way. They're great. That's why I don't think they need fixing.


Alright, here are the particular things which I think went beyond 'this is my opinion' to either telling people what to do.

You said "you're spending a lot of time on this thread telling people not to try to do this thing they want to do". Nothing you have cited here resembles that whatsoever.

The first quote was not even a discussion about homebrew, that was me explaining to someone who asked how they are intended to adjudicate ability checks RAW. It's just a regurgitation of the guidance from the designers of the game, not me trying to tell someone they can't homebrew.

The second quote literally begins with the sentence "I have no problem with you making up whatever formula you want."

The last quote is just my thoughts on the approaches of other people. Not a word about whether or not one should not do X.

The truth of the matter is that I've gone out of my way to encourage others to change the game as they see fit, and have reiterated numerous times that my statements are opinion, not fact. I'd appreciate if you stopped mischaracterizing what I've written. Thank you.

[Telok]

it would seem said folks are not even trying to change up how they approach the game.

Yes, I am fatigued of reading the same complaints by the same people, doing the same thing, ad nauseam….but I have not, nor expect to ever tell someone to “Shut Up”, here.

I have changed the way I play D&D because of the ability check system. I only play casters and seek to avoid ability checks (or stack multiple +dice and a reroll) to extremes. Of course I don't GM D&D 5e, the GMs around here use mostly dc 15 & 20 for about everything, and tjose GMs aren't on message boards like this one because they don't like the tone. No amount of homebrew, useful advice, wailing about the sky falling, or "it works for me so you're wrong" will change how D&D 5e ability checks play out in my local games. Telling people like me how wrong I am or that the GM didn't read the DMG (which is of course false) does absolutely nothing.

[Aimeryan]

It's much more than the fact that they aren't "broken". I said that ability checks do what they are designed to do and work fine.

I wouldn't even agree with this statement: the checks literally require the DM to figure out the DC, with no input past 'easy, medium, hard, very hard' - a relative set of difficulties with nothing to relate to. If this was coded the code would incomplete. It would require the user to do some of the code in their head, not state what that code was, and then set the variable themselves.

At this point, the skill system might as well just be 'roll a magic 8-ball'. At least that would not require the DM to sit there ummming and ahhhing about what the DC should be. In fact, it would be better in my opinion, because currently as a non-athlete, non-salesman, non-scout, I'm more likely to consider Int checks as easier than physical or charismatic checks - which leads to some casters (Wizards) having an easier time with skills they are proficient in than martials do skills they are proficient in, furthering the caster-martial gap.

[GloatingSwine]

My argument is that the the OP's premise of jump distance is too short is wrong and if anything they are absurdly high distances that no real world athlete can match. But I'm perfectly happy with the jump distances as they are because yes it's fantasy so I don't need to limit them by what a guy at the gym can do. I don't see any value in trying to add rules that give us a more realistic jump when not carrying anything because it's not a situation that matters. It has nothing to do with it's not perfect so therefore doesn't work at all but all about whether it makes the game better. Like your proposed rule (Which was basically what I put in my OP), it adds verisimilitude sure, but does it make the game better, I'd say no.

Right, and my point is that jump distances can in no way be extrapolated from real world physicality because D&D characters no matter their stats are clearly operating on another level. And there is no argument from individual table theming which survives that whilst they all use the same combat system. The combat system places very firm bounds on what the physicality of its characters are, and even their absolute lower bound is much higher than the real world.

[Segev]

I have no problem with you making up whatever formula you want. I'm just saying that doing so is missing the entire point of the ability check system. And when people say "there's no guidance", well, that is objectively false. The guidance is that DC's are subjective.

Subjective adjudication on behalf of the DM (or as it is otherwise known, "Rulings, not rules") is a core philosophy of the game. To me, trying to come up with dozens of tables defeats the point. It's like buying a truck and complaining that it doesn't go as fast a sports car. You can tear down the truck and retool it to be more like a sports car. Or... maybe just buy a sports car. I don't really have a problem with either approach, but the latter approach seems to make more sense to me.



If you want to hear it from the horse's mouth, here it is (from the Sage Advice Compendium):


The DM is key. Many unexpected things can happen in a D&D campaign, and no set of rules could reasonably account for every contingency. If the rules tried to do so, the game would become unplayable. An alternative would be for the rules to severely limit what characters can do, which would be counter to the open-endedness of D&D. The direction we chose for the current edition was to lay a foundation of rules that a DM could build on, and we embraced the DM’s role as the bridge between the things the rules address and the things they don’t.

In other words, they want the DM to decide the tone of their game. Maybe one DM wants anime/comic book levels of athleticism, so maybe doubling your jump distance is DC 10. Others may prefer a gritter, more realistic tone, and set the DC at 25.All of this is still missing the point. I am not disputing that this is the justification for the poorly-defined ability check system in 5e. Whether you agree with me that it is poorly-designed or not is irrelevant to this thread, which is about jumping distances, not about ability checks in general.

The point that you have not addressed here is my actual question: why is it okay that all games have a formula for minimum jump distance, no matter what "tone of the game" the DM wants to set, given what you have outlined here as necessary for the DM to have the freedom to set the tone of his game?


Again, you are free to inject a skill check into Bob's jump if the situation calls for it. These are all Dexterity (Acrobatics) checks and have nothing to do with jump distance, hurdle height, or the distance needed to get a running start.Eh, I'd probably use Strength(Athletics), but again, that's another discussion entirely. We agree that ability checks can be added to even shorter jumps than the minimum based on external factors. The only reason I even reiterated the point was because others were using it to justify why it is apparently impossible to have a formula for the Strength(Athletics) check's extra distance. Note, you, nor anybody else, have not yet explained why having the formula for a minimum distance is okay, given your argument for why having a formula for the check-to-extra-distance would not be okay.


As for the rest of your post, it sounds like you'd prefer Athletics not be a skill at all, which is fine. It's just not my preference.I do not understand how my argument in any way even suggests this, and this only leads me to believe, therefore, that you are not understanding what I am saying. I have repeated the crux of my point in bold, and hope you will maybe address that at some point. If you have, please reiterate it, because I have missed it in the wall of text that is this thread, and for that, I apologize.


I have a couple of issues with some of the language you've used here. First off, just because my opinion doesn't align with yours doesn't make mine "lamentation and admonition." Second, calling it "the DM's whimsy" makes it sound like DMs are these capricious creatures making rulings completely at random. My opinion is that DMs should be allowed, with the agreement of their players, to set the tone for their games, not that DMs should be setting DCs totally on whims.Fair enough on "lamentation and admonition." I apologize for any mischaracterization it may have engendered. I will stand by the "DM's whimsy" wording, however, because we are given so little guidance and when I ask how to figure out how difficult a particular task should be, I am repeatedly asked, "How hard do you want it to be?" That question implies that there is zero basis other than my whim as a DM on which I am able to base DC decisions. So until that question is either withdrawn or expanded upon to show that it does not rely solely on the DM's entirely-arbitrary desire for a particular thing to be a particular difficulty, then I believe "whimsy" is not an inaccurate term to describe it.

"Whimsy" is not "completely at random." It is based on the DM's arbitrary feelings about something at any point in time, but I am certain that most people can predict their good friends' whims. For instance, given character selection options in a game, most of my friends would be entirely unsurprised when I go for the necromancer option if one is available. That still is my whim, and if I choose by whimsy to play the paladin option, instead, it may surprise people, but that isn't random; there will be factors to my whimsy.


As for why it's okay to have a hard-and-fixed formula for determining standard maximum jump distance/height, that's because those are standard movement rules.Okay, but the argument about why we need zero guidance at all about how much further he can jump with an ability check is that the DM might want to set a particular tone. Why isn't a fixed movement distance a problem for DMs who want to set a tone? Why isn't jumping beyond this minimum part of the movement rules, rather than part of the DM's entirely-arbitrary, unguided, make-up-the-rules-because-he-has-no-help-from-the-books-he-paid-for ability check that has literally no way of helping him determine how far he should even consider letting a given check carry somebody?


If a PC wants to exceed their normal maximum jump distance/height, then they are inherently attempting to do something beyond what is usually allowed. The rules say the DM might allow the additional distance with an ability check. It would be really weird to have that extra distance be dependent on the DM deciding you can attempt it, but then also give hard-and-fixed rules for how the DM has to allow it if they decide to allow it.If the rules are only saying the DM "might" allow it, then why do they include specificity about what the DM will be required to call for in order to allow it, then give the DM no guidance whatsoever about what that thing he calls for actually means? What if the DM wanted to call for a use of the Dash action, or a use of a bonus action and a superiority die, rather than a Strength(Athletics) check? "Oh, he totally could!" you might say, but I will respond, "And, if they gave a formula for the Strength(Athletics) check-to-distance, the DM could still change that formula for his chosen tone, or call for something entirely different, too, so why is not including any guidance a positive but including the specificity of an ability check and proficiency to apply not a negative?"


You say that I am inviting one DM to adjudicate that it would be night impossible to jump one additional foot, while another DM adjudicates that it would be relatively easy to jump an additional 30 feet. To this I say, yes, absolutely, that's the point. Perhaps the first DM is running a "guy at the gym" style campaign, where jumping beyond the normal maximum is incredibly difficult or even impossible. Meanwhile the second DM may be running a "wuxia" style campaign where PCs are constantly bouncing off the walls. As long as the DM (a) is being consistent within the same adventures and (b) communicates well with their players, there's not a problem there.Why, then, is it not a problem that the DM is forced to change the rules for minimum jumping distance if he's running a wuxia game and determines that players should jump 50 feet minimum, before having to roll for it? Why is it not a problem that the gritty realist (read: everything is super hard) DM would have to say, "No, there's no minimum jumping distance. All jumps require a Strength(Athletics) check and I'll tell you for each jump what the DC is?"

Your arguments fall apart because you say, "Yeah, the minimum is fine," even though it violates every principle you're laying out for why the DM has to have zero guidance other than a whim-based "how hard do you want it to be?"

And also, unless the DM writes down his own formula, that one extra foot may be DC 10 one day, 5, the next, and four sessions later, it might be DC 25, all based on how much the DM does or does not want that jump to succeed for whatever dramatic purposes he has. And, since we're well beyond the variances of the jumping conditions (those would've affected minimum jumping distance or ability to jump at all - maybe with their own check), we are absolutely only looking at the exact same extra distance, but different DCs each time. Again, unless the DM makes up his own formula for it. At which point, he's not setting DCs according to the hideously-bad guidance of "how hard do you want it to be?" that is deemed so critical by the philosophical arguments presented by you and others, but rather has had to make up rules to an incomplete ruleset.

[NichG]

I wouldn't even agree with this statement: the checks literally require the DM to figure out the DC, with no input past 'easy, medium, hard, very hard' - a relative set of difficulties with nothing to relate to. If this was coded the code would incomplete. It would require the user to do some of the code in their head, not state what that code was, and then set the variable themselves.

At this point, the skill system might as well just be 'roll a magic 8-ball'. At least that would not require the DM to sit there ummming and ahhhing about what the DC should be. In fact, it would be better in my opinion, because currently as a non-athlete, non-salesman, non-scout, I'm more likely to consider Int checks as easier than physical or charismatic checks - which leads to some casters (Wizards) having an easier time with skills they are proficient in than martials do skills they are proficient in, furthering the caster-martial gap.

Eh, freeform isn't inherently broken. The advantage of TTRPGs over something like CRPGs is that you don't need the code to be complete - you can rely on a human to adapt things on the fly, meaning that you can go places that weren't anticipated in advance. But at the same time, not being 'broken' is not really a good excuse to stop improving a thing and at least for a number of posters (including me) the current form seems pretty meh. It's not actively bad, but I don't think its really doing anything much by being there at all either - I feel like you could e.g. replace skill proficiencies with stat proficiencies, delete all the lists of specific things to make ability checks for, and it wouldn't really change that much. Plus that would more directly own the idea that ability checks just exist as a backup resolution tool for the DM to use when things go outside of the established mechanics - sort of like 'if the system doesn't tell you how to deal with this thing a player wants to do, and you think it could work but it seems like it'd be tricky, just ask for a DC 15 ability check and move on'.

Of course that would imply that things like picking locks or disabling traps are not actually part of the established mechanics of D&D...

[schm0]

The point that you have not addressed here is my actual question: why is it okay that all games have a formula for minimum jump distance, no matter what "tone of the game" the DM wants to set, given what you have outlined here as necessary for the DM to have the freedom to set the tone of his game?

The reason is to set up default assumptions about the world of D&D and the intentions of the designers.

D&D is filled with default assumptions. 10 is the default ability score for commoners. A steel door has an AC of 19. The minimum jump distance is your Strength score. The DM can always adjust those things, but those are the defaults. The designers also said, any time a creature wants to jump further than that distance, they are taking on a risk. How much of a risk depends entirely on preference and context of the DM, because the DM sets the DCs and they are the "bridge between the things the rules address and the things they don’t." So the DM sets the DC, the player rolls, and the game keeps going.

And in case I am not being clear, I am trying to answer your question here, and this is my opinion. You should feel free to adjust and change these default assumptions as you see fit.

I think I'm going to put that in my signature.

[Psyren]

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I'm with schm0 on this one. The existence of a (low) minimum automatic jump distance is not at odds with their objective of letting the GM control the tone of what jumps aided by skill checks can achieve. The DMG even provides a list of what those tones are - "Flavors of Fantasy", DMG 38. They spell out very clearly that Heroic Fantasy is the default for D&D, but if you want a Mythic game where the characters are demigods and a rogue can steal souls from death or steal an archdevil's name, and however that translates to jumping, you can do that.

[Pex]

The reason is to set up default assumptions about the world of D&D and the intentions of the designers.

D&D is filled with default assumptions. 10 is the default ability score for commoners. A steel door has an AC of 19. The minimum jump distance is your Strength score. The DM can always adjust those things, but those are the defaults. The designers also said, any time a creature wants to jump further than that distance, they are taking on a risk. How much of a risk depends entirely on preference and context of the DM, because the DM sets the DCs and they are the "bridge between the things the rules address and the things they don’t." So the DM sets the DC, the player rolls, and the game keeps going.

And in case I am not being clear, I am trying to answer your question here, and this is my opinion. You should feel free to adjust and change these default assumptions as you see fit.

I think I'm going to put that in my signature.

Then why is it a problem for you if the game designers had chosen to add more default assumptions about various tasks by adding DC tables of the more common more likely to happen tasks PCs are wont to do? If by default all platemail is AC 18, all long swords do 1d8 damage, why can't climbing a tree be Athletics DC 10 or knowing something about a creature be Knowledge (Appropriate) DC 10 + CR or here's a list of example diseases with their Medicine check to cure. There can even be advice on how the game atmosphere changes if you want to increase or decrease the default DCs if you want grittier or superheroic game play.

I remember, before the Xanathar book, people condemning the idea of spellcasters being able to identify a spell being cast, at least one in this very thread. Even suggesting Knowledge (Arcana) DC 10 + spell level was shot down for how dare you want to stifle DM creativity. Then one day Xanathar book came out giving a DC formula of exactly that. The game did not fall apart into an unplayable mess. Counterspell lovers did not like it took a Reaction, but I guess using a Reaction was on purpose precisely not to make Counterspell more uberpowerful than it was which is fair. Taking two Reactions - one PC to identify another PC to counter - can work.

[Psyren]

Then why is it a problem for you if the game designers had chosen to add more default assumptions about various tasks by adding DC tables of the more common more likely to happen tasks PCs are wont to do? If by default all platemail is AC 18, all long swords do 1d8 damage, why can't climbing a tree be Athletics DC 10 or knowing something about a creature be Knowledge (Appropriate) DC 10 + CR or here's a list of example diseases with their Medicine check to cure. There can even be advice on how the game atmosphere changes if you want to increase or decrease the default DCs if you want grittier or superheroic game play.

Because putting a DC on "climbing a tree" encourages DMs to call for a roll for climbing a tree without first considering if that should even be a roll to begin with. What kind of tree? How tall is it? Why is the PC climbing it in the first place? Is it an interesting obstacle or challenge? Is there a meaningful consequence for failure?

Standardizing longswords and platemail is a non sequitur - those aren't challenges. They are mass-manufactured items in most official settings. Trees aren't, and neither are the reasons for climbing them.

[Blatant Beast]

I have changed the way I play D&D because of the ability check system. I only play casters and seek to avoid ability checks (or stack multiple +dice and a reroll) to extremes. Of course I don't GM D&D 5e, the GMs around here use mostly dc 15 & 20 for about everything,

This is not illustrative of a system issue, your example illustrates an issue with how the game is ran with your local DMs.


Perhaps unsurprisingly, I'm with schm0 on this one. The existence of a (low) minimum automatic jump distance is not at odds with their objective of letting the GM control the tone of what jumps aided by skill checks can achieve. The DMG even provides a list of what those tones are - "Flavors of Fantasy", DMG 38. They spell out very clearly that Heroic Fantasy is the default for D&D, but if you want a Mythic game where the characters are demigods and a rogue can steal souls from death or steal an archdevil's name, and however that translates to jumping, you can do that.

Yep

[Pex]

Because putting a DC on "climbing a tree" encourages DMs to call for a roll for climbing a tree without first considering if that should even be a roll to begin with. What kind of tree? How tall is it? Why is the PC climbing it in the first place? Is it an interesting obstacle or challenge? Is there a meaningful consequence for failure?

Standardizing longswords and platemail is a non sequitur - those aren't challenges. They are mass-manufactured items in most official settings. Trees aren't, and neither are the reasons for climbing them.

Which could have been handled if the designers said the default of climbing a tree was go ahead, just climb it, if that's what they wanted the default to be. As it is now, since it's not, the ability to climb a tree is based on who is DM that day. No, not every DM allows climbing trees just because a PC wants to. They aren't playing the game wrong. They just disagree with you on the difficulty of climbing a tree.

[GloatingSwine]

This is not illustrative of a system issue, your example illustrates an issue with how the game is ran with your local DMs.


Ah but those DMs are running the game in the way we are being told they should. They are deciding how difficult they want things to be.

Which means that a player who wants to be consistently capable uses the options that exist in the same system that don’t give them that.

Which is a consistency issue, the system allows the DM to set the difficulty of tasks but has ways for players to override it by not interacting with the DC system.

And those ways start to become more prevalent as the game goes on. Everyone wants a way to fly eventually, for instance.

[GooeyChewie]

Fair enough on "lamentation and admonition." I apologize for any mischaracterization it may have engendered. I will stand by the "DM's whimsy" wording, however, because we are given so little guidance and when I ask how to figure out how difficult a particular task should be, I am repeatedly asked, "How hard do you want it to be?" That question implies that there is zero basis other than my whim as a DM on which I am able to base DC decisions. So until that question is either withdrawn or expanded upon to show that it does not rely solely on the DM's entirely-arbitrary desire for a particular thing to be a particular difficulty, then I believe "whimsy" is not an inaccurate term to describe it.

"Whimsy" is not "completely at random." It is based on the DM's arbitrary feelings about something at any point in time, but I am certain that most people can predict their good friends' whims. For instance, given character selection options in a game, most of my friends would be entirely unsurprised when I go for the necromancer option if one is available. That still is my whim, and if I choose by whimsy to play the paladin option, instead, it may surprise people, but that isn't random; there will be factors to my whimsy.

I do define "whimsy" as "completely at random," so that's part of our miscommunication.

By your definition of "whimsy," pretty much every decision the DM makes is "whimsy." In fact, the distance you need to jump to clear to obstacle is entirely up to the DM as well. Adding guidance on what DC to use for what distance doesn't make the DC any less the DM's whimsy; it just changes the DM's decision-making from "I want the obstacle to present this level of challenge" to "I want the obstacle to be precisely this so that it presents this level of challenge." It's whimsy with an extra step.


Okay, but the argument about why we need zero guidance at all about how much further he can jump with an ability check is that the DM might want to set a particular tone. Why isn't a fixed movement distance a problem for DMs who want to set a tone? Why isn't jumping beyond this minimum part of the movement rules, rather than part of the DM's entirely-arbitrary, unguided, make-up-the-rules-because-he-has-no-help-from-the-books-he-paid-for ability check that has literally no way of helping him determine how far he should even consider letting a given check carry somebody?
Short answer, because the maximum (not minimum!) jump distance and height are movement rules and not ability check rules. The ability check system exists to allow players to do things that the rules do not normally allow, and jumping beyond your maximum jump height is inherently something the rules do not normally allow. (Side note, we keep talking about "distance," but the Long Jump rule actually doesn't have a clause stating that the DM might allow extra distance with an ability check. Only the High Jump rule says that. Jumping extra distance on a Long Jump is entirely based on the DM's prerogative.)

The book does provide guidance for what DC to set for what level of difficulty the DM wants the obstacle to represent. It's not that much different from the CR system. The rules tell you that a certain number means easy/medium/hard/deadly, but it's entirely the DM's "whimsy" as to what level of encounter you face. Likewise, the rules tell you that a certain DC means easy/medium/hard/very hard/nearly impossible. I will grant you that the guidance should make it clearer that the DM is choosing the DC they want the obstacle to represent rather than trying to craft an obstacle that objectively meets the DC they want, but it isn't the same as "entirely-arbitrary, unguided, make-up-the-rules-because-he-has-no-help-from-the-books-he-paid-for."


If the rules are only saying the DM "might" allow it, then why do they include specificity about what the DM will be required to call for in order to allow it, then give the DM no guidance whatsoever about what that thing he calls for actually means? What if the DM wanted to call for a use of the Dash action, or a use of a bonus action and a superiority die, rather than a Strength(Athletics) check? "Oh, he totally could!" you might say, but I will respond, "And, if they gave a formula for the Strength(Athletics) check-to-distance, the DM could still change that formula for his chosen tone, or call for something entirely different, too, so why is not including any guidance a positive but including the specificity of an ability check and proficiency to apply not a negative?"

They do give guidance about that thing he calls for. It just gives that guidance in the form of "determine how difficult you want it to be" rather than "here's a mathematical formula to determine how you need to set the scenario so that you can pretend it wasn't you who determined how difficult you want it to be."


Why, then, is it not a problem that the DM is forced to change the rules for minimum jumping distance if he's running a wuxia game and determines that players should jump 50 feet minimum, before having to roll for it? Why is it not a problem that the gritty realist (read: everything is super hard) DM would have to say, "No, there's no minimum jumping distance. All jumps require a Strength(Athletics) check and I'll tell you for each jump what the DC is?"

Your arguments fall apart because you say, "Yeah, the minimum is fine," even though it violates every principle you're laying out for why the DM has to have zero guidance other than a whim-based "how hard do you want it to be?"

And also, unless the DM writes down his own formula, that one extra foot may be DC 10 one day, 5, the next, and four sessions later, it might be DC 25, all based on how much the DM does or does not want that jump to succeed for whatever dramatic purposes he has. And, since we're well beyond the variances of the jumping conditions (those would've affected minimum jumping distance or ability to jump at all - maybe with their own check), we are absolutely only looking at the exact same extra distance, but different DCs each time. Again, unless the DM makes up his own formula for it. At which point, he's not setting DCs according to the hideously-bad guidance of "how hard do you want it to be?" that is deemed so critical by the philosophical arguments presented by you and others, but rather has had to make up rules to an incomplete ruleset.
Earlier you said that "whimsy" doesn't mean "completely at random." Yet here you are accusing DMs of setting different DCs for the exact same thing. The DM should be consistent with themselves within any given adventure. And that doesn't apply to just DCs, but to pretty much everything.

If the DM wants the second jump to require a higher DC, there's an extremely easy way to do that. For the first one, the DM says "it looks like it would be easy to jump this." For the second, the DM would say "it looks like it would be very easy to jump this." And for the third, they would say "it looks like it would be very hard to jump this." They don't actually need to specify an exact distance except to say that it is further than the PCs normal maximum, much less that the jumps are all the same distance. Also, I disagree that we're well beyond other variances for jumping conditions. The DM can absolutely consider those other variances to affect the difficulty of the jump rather than making them their own check.


Which could have been handled if the designers said the default of climbing a tree was go ahead, just climb it, if that's what they wanted the default to be. As it is now, since it's not, the ability to climb a tree is based on who is DM that day. No, not every DM allows climbing trees just because a PC wants to. They aren't playing the game wrong. They just disagree with you on the difficulty of climbing a tree.

Climbing by default does not require a check. It only requires a check when the DM determines the surface is particularly difficult to climb, such as being slippery and/or having few or no handholds. And if the DM is determining that every tree is slippery and/or has few or no handholds, then that's something they would do even if there was additional guidance on what trees equated to what DCs to climb. They'd just have to go through the extra step of choosing the 'right' trees for their adventure.

[Aimeryan]

Eh, freeform isn't inherently broken. The advantage of TTRPGs over something like CRPGs is that you don't need the code to be complete [snip]

Freeform is inherent to any system that you have access to the source coding (and even to many that you don't). Even computer games can have adjustable rules, or be modded in many cases. In this case, any TTRPG is inherent to freeform, outside of a higher official that can stop the game. As such, there is no need to 'fake' permission by not including guidance or a ruleset - just an explicit permission in the text is enough to convince basically anyone but the most obstinate that this is fine. If someone wants to ignore the guidance/rules that are there, they can. If someone wants to follow the guidance/rules that is very very contingent on there actually being any.

Do I think this is 'broken'? No, but if the text said to roll a magic 8-ball to get the result it wouldn't be 'broken', either. If the DMG was just a page saying 'Do whatever you want' it wouldn't be 'broken'. It would be bad value for money, and absolutely could be improved upon.

This is how I feel about the skills, especially given the context of combat and spells being very rules heavy - 100% freeform just doesn't mesh with such a codified system. For example, since there are no rules or guidance there is nothing to suggest at all that it is out of balance for the Strength (Athletics) check to allow a person to jump up to their maximum speed with a DC 5 check. No one here can tell me this is in even the slightly bit not in balance with the game, because the rules don't provide for the balance. This means that a Giant Elk should be able to jump 60ft over Spiked Growth, Web, or any form of ground-level blocking terrain, spell, or ability. I can therefore state without anyone being able to pushback on these forums that such spells are awful and need buffing, because of this jump mechanic.

[Blatant Beast]

Ah but those DMs are running the game in the way we are being told they should. They are deciding how difficult they want things to be.

Which means that a player who wants to be consistently capable uses the options that exist in the same system that don’t give them that.

Which is a consistency issue, the system allows the DM to set the difficulty of tasks but has ways for players to override it by not interacting with the DC system.

And those ways start to become more prevalent as the game goes on. Everyone wants a way to fly eventually, for instance.

A DM can potentially chose to select only creatures that are immune to Magic, and place all fights in anti-Magic zones….the system empowers a DM in such a fashion that this can be an outcome.

Yet, clearly a game in which Magic is ineffectual due to DM choices like the above, is a bit on an outlier.

If the DMG recommends using 10,15, and 20 as a simplified method of establishing target DCs, and you leave out 10, then of course Ability Checks are going to suffer.

This is a case of poor 5e DM-ing…Ability Checks are not only intended to function when Magic such as Guidance or Enhance Ability are assisting the check.

The game is still a game. Nobody succeeding on Ability Checks w/o Magic is something a DM should catch and ponder, when reviewing their session notes and thinking about how the session went.

Set DCs, are not going to solve the issue of bad DM-ing….using just DC 15 or 20 would be punishing in 3e game at low levels, as well.

Tone Deaf DM-ing will occur, just as a matter of numbers, due to the popularity of D&D. One shouldn’t hold up tone deaf DM-ing as being emblematic of the system, anymore than the poor driving habits of the little old lady from Pasadena is emblematic of Formula One racing.

[NichG]

Do I think this is 'broken'? No, but if the text said to roll a magic 8-ball to get the result it wouldn't be 'broken', either. If the DMG was just a page saying 'Do whatever you want' it wouldn't be 'broken'. It would be bad value for money, and absolutely could be improved upon.

Yes, this bit I agree with

I would absolutely play a game where the only rule is: when someone tries to do something, the player seated across from them draws a tarot card and interprets it to determine what happens. Actually I think that would be a pretty good game for quick pickup games and oneshots.

I wouldn't buy such a game though.



This is how I feel about the skills, especially given the context of combat and spells being very rules heavy - 100% freeform just doesn't mesh with such a codified system. For example, since there are no rules or guidance there is nothing to suggest at all that it is out of balance for the Strength (Athletics) check to allow a person to jump up to their maximum speed with a DC 5 check. No one here can tell me this is in even the slightly bit not in balance with the game, because the rules don't provide for the balance. This means that a Giant Elk should be able to jump 60ft over Spiked Growth, Web, or any form of ground-level blocking terrain, spell, or ability. I can therefore state without anyone being able to pushback on these forums that such spells are awful and need buffing, because of this jump mechanic.

Online argument winnability isn't a relevant feature of a game for me. I think it would be a worse game if this were taken as a reason to favor one design over another. Even inter-table coherency is a bad design goal IMO.

[schm0]

Then why is it a problem for you if the game designers had chosen to add more default assumptions about various tasks by adding DC tables of the more common more likely to happen tasks PCs are wont to do? If by default all platemail is AC 18, all long swords do 1d8 damage, why can't climbing a tree be Athletics DC 10 or knowing something about a creature be Knowledge (Appropriate) DC 10 + CR or here's a list of example diseases with their Medicine check to cure. There can even be advice on how the game atmosphere changes if you want to increase or decrease the default DCs if you want grittier or superheroic game play.

I started playing with 5e. So my preferences lean mostly towards the system I learned on. I have also played 2e and 3e via CRPGs, so I have a small idea of the depth involved in those editions. And as a DM I often refer to that older material for inspiration or context, and in those books one can find a lot of the sort of tables you ascribe to.

Speaking as a DM and from a general design standpoint (and this opinion applies to much more than DCs), I think I possess enough perspective to say I prefer the streamlined, comparably rules light approach of 5e. If given the choice, I prefer less/simpler rules to more/complicated ones. Tables naturally represent more rules.

Secondly, if you are going to add more rules to replace a given mechanic, then I believe the new mechanics should be better than what exists. I'm not convinced that's the case here. What do tables add? In my opinion, more time spent looking them up and less flexibility, which are both negatives. Further, the DC system works pretty much flawlessly for me. I find it to be elegant, intuitive, flexible and fast. So if it ain't broke...

Thirdly, predetermined DCs create a source of conflict if I want to deviate from them. Eventually a player will say "But the table says the DC is X...". I prefer the freedom of not being tied to a table and avoiding the resentment I might get from a player.

Lastly, I generally don't like to make DCs available to players. I prefer to keep all my rolls behind the screen, and try to reduce metagaming to a minimum. It's an immersion thing for me. I'd prefer my players to not think about numbers, but instead about their characters and their motivations. The PCs arent calculating statistics every time they want to make a jump, after all. Having player facing DCs undermines the sort of game I'd prefer to run.

[Aimeryan]

Online argument winnability isn't a relevant feature of a game for me. I think it would be a worse game if this were taken as a reason to favor one design over another. Even inter-table coherency is a bad design goal IMO.

Other than ease of access for inexperienced DMs, and my own personal desire for a codified skill system, the issue with freeform skills is that they interact with combat and spells, two very codified sections of the game. If skills shared no space with these, including character power (Class Features, Feats, ASIs, etc.), then it would be less of an issue that they are so freeform (probably still contribute to the DM crisis, though). I don't see how this could at all be possible, but if so.

As it is, the DC is basically 'Do I as the DM want the player's character to succeed, or not?'. In which case, 5e might as well just say as such and lose the whole DC part in the first place because the smokescreen isn't fooling a lot of people. Some people, maybe.

[Aimeryan]

Secondly, if you are going to add more rules to replace a given mechanic, then I believe the new mechanics should be better than what exists. I'm not convinced that's the case here. What do tables add? In my opinion, more time spent looking them up and less flexibility, which are both negatives. Further, the DC system works pretty much flawlessly for me. I find it to be elegant, intuitive, flexible and fast. So if it ain't broke...

I'll try from another approach. Lets say you really like to headbutt nails into walls. You just absolutely go mad for it. And, in your opinion, you are really good at it.
Ok, so now someone puts a hammer next to you. They don't tape it to your head, its just there. Like, you can see it, but you don't have to touch it. You really don't.
So, you can just go on headbutting those nails. However, if someone else comes along, maybe someone who isn't as experienced or has a hard a head as you do, they could choose to use the hammer. If it was put there.

Do you need to me translate this into tables/examples for skills?

[schm0]

However, if someone else comes along, maybe someone who isn't as experienced or has a hard a head as you do, they could choose to use the hammer. If it was put there.

A few things.

First, please drop the thinly veiled insults. They're not helpful.

Second, experience has nothing to do with it. I had just as much ease in using the jump rules and DC system in my first game as I do today.

Third, you and I disagree that the alternative solution is analogous to a better tool. In my opinion, it is not better, for the reasons I cited.

[GooeyChewie]

This is how I feel about the skills, especially given the context of combat and spells being very rules heavy - 100% freeform just doesn't mesh with such a codified system. For example, since there are no rules or guidance there is nothing to suggest at all that it is out of balance for the Strength (Athletics) check to allow a person to jump up to their maximum speed with a DC 5 check. No one here can tell me this is in even the slightly bit not in balance with the game, because the rules don't provide for the balance. This means that a Giant Elk should be able to jump 60ft over Spiked Growth, Web, or any form of ground-level blocking terrain, spell, or ability. I can therefore state without anyone being able to pushback on these forums that such spells are awful and need buffing, because of this jump mechanic.

The guidance the rules provide is that a DC of 5 is “very easy.” A DM who decides to allow characters in the adventure at hand to jump their full speed with a DC 5 Athletics check has decided that jumping your full speed is a very easy thing to do. If that’s what the DM and their players want for a given adventure, that’s perfectly fine. But they shouldn’t be surprised when obstacles that can be bypassed by jumping over them are very easy to bypass in that adventure. I don’t think you would get much pushback on claiming that Spike Growth and the like are awful in that adventure. But at that point you’re basically just saying the system works the way it tells you it will work.


Other than ease of access for inexperienced DMs, and my own personal desire for a codified skill system, the issue with freeform skills is that they interact with combat and spells, two very codified sections of the game. If skills shared no space with these, including character power (Class Features, Feats, ASIs, etc.), then it would be less of an issue that they are so freeform (probably still contribute to the DM crisis, though). I don't see how this could at all be possible, but if so.
Ability checks are the catch-all of the system. They are the thing that allows a DM to process what happens when a character tries to do something that the other rules do not cover. Even if the rules codified some ability checks (and they actually do), there’s no way to codify everything a player might try. Unless you want a game where players can only do things explicitly included in the rules, the game needs a freeform way to adjudicate unforeseen possibilities.

As for the DM crisis, I would find it a lot harder to DM if I had to constantly cross-reference my DCs with a codified system. I think the best thing that could happen would be if the 2024 rule books do a better job of explaining why the system works the way it does and empowering DMs to not worry about matching their DCs up to some objective “right” DC, when what’s needed is simply something that works for the players at the table in the moment.


As it is, the DC is basically 'Do I as the DM want the player's character to succeed, or not?'. In which case, 5e might as well just say as such and lose the whole DC part in the first place because the smokescreen isn't fooling a lot of people. Some people, maybe.

Horseradish. It only turns into “Do I as the DM want the player’s character succeed, or not?” if the DM is purposefully setting DCs that the characters either cannot fail or cannot succeed. And that’s a DM problem, not a problem with the system. The DC is “How hard do I as the DM want it to be for a character succeed?”. The reality is that the DM controls the DC regardless; 5e just got rid of the smokescreen of the DM picking their description off a table to arrive at that DC.

[Aimeryan]

A few things.

First, please drop the thinly veiled insults. They're not helpful.

Second, experience has nothing to do with it. I had just as much ease in using the jump rules and DC system in my first game as I do today.

Third, you and I disagree that the alternative solution is analogous to a better tool. In my opinion, it is not better, for the reasons I cited.

Heh, that was actually accidental. Still, yeah, that is what I mean with the 'or' - experience isn't the only key; thinking you know what to do is also a reason you think it works - its purely subjective.

Once again though, you seem to miss the point that it doesn't matter what you think is the better tool, you, or the hammer. What IS important is that both are available.

[Keltest]

Heh, that was actually accidental. Still, yeah, that is what I mean with the 'or' - experience isn't the only key; thinking you know what to do is also a reason you think it works - its purely subjective.

Once again though, you seem to miss the point that it doesn't matter what you think is the better tool, you, or the hammer. What IS important is that both are available.

The thing is, most of us disagree that the situation is analogous in the first place. They arent two different tools for accomplishing the same task.

[Pex]

Climbing by default does not require a check. It only requires a check when the DM determines the surface is particularly difficult to climb, such as being slippery and/or having few or no handholds. And if the DM is determining that every tree is slippery and/or has few or no handholds, then that's something they would do even if there was additional guidance on what trees equated to what DCs to climb. They'd just have to go through the extra step of choosing the 'right' trees for their adventure.

If a DC existed for climbing a tree that's what it would be just for existing. The DM wouldn't have to think about it at all.

[NichG]

If a DC existed for climbing a tree that's what it would be just for existing. The DM wouldn't have to think about it at all.

This is a bad example because as posters have pointed out, the 'DC' does explicitly exist for this - its 'this is just part of movement, you succeed'. Something like a Ranger finding food to feed yourself in a forest, and whether they could expect to manage that or not would be a better example. Like, Rangers have this explicit mechanic: "When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would." in their favored terrain, but what is '1x as much food as you normally would find' in order to define how that would be doubled?

[Segev]

The reason is to set up default assumptions about the world of D&D and the intentions of the designers.

D&D is filled with default assumptions. 10 is the default ability score for commoners. A steel door has an AC of 19. The minimum jump distance is your Strength score. The DM can always adjust those things, but those are the defaults. The designers also said, any time a creature wants to jump further than that distance, they are taking on a risk. How much of a risk depends entirely on preference and context of the DM, because the DM sets the DCs and they are the "bridge between the things the rules address and the things they don’t." So the DM sets the DC, the player rolls, and the game keeps going.

And in case I am not being clear, I am trying to answer your question here, and this is my opinion. You should feel free to adjust and change these default assumptions as you see fit.

I think I'm going to put that in my signature.I'm all for default assumptions. I would appreciate some default assumptions about just how to translate a Strength(Athletics) check into extra distance.


Perhaps unsurprisingly, I'm with schm0 on this one. The existence of a (low) minimum automatic jump distance is not at odds with their objective of letting the GM control the tone of what jumps aided by skill checks can achieve. The DMG even provides a list of what those tones are - "Flavors of Fantasy", DMG 38. They spell out very clearly that Heroic Fantasy is the default for D&D, but if you want a Mythic game where the characters are demigods and a rogue can steal souls from death or steal an archdevil's name, and however that translates to jumping, you can do that.I think it is at odds, though. The DM may not want to permit 20-foot jumps without a check, period, for the tone of his game. He may feel that even 10 foot jumps are difficult, and want most people to have to roll DC 15 or 20 to be able to do them without slipping and falling off the far ledge.


Because putting a DC on "climbing a tree" encourages DMs to call for a roll for climbing a tree without first considering if that should even be a roll to begin with. What kind of tree? How tall is it? Why is the PC climbing it in the first place? Is it an interesting obstacle or challenge? Is there a meaningful consequence for failure?For the purposes of this thread (and yes, I know you were responding to Pex, but I feel the need to refocus, here), tree-climbing DCs are missing the point. What I am annoyed by is the fixed, defined minimum jumping distance with zero guidance on the Strength(Athletics) check's translation to additional jumping distance. I do not think that giving an actual formula or rule here would have been any different than giving the default minimum jumping distance, nor do I think it would point directly at "tree climbing DCs" or anything like that. It is relevant because it is part of the same rule, and if a default is cromulent for the rule, it should be given for the whole rule.

[schm0]

Once again though, you seem to miss the point that it doesn't matter what you think is the better tool, you, or the hammer. What IS important is that both are available.

I think having two different methods to resolve ability checks is a terrible idea. You only need one.

In addition, I already addressed this: I prefer less and/or simpler rules, and I don't believe the existing rules need changing at all.

[GooeyChewie]

If a DC existed for climbing a tree that's what it would be just for existing. The DM wouldn't have to think about it at all.

They already don’t have to think about it. Climbing doesn’t take an ability check.

If the DM wants the tree (or wall or whatever other surface) to be particularly difficult to climb, they can add an ability check. In that case I would argue it takes a great deal less thinking for the DM to choose the DC that corresponds to the difficulty they intend then it is for the DM to look up a bunch of tables to figure out the ‘right’ scenario to get to the difficulty they intend.

[Telok]

This is not illustrative of a system issue, your example illustrates an issue with how the game is ran with your local DMs.

Thats been said for years. Look, telling me that because it works fine for you therefore I'm automatically wrong and everyone I know GMing D&D is incompetent is insulting. Repeated use of that stance is, in fact, the only way to get on my ignore list.

See, you're trying to say that everyone I know who GMs 5e, from new GMs who started on 5e to experienced GMs with decades of good gaming in systems with both more and less codified skill systems than 5e, is somehow incompetent to run 5e because they experience the same category of problem in setting dcs based on their guessing how difficult something should be.

If we want a reference point I've personally seen a GM lay out the following logic:
1. The base jump distance is your normal jump distance.
2. Since thats normal and jumping farther is exerting yourself beyond it, then the task must be harder than average.
3. Therefore starting with the "hard" dc 20 (because 15 is medium/average) you need to check for extra distance.
4. Dcs go up by 5s and map squares are 5s so +5 dc for +5 feet.
5. Dc 20 +5 per 5 feet beyond normal.

The obvious issue here being that we now have a baseline dc 25 to go any farther than the minimum jump distance and the game's math puts that neatly in "effectively impossible for practically everyone" territory. Keeping in mind of course that these aren't people who stop to check character sheets or calculate probabilities in their heads every time a possible check comes up. Hell, I don't do that sort of thing and I've done calculus in my head coming out on anaesthesia after surgery as a sort of self systems check. The game system I run has practically the same dc chart description as 5e but I can trust that game's jumping formula to give me reasonable results without my having to ever think about probabilities or character stats. Not having to worry about these things or do probability checks mid-game makes my job as a GM easier.

[NichG]

They already don’t have to think about it. Climbing doesn’t take an ability check.

If the DM wants the tree (or wall or whatever other surface) to be particularly difficult to climb, they can add an ability check. In that case I would argue it takes a great deal less thinking for the DM to choose the DC that corresponds to the difficulty they intend then it is for the DM to look up a bunch of tables to figure out the ‘right’ scenario to get to the difficulty they intend.

This is a whole other issue. IMO, DMs should not start from an intended difficulty in the first place, especially not for a scene element that becomes important because a player prompts it to do so.

Like, people designing a fort want the moat distance to be large enough that the average adventurer can't jump it, sure - there's a reason why the people building that fort would tune the difficulty, because the moat doesn't serve its purpose if it can be jumped by two thirds of the soldiers in an army. People clearing away all the nearby trees so that snipers can't climb them and take potshots over the walls, sure, fine. But some arbitrary tree shouldn't be tuned to be sufficiently easy or difficult for this particular party of adventurers to climb, any more than it being good practice for all adventures to conspicuously occur in places with 6ft tall ceilings the moment someone in the party learns Fly.

If someone's complaint is that the design philosophy of 5e is influencing new DMs to take an intended-difficulty-first attitude towards adventure design, I think that's actually a valid complaint and needs to be considered. I would not have automatically thought that it does so for DMs not already predisposed towards difficulty-first thinking though, but some people on this thread have posed that as the right way to respond to 5e's guidance so now I'm not so sure. Maybe it does create that bias.

[Keltest]

This is a bad example because as posters have pointed out, the 'DC' does explicitly exist for this - its 'this is just part of movement, you succeed'. Something like a Ranger finding food to feed yourself in a forest, and whether they could expect to manage that or not would be a better example. Like, Rangers have this explicit mechanic: "When you forage, you find twice as much food as you normally would." in their favored terrain, but what is '1x as much food as you normally would find' in order to define how that would be doubled?

Depends on the terrain. Theres a chart in the DMG for how much food you find based on the terrain and the survival check of the ranger, as well as what that translates into how many people and animals it can feed.

Personally I never use that because the kind of tedious ration tracking it requires is only interesting at a couple points in the adventure.

[NichG]

Depends on the terrain. Theres a chart in the DMG for how much food you find based on the terrain and the survival check of the ranger, as well as what that translates into how many people and animals it can feed.

Personally I never use that because the kind of tedious ration tracking it requires is only interesting at a couple points in the adventure.

A wild chart of DCs appears!

I missed that one since I'm working off of the SRD, which does not have that particular chart.

[GooeyChewie]

The obvious issue here being that we now have a baseline dc 25 to go any farther than the minimum jump distance and the game's math puts that neatly in "effectively impossible for practically everyone" territory.

Maximum, not minimum. The DM has set a baseline DC of 25 to jump beyond your normal maximum jump distance. That’s perfectly reasonable. It’s also reasonable for another DM (or even the same DM in another adventure) to allow the characters to be more superheroic, and set the DC lower. There would only be an obvious problem if there was something telling the DM they were objectively wrong.


Keeping in mind of course that these aren't people who stop to check character sheets or calculate probabilities in their heads every time a possible check comes up. Hell, I don't do that sort of thing and I've done calculus in my head coming out on anaesthesia after surgery as a sort of self systems check. The game system I run has practically the same dc chart description as 5e but I can trust that game's jumping formula to give me reasonable results without my having to ever think about probabilities or character stats. Not having to worry about these things or do probability checks mid-game makes my job as a GM easier.

The DM already doesn’t need to check character sheets or probabilities. The DM only needs to decide if the obstacle should present a very easy challenge, an easy challenge, a medium challenge, a hard challenge, a very hard challenge, or a near impossible challenge. The build decisions the players made for their characters will take care of the probabilities without the DM having to calculate anything.

It is funny to me that these DMs won’t stop to check character sheets, but for some reason would stop to consult DC charts?


This is a whole other issue. IMO, DMs should not start from an intended difficulty in the first place, especially not for a scene element that becomes important because a player prompts it to do so.

Like, people designing a fort want the moat distance to be large enough that the average adventurer can't jump it, sure - there's a reason why the people building that fort would tune the difficulty, because the moat doesn't serve its purpose if it can be jumped by two thirds of the soldiers in an army. People clearing away all the nearby trees so that snipers can't climb them and take potshots over the walls, sure, fine. But some arbitrary tree shouldn't be tuned to be sufficiently easy or difficult for this particular party of adventurers to climb, any more than it being good practice for all adventures to conspicuously occur in places with 6ft tall ceilings the moment someone in the party learns Fly.

If someone's complaint is that the design philosophy of 5e is influencing new DMs to take an intended-difficulty-first attitude towards adventure design, I think that's actually a valid complaint and needs to be considered. I would not have automatically thought that it does so for DMs not already predisposed towards difficulty-first thinking though, but some people on this thread have posed that as the right way to respond to 5e's guidance so now I'm not so sure. Maybe it does create that bias.

You’re absolutely right that most things don’t need a fine-tuned DC. For that reason, when a player does something unexpected, I don’t want to have to go diving through a bunch of tables to find out the “right” DC. A generic level of difficulty is sufficient to get the right feel.

And then other times you do need to make sure the DC presents the right level of challenge. In those instances, like with the characters crossing a moat to storm a castle, I don’t want to accidentally describe something in such a way that I mess up my planned DC. I would like to be able to tell my players simply “it looks very hard to do that” rather than risk having one of them whip out a table that tells me I’m wrong.

Either way, I prefer the system we have.

[Theodoxus]

I don't need a table - though if there was one, I'd probably read it, memorize what I liked, ignored the rest and if a player balked at some decision I made I'd offer to let them run. It'd be nice to play once in a while.

But what I would like is a reference for what the FR considers easy, hard, very hard tasks. Kind of like the old attribute tables, listing an elephant has an Int of 5 and a Str of 21. A phoenix has a Chr of 26 and a Dex of 14. A human is half 10s and 11s.

So, climbing a tree is easy. Jumping 10' between rooftops is medium. Convincing Asmodeus that you're his top lieutenant is nigh impossible.

It doesn't need to be exhaustive by any stretch, but maybe one for each skill, listing different difficulties...

Acrobatics: swinging on a chandelier: DC 15
Arcana: Knowing something half the Wizards commonly know: DC 10
Athletics: Jumping an extra 5' beyond your strength: DC 20
Nature: Knowing which plants and fungus are edible: DC 5
Religion: Knowing something only cloistered clergy know: DC 20
Survival: Finding water sufficient for yourself in a forest: DC 5

Something like that. This tells me a couple things. 1) In the FR, forests tend to be chock full of water tributaries, I can use that to extrapolate on my own world that maybe there isn't quite that much water, so I'll make it DC 10. B) If finding water is DC 5 in a forest, then it's probably DC 15 in a desert in the FR (and 20 on my world).

Beyond that, having a few examples of common DCs spread across skills makes a lot easier to extrapolate ones that don't. So, if a PC is trying to use Arcana to figure out the workings of some esoteric magic device, you can quickly think about how many Wizards even know such a device exists. Half? DC 10. Quarter? DC 15. 10%? DC 20. Only the guy who made it? DC 30... a little crunch really does go a long way. Sans tables.

[Psyren]

I think it is at odds, though. The DM may not want to permit 20-foot jumps without a check, period, for the tone of his game. He may feel that even 10 foot jumps are difficult, and want most people to have to roll DC 15 or 20 to be able to do them without slipping and falling off the far ledge.

The DM has every right to ignore those automatic measurements if they wish. But that isn't what WotC has defined as Heroic Fantasy, i.e. the default they chose for their game. Which is totally okay, the DM isn't required to stick with any default WotC came up with, but that doesn't mean WotC is wrong to have established such an automatic default at all.

In WotC's Heroic Fantasy, characters can jump a distance equal to their strength score without a check; other flavors of fantasy (or even other DMs' interpretations of Heroic Fantasy), may have different defaults or no defaults.


What I am annoyed by is the fixed, defined minimum jumping distance with zero guidance on the Strength(Athletics) check's translation to additional jumping distance. I do not think that giving an actual formula or rule here would have been any different than giving the default minimum jumping distance, nor do I think it would point directly at "tree climbing DCs" or anything like that. It is relevant because it is part of the same rule, and if a default is cromulent for the rule, it should be given for the whole rule.

The problem with establishing a specific formula to take you above the minimum here is that Heroic Fantasy has an undefined ceiling. The closest we get to one is Tiers of Play describing Tier 4 characters' capabilities as "superheroic" which could literally mean anything beyond mortal capabilities in our world. All they can realistically define therefore is the minimum, and leave it up to each DM to land on their own maximum. And keep in mind, that's just for games that stay Heroic from 1-20; some start Heroic and then progress to Epic or Mythic or Wuxia (which honestly sounds like something you might find appealing), pushing that imputed ceiling even higher.

[Pex]

For the purposes of this thread (and yes, I know you were responding to Pex, but I feel the need to refocus, here), tree-climbing DCs are missing the point. What I am annoyed by is the fixed, defined minimum jumping distance with zero guidance on the Strength(Athletics) check's translation to additional jumping distance. I do not think that giving an actual formula or rule here would have been any different than giving the default minimum jumping distance, nor do I think it would point directly at "tree climbing DCs" or anything like that. It is relevant because it is part of the same rule, and if a default is cromulent for the rule, it should be given for the whole rule.

You're right to get the thread back on topic. I just go a bit farther than lack of guidance for checks to jump. I see it as a broader issue of skill use in general. The lack of guidance on jumping more than your ST score is a specific example symptom of the larger problem. There's a correlation. Had their been such specific guidance it would exist for other skills and vice versa.


Depends on the terrain. Theres a chart in the DMG for how much food you find based on the terrain and the survival check of the ranger, as well as what that translates into how many people and animals it can feed.

Personally I never use that because the kind of tedious ration tracking it requires is only interesting at a couple points in the adventure.

Wow! Look at that! Another DC table, DMG page 111. You're free not to use it, but fantastic it exists for DMs who can use it. It's wonderful I'm discovering it's not as bad as I thought. It's not complete for all skills, but it's something. All 5.5E needs to do now is consolidate all the skill DC tables that already do exist in 5E, add more for the skills that don't have them, and place them in an easy to find section to reference. For sections of the DMG and/or Player's Handbook that discuss the issue thoroughly they can still have the individual table for reference in learning those rules, but they can also have a chapter index in the back that repeats all the tables for convenience of use. Players don't need info on the Planes, so a skills index chapter can replace that one if economics in publication is interfering.

So the issue is not that 5E game designers didn't want DC tables. That actually already exist. The issue is they are all over the place hard to find and they didn't make enough of them.

[GloatingSwine]

A DM can potentially chose to select only creatures that are immune to Magic, and place all fights in anti-Magic zones….the system empowers a DM in such a fashion that this can be an outcome.

Yet, clearly a game in which Magic is ineffectual due to DM choices like the above, is a bit on an outlier.


A game in which magic is ineffectual requires active and regular disciplined effort to make it so. A game in which skill checks are ineffectual just requires the DM's vibes to feel like big numbers are appropriate.


If the DMG recommends using 10,15, and 20 as a simplified method of establishing target DCs, and you leave out 10, then of course Ability Checks are going to suffer.

This is a case of poor 5e DM-ing…Ability Checks are not only intended to function when Magic such as Guidance or Enhance Ability are assisting the check.

The game is still a game. Nobody succeeding on Ability Checks w/o Magic is something a DM should catch and ponder, when reviewing their session notes and thinking about how the session went.

Set DCs, are not going to solve the issue of bad DM-ing….using just DC 15 or 20 would be punishing in 3e game at low levels, as well.

Tone Deaf DM-ing will occur, just as a matter of numbers, due to the popularity of D&D. One shouldn’t hold up tone deaf DM-ing as being emblematic of the system, anymore than the poor driving habits of the little old lady from Pasadena is emblematic of Formula One racing.

And yet you resist any clarification of that in the rules. If a DM follows the written advice in a way which is totally consistent with it, using the upper range of suggested values, they are a bad DM (by your own words), but woe betide if the rules are clarified to help them be a better DM because they must remain absolutely open ended and all guidance might tread on the DM's toes!

Even if their toes, untrodden, are the toes of a bad DM. Their minds must remain pure of suggestions about what DCs fit into the probability maths of the system and what outcomes fit into the physicality of the characters and contend as useful options with the spell lists! They need to sit and figure that out for themselves, if they've even noticed their players don't try skill checks very much.

[Aimeryan]

And yet you resist any clarification of that in the rules. If a DM follows the written advice in a way which is totally consistent with it, using the upper range of suggested values, they are a bad DM (by your own words), but woe betide if the rules are clarified to help them be a better DM because they must remain absolutely open ended and all guidance might tread on the DM's toes!

Even if their toes, untrodden, are the toes of a bad DM. Their minds must remain pure of suggestions about what DCs fit into the probability maths of the system and what outcomes fit into the physicality of the characters and contend as useful options with the spell lists! They need to sit and figure that out for themselves, if they've even noticed their players don't try skill checks very much.

This thread has wrapped back around to once more being the case that the solution exists, the solution doesn't interfere with those who would prefer to pick a number out of the air, yet even the presence of a tool that may help others is repulsive to the freeform crowd to the extent that they will go out of the way to stop others getting something they would benefit from.

It is like football fans getting annoyed that someone else likes ice hockey, and that because they only need grass to play on they scoff at someone else trying to set up an ice rink nearby - even though their grass pitch is still perfectly preserved. People need to stop being so righteous and realise that if it doesn't affect them then they should leave well enough alone and let others get on with it.

[Blatant Beast]

And yet you resist any clarification of that in the rules. .

Apparently we are operating under the principle of: Never let the facts get in the way of a dispute.

I have been clear that I, (and I think most people), would have no issue with further guidance and examples of DCs being given.

I even went so far as to support the notion of a Big Book of DCs, as long as like XGE, TCoE, and all other books, it was labeled as optional.

My concern, which again, I stated openly in a post in this very thread, was without sufficient reinforcement that example DCs are for illustrative purposes, and can be altered by a DM, people will try to Brainy Smurf/RAW Hammer a DM.

A concern which was validated, as people recommended that course of action in this thread as well.

A game without DC 10, is a game in which nothing is easy. That in itself, can be mitigated, if the DM does not call for Ability Checks for everything, (meaning lots of auto successes), or has consumable items that grant die roll enhancements, (potions of Guidances, etc, etc).

If those elements are not present, then peeling garlic, with someone Helping, is a DC 15 Ability check, as is tying one’s shoes.

If every AC score in the world was either 15 or 20, if every Saving Throw DC in the world was either 15 or 20, the mechanical and narrative impact on a game would be huge.

Yet, when it comes to Ability Checks, some people seem to fervently insist that no task in the world being easy, is not a substantial alteration to the game, which strikes me as clearly incorrect.

According to D&D Beyond data the three classes used most to create PCs are Fighters, Rogues, and then Barbarians. (Wizards are in fourth place).

This data, would suggest that most games are probably not ran in such a fashion that the players just give up on Ability Checks altogether, and just use spells, which was brought up as an example in the course of this thread.

Feel Free, to Feel Differently.

[Zhorn]

- Either the game is perfect and nothing should be improved -> oneD&D should not be made
or
- The game isn't without faults and could use some cleaning up -> taking another pass at some rules, and adding rulings into the blank spaces should be welcomed
Pick a lane
^ Didn't quote anyone on that. The right person will know it's calling out the inconsistency of their stance in this thread

As for the DC 10,15,20 argument; unless there's some citable metric by which those translate into jump distance values, then you're just talking past the issue being discussed.
If the nebulousness of having undefined rulings is truly the superior design direction, then surely the argument should be made for more rules to be converted to blank lead-nowhere statements of something being possible with now further guidance of how it could be done.

Back into the either I go. Maybe re-emerge if this thread that was answered back in the first 4 pages continues to make it to 25.

[Psyren]

Wow! Look at that! Another DC table, DMG page 111. You're free not to use it, but fantastic it exists for DMs who can use it. It's wonderful

It's garbage. DC 10 if food and water sources are "abundant?" Why is that even a check then? So I need to roll to find vegetables in a farmer's market? Apples in an apple orchard? And a farmer or a child has a 50% chance to fail? What's the meaningful consequence for failure, do I starve to death in the deli or the produce section? This is one case where I'm actually happy that most DMs don't read through the book.


This thread has wrapped back around to once more being the case that the solution exists, the solution doesn't interfere with those who would prefer to pick a number out of the air, yet even the presence of a tool that may help others is repulsive to the freeform crowd to the extent that they will go out of the way to stop others getting something they would benefit from.

It is like football fans getting annoyed that someone else likes ice hockey, and that because they only need grass to play on they scoff at someone else trying to set up an ice rink nearby - even though their grass pitch is still perfectly preserved. People need to stop being so righteous and realise that if it doesn't affect them then they should leave well enough alone and let others get on with it.

I don't want the books cluttered with more nonsense examples like the one above. So yes, it would "affect me" if they wasted dev time on making more of them. If that makes me "righteous," then I'll wear that label with pride.

[Telok]

The DM has set a baseline DC of 25 to jump beyond your normal maximum jump distance. That’s perfectly reasonable.......There would only be an obvious problem if there was something telling the DM they were objectively wrong...... The DM already doesn’t need to check character sheets or probabilities...... The build decisions the players made for their characters will take care of the probabilities without the DM having to calculate anything.

You're missing it again. I will repeat again with different words. GMs following the book formula, doing exactly what you say us good and right, **** up the ability check system by picking dcs the book says they should pick. By not knowing or checking probabilities, trusting that the writers are tellung them how to best use the system, they regularly pick dcs that are impossible or hard for characters. Your "perfectly reasonable" causes players to view interacting with the ability check system to be a failure state. That results in games where every character can fly as soon as they can get a spell or item, breath water or have swim speeds, magical mind screw npcs instead of talking to them, only ever scout with invisible familiars. All because they expect the ability check system to screw them over any time its invoked, because the GM followed the book like you said they should and don't double check thr probability math. That is my lived experience of the 5e ability checks. An utter game system failure unlike I've seen in all other versions of D&D.

And yeah, I run much crunchier games with 5 sheets of charts (3 if I skipped vehicle & starship rules) and not looking at character sheets or cracking the books. Works great if the probabilities in the books are right.

Honestly though, most of this stuff would probably work fine if they just moved all the descriptions down by 5. Putting the normal dc at 10 instead of 15. What I think they'll do in the upcoming edition is spray faux expertise and misc +1dX bonuses everywhere in the classes. Having a character succeed will become more about stacking bonus dice than stat+prof.

[Dr.Samurai]

Your "perfectly reasonable" causes players to view interacting with the ability check system to be a failure state. That results in games where every character can fly as soon as they can get a spell or item, breath water or have swim speeds, magical mind screw npcs instead of talking to them, only ever scout with invisible familiars. All because they expect the ability check system to screw them over any time its invoked, because the GM followed the book like you said they should and don't double check thr probability math. That is my lived experience of the 5e ability checks. An utter game system failure unlike I've seen in all other versions of D&D.
Precisely the point. The ability check "system" does not inspire confidence or encourage use. So much so that you can't even initiate it yourself. You just explain what you want to do, and then the DM tells you if your proficiencies will be relevant or not. You hope you're both on the same page about which skill is relevant, and about how easy it might be for your character. But none of it is in your hands.

It's an absurd way to handle skills. I understand the idea that these events will be so varied and numerous that assigning DCs seems impossible. But it's a game. So... somewhere along the line you have to move away from "cops and robbers" to some sort of guidance. And what is provided now is simply not sufficient.

[GloatingSwine]

Apparently we are operating under the principle of: Never let the facts get in the way of a dispute.

I have been clear that I, (and I think most people), would have no issue with further guidance and examples of DCs being given.

I even went so far as to support the notion of a Big Book of DCs, as long as like XGE, TCoE, and all other books, it was labeled as optional.


Which is exactly the wrong place for them. Guidance on what sort of sample DCs make sense for different skills, and guidance on how to figure out what kind of numbers fit as DCs at different tiers of play, are the sort of thing that new DMs need so they can turn into good DMs and those are the least likely people to buy an extra big book of examples because they're still new. (The second least likely are people who are ingrained into bad habits but don't know it who will think they don't need it)


My concern, which again, I stated openly in a post in this very thread, was without sufficient reinforcement that example DCs are for illustrative purposes, and can be altered by a DM, people will try to Brainy Smurf/RAW Hammer a DM.

A concern which was validated, as people recommended that course of action in this thread as well.

If people are getting to that point with their DM it's probably because they feel too restricted in the options they're being allowed. D&D is a collaborative game, a DM who needs to use their control over the physics of the world to make sure the players only get to do what the DM wants is a worse DM than one who sets every DC at 20.

[Psyren]

GMs following the book formula, doing exactly what you say us good and right, **** up the ability check system by picking dcs the book says they should pick.

But many GMs don't, their games run just fine with the provided guidance. And the ones that do have trouble can adjust on the fly. "Hmm, I set 15 last time, but even the Bard had trouble landing that one, maybe I should try 12 instead." Done, no additional dev time or page space required. Even if I agreed that your stated problem was widespread, the "No Child Left Behind" approach is a massive overcorrection.



And yeah, I run much crunchier games with 5 sheets of charts (3 if I skipped vehicle & starship rules) and not looking at character sheets or cracking the books. Works great if the probabilities in the books are right.

The fact that chart proponents are willing to do this on their own is even more reason that WotC themselves should not bother.


Honestly though, most of this stuff would probably work fine if they just moved all the descriptions down by 5. Putting the normal dc at 10 instead of 15. What I think they'll do in the upcoming edition is spray faux expertise and misc +1dX bonuses everywhere in the classes. Having a character succeed will become more about stacking bonus dice than stat+prof.

I'd actually be in favor of making the starting recommended DC for new DMs 10 instead of 15.

OneD&D does indeed have a smattering of bonuses like the ones you mention, like Fighters getting Tactical Mind, Barbarians getting Primal Knowledge, and Clerics getting Thaumaturge. But the bonuses themselves are relatively limited, either in use or in applicability (or both.) There is no danger of the Fighter showing up with a fistful of dice to become a pseudo-rogue, these bonuses are totally fine.

[Pex]

It's garbage. DC 10 if food and water sources are "abundant?" Why is that even a check then? So I need to roll to find vegetables in a farmer's market? Apples in an apple orchard? And a farmer or a child has a 50% chance to fail? What's the meaningful consequence for failure, do I starve to death in the deli or the produce section? This is one case where I'm actually happy that most DMs don't read through the book.


That's the beauty of it. You don't have to like it. You can inform your players you're using a house rule to do something else. Meanwhile, everyone else who is not you can use it for ease of reference and not worry about it. It shows that 5E is not anathema to having DC tables. All they need to do is have a few more and consolidate into an easy to find location.

Besides which, it's for foraging food in the wilderness not shopping at the supermarket. When at such a place you just find it. However, some DMs do like to ask for Investigations check to see if you can find where they are being sold in the market fair or at least how long it takes where a low roll means you still find it, but it takes a lot longer than expected.

[Witty Username]

It's garbage. DC 10 if food and water sources are "abundant?" Why is that even a check then? So I need to roll to find vegetables in a farmer's market? Apples in an apple orchard? And a farmer or a child has a 50% chance to fail? What's the meaningful consequence for failure, do I starve to death in the deli or the produce section? This is one case where I'm actually happy that most DMs don't read through the book.

A child goes into the woods looking for food, and brings back enough mushrooms to feed 7 people is pretty reasonable to expect.

A farmer would almost certainly add proficiency to the check.

And an untrained Noblemen who has hardly been outside, has a half chance of success.

I would use DC 11 (that is what I always use), but DC 10 isn't a bad place to set it.

This seems to be more a sign that the proficiency system is a bit weird.



A trainned ranger wouldn't even have to roll by tier 2, even in a lackluster environment.

And food/water can be abundant in non intuitive ways.

[NichG]

It's more important to know in advance whether you can or can't do something, than for that thing to have the correct DC.

Is DC 10 a good DC to find food in healthy wilderness? Well, if that DC is too hard to rely on but I know it, I can dedicate more effort to transporting food instead of expecting to forage. If that DC is something that I can hit reliably enough for me and the group I'm travelling with to not starve as long as we keep a few days backup, then I can plan around that.

On the other hand, thinking e.g. 'even in a modern, semi-urbanized forest I'm finding lots of blackberries and salmonberries and rose hips and wild peas whenever I go on a walk and I have no clue what I'm doing, so surviving in a medieval forest in summer should be a cinch' when the DM is thinking 'the hard thing is knowing what is edible, so even if there might be a lot of food, you have to hit a moderate DC to recognize enough of what you find to get a meal out' is a problem.

Even if you don't want tables of pre-baked DCs that you're going to have to replace anyhow, I think a list of things the DM should decide DCs for in advance and hand out to the players, representing things that their characters would know about their own abilities for example should be fine. Establishing 'hey, here are a few things you and your players should be on the same page about before it comes up in play' would be a good thing. And yes that might mean that e.g. Telok's DM makes every DC 25 - but as long as they tell the players they're going to do that, the players can say 'okay I won't rely on those abilities' or discuss 'uh, isn't that going to have some bad consequences?' with the DM.

[Blatant Beast]

It's more important to know in advance whether you can or can't do something, than for that thing to have the correct DC.

You seem to be ignoring the main advantage of broad based skills, and a large part of what makes D&D the game it is: uncertainty.

One of the great parts about the skill system, is player creativity is a key driver. A restrictive list of approved actions, reduces the game's dynamicism and the amount of improvisation that can be performed by the players and DM.

Most skills have enough details, that one is provided with a sampling of uses, but it is a strength in my opinion, that the 5e skill system has qualities in common with the old text scroller, Zork.

Bold, Inventive play is rewarded in 5e....I like that.

[Theodoxus]

Bold, Inventive play is rewarded in 5e....I like that.


"Bold, Inventive play is might be rewarded in 5e, depending on your DM." FTFY

[Dr.Samurai]

Bold, Inventive play is rewarded in 5e....I like that.
But this is a comment that virtually anyone might agree to despite which side of this issue they fall on.

You can imagine, in fact, that part of the reason people have a problem with the current skill system is that bold inventive play has NOT been rewarded in their experience.

I think sample DCs can easily be included with all the caveats about "DM decides, these aren't set in stone" etc and everyone can have the best of both worlds. Even including set DCs as a variant table to use in the DMG, where they stuck all the other things they didn't want to commit to, would be better than the current level of guidance in my opinion.

[Psyren]

That's the beauty of it. You don't have to like it. You can inform your players you're using a house rule to do something else. Meanwhile, everyone else who is not you can use it for ease of reference and not worry about it. It shows that 5E is not anathema to having DC tables. All they need to do is have a few more and consolidate into an easy to find location.

No, the beauty of it is that these derelictions of game design are limited enough in number to encourage DMs to use their gray matter and the DC-setting guidance instead (as well as being very easy to ignore.) I want them to stay that way, not compound.


A child goes into the woods looking for food, and brings back enough mushrooms to feed 7 people is pretty reasonable to expect.

A farmer would almost certainly add proficiency to the check.

And an untrained Noblemen who has hardly been outside, has a half chance of success.

I would use DC 11 (that is what I always use), but DC 10 isn't a bad place to set it.

This seems to be more a sign that the proficiency system is a bit weird.

"You can eat any mushroom once." I would view knowing which mushrooms are safe to be a task that needs some level of training or experience, even (perhaps especially) in a biome where mushrooms are a nutritional staple like the Underdark.



And food/water can be abundant in non intuitive ways.

It can, but that's not what the table says. All it says is "abundant" which could be anything from a laden forest where you still need to do a bit of searching, to a well-cultivated orchard whose fruits are blindingly obvious. But I guess we need more guidance to go along with the table, and then guidance for that guidance, and... that's just one narrow use of one skill.

[Keltest]

But this is a comment that virtually anyone might agree to despite which side of this issue they fall on.

You can imagine, in fact, that part of the reason people have a problem with the current skill system is that bold inventive play has NOT been rewarded in their experience.

I think sample DCs can easily be included with all the caveats about "DM decides, these aren't set in stone" etc and everyone can have the best of both worlds. Even including set DCs as a variant table to use in the DMG, where they stuck all the other things they didn't want to commit to, would be better than the current level of guidance in my opinion.

Everything already has the caveat that the DM decides and nothing is set in stone. That has not and will not stop people from going after their DM for deviating from it, and it won't do anything from the player side except set expectations that won't hold up to actual play when the DM does inevitably deviate from them.

[Saelethil]

Honestly though, most of this stuff would probably work fine if they just moved all the descriptions down by 5. Putting the normal dc at 10 instead of 15. What I think they'll do in the upcoming edition is spray faux expertise and misc +1dX bonuses everywhere in the classes. Having a character succeed will become more about stacking bonus dice than stat+prof.

IMO the simplest & best solution to a lot of this is (as you say) moving the descriptions down by 5. As much as I enjoy stacking bonuses as a player, I’d much rather that my characters just be component without feeling like I need to eke out every little bonus die I can.

[Dr.Samurai]

Everything already has the caveat that the DM decides and nothing is set in stone. That has not and will not stop people from going after their DM for deviating from it, and it won't do anything from the player side except set expectations that won't hold up to actual play when the DM does inevitably deviate from them.
Then we should probably not set anything to paper out of fear of these tyrannical players potentially using it to go after their DMs.

I'll start a petition to abolish D&D so this potentiality ceases to exist, and we can all go back to playing "Cops and Robbers: Medieval Times", with no rules, and therefore no squabbles.

I'm currently running through a module and hit a group of enemies with an AoE. I didn't kill any of them, and I don't know the monsters to know any better anyways. One of the other players messaged me and said that my spell should have killed the entire group of enemies, because they have X hp. I replied back that I don't know their stats but maybe these are a stronger version.

People that insist on the DM not deviating from the rules are a problem, but they are not a problem that the rulebooks can help solve. That's a personality issue and a socializing issue.

People having trouble running the skill system IS a problem the rulebooks can help solve and SHOULD help solve.

[Keltest]

Then we should probably not set anything to paper out of fear of these tyrannical players potentially using it to go after their DMs.

I'll start a petition to abolish D&D so this potentiality ceases to exist, and we can all go back to playing "Cops and Robbers: Medieval Times", with no rules, and therefore no squabbles.

I'm currently running through a module and hit a group of enemies with an AoE. I didn't kill any of them, and I don't know the monsters to know any better anyways. One of the other players messaged me and said that my spell should have killed the entire group of enemies, because they have X hp. I replied back that I don't know their stats but maybe these are a stronger version.

People that insist on the DM not deviating from the rules are a problem, but they are not a problem that the rulebooks can help solve. That's a personality issue and a socializing issue.

People having trouble running the skill system IS a problem the rulebooks can help solve and SHOULD help solve.

I disagree. The rulebooks creating false expectations is a problem, and its something they can solve. The rulebooks cannot teach people what they like, what their group likes, or what they want. Because ultimately, the only trouble people have been able to demonstrate is them not knowing what they want. "Pick a number between 0 and 31" is not a complicated system.

[schm0]

It's more important to know in advance whether you can or can't do something, than for that thing to have the correct DC.

Is DC 10 a good DC to find food in healthy wilderness? Well, if that DC is too hard to rely on but I know it, I can dedicate more effort to transporting food instead of expecting to forage. If that DC is something that I can hit reliably enough for me and the group I'm travelling with to not starve as long as we keep a few days backup, then I can plan around that.

I think this is just another reason I'm opposed to tables upon tables of DCs. It encourages metagame thinking. You're not doing what your character would do, you're using your out of character knowedge about DCs to choose your player's actions. That's antithetical to the entire idea of roleplaying games, IMHO.

Your PC simply doesn't have the perfect information that you do in this scenario. They largely navigate the world like we do, discovering things by trying them.

This is why DCs come with subjective descriptors. There are some things your character understands, but not everything. "That jump looks moderately difficult", for example. But that's just a guess. They don't know what the DC is. If you really want to metagame, then you, as the player, know that means the DC is somewhere around 15.

But that exact number? It should stay behind the screen where it belongs, not placed out in the open for everyone to see. (Again, in my opinion).

Even then, I don't think every situation warrants giving this information to the player. There are some things the PC can't possibly know. For instance, how difficult it is to disarm a certain trap or determine if someone is lying.

[TotallyNotEvil]

I don't need a table - though if there was one, I'd probably read it, memorize what I liked, ignored the rest and if a player balked at some decision I made I'd offer to let them run. It'd be nice to play once in a while.

But what I would like is a reference for what the FR considers easy, hard, very hard tasks. Kind of like the old attribute tables, listing an elephant has an Int of 5 and a Str of 21. A phoenix has a Chr of 26 and a Dex of 14. A human is half 10s and 11s.

So, climbing a tree is easy. Jumping 10' between rooftops is medium. Convincing Asmodeus that you're his top lieutenant is nigh impossible.

It doesn't need to be exhaustive by any stretch, but maybe one for each skill, listing different difficulties...

Acrobatics: swinging on a chandelier: DC 15
Arcana: Knowing something half the Wizards commonly know: DC 10
Athletics: Jumping an extra 5' beyond your strength: DC 20
Nature: Knowing which plants and fungus are edible: DC 5
Religion: Knowing something only cloistered clergy know: DC 20
Survival: Finding water sufficient for yourself in a forest: DC 5

Something like that. This tells me a couple things. 1) In the FR, forests tend to be chock full of water tributaries, I can use that to extrapolate on my own world that maybe there isn't quite that much water, so I'll make it DC 10. B) If finding water is DC 5 in a forest, then it's probably DC 15 in a desert in the FR (and 20 on my world).

Beyond that, having a few examples of common DCs spread across skills makes a lot easier to extrapolate ones that don't. So, if a PC is trying to use Arcana to figure out the workings of some esoteric magic device, you can quickly think about how many Wizards even know such a device exists. Half? DC 10. Quarter? DC 15. 10%? DC 20. Only the guy who made it? DC 30... a little crunch really does go a long way. Sans tables.
Agreed, this would be sensational.

It'd take up all of one or two pages and you could give solid examples of like, eighty percent of commonly used checks.

It doesn't have to be exhaustive, doesn't have to to have complex formulas, it just has to give you context as to your own abilities and the world at large.

At my table, we've found that, for most of the game, the skill system just doesn't really work as-is, given a +4 to +5 bonus for like 40% of the level range is "pretty good" (and this is probably like 80% of actual play time, levels one through eight), actual "average difficulty" DC ought to be closer to 10 than 15, but we bump that to a 15 or more for non-proficiency to actually represent the meaning behind the skill investment, and sometimes straight up gate the check behind proficiency, because it's ridiculous how high of a chance a complete, absolute amateur has of making checks that stump an expert on the matter with alarming regularity. But that's another conversation...

[Blatant Beast]

"Bold, Inventive play is might be rewarded in 5e, depending on your DM." FTFY

I have played every version of D&D, at some point, and my experience has been the quality of the players always has a direct, and probably the most substantial impact on the game.

I'm willing to play RPGs that I do not like, if I do like the players, because I know what people bring to the game, usually will compensate for systemic issues that bother me.

Due to the nestled nature of the rules in 3e, ad hoc action resolution was tricky, and only became more complicated the more rule modules one added. I watched friends, very creative friends, that make games fun and interesting, struggle with the restrictive constraints found in 3e design.

Those friends, have thrived, (role playing wise), in 5e. Other creative friends, that really liked 3e, only find 5e to be ok. No, RPG is going to please everyone, because a good RPG makes design choices, which invariably are not going to suit everyone's taste, natively.



I think sample DCs can easily be included with all the caveats about "DM decides, these aren't set in stone" etc and everyone can have the best of both worlds. Even including set DCs as a variant table to use in the DMG, where they stuck all the other things they didn't want to commit to, would be better than the current level of guidance in my opinion.

I am not opposed to this, as I have stated. Yet, how many pages of DCs do you want or need?
Do you think you need more than a 4 panel DM's Screen's Worth? Do you think you need a whole book worth of DCs?

I will confess, that I am a bit dubious, that the only thing holding people back from groking the Ability Check system is not being provided with the DCs for cracking eggs while baking or how difficult it is to pick mushrooms, or swing on a chandelier.

If your response to being presented with the dilemma of someone wanting to jump further than their strength score is to exclaim: "How am I supposed to know how difficult that is?".....the major issue I see is one's confidence and approach.

Example DCs, might provide enough of a Safety Net of Confidence, for some out there, that they grow more comfortable with 5e's Ability Checks, but I would wager, that those folks were probably on the cusp of groking the DM's role in 5e, as is.

I also completely agree with schm0, about the metagame quality to lists of task DCs. Zork was fun because you had to be in the moment, and think of ways to use all of your mental resources. It is more fun, than just pushing the "A" button on a controller in Mass Effect, which unlocks a cut scene.

[NichG]

You seem to be ignoring the main advantage of broad based skills, and a large part of what makes D&D the game it is: uncertainty.

One of the great parts about the skill system, is player creativity is a key driver. A restrictive list of approved actions, reduces the game's dynamicism and the amount of improvisation that can be performed by the players and DM.

Most skills have enough details, that one is provided with a sampling of uses, but it is a strength in my opinion, that the 5e skill system has qualities in common with the old text scroller, Zork.

Bold, Inventive play is rewarded in 5e....I like that.

Having difficulties being unknowable in advance punishes creative play, it doesn't reward it.

It's like the problem with doing combat stunts in a lot of games that don't formalize them. Lots of DMs will reflexively handle a stunt by adding an extra check where, if you succeed you get to do a basic attack with some bonus, and if you fail you miss. This can very easily be strictly worse than just 'I attack' if the bonus is too small, if it ends up needing a different skill than you thought it should, if the DC is too high, even just if it's a hard to hit enemy already and squaring a small probability makes it much smaller faster than squaring a large probability.

So yeah the stunt could be cool and rewarding. Maybe even half the time it will be rewarding. But if your basic attack is hitting 75% of the time you're better off doing that.

If you want unpredictably, that's what the dice roll is for. A player doesn't know whether a 60/40 chance is going to go in their favor or not, even if they know it's a 60/40 chance. Remove even the ability to know the odds and you're just removing the possibility that the player can make meaningful choices. You're removing agency, in effect.


I think this is just another reason I'm opposed to tables upon tables of DCs. It encourages metagame thinking. You're not doing what your character would do, you're using your out of character knowedge about DCs to choose your player's actions. That's antithetical to the entire idea of roleplaying games, IMHO.

I explicitly said that a list of things characters should know about their own abilities would be desirable. Obviously I believe that that list should contain entries.

It is not metagaming for a trained woodsman to know how hard it is to find food in the forest they've lived in for 10 years. It is not metagaming for a professional athlete training in the long jump to have some idea of how far they can jump when they push themselves, and how much that varies. A doctor should know the odds that they can perform a surgery without killing the patient pretty well.

Should a negotiator know in advance how hard it will be to broker a particular deal with a person they've never met? No. Should they know how hard it would be given accurate information about that person's needs and desires and circumstances and personality? IMO, in that case, yes - do the legwork and the DM should give you the DC if they want you to roleplay your professional negotiator well. Because your character will have gone through more social interactions than will ever see the light of play, and they should well know how those went and have an idea of how hard it is to sell a hungry person a cheap meal versus convincing a priest to abandon their god.

Characters should have an entire life of experience. That's very hard to model with a hundred hours of table uptime. Knowing how your own abilities work assists in roleplay, it doesn't detract from it.

If you really want to model meta-uncertainty, having standard DCs and factors that can make them vary is a much better way of doing it. A standard negotiation is DC 15 - but are you sure this is a standard negotiation? 'The other side stands to lose', 'the other side is racist against the negotiator's character', 'the other side is in a bad mood' could all be factors that would change the DC, that a negotiator should know can matter a lot! But the difference between that and 'DM comes up with a number' is that the negotiator could actually find out if those factors are in play. They could even try to address those factors before the roll, knowing - because you as DM telegraphed this - that it is important and effective to do so.

I think a negotiator noticing that the other party is in a funk, asking their aide what's going on, finding out that the guy just received news that their kid is sick, and offering to delay the negotiation for a week so they can be with them is pretty good roleplay! And that's much more sustainable if the player of the negotiator can tell the other players 'yeah, this costs us a week, but I know I don't have a good chance of convincing this guy when he's distracted and anxious'.

If it's just an opaque DM DC pick, I know lots of players who will insist on 'just roll for it, we shouldn't waste a week if we don't know it'll help'

[schm0]

It is not metagaming for a trained woodsman to know how hard it is to find food in the forest they've lived in for 10 years. It is not metagaming for a professional athlete training in the long jump to have some idea of how far they can jump when they push themselves, and how much that varies. A doctor should know the odds that they can perform a surgery without killing the patient pretty well.


An ability does not necessarily give any of those characters omniscience into how difficult a specific day of hunting, a particular leap, or individual medical problem will be. For some scenarios, you might be able to guess, but certainly not all. That's why the DCs use subjective terms. Much of the time they'll have little to no clue.

Regardless, they are certainly not thinking about these problems in exact numerical terms, let alone using modern statistics to solve them. That is, quite literally, metagaming.

[Keltest]

An ability does not necessarily give any of those characters omniscience into how specifically difficult a specific day of hunting, a particular leap, or individual medical problem will be. For some scenarios, you might be able to guess, but certainly not all. That's why the DCs use subjective terms. Much of the time they'll have little to no clue.

Regardless, they are certainly not thinking about these problems in exact numerical terms, let alone using modern statistics to solve them. That is, quite literally, metagaming.

Agreed. You can guess the approximate DC by taking the context into consideration sometimes, like with the diplomat for example, and others you have to learn by doing, such as by trying to pick a lock. But either way, it should be the player guessing out of character, because DCs are an out of character concept.

[Psyren]

Everything already has the caveat that the DM decides and nothing is set in stone. That has not and will not stop people from going after their DM for deviating from it, and it won't do anything from the player side except set expectations that won't hold up to actual play when the DM does inevitably deviate from them.


IMO the simplest & best solution to a lot of this is (as you say) moving the descriptions down by 5. As much as I enjoy stacking bonuses as a player, I’d much rather that my characters just be component without feeling like I need to eke out every little bonus die I can.

Indeed.



People having trouble running the skill system IS a problem the rulebooks can help solve and SHOULD help solve.

Not if the cure is worse than the disease, which reams of DC charts would be.


I disagree. The rulebooks creating false expectations is a problem, and its something they can solve. The rulebooks cannot teach people what they like, what their group likes, or what they want. Because ultimately, the only trouble people have been able to demonstrate is them not knowing what they want. "Pick a number between 0 and 31" is not a complicated system.

This too.


I think this is just another reason I'm opposed to tables upon tables of DCs. It encourages metagame thinking. You're not doing what your character would do, you're using your out of character knowedge about DCs to choose your player's actions. That's antithetical to the entire idea of roleplaying games, IMHO.

Your PC simply doesn't have the perfect information that you do in this scenario. They largely navigate the world like we do, discovering things by trying them.

This is why DCs come with subjective descriptors. There are some things your character understands, but not everything. "That jump looks moderately difficult", for example. But that's just a guess. They don't know what the DC is. If you really want to metagame, then you, as the player, know that means the DC is somewhere around 15.

But that exact number? It should stay behind the screen where it belongs, not placed out in the open for everyone to see. (Again, in my opinion).

Even then, I don't think every situation warrants giving this information to the player. There are some things the PC can't possibly know. For instance, how difficult it is to disarm a certain trap or determine if someone is lying.

I think it's possible for a PC to learn DCs by interacting with the world. Haley knowing she couldn't disarm a trap on her own and would need help by examining it (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0867.html) is information she earned in-universe. At least a ballpark.

[NichG]

An ability does not necessarily give any of those characters omniscience into how specifically difficult a specific day of hunting, a particular leap, or individual medical problem will be. For some scenarios, you might be able to guess, but certainly not all. That's why the DCs use subjective terms. Much of the time they'll have little to no clue.

I covered this in my post. You can communicate a standard DC and also communicate that factors might change it, if you want to model when there are specific reasons why it might be easier or harder that can be sussed out. If you want to model general uncertainty, that's what rolling a d20 does.

If I have a +7 and I know it's normally DC 12 to find food in the sort of terrain and season I'll be foraging in, on any given day I still can't know whether that will be a day that I find food or not. But I can know that, on average, if I want to spend a month in the wilderness I should pack at least a week's worth of food but I probably don't need to pack two weeks or three weeks worth. Knowing the DC doesn't tell me how things will go on a specific day, even if I know it exactly.

Now lets say I notice when I pass through an area that I fail to find food four days out of five. If its just 'it could be anything!' then there's nothing that comes out of that. If I properly roleplay an experienced woodsman, that should be a hint to me that something is different. Maybe there's a herd of animals stripping the area bare, maybe there's a toxin spreading through the soil, etc. That means that, because I know how things should be and I can trust that to not be *arbitrarily* different, the DM can send a subtle clue that I might or might not notice.

DMs should not be afraid of their players knowing things. Being on the same page about the world gives a DM a lot more power to set up subtle hints and clues that either can lead players to figuring things out, or which make sense in retrospect and give a very fulfilling feel that everything is coherent and tied together.

[Pex]

No, the beauty of it is that these derelictions of game design are limited enough in number to encourage DMs to use their gray matter and the DC-setting guidance instead (as well as being very easy to ignore.) I want them to stay that way, not compound.



Everything already has the caveat that the DM decides and nothing is set in stone. That has not and will not stop people from going after their DM for deviating from it, and it won't do anything from the player side except set expectations that won't hold up to actual play when the DM does inevitably deviate from them.

In other words, rules existing are a dire threat to the divine power of the DM. Why does that sound familiar?

[Aimeryan]

Then we should probably not set anything to paper out of fear of these tyrannical players potentially using it to go after their DMs.

I'll start a petition to abolish D&D so this potentiality ceases to exist, and we can all go back to playing "Cops and Robbers: Medieval Times", with no rules, and therefore no squabbles.

I'm currently running through a module and hit a group of enemies with an AoE. I didn't kill any of them, and I don't know the monsters to know any better anyways. One of the other players messaged me and said that my spell should have killed the entire group of enemies, because they have X hp. I replied back that I don't know their stats but maybe these are a stronger version.

People that insist on the DM not deviating from the rules are a problem, but they are not a problem that the rulebooks can help solve. That's a personality issue and a socializing issue.

People having trouble running the skill system IS a problem the rulebooks can help solve and SHOULD help solve.

It has legitimately came down to this. D&D has rules folks; if you want to change them the game allows it. If the players don't allow it, this goes way way further than skills checks for you.

[Keltest]

In other words, rules existing are a dire threat to the divine power of the DM. Why does that sound familiar?

No. I meant what I wrote. Thats why I wrote it. Your statement is not equivalent.

[Dr.Samurai]

Yeah, it just seems that these opinions are held especially for skills, and I don't know why that is.

Like... you can say everything said in this thread equally about monsters. There are so many, some are big, some are small, some are plants some are monstrosities, some can fly and others can swim and others are incorporeal and some make ranged attacks and others melee attacks and others cast spells and have high ACs and some low ACs and different hit points, etc. You can literally talk about reams of monster stat blocks, or how "you just don't know what kind of monster you want, that's the problem".

Same thing with spells. Some are cones, some are rays, some deal acid damage and others deal fire, some are long distance and some are short and some affect allies while others affect enemies and some do both and some summon monsters while others create objects and the list goes on into the infinity of creativity. We can again talk about reams of spell descriptions and how DMs should just be able to know what spells they want and the problem is actually the DM lacking confidence to create spell effects and parameters on the fly.

But we don't. We accept that the game has rules that are hard-coded and we accept that the DM can always deviate from them if they want.

For some reason Skills require the most vague guidance ever conceived of, and doing anything more than that opens up Pandora's box.

[schm0]

Agreed. You can guess the approximate DC by taking the context into consideration sometimes, like with the diplomat for example, and others you have to learn by doing, such as by trying to pick a lock. But either way, it should be the player guessing out of character, because DCs are an out of character concept.

The decision should be made by doing what your character would do, though, not with precise numerical information and statistics. Having lists of pre-established DCs encourages thinking like the latter.


I think it's possible for a PC to learn DCs by interacting with the world. Haley knowing she couldn't disarm a trap on her own and would need help by examining it (https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0867.html) is information she earned in-universe. At least a ballpark.

That's what DCs are meant to be an why they have relatively increasing, subjective descriptors such as "easy", "moderate" or "hard". But I'd argue that most checks do not fall into the category of precise or even vague knowledge. At best, the DM might give the player what you describe: a ballpark. The exact number should always be behind the screen, IMHO.

[Keltest]

The decision should be made by doing what your character would do, though, not with precise numerical information and statistics. Having lists of pre-established DCs encourages thinking like the latter.

Er, whether the player can figure out the DC for a given task is separate from whether a given task had its DC pulled from a chart or not.

[Telok]

It's And yes that might mean that e.g. Telok's DM makes every DC 25 - but as long as they tell the players they're going to do that, the players can say 'okay I won't rely on those abilities' or discuss 'uh, isn't that going to have some bad consequences?' with the DM.

Actually most of the dcs are 15-20. The 25 was just the outcome of the logic that jumping as far as you normally can is normal and therefore further is hard, plus a reasonable "5 feet for 5 over". Another part of the issue was GM dependency on grid map play and that everything rounds down so a 13 str jumped 2 squares and instead of needing 22 to go 15 feet needed 25. Still effectively out of reach of the dex fighter at 9th level.

Its like climbing. Sure you can auto climb in the book, and ut also says to roll for uncertainty and risk of consequences. Since some low level characters can die from a 30 foot fall and be seriously in danger even if they survive then there's risk of serious consequences in all climbing. Thus, by the book, if the GM has any uncertainty about success in climbing they should roll. Since the average dc is 15 many low level characters have a coin flip chance of taking several d6 of damage any time a couch potato GM thinks climbing something would be hard for them in RL.

Its not absolutely the dcs, but to me the logic chain that the game teaches is a big part of it. If you know statistics you see the issue instantly, that if you call for climbing, jumping, etc., rolls enough then you end up with dead characters because a +6 expertise thief from 15 str rolled an 8- and took 16 damage on the first attempt to climb a rope.

[Keltest]

Actually most of the dcs are 15-20. The 25 was just the outcome of the logic that jumping as far as you normally can is normal and therefore further is hard, plus a reasonable "5 feet for 5 over". Another part of the issue was GM dependency on grid map play and that everything rounds down so a 13 str jumped 2 squares and instead of needing 22 to go 15 feet needed 25. Still effectively out of reach of the dex fighter at 9th level.

Its like climbing. Sure you can auto climb in the book, and ut also says to roll for uncertainty and risk of consequences. Since some low level characters can die from a 30 foot fall and be seriously in danger even if they survive then there's risk of serious consequences in all climbing. Thus, by the book, if the GM has any uncertainty about success in climbing they should roll. Since the average dc is 15 many low level characters have a coin flip chance of taking several d6 of damage any time a couch potato GM thinks climbing something would be hard for them in RL.

Its not absolutely the dcs, but to me the logic chain that the game teaches is a big part of it. If you know statistics you see the issue instantly, that if you call for climbing, jumping, etc., rolls enough then you end up with dead characters because a +6 expertise thief from 15 str rolled an 8- and took 16 damage on the first attempt to climb a rope.

Unless your thief is habitually greasing his ropes, they shouldn't be rolling for it in the first place. And if he is, well... Falling to his death suddenly seems like a less ridiculous outcome.

[Psyren]

For some reason Skills require the most vague guidance ever conceived of, and doing anything more than that opens up Pandora's box.

Because skills are functionally infinite in variation and circumstance. Longswords and ogres are not. An ogre is a static thing: the tone/fantasy of your campaign might change how a PC approaches or interacts with it, but not the thing itself. By contrast, what can be accomplished with an Athletics check varies wildly if you go from Heroic to Gritty to Mythic to Wuxia.


In other words, rules existing are a dire threat to the divine power of the DM. Why does that sound familiar?


No. I meant what I wrote. Thats why I wrote it. Your statement is not equivalent.

^ What Keltest said (and please sweep up all that straw you got everywhere), but also - I'm not advocating for the *removal* of any rules, even the tables I find silly are ultimately fairly harmless. The rules we have in the book today are broadly fine, though I think it would be improved if the DC labels were shifted down a step as others have mentioned.



That's what DCs are meant to be an why they have relatively increasing, subjective descriptors such as "easy", "moderate" or "hard". But I'd argue that most checks do not fall into the category of precise or even vague knowledge. At best, the DM might give the player what you describe: a ballpark. The exact number should always be behind the screen, IMHO.

I'm totally fine with sharing the label or a character's estimation rather than the exact number. A GM who does choose to share the number isn't doing anything wrong though.

[Dr.Samurai]

Unless your thief is habitually greasing his ropes, they shouldn't be rolling for it in the first place. And if he is, well... Falling to his death suddenly seems like a less ridiculous outcome.
Surely there are times when climbing a rope will require a skill check though right? And if it does, and they miss the DC and fall...

Because skills are functionally infinite in variation and circumstance. Longswords and ogres are not. An ogre is a static thing: the tone/fantasy of your campaign might change how a PC approaches or interacts with it, but not the thing itself. By contrast, what can be accomplished with an Athletics check varies wildly if you go from Heroic to Gritty to Mythic to Wuxia.
An ogre is not a static thing actually. There are stats for ogres, ogre zombies, ogre skeletons, ogre bolt launchers, ogre howdahs, ogre chain brutes, ogre goblin huckers. Different CRs, different attacks, different stats, etc.

And, as I said in my post, this can go on into infinity. Smarter ogres, faster ogres, elemental ogres, better equipped ogres, smaller ogres, etc etc etc. An ogre can literally be anything, just like a skill check DC. And that's just ogres, mind you, that's not even starting at 0 and contemplating all the different monsters to put into a D&D game before you're even coming up with variants.

You are saying it's not worth the effort to classify skill check DCs because there are too many possibilities. This simply isn't true. And if it were, it would apply to the entire game, like spells and monsters.

[Psyren]

An ogre is not a static thing actually. There are stats for ogres, ogre zombies, ogre skeletons, ogre bolt launchers, ogre howdahs, ogre chain brutes, ogre goblin huckers. Different CRs, different attacks, different stats, etc.

No, those are all different creatures/entries. An ogre is not an ogre zombie, an ogre is an ogre, period. And if you modify an ogre entry, it becomes a different (homebrew) creature. That's perfectly okay to have, but printed D&D uses defined entries for monsters (and longswords) for a reason.



You are saying it's not worth the effort to classify skill check DCs because there are too many possibilities. This simply isn't true. And if it were, it would apply to the entire game, like spells and monsters.

It IS true. And I'm not just deriding the effort involved, though that's certainly part of it; I'm also deriding the negative side-effects of attempting that kind of detailed classification.

[Dr.Samurai]

Psyren, you are not addressing the point. The monster manual has over 300 monsters in it, one of which is an ogre.

A DMG can have 35 sample DCs, one of which is a climb DC.

Note, sample DCs are helpful guides. We don't have to be able to capture everything, which appears to be the metric you're using, to provide that guidance.

Just imagine the design team before anything has been written down.

Someone can say "Ok, which monsters are we going to put in the Monster Manual?"

To which a response like yours would be "There are far too many and varied monsters to realistically fit all of them in a book. So let's just provide some vague guidance on how to generate a monster statblock on the fly. To expect anything more concrete than that is unreasonable. Worse still, players will use definitive statblocks as a bludgeon against the DM if the DM chooses to modify or deviate from what is written in the RAW, and we have to take measures to prevent that by not placing definitive things in the RAW."

Which begs the question, with that kind of thinking why did they create the monster manual?

[Keltest]

Surely there are times when climbing a rope will require a skill check though right? And if it does, and they miss the DC and fall...

Then they fall? I don't understand the question. Maybe it was just a spat of bad luck, or they regularly take risks and they missed this time

[NichG]

Er, isn't the point that, no, if you have a rope then that really just is 'a thing adventurers can climb'? Like how moving over difficult terrain is a speed reduction, not a Dexterity check.

[Psyren]

Psyren, you are not addressing the point. The monster manual has over 300 monsters in it, one of which is an ogre.

A DMG can have 35 sample DCs, one of which is a climb DC.

Note, sample DCs are helpful guides. We don't have to be able to capture everything, which appears to be the metric you're using, to provide that guidance.

Just imagine the design team before anything has been written down.

Someone can say "Ok, which monsters are we going to put in the Monster Manual?"

To which a response like yours would be "There are far too many and varied monsters to realistically fit all of them in a book. So let's just provide some vague guidance on how to generate a monster statblock on the fly. To expect anything more concrete than that is unreasonable. Worse still, players will use definitive statblocks as a bludgeon against the DM if the DM chooses to modify or deviate from what is written in the RAW, and we have to take measures to prevent that by not placing definitive things in the RAW."

Which begs the question, with that kind of thinking why did they create the monster manual?

Samurai, I've explained repeatedly why I see skill challenges and monster entries as a false equivalency. If you disagree with me that's fine, but to say I'm avoiding it or haven't explained myself is just dishonest.

To repeat, again - 300 monster entries mean absolutely *nothing* compared to the vast degree of variation that the checks involving the six ability scores in this game can have, especially when desired Flavor of Fantasy is layered on top. An ogre is an ogre and a longsword is a longsword no matter what type of campaign you run them in (e.g. Heroic vs Wuxia), but the same is just not true of an Athletics check.

[Darth Credence]

How many examples do you need? "Running the Game" in the DMG has a list of sample DCs. A table with an example of tracking DCs, at 10, 15, and 20 with two different riders; three charts for social interactions with the 0, 10, and 20 DCs for different starting positions; chase complication tables with a whole bunch of examples of things that are either DC 10 or 15 athletics or acrobatics checks; DC 10 Constitution check (not save, it says check) for dashing too much during a chase; and a specific DC 20 nature check for harvesting poisons. The books have already provided more than a dozen different scenarios, covering the possibility of survival(WIS), deception, intimidation, or persuasion(CHA), nature(INT), athletics(STR), acrobatics(DEX), and exhaustion as CON. Every ability has something, most have several different examples.

People keep saying all they need is a few examples, and they can work it out from there. But I've pointed out the existence of these examples before (although not all of them together), and people keep saying they aren't being provided. This entire conversation seems to be people talking around the concrete existence of examples - on both sides because anyone arguing that a bunch of example DCs will make for arguments or stifle creativity is not acknowledging that there are already plenty.

We could argue that they do not exist in a convenient enough form to be worthwhile, being spread throughout an entire section of the DMG. That might be fruitful ground for discussion - I think being in what I think of as the most important part of the DMG is enough to make them prominent, but I could see someone not wanting to dig through all those pages for an example. We could argue about whether those are limiting in any way - the encounter with a pack of hungry dogs in the urban chase requiring a DC 10 to avoid or be slowed and take damage is questionable to me, as my first thought would have been to toss some rations to avoid needing a check while someone may say, "No, it says you make a check".

We could debate which, if any, of the examples are relevant to jumping distance - does the general pattern of a DC 10 avoids 5-10' of difficult terrain mean that a DC 10 could be getting an extra 5-10' out of a jump, while the DC 15 for a similar distance over something tall mean that would be applied when you have to clear an extra height while jumping? Or are none of them actually more helpful than simply deciding if it's easy, medium, or hard? I lean towards them not being more helpful than e/m/h, which is why I am mostly on the side of examples aren't going to do much and we should either go all the way and have the Big Book of DCs or just leave it as is.

[Theodoxus]

A longsword does 1d8 because it's been coded by a dev to do so. A DM is perfectly capable of changing a longsword to 15d7 if they want.

An ogre is an ogre because it's been coded by a dev to be so. A DM is perfectly capable of changing an ogre to have 3 HP if they want (and a sad day it is when the 3 HP ogre meets the 15d7 longsword!)

The only reason this discussion has come up is because a (the) dev(s) deigned to not codify beyond a very generic 'easy, medium, hard' guideline.

You can't say "a longsword is a longsword because of its intrinsic nature." Someone decided that, and I would suspect greater than 99% of tables go with it.

A dev could have written "To determine the distance a player character can jump, roll a Strength (Athletics) check. The total of the roll, divided by 3 is the number of feet they jump, or their Strength score, whichever is greater."

A formula for jumping is also not intrinsic, codified or not. In that regard, it's exactly like a longsword. Someone decided what it would be (or, in the case of skills, completely abdicated the responsibility onto DMs, some of whom we have anecdotal evidence that such responsibility should not be theirs).

I'm with Dr.Samurai on this one. For some reason, creating hard coded decisions for weapons, armor, spells, and monsters = good. Good = handholding DMs who can't be trusted to creating such things on their own, apparently. Creating hard coded decisions on how to utilize your six attributes, affecting the world in non-combat scenarios = bad. Because hypocritically, you can trust DMs to create plausible non-combat scenarios that challenge PCs despite concrete proof otherwise.

This really seems to be boiling down to cases of 'badwrongfun'; if you can't (or simply don't want to spend the time to) adjudicate a task, you're 'a bad DM', or 'doing it wrong', or 'killing the fun'.

[Psyren]

A dev could have written "To determine the distance a player character can jump, roll a Strength (Athletics) check. The total of the roll, divided by 3 is the number of feet they jump, or their Strength score, whichever is greater."

You're right, they could have done that. I'm glad they didn't. As for why they didn't, absent a dev interview (which I'll now try to locate) all we can really do is speculate, but I gave my own suppositions/reasoning. Why do you think they didn't? Do you really think there was no other reason(s) beyond sheer laziness or contempt?


I'm with Dr.Samurai on this one. For some reason, creating hard coded decisions for weapons, armor, spells, and monsters = good. Good = handholding DMs who can't be trusted to creating such things on their own, apparently. Creating hard coded decisions on how to utilize your six attributes, affecting the world in non-combat scenarios = bad. Because hypocritically, you can trust DMs to create plausible non-combat scenarios that challenge PCs despite concrete proof otherwise.

Weapons, armor, spells and monsters are not challenges. They are game elements you use to make challenges.


This really seems to be boiling down to cases of 'badwrongfun'; if you can't (or simply don't want to spend the time to) adjudicate a task, you're 'a bad DM', or 'doing it wrong', or 'killing the fun'.

I'm not saying you as a DM should be forced to adjudicate tasks/challenges regardless of your own wishes. That's precisely what pre-written modules and supplements are for - letting you outsource that part of the job to authors who have more time. They can tell you exactly what the Athletics DC should be to leap across a critical chasm, climb a cliff, chase a fleeing cutpurse etc.

[Witty Username]

Because skills are functionally infinite in variation and circumstance. Longswords and ogres are not. An ogre is a static thing: the tone/fantasy of your campaign might change how a PC approaches or interacts with it, but not the thing itself. By contrast, what can be accomplished with an Athletics check varies wildly if you go from Heroic to Gritty to Mythic to Wuxia.


Kinda,
Longswords and Ogres have codified mechanics but are not static.

For example longsword because that has alot less components:
It has set things like the damage it deals and its weight, and variable things like how easy it is to break or fix.

The core difference is that it was a design decision at some point that longsword needed some set mechanics and some flexible ones. Damage (set) breaking (variable).

But this doesn't really address 'why' it is just what it 'is'.

[GooeyChewie]

You are saying it's not worth the effort to classify skill check DCs because there are too many possibilities. This simply isn't true. And if it were, it would apply to the entire game, like spells and monsters.
First off, it is true. Ability checks are the catch-all mechanic of the game. They apply to literally an infinite number of possibilities.

Secondly, just because something works for one aspect of the game doesn't mean it would apply to all aspects of the game. Ability checks take a "the DM decides the difficulty directly" approach. That's partly because it is the catch-all mechanic and the designers literally cannot cover everything. It's also partly because ability checks can and do come up mid-session, when it's too late for the DM to do prep work for them. When a player suddenly has their character try something the DM didn't expect, the DM needs a way to quickly adjudicate the situation and move on.

Honestly, it shouldn't be a big surprise that different design directions help achieve different goals within a game.


I'm with Dr.Samurai on this one. For some reason, creating hard coded decisions for weapons, armor, spells, and monsters = good. Good = handholding DMs who can't be trusted to creating such things on their own, apparently. Creating hard coded decisions on how to utilize your six attributes, affecting the world in non-combat scenarios = bad. Because hypocritically, you can trust DMs to create plausible non-combat scenarios that challenge PCs despite concrete proof otherwise.

I would say the weapons, armor, spell and monsters correlate to the skill list, which the game does provide. I would say choosing the DC for any given ability check correlates to choosing the encounter difficulty for any given encounter, which the game also leaves up to the DM.

To avoid confusion, I am aware that encounter difficulty is calculated based on a table that uses XP thresholds compared to character levels, but since the DM has full control over the XP thresholds they also have full control over the encounter difficulty. The direction given for building an encounter is literally "let your imagination run wild and build something your players will enjoy." (DMG pg. 81) To me, the real hypocrisy is trusting DMs to figure out how difficult they want everything else in the adventure to be, but then acting like DMs are incapable of being consistent or communicating with their players when it comes to ability checks.

[Dr.Samurai]

First off, it is true.
No, it isn't.

Ability checks are the catch-all mechanic of the game. They apply to literally an infinite number of possibilities.
An "infinite number of possibilities" that ALL have to fall within 10 and 20, if you follow the guidance in the book.

Every possible thing you can imagine, this giant blob of potentiality that's being used as a bludgeon to fight against sample DCs, all of it falls within DC 10-20. Or 5-25. This is not infinite. This is not impossible to achieve.

You give some sample difficulties, and then DMs that dream of up of any of the infinite super duper nuanced and complex galaxy brain skill check scenarios that you guys are envisioning can compare them to some of the samples given and work from there. This is perfectly doable; eminently possible.

Secondly, just because something works for one aspect of the game doesn't mean it would apply to all aspects of the game. Ability checks take a "the DM decides the difficulty directly" approach. That's partly because it is the catch-all mechanic and the designers literally cannot cover everything.
No one is asking designers to cover everything.

It's also partly because ability checks can and do come up mid-session, when it's too late for the DM to do prep work for them. When a player suddenly has their character try something the DM didn't expect, the DM needs a way to quickly adjudicate the situation and move on.
A table of sample DCs doesn't preclude this.

Honestly, it shouldn't be a big surprise that different design directions help achieve different goals within a game.
That's not the surprise. People just don't agree. And the argument that "it could be anything, therefore you get nothing" is not a strong argument and does apply to all parts of the game. The edition begins with limitless potential. The devs then have to start pulling ideas out of the air and codifying them into rules. Saying "a longsword is a longsword" fails to recognize that.

I would say the weapons, armor, spell and monsters correlate to the skill list, which the game does provide. I would say choosing the DC for any given ability check correlates to choosing the encounter difficulty for any given encounter, which the game also leaves up to the DM.

To avoid confusion, I am aware that encounter difficulty is calculated based on a table that uses XP thresholds compared to character levels, but since the DM has full control over the XP thresholds they also have full control over the encounter difficulty. The direction given for building an encounter is literally "let your imagination run wild and build something your players will enjoy." (DMG pg. 81)
Again, we're talking about some sample DCs for each skill. And I'm curious who would agree that the guidance for encounter building is comparable to that for skill checks.

To me, the real hypocrisy is trusting DMs to figure out how difficult they want everything else in the adventure to be, but then acting like DMs are incapable of being consistent or communicating with their players when it comes to ability checks.
I am not acting. I'm speaking from experience. I recognize the concern that people have about players misinterpreting the existence of sample DCs. I consider that a secondary concern to providing more and better guidance for DMs on how to assign DCs. The idea that the game has plenty to say on what types of encounters the PCs can participate in, when and how many spells they should be able to cast, how likely they should make certain saving throws, etc. but they are unable to speak to what types of various skills they can perform is pretty hilarious.

WotC: Oh, you want to know how hard it is to do a skill? I'm sorry, we're not in the business of determining what types of things player characters can and can't do. Thank you, that's all the time we have now for questions.

[Sorinth]

Surely there are times when climbing a rope will require a skill check though right? And if it does, and they miss the DC and fall...

Failing the skill check doesn't have to mean fall, it can also mean the whole turn was just spent hanging on and no progress was made.

[JLandan]

I generally go by skill failure generates a saving throw to avoid consequences. On occasion, this works well with social skill use too. Knowledge skill failure I will do an Intelligence saving throw to avoid incorrect information rather than just not knowing.

[Theodoxus]

You're right, they could have done that. I'm glad they didn't. As for why they didn't, absent a dev interview (which I'll now try to locate) all we can really do is speculate, but I gave my own suppositions/reasoning. Why do you think they didn't? Do you really think there was no other reason(s) beyond sheer laziness or contempt?

You're right, it's pure speculation outside of an interview, or possibly construction notes for D&D Next. My semi-educated guess is Skills didn't get a lot of player facing playtesting, and that the more problematic ones that got feedback ended up in the various sections of the DMG that folks have pointed out. Since a number of skills are nearly always contested on the fly, and others are fairly straightforward (Int skills in particular are either binary or provide a tidbit of information on a success that DMs (or modules) should be ready to make up or have at their fingertips already). So, that narrows down the really problematic ones to things like Strength (Athletics) and jumping. And it does appear that the devs had considered it, started to write up something about it, and then forgot to finish it... so, maybe not laziness or contempt, perhaps fatigue instead?


I'm not saying you as a DM should be forced to adjudicate tasks/challenges regardless of your own wishes. That's precisely what pre-written modules and supplements are for - letting you outsource that part of the job to authors who have more time. They can tell you exactly what the Athletics DC should be to leap across a critical chasm, climb a cliff, chase a fleeing cutpurse etc.

Last time we brought up using modules to review what DCs the writers propose, that was also shouted down... I still find it useful - as I noted up thread, a small list of various DCs for the skills that could use them would be useful. Yanking that list from written works, well, works, but it would be a bit of work. Something I'd be ok doing (though because of this thread, and the one of non-combat challenges, I'm moving away from static DCs and using your <10 fail, >20 succeed generalization).

[Brookshw]

I consider that a secondary concern to providing more and better guidance for DMs on how to assign DCs.

I, too, am deeply concerned by the existence of these DMs who are incapable of determining if something should be easy, medium, hard, or similar. That these brave souls are able to feed themselves every morning and avoid starvation through indecisiveness is nothing shy of divine benevolence. That's why I'm starting a new charity 'Save The DMs', we're not a non-profit and gladly accept any donation you would care to make. PM me for donation instructions :smallwink:

[Dr.Samurai]

I, too, am deeply concerned by the existence of these DMs who are incapable of determining if something should be easy, medium, hard, or similar. That these brave souls are able to feed themselves every morning and avoid starvation through indecisiveness is nothing shy of divine benevolence. That's why I'm starting a new charity 'Save The DMs', we're not a non-profit and gladly accept any donation you would care to make. PM me for donation instructions :smallwink:
Lol, well I'm always going to chuckle at some light ribbing :smallbiggrin:.

But I think we can make light of the reverse as well, the fear that players are going to grab the DM by the scruff of their neck and rub their faces in the sample DC tables if the DM deviates from it in anyway.

I don't think Skill Checks can be so easy that it's mock-worthy of DMs that struggle with it, while simultaneously being so infinite and vast; the possibilities so endless, that no sample DCs can ever be put to paper. Seems like having your cake and eating it too just to win an argument.

[Slipjig]

This really seems to be boiling down to cases of 'badwrongfun'; if you can't (or simply don't want to spend the time to) adjudicate a task, you're 'a bad DM', or 'doing it wrong', or 'killing the fun'.

I mean... yes? If somebody doesn't want to make such a simple decision about the game world (or, as you put it, can't be trusted to do so), they will be miserable as a DM, which means their players will probably not be having much fun either.

The DMG could be 50k pages long, and players would still come up with crazy **** that isn't covered by the rules. Adjudicating what happens when they do that is one of, if not THE, primary role of the DM. If this does not bring you joy, do yourself and everybody else at the table a favor and pass the DMG off to somebody else and roll up a character instead.

[Brookshw]

Lol, well I'm always going to chuckle at some light ribbing :smallbiggrin:.

But I think we can make light of the reverse as well, the fear that players are going to grab the DM by the scruff of their neck and rub their faces in the sample DC tables if the DM deviates from it in anyway.

I don't think Skill Checks can be so easy that it's mock-worthy of DMs that struggle with it, while simultaneously being so infinite and vast; the possibilities so endless, that no sample DCs can ever be put to paper. Seems like having your cake and eating it too just to win an argument.

Surely you jest, everyone knows players and DMs are slavering blackheart's of the worst kind, looking to destroy each other's fun. It's a public secret that no one actually plays D&D because of the consistently hostile relationships, we maintain the facade but know that the game is not actually played.

[Pex]

Failing the skill check doesn't have to mean fall, it can also mean the whole turn was just spent hanging on and no progress was made.

It could, but since the rules don't give such guidance a DM can be playing the game correctly and just flat out disagree with you to say you fall and take damage. Are you Tarzan or George? Depends on who is DM that day.

[Psyren]

No, it isn't.

Yeah-huh! Yes, it is.


An "infinite number of possibilities" that ALL have to fall within 10 and 20, if you follow the guidance in the book.

Every possible thing you can imagine, this giant blob of potentiality that's being used as a bludgeon to fight against sample DCs, all of it falls within DC 10-20. Or 5-25. This is not infinite. This is not impossible to achieve.


5-30 actually, and yes, every check that is neither impossible nor automatic/trivial does fall within that range. Can you explain what problem it is you see with that concept?



WotC: Oh, you want to know how hard it is to do a skill? I'm sorry, we're not in the business of determining what types of things player characters can and can't do. Thank you, that's all the time we have now for questions.

They are in that business actually. They do it all the time - it's called adventure paths! Because defining DCs for specifically crafted challenges or scenarios is exactly what they should be doing, not trying to spread context-free peanut butter to all campaigns from the DMG.

[Dr.Samurai]

5-30 actually, and yes, every check that is neither impossible nor automatic/trivial does fall within that range. Can you explain what problem it is you see with that concept?
I didn't claim there is a problem with that concept. I am stating, accurately mind you, that there is a problem with the position you are putting forth, that it is impossible to provide some sample guidance within that finite range of numbers.

By claiming that there are infinite possibilities of scenarios, you are attempting to claim that we can't pluck any of those scenarios and assign to them an example DC as guidance for DMs. That doesn't logically follow from your premise.

They are in that business actually. They do it all the time - it's called adventure paths! Because defining DCs for specifically crafted challenges or scenarios is exactly what they should be doing, not trying to spread context-free peanut butter to all campaigns from the DMG.
If you copy-paste a sample DC from an adventure path and slot it into a DMG section on ability checks, there is literally no difference. You have the ability check, relevant skill proficiency, context, and DC.

Again, none of this is impossible. It is all perfectly doable. Yes, you can cross your arms and stamp your feet, but you can't put forth that it can't be done.

[Psyren]

I didn't claim there is a problem with that concept. I am stating, accurately mind you, that there is a problem with the position you are putting forth, that it is impossible to provide some sample guidance within that finite range of numbers.

I don't think it's impossible to do - I think it's impossible to do well, i.e. in a way that doesn't cause more problems for DMs and the game as a whole than it solves, and that justifies the time and space spent on it.


By claiming that there are infinite possibilities of scenarios, you are attempting to claim that we can't pluck any of those scenarios and assign to them an example DC as guidance for DMs. That doesn't logically follow from your premise.

If you copy-paste a sample DC from an adventure path and slot it into a DMG section on ability checks, there is literally no difference. You have the ability check, relevant skill proficiency, context, and DC.

The context is the problem with that approach. The context is specific to that adventure path, so lifting that DC out of the AP and putting it in the DMG would strip that out. "It's DC 15 to hide in the azalea bushes outside the duke's sitting room and eavesdrop on his plot to kidnap the prince" does not mean "It's DC 15 to hide in a bush.


Again, none of this is impossible. It is all perfectly doable. Yes, you can cross your arms and stamp your feet, but you can't put forth that it can't be done.

Uh, I'm not the one stamping. The books are already the way I want.

[Blatant Beast]

It could, but since the rules don't give such guidance a DM can be playing the game correctly and just flat out disagree with you to say you fall and take damage. Are you Tarzan or George? Depends on who is DM that day.

This is a feature in common feature of all games with a referee. A NBA Playoff series can have differing thresholds on what triggers a foul from game to game.

The key aspect, is for a DM to be consistent within their game, so the participants can derive a sense of what is normal.

Game play variance from gaming group to gaming group is expected, indeed it is a big reason why I like D&D. Even Boardgames, in practical play pick up house rules; a game based on inter-subjective play, like an RPG, is never going to have uniform play across all participants…nor should it.

Expecting every game, to run the exact same way as each other, is just not a reasonable ideal.

D&D games, should run with similar broad brushstrokes, but the nuance and details are going to differ…that is intentional.

In regards to the contention that Ability Checks and Creatures belong in the same category of existence…..modern game design zeitgeist frowns on big lists of skills.

Look at the reviews for Cyberpunk Red, a common complaint is that the game design is very dated, with its bloated list of skills, and skill DCs.

Again, thought how many pages of DCs do we need?
Do we need a whole book, a DM’s Screen’s worth, 20 pages?
How many pages of just DCs are needed?

[Theodoxus]

In regards to the contention that Ability Checks and Creatures belong in the same category of existence…..modern game design zeitgeist frowns on big lists of skills.

Look at the reviews for Cyberpunk Red, a common complaint is that the game design is very dated, with its bloated list of skills, and skill DCs.

If this is a complaint (I'll have to take your word on that, as I know nothing of Cyberpunk Red), the DMG already addresses it. Remove skills and just use Attributes. Each class is granted two proficiencies, much like their saving throw proficiencies (I'm AFB, so it's possible it mirrors the same attributes for both).

It doesn't address the underlying problem of figuring out how hard it is to use Dex (or Str) to swing from a chandelier, or what the DC might be to jump an extra 5'. But it definitely simplifies the skill list problem (and squashes completely the issue of adding new skills based on setting).

It even encourages more thinking outside the box. Swinging from a chandelier might be an Int check if you Rube Goldberg some contraption to get you up on it. Not sure what D&D 5E skill that would even fall under!

[Aimeryan]

Samurai, I've explained repeatedly why I see skill challenges and monster entries as a false equivalency. If you disagree with me that's fine, but to say I'm avoiding it or haven't explained myself is just dishonest.

We are looking for objective differences. Examples for ability checks and examples for monster entries are objectively similar in the way that matters to the discussion - the examples are a limited subset of all the possibilities. If you disagree with a monster entry you can change it. If you disagree with a skill entry you can change it. You'll need to point out to how that distinction is not correct for us to move from that position, else we are essentially stuck on never being able to see your point.

If your position was the same for monster entries as it is for skill check example, i.e., you want them all gone, then your stance would be consistent with what you have explained - that examples make it difficult for you because your players give you flak for doing something else. Given that you have not mentioned this issue with monsters before, it does make it difficult to believe this is not a smokescreen.

[Keltest]

We are looking for objective differences. Examples for ability checks and examples for monster entries are objectively similar in the way that matters to the discussion - the examples are a limited subset of all the possibilities. If you disagree with a monster entry you can change it. If you disagree with a skill entry you can change it. You'll need to point out to how that distinction is not correct for us to move from that position, else we are essentially stuck on never being able to see your point.

The difference is that a monster entry has a significantly higher time investment in creating something whole cloth, even if you can make a snap decision on all of the different components, which is significantly more difficult to do than with deciding a skill DC. Its just not practical for a DM to have to come up with something on the spot the way it is for an ability check.

As was pointed out earlier, youre trying to compare an entire encounter to a single die roll.

[Aimeryan]

The difference is that a monster entry has a significantly higher time investment in creating something whole cloth, even if you can make a snap decision on all of the different components, which is significantly more difficult to do than with deciding a skill DC. Its just not practical for a DM to have to come up with something on the spot the way it is for an ability check.

As was pointed out earlier, youre trying to compare an entire encounter to a single die roll.

Which is fundamentally unimportant to the point being made that things can be changed even with examples being present.

[Blatant Beast]

If this is a complaint (I'll have to take your word on that, as I know nothing of Cyberpunk Red), the DMG already addresses it. Remove skills and just use Attributes. Each class is granted two proficiencies, much like their saving throw proficiencies (I'm AFB, so it's possible it mirrors the same attributes for both).

It doesn't address the underlying problem of figuring out how hard it is to use Dex (or Str) to swing from a chandelier, or what the DC might be to jump an extra 5'. But it definitely simplifies the skill list problem (and squashes completely the issue of adding new skills based on setting).

It even encourages more thinking outside the box. Swinging from a chandelier might be an Int check if you Rube Goldberg some contraption to get you up on it. Not sure what D&D 5E skill that would even fall under!

I have brought up that exact variant in this thread, and have used it. As I mentioned before, I think the variant actually works very well in getting people out of the "skill check" mindset. As the rule variant in the DMG makes clear, the only role that Skills and Tool Proficiencies play is as a customizable means for a player to add their Proficiency Bonus to a die roll.

Two questions that I have asked repeatedly, and still have not received an answer to:

What are the advantages to changing 5e to a set DC system, compared to the way that 5e was designed?
How many preset DCs are needed?

[Telok]

The difference is that a monster entry has a significantly higher time investment in creating something whole cloth, even if you can make a snap decision on all of the different components, which is significantly more difficult to do than with deciding a skill DC. Its just not practical for a DM to have to come up with something on the spot the way it is for an ability check.

Not long ago I spent a fairly reasonable amount of time working out three quasi-skill challenges for the PCs to get a piece of paper with a signature on it. Social with bribery or a duel, stealth & forgery, computers & hacking. For the combat that was a precursor to I just ass pulled a big critter stat block off a template, added swimming and poison, then decided a river-side den every 1d3 days of boat travel and a perception 20 check. I could have just thrown down one skill check to get the hunting permit I guess, but that wouldn't be interesting or fun and doesn't show how that culture differs from other cultures in the region. I didn't want to place to be "generic background town scenery no.7" like a single skill check would have done. More work on making skill use interesting and interactive has good payoffs. Roll-once-and-done should only be done for tiny atomic actions on the same level of effect as individual sword swings. The whole "combat is complicated but skills are simple" is a false dichotomy created purely by the word count difference between them in the books.

[Dr.Samurai]

I don't think it's impossible to do - I think it's impossible to do well, i.e. in a way that doesn't cause more problems for DMs and the game as a whole than it solves, and that justifies the time and space spent on it.
This is a general question for everyone, though Psyren's comment here has inspired it.

I am wondering if we can at least acknowledge the problem we are contending currently exists.

I understand the problem others are worried this will create (players using it against the DMs), though I wonder if there are other problems people think will happen. But do others take seriously the problem of DMs struggling with skill checks. I get the sense that the problem is not taken seriously, which is fien of course, but then also makes this all sort of pointless. (Which is also fine; does one need a reason to argue :smallamused:.)

The context is the problem with that approach. The context is specific to that adventure path, so lifting that DC out of the AP and putting it in the DMG would strip that out. "It's DC 15 to hide in the azalea bushes outside the duke's sitting room and eavesdrop on his plot to kidnap the prince" does not mean "It's DC 15 to hide in a bush.
Is anyone able to provide an example skill check DC from a current existing adventure path that has so much context relevant to the DC it can't possibly be included in a DMG section about setting DCs? I'm really curious to see this.


This is a feature in common feature of all games with a referee. A NBA Playoff series can have differing thresholds on what triggers a foul from game to game.

The key aspect, is for a DM to be consistent within their game, so the participants can derive a sense of what is normal.

Game play variance from gaming group to gaming group is expected, indeed it is a big reason why I like D&D. Even Boardgames, in practical play pick up house rules; a game based on inter-subjective play, like an RPG, is never going to have uniform play across all participants…nor should it.

Expecting every game, to run the exact same way as each other, is just not a reasonable ideal.

D&D games, should run with similar broad brushstrokes, but the nuance and details are going to differ…that is intentional.
I think you're conflating consistency within the skill check system with consistency across different tables.

No one is saying all tables should be run the same, and I don't think sample DCs would lead to that occurring.

Again, thought how many pages of DCs do we need?
Do we need a whole book, a DM’s Screen’s worth, 20 pages?
How many pages of just DCs are needed?
I am speaking only for myself.

I think providing even just 1 example of a check, with various factors that could influence it and how would be beneficial, and I don't think it's egregious and I don't think it's handcuffing the DM. In fact, limiting it to 1 example for each skill would demonstrate that it isn't an exhaustive list meant to capture every single instance, but rather a tutorial to go through the process.

Currently, this whole concept about infinite possibilities and contexts and circumstances is encapsulated in 5E by Advantage/Disadvantage. That's it. You can dream up all of the different scenarios you want, but at the end of the day you can't stack Advantages or Disadvantages on top of other Advantages or Disadvantages. A walkthrough of setting the DC, especially including numbers between 10 and 15, and when you might apply an Advantage or Disasdvantage, and how to handle failures would be a very welcome addition in my mind. If that takes a handful of pages to cover each skill once, I'm okay with that.

It doesn't address the underlying problem of figuring out how hard it is to use Dex (or Str) to swing from a chandelier, or what the DC might be to jump an extra 5'. But it definitely simplifies the skill list problem (and squashes completely the issue of adding new skills based on setting).

It even encourages more thinking outside the box. Swinging from a chandelier might be an Int check if you Rube Goldberg some contraption to get you up on it. Not sure what D&D 5E skill that would even fall under!
To this point, TreantMonk just put out a video about how to optimize skills. Because the system is so pared down and you really can't do much with it proactively, the video is basically like a "Here is how skills work in 5E" video, with very little actual optimization that you'd expect from a TreantMonk video. On top of that, he also explains how skills are vague and can lead to confusion, and ways that he has adjudicated skills previously that he now handles differently after experience/consideration.

To be clear, TreantMonk is not "struggling" with the skill system, but he is a veteran D&D player and DM, like him or not. And it's clear to him that there's a lot of questions around the skill system. This is not surprising to me, and in my experience this phenomenon is exaggerated for newer DMs that don't make a living interacting with the rules of the game.

We are looking for objective differences. Examples for ability checks and examples for monster entries are objectively similar in the way that matters to the discussion - the examples are a limited subset of all the possibilities. If you disagree with a monster entry you can change it. If you disagree with a skill entry you can change it. You'll need to point out to how that distinction is not correct for us to move from that position, else we are essentially stuck on never being able to see your point.

If your position was the same for monster entries as it is for skill check example, i.e., you want them all gone, then your stance would be consistent with what you have explained - that examples make it difficult for you because your players give you flak for doing something else. Given that you have not mentioned this issue with monsters before, it does make it difficult to believe this is not a smokescreen.
Yes, complaints about page count, infinite possibilities, handcuffing the DM all seem to ring hollow given what the game is.

The difference is that a monster entry has a significantly higher time investment in creating something whole cloth, even if you can make a snap decision on all of the different components, which is significantly more difficult to do than with deciding a skill DC. Its just not practical for a DM to have to come up with something on the spot the way it is for an ability check.

As was pointed out earlier, youre trying to compare an entire encounter to a single die roll.
See, on the one hand this is supposed to be the exploration and social aspect of the game, with too much relevant context and a multiverse of potentialities that it can't be contained.

And then at other times it's just a die roll man.

Not directly on topic but certainly related is the idea that the non-combat aspects of the game are severely under-cooked. And now it's just a die roll. These things are not unrelated. An attack roll is also just a die roll by the way, and we're told what happens when you attack and can't see, or if there's cover, or if you're underwater, or if you're prone, or if you're too far with your ranged weapon or too close with your ranged weapon, etc.

[Pex]

This is a feature in common feature of all games with a referee. A NBA Playoff series can have differing thresholds on what triggers a foul from game to game.

The key aspect, is for a DM to be consistent within their game, so the participants can derive a sense of what is normal.

Game play variance from gaming group to gaming group is expected, indeed it is a big reason why I like D&D. Even Boardgames, in practical play pick up house rules; a game based on inter-subjective play, like an RPG, is never going to have uniform play across all participants…nor should it.

Expecting every game, to run the exact same way as each other, is just not a reasonable ideal.

D&D games, should run with similar broad brushstrokes, but the nuance and details are going to differ…that is intentional.

In regards to the contention that Ability Checks and Creatures belong in the same category of existence…..modern game design zeitgeist frowns on big lists of skills.

Look at the reviews for Cyberpunk Red, a common complaint is that the game design is very dated, with its bloated list of skills, and skill DCs.

Again, thought how many pages of DCs do we need?
Do we need a whole book, a DM’s Screen’s worth, 20 pages?
How many pages of just DCs are needed?

We're talking in circles because we're back to the game is perfectly fine with having everything else everywhere about the game, except for skill use, to work the exact same way across all games for every DM. All armors, all weapons, all class abilities, all spells, all monsters, all saving throws, all ability DCs. Actually there are some skills that are also universal - NPC reactions, tracking, sample traps, food foraging, object hardness, object hit points, tool use, identify a spell being cast. Asking for just a little bit more to cover the skills not yet defined is not outrageous. It would also help for the skill usage to be conveniently located in one place for ease of reference.

[NichG]

I have brought up that exact variant in this thread, and have used it. As I mentioned before, I think the variant actually works very well in getting people out of the "skill check" mindset. As the rule variant in the DMG makes clear, the only role that Skills and Tool Proficiencies play is as a customizable means for a player to add their Proficiency Bonus to a die roll.

Two questions that I have asked repeatedly, and still have not received an answer to:

What are the advantages to changing 5e to a set DC system, compared to the way that 5e was designed?
How many preset DCs are needed?


Answering for myself at least, here are the advantages of including example DCs. I don't consider this 'changing 5e to a set DC system', because most of what I would want here is about establishing a baseline *fiction* about what sorts of things are possible that the players and DM can share, and secondarily giving DMs an idea of how to go about establishing and communicating their own such fictions when they want to change that. The default I want to remove is essentially 'let things go unspoken', not 'DMs can set DCs'. But anyhow:

- Example DCs give players a better idea of what a given character can and cannot do outside combat.
-- This means that choices of things like proficiencies or feats which modify skills can be made with an understanding of what those investments will actually do. So, a corresponding increase in player agency in the character building minigame, and also greater transparency about what your build resources are doing is generally a good thing.
-- Players can plan and reason around known DCs. Being able to predict things means a longer planning horizon, means an increased maximum possible strategic complexity of the out-of-combat aspects of the game. Can the ranger scout the wilderness alone reliably? Can we rely on the rogue to infiltrate the archmage's tower and crack the locks on the inner doors to get the rest of the party in during the three hours we know the archmage will be at the play? If I want to run things like a heist, a wilderness expedition, a courtly scenario centered on manipulating people's reputations with blackmail and public challenges, a settlement building arc, etc then even if its easy for me to set DCs for things that would come up, I as DM still need the players to know those DCs in advance in order to actually make choices that make sense given my mental model of those situations. Which I guarantee will differ from players' own internal models of those situations. If the mental model I use is transparently in player-facing material, that's one way to solve that. Another way to solve that is for the DM-facing material to outline the sorts of things which should be established ahead of time for these different kinds of scenarios and to entreat the DM to write those things down and distribute them to the players.

- Furthermore, example DCs (or even just character-centered short stories) establish what sorts of things are possible or not possible in the fictional world established by the books. This ties in with players and DM being on the same page for planning purposes from the above point, but also beyond that - a large part of the value of a new system is the inspiration it provides.
-- For players this can be reading spells and powers and things and saying to themselves 'I want to be able to do that! I want to explore what it's like to interact with the world through that lens!'. Right now this is very lopsided towards magic, and towards combat. Expanding on skills would give more sources of inspiration in that vein.
-- For experienced DMs, inspiration is also where a lot of the value is. The writers and developers have a chance to think deeply and extract potential fictional ways of being and share that with the DM. For me, that's what I'd be buying, the fact that someone thought 'I can imagine a world where a sufficiently skilled person can see bacteria with their naked eye, and here's what follows from that' or 'this is how people are in a world where there's a class of people who can catch bullets and walk on clouds'.
-- Even if that fictional baseline isn't gonzo or mythological in some way, the act of formalizing 'what are some of the things people try to do?' and 'what is a model of how they get done?' communicates a framework for abstracting the world, and those can be useful even if you don't use them exactly as given. This is a bit more meta, but things like 'what you are using your social skills to do is to mind control the other person' is a different framework than 'what you are using your social skills to do is to find out a person's buttons and levers, which anyone could have used if they had known about them'. So this is less about setting the DCs and more about what you choose to populate a potential table. Is the ranger rolling 'to feed their party' or rolling 'to find X quantity of food?'. It's subtle, but different - in the former case you're saying that there's no permanent carryover and food goes bad too quickly with the kinds of preservation methods the character can apply on the road to retain, whereas in the latter case a good roll can pay for a future bad roll and you could even have a character making a living by extracting food from the environment and selling it in town. Which is more like the real world? I don't care! The utility is in seeing the possible way of looking at things, and the more of those models I get to see the more readily I can pick a good combination for a certain genre or theme of campaign later on.

So those are the missed opportunities out there as I see it.

As far as 'how many DCs do you need?', its communication so it depends on how detailed an imagining of a fictional world the developers can achieve. Basically, the broader ask is 'imagine the non-combat, non-spell parts of the implied setting of D&D 5e more deeply please, then tell us about that'. If the developers can't imagine those things, its better not to phone it in and list stuff that doesn't even make sense to them. But it would be better if the developers can flesh out those parts of the imagining, and then communicate sufficiently to express it.

And even if a DM wants to do their own setting and their own imagined world and throw out all of this baseline fiction, its useful to see what sorts of questions the developer of a different imagined world asked themselves. What is disease and health like in this world? What are economics like in this world? How are cities grown and castles built? How does discovery work? How does scholarship work? Is career criminality a thing, and why or why not? What do the outliers of ability look like to the average person in the setting - is society structured to be stable around average performance, or is it structured with a focus on those outliers?

[Sorinth]

It could, but since the rules don't give such guidance a DM can be playing the game correctly and just flat out disagree with you to say you fall and take damage. Are you Tarzan or George? Depends on who is DM that day.

They do give guidance in the DMG, no doubt it could be better but to say that the DM doesn't have any help/guidance is dishonest. What the DMG doesn't do is say this here is the right way to play D&D which seems to be what you want from the game.

Using the exact same rules and being able to do either a Tarzan or George style of game is a positive to me as it shows off how flexible 5e is.

[Psyren]

I am wondering if we can at least acknowledge the problem we are contending currently exists.

I've always acknowledged that the problem can/does exist for some portion of the base. But I've also consistently said that I believe the cure being proposed to be (far) worse than the disease.


I understand the problem others are worried this will create (players using it against the DMs), though I wonder if there are other problems people think will happen. But do others take seriously the problem of DMs struggling with skill checks. I get the sense that the problem is not taken seriously, which is fien of course, but then also makes this all sort of pointless. (Which is also fine; does one need a reason to argue :smallamused:.)

You correctly identified one potential issue (DC-weaponizing players); another one is on the DM side. Too many DC tables train DMs to default to looking up DCs and calling for unnecessary rolls, instead of what they should be doing - which is to first rule out tasks that fall on the automatic/conflict-free and impossible/inappropriate ends of the spectrum, and even then, only call for a roll when they've established a meaningful consequence for failure.

Another issue is Bounded Accuracy, because it makes failure difficult to eliminate mathematically; even being extremely good at a relatively easy roll still has a material chance of failure on the d20. A level 1 Rogue with Expertise and a maxed ability score will fail 1 out of every 10 DC10 checks they attempt; without Expertise, it rises to 1 out of every 5. If there are printed DCs for everything, even if they're low, DMs will call for more checks than they need to and these failures will pop up more frequently. This is one of the factors working against martials in 5e and making them feel less competent than they should, and it's something Baldurs Gate 3 did a great job of subverting. There are things martials should be able to do automatically or with advantage, that casters should be worse at due to lacking their training.

Baldur's Gate 3 had multiple instances where being a martial class meant you didn't have to roll at all, or gave you advantage. For example, early on in the game you can meet a tiefling child who tries to con you; rogues can discern what he's up to without needing to roll at all. Later on in Act 3, a number of quests require you to make contact with the thieves' guild hidden in the lower city, and rogues have an easier time of finding it than other classes. There is another instance where you have to save a man from a burning building, and barbarians get advantage on the athletics check to free him without needing to rage first. This is the kind of thing DMs should be doing in the tabletop game as well.


Is anyone able to provide an example skill check DC from a current existing adventure path that has so much context relevant to the DC it can't possibly be included in a DMG section about setting DCs? I'm really curious to see this.

Dragon Heist has a tower with invisible stairs, if you move faster than half speed on them you need to make a DC 10 Acrobatics check or fall down the stairs and land prone. I'm not saying you couldn't create some kind of general rule about navigating invisible stairs from that... but why would you need one? Is that really something that's going to come up often enough to need a rule in the DMG?


We're talking in circles because we're back to the game is perfectly fine with having everything else everywhere about the game, except for skill use, to work the exact same way across all games for every DM. All armors, all weapons, all class abilities, all spells, all monsters, all saving throws, all ability DCs. Actually there are some skills that are also universal - NPC reactions, tracking, sample traps, food foraging, object hardness, object hit points, tool use, identify a spell being cast. Asking for just a little bit more to cover the skills not yet defined is not outrageous. It would also help for the skill usage to be conveniently located in one place for ease of reference.

It wouldn't be "just a little bit more" especially since a bunch of the ability DCs they have defined make no sense already. Plus the other problems listed above.

[Aimeryan]

If there are printed DCs for everything, even if they're low, DMs will call for more checks than they need to and these failures will pop up more frequently.

Will they, though?

Your proposition requires several things as fact to be so:

There will be a DC listed for that exact thing.
The DM is incapable or unwilling to make a judgement that would be for a lower number.
The DM would not make a check if no guidance was available, or, would make a check with a lower number.


None of the proposals I've seen thus far would have anything akin to the encyclopedic nature to spur point 1 as even a remote likelihood - almost certainly ruling out point 1.

The DM would still have to make a judgement; the only difference would be that they would have an idea of what a numerical DC related to with that skill. As such, this pretty much rules out point 2 as a DM that is incapable or unwilling to make a judgement would be unable to DM, and a DM that is capable and willing could choose a lower number if they saw fit.

A DM with no guidance available may indeed make fewer or no checks, precisely because they feel unconfident in the task. That is a failing of the system, not a benefit. A DM that would make checks is no more or less likely to rule higher or lower - they are likely to rule different, but not in a particular direction, unless WotC is quite off-base. This rules out point 3 unless we are will to confidently say that WotC will set the DCs too high for balance - for all you or I know they may set them too low for balance and have players failing less.

What we can say is that if WotC get the balance correct then a high percentage of DMs would be likely to get the balance correct if they follow the guidance. If WotC get the balance incorrect then we can point this out, either informally to players like here on the forum or formally to WotC to get them corrected. Without the guidance at all, a small percentage of DMs will get balance correct (the more experienced ones being more likely), while a large percentage of DMs will get inbalance (the less experienced ones being more likely). All the while, the DMs who don't care about the WotC DCs would do their own thing under either scenario. Thus, at worse we have DMs going from inbalance to imbalance until WotC fixed the DCs, while at best we have DMs going from imbalance to balance - all while not affecting DMs ability to do what they like.

[Psyren]

Will they, though?

Yes, and we have a clear example of that - identifying spells as they're being cast. Before Xanathar's codified that as a reaction with a DC of 15+spell level, many DMs simply let people recognize a spell for free if they had the same spell on their list, and when they did call for a check many set the DC at 10+level like Dispel Magic and Counterspell do (sidenote: why is simply recognizing a spell significantly harder than forcibly unraveling it now?), and they definitely didn't require it to consume your reaction either. I skimmed a few (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?417974-Arcana-checks-What-does-it-do) old (https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/3yo7va/5e_how_do_you_guys_use_arcana_checks/) threads (https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/3tyscn/5e_identifying_spells/) that predated XGtE to see how people handled spell identification pre-codification, and while the vast majority agreed on Arcana when a check was even required, I didn't see anyone handle it the way Xanathar's did before that book was printed. And that's a single use case of a single skill; what you're proposing would be to add multiple other examples for a bunch more skill uses across the game. It's not something I trust WotC to do well, even if they had unlimited time and resources to dedicate to doing that without tradeoffs elsewhere.

[Aimeryan]

Yes, and we have a clear example of that - identifying spells as they're being cast. Before Xanathar's codified that as a reaction with a DC of 15+spell level, many DMs simply let people recognize a spell for free if they had the same spell on their list, and when they did call for a check many set the DC at 10+level like Dispel Magic and Counterspell do (sidenote: why is simply recognizing a spell significantly harder than forcibly unraveling it now?), and they definitely didn't require it to consume your reaction either. I skimmed a few (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?417974-Arcana-checks-What-does-it-do) old (https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/3yo7va/5e_how_do_you_guys_use_arcana_checks/) threads (https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/3tyscn/5e_identifying_spells/) that predated XGtE to see how people handled spell identification pre-codification, and while the vast majority agreed on Arcana when a check was even required, I didn't see anyone handle it the way Xanathar's did before that book was printed. And that's a single use case of a single skill; what you're proposing would be to add multiple other examples for a bunch more skill uses across the game. It's not something I trust WotC to do well, even if they had unlimited time and resources to dedicate to doing that without tradeoffs elsewhere.

For one, there were probably a significant number of DMs that didn't let you know what the spell was at all, unless the DM felt is was visibly possible for that specific spell - at which point they may or may not have required a skill check, possibly a Perception check rather than Arcana. Others may have said something like if you take the time to figure it out it will be too late to stop (which is pretty much what XGtE did). Yet others may have required both being able to cast that specific spell AND having an Arcana check, which could be some random DC based on how often the DM felt you used the skill. Yet still others may have had a History skill check based on how often you had seen that spell cast before.

That sort of discrepancy is not good for balance. Regardless, how do you know that many DMs don't do exactly what they did before if they prefer it? I would argue, from my various experiences on and off the forum, that many people do ignore that rule - which is exactly the point we are making.

Lastly, this is not in the same realms as the proposal - the XGtE ruling added for identifying a spell was an added rule that created an additional obstacle, meanwhile the skill check DCs are already a thing that we seeking guidance on the balance of. If skill checks were not a thing and everyone could simultaneously do everything and nothing, and then we were asking for skill checks to be added to help clear this up, this would be more akin to your example.

[Psyren]

That sort of discrepancy is not good for balance.

I would actually prefer that kind of discrepancy to what we got - a clear, universal, and codified rule that I now have to ignore/houserule in every game I run because it sucks.


Furthermore, how do you know that many DMs don't do exactly what they did before if they prefer it? I would argue, from my various experiences on and off the forum, that many people do ignore that rule - which is exactly the point we are making.

But that's exactly the point I'm making - one bad codification that most of us ignore is bad enough (and it's more than one, if you throw in things like the foraging rule Pex dug up). If you get your way, we'll likely end up with a bunch more. No thanks; 5e's strength is its flexibility in the ability check system.


Lastly, this is not in the same realms as the proposal - the XGtE ruling added for identifying a spell was an added rule that created an additional obstacle, meanwhile the skill check DCs are already a thing that we seeking guidance on the balance of. If skill checks were not a thing and everyone could do everything, and then we were asking for skill checks, this would be more akin to your example.

Any time the book encourages the DM to call for a check when they might have otherwise granted something automatically, that's an "additional obstacle." And every additional printed DC does exactly that.

[Dr.Samurai]

You correctly identified one potential issue (DC-weaponizing players); another one is on the DM side. Too many DC tables train DMs to default to looking up DCs and calling for unnecessary rolls, instead of what they should be doing - which is to first rule out tasks that fall on the automatic/conflict-free and impossible/inappropriate ends of the spectrum, and even then, only call for a roll when they've established a meaningful consequence for failure.
I don't agree that this is a problem of this approach. You sort of keep sneaking in "too many DC tables" and I'm not sure it's necessary to have a bunch of DC tables. But I do think it would be useful to show a thought process behind setting a DC and modifying it based on circumstances.

Another issue is Bounded Accuracy, because it makes failure difficult to eliminate mathematically; even being extremely good at a relatively easy roll still has a material chance of failure on the d20. A level 1 Rogue with Expertise and a maxed ability score will fail 1 out of every 10 DC10 checks they attempt; without Expertise, it rises to 1 out of every 5. If there are printed DCs for everything, even if they're low, DMs will call for more checks than they need to and these failures will pop up more frequently.
I don't think we need printed DCs for everything though.

This is one of the factors working against martials in 5e and making them feel less competent than they should, and it's something Baldurs Gate 3 did a great job of subverting. There are things martials should be able to do automatically or with advantage, that casters should be worse at due to lacking their training.
It's not just calling for more checks than you need to; it is also setting DCs that are higher than they need to.

Baldur's Gate 3 had multiple instances where being a martial class meant you didn't have to roll at all, or gave you advantage. For example, early on in the game you can meet a tiefling child who tries to con you; rogues can discern what he's up to without needing to roll at all. Later on in Act 3, a number of quests require you to make contact with the thieves' guild hidden in the lower city, and rogues have an easier time of finding it than other classes. There is another instance where you have to save a man from a burning building, and barbarians get advantage on the athletics check to free him without needing to rage first. This is the kind of thing DMs should be doing in the tabletop game as well.
Interesting. I would think, based on the current "flavor is mutable, nothing means anything" zeitgeist, people would rail against the idea that the rogue must automatically be well versed in conning people, or connected to a thieves guild.

Dragon Heist has a tower with invisible stairs, if you move faster than half speed on them you need to make a DC 10 Acrobatics check or fall down the stairs and land prone. I'm not saying you couldn't create some kind of general rule about navigating invisible stairs from that... but why would you need one? Is that really something that's going to come up often enough to need a rule in the DMG?
This is a great example actually, thank you for sharing it.

Do we need an example about invisible stairs in the DMG? No, I don't think so. But notice the stairs are invisible but still an Easy DC to navigate, as opposed to simply setting the DC to Medium or even Hard to demonstrate it's trickier to navigate them. Notice also that no Disadvantage is imposed on the check, which is normally how a new DM might consider modifying a roll to show that it's harder than normal. Even still, the check isn't automatic if you move up the stairs, you can be careful and move more slowly and avoid the need for a check in the first place, only requiring a check if you want to move at normal speeds.

This is the sort of stuff I think the DMG can expand upon to assist DMs in how to navigate Ability/Skill checks.

[InvisibleBison]

I would actually prefer that kind of discrepancy to what we got - a clear, universal, and codified rule that I now have to ignore/houserule in every game I run because it sucks.

I don't see how there's any difference between what you'd have to do in those two situations. In the absence of a standard rule, you'd have to figure out how to handle the situation and then communicate your decision to your players. If there's a standard rule that you don't like, you'd have to figure out how handle the situation and then communicate your decision to your players. It seems to me that you'd be doing the exact same thing in both situations, so why do you have a preference for one over the other?

[Blatant Beast]

I
Do we need an example about invisible stairs in the DMG? No, I don't think so. But notice the stairs are invisible but still an Easy DC to navigate, as opposed to simply setting the DC to Medium or even Hard to demonstrate it's trickier to navigate them. Notice also that no Disadvantage is imposed on the check, which is normally how a new DM might consider modifying a roll to show that it's harder than normal. Even still, the check isn't automatic if you move up the stairs, you can be careful and move more slowly and avoid the need for a check in the first place, only requiring a check if you want to move at normal speeds.

This is the sort of stuff I think the DMG can expand upon to assist DMs in how to navigate Ability/Skill checks.

While I am not defending the status quo of the DMG, reading Modules have almost always been better training on how to run the game than the Dungeon Master’s Guide. The Starter Sets are excellent guides, as is the Sunless Citadel in the Yawning Portal Anthology.

The DMG has almost always been more of a Dungeon Master’s Almanac, then a guide. 2e AD&D’s DMG is probably the best of the lot, in terms of format, topics, and readability.

Now, while 5E’s DMG does exhort the Dungeon Master to think about their DCs, the book does little to guide the DM in how to approach this.

Any Check that comes up repeatedly,(Repeatedly being defined as once or more per Turn), such as slipping on icy or invisible stairs while moving, or making continual Exhaustion checks due to cold or hot weather should have a lower DC than an effect that will only trigger once.

A DC 10 Constitution check, on the surface, seems trivial for a 20th level Fighter, and as a singular die roll it is. If the same Fighter has to make twenty DC 10 checks, it is amazing to see what the expected fail rate after a number of attempts is.

Stattrek.com is a good resource to help one calculate for phenomena like this.

I do wish to point out, that mathematical considerations like this have been brought up in thread, (Stoutstein, Phoenix Phyre, and I think Keltest had posts regarding this topic).

In my experience, DMs want to help other DMs. I think, unfortunately, that these type of discussions become arguments, as we focus on game philosophy, instead of being clearing houses of practical advice.

Shout out to Psyren, I also do not use the XGE option for Spell Identification.

[Psyren]

I don't agree that this is a problem of this approach. You sort of keep sneaking in "too many DC tables" and I'm not sure it's necessary to have a bunch of DC tables. But I do think it would be useful to show a thought process behind setting a DC and modifying it based on circumstances.



I don't think we need printed DCs for everything though.

I guess I'm just not seeing this golden mean that you are then. If all you want is a handful of extra printed DCs, I don't see how that solves your stated issue. If you want more than a handful, that may solve your issue, but runs headfirst into mine.


It's not just calling for more checks than you need to; it is also setting DCs that are higher than they need to.

Yeah, it's both. WotC seems married to a base of 15 for most things that matter (like foraging for food when it isn't abundant, or identifying spells) because they genuinely see 15 as "moderate."

But given that they have this mindset/design philosophy, the notion that they should be trusted to come up with even more codifications just seems odd to me. Aren't most of the people with this mindset generally critical of WotC? Why do you think they'll do such a better job of this than a GM you know personally?


Interesting. I would think, based on the current "flavor is mutable, nothing means anything" zeitgeist, people would rail against the idea that the rogue must automatically be well versed in conning people, or connected to a thieves guild.

Maybe because the only people who actually think things like "nothing means anything" are y'all?



This is a great example actually, thank you for sharing it.

Do we need an example about invisible stairs in the DMG? No, I don't think so. But notice the stairs are invisible but still an Easy DC to navigate, as opposed to simply setting the DC to Medium or even Hard to demonstrate it's trickier to navigate them. Notice also that no Disadvantage is imposed on the check, which is normally how a new DM might consider modifying a roll to show that it's harder than normal. Even still, the check isn't automatic if you move up the stairs, you can be careful and move more slowly and avoid the need for a check in the first place, only requiring a check if you want to move at normal speeds.

This is the sort of stuff I think the DMG can expand upon to assist DMs in how to navigate Ability/Skill checks.

...Why would the DM have imposed disadvantage? Traversing stairs at normal speed usually wouldn't require a check at all, just like climbing a ladder or walking across a room wouldn't need a check. The fact that there is a check in the first place already encompasses the sole complication of the stairs being invisible, by having it be a challenge in the first place.

Moreover, this example shows why slapping a printed DC on things can result in odd outcomes. What if the PC has blindsight? Ideally the stairs being invisible shouldn't matter then, but of course the module doesn't cover that, and the DMG wouldn't either. What if the room is pitch dark or the PC is blinded, does that mean the stairs being invisible shouldn't matter? Should all PCs navigating stairs while blinded or heavily obscured need an acrobatics check then? This is why a quirky challenge made for a specific module should stay within that module, rather than becoming a source of global extrapolation for the whole game.


I don't see how there's any difference between what you'd have to do in those two situations. In the absence of a standard rule, you'd have to figure out how to handle the situation and then communicate your decision to your players. If there's a standard rule that you don't like, you'd have to figure out how handle the situation and then communicate your decision to your players. It seems to me that you'd be doing the exact same thing in both situations, so why do you have a preference for one over the other?

Because in one scenario, I'm fighting against the current; there's a universal DC that I have to remember and consciously adjust every single campaign where it comes up, especially if the players come to the table expecting the rules to be as written. That's not a big deal when there's only a few such rules in the book, as exists today, but the more that are codified the more onerous it becomes. And as most games have a 1:M between the DM and the players, the collective ability of the players to remember (and weaponize) such rules will almost always eclipse that of the DM.

And that's putting aside the other issues, where the printed rule is taking up space and took dev time to write that could have gone to something more valuable, or the issue of other DMs who might see a printed DC and think "ok, this is a roll" before considering PC qualities or meaningful consequences. The Xanathar's rule is three paragraphs long, just to explain one use case of one skill, and at the end of that they ended up with a rule that even some of the pro-DC people admit they ignore.

[Dr.Samurai]

I guess I'm just not seeing this golden mean that you are then. If all you want is a handful of extra printed DCs, I don't see how that solves your stated issue. If you want more than a handful, that may solve your issue, but runs headfirst into mine.
I don't know how to explain it any other way except the way I already have. I thought the example of the invisible stairs helped facilitate the point pretty well. The book has space to explain in more depth how a DM can approach various scenarios.

Yeah, it's both. WotC seems married to a base of 15 for most things that matter (like foraging for food when it isn't abundant, or identifying spells) because they genuinely see 15 as "moderate."

But given that they have this mindset/design philosophy, the notion that they should be trusted to come up with even more codifications just seems odd to me. Aren't most of the people with this mindset generally critical of WotC? Why do you think they'll do such a better job of this than a GM you know personally?

So don't do it because the guidance is enough, and also don't do it because the guidance is bad. Seems like we're just trying to preserve the "don't do it" conclusion.

There have been suggestions to lower the DCs in this thread. If we're discussing issues with the DMG, we can lump this in as well.

Maybe because the only people who actually think things like "nothing means anything" are y'all?
Not sure who you're referring to. Like...what group are you lumping me in with?

...Why would the DM have imposed disadvantage? Traversing stairs at normal speed usually wouldn't require a check at all, just like climbing a ladder or walking across a room wouldn't need a check. The fact that there is a check in the first place already encompasses the sole complication of the stairs being invisible, by having it be a challenge in the first place.
Are you suggesting that because it wouldn't occur to you it therefore wouldn't occur to anyone else?

Moreover, this example shows why slapping a printed DC on things can result in odd outcomes. What if the PC has blindsight? Ideally the stairs being invisible shouldn't matter then, but of course the module doesn't cover that, and the DMG wouldn't either. What if the room is pitch dark or the PC is blinded, does that mean the stairs being invisible shouldn't matter? Should all PCs navigating stairs while blinded or heavily obscured need an acrobatics check then? This is why a quirky challenge made for a specific module should stay within that module, rather than becoming a source of global extrapolation for the whole game.
It doesn't have to be about the stairs (as I said in that post), and it doesn't have to be concrete. It's just walking a DM through how they can handle these types of checks. Like Blatant Beast's comment above that a check being performed every turn should probably remain easy, and your comment that the check in and of itself is demonstrative of the challenge so resist the urge to increase the difficulty. These things would be very helpful for newer DMs.

(This is different from a table of sample DCs, but I think this example helped me to understand that the guidance can take maybe even a better form than some sample DCs to compare to. But I still think a table of some sample DCs might be helpful. But I don't see how the guidance mentioned above would be harmful in the same way you and others think a table of sample DCs would be.)

[Witty Username]

Because in one scenario, I'm fighting against the current; there's a universal DC that I have to remember and consciously adjust every single campaign where it comes up, especially if the players come to the table expecting the rules to be as written. That's not a big deal when there's only a few such rules in the book, as exists today, but the more that are codified the more onerous it becomes. And as most games have a 1:M between the DM and the players, the collective ability of the players to remember (and weaponize) such rules will almost always eclipse that of the DM


From personal experience, this isn't how it works in practice. I think the clearest example I could use is Beastmaster Ranger but spell identification is more straightforward and more closely related to the topic at hand, so I will continue its use.

Identification of a spell, for those exposed to the rule tend to have a similar line of use:
1. Use as written.
2. Determine how that effects play.
3. Make adjustments when effects and intention do not align.

It helps that this is one of the better understood rules in 5e as well. As steps 1 and 2 have had several discussions on the topic on this forum, which makes it possible to fast track to step 3 if one wants to do some reading.

Also, what I recall before Xanathar's was a pretty messy process of trial and error, something like
1. Issue comes up during play so you make a quick ruling that sets precedent.
2. Realize an issue in play you hadn't accounted for.
3. Adhoc fix and create a rule to best map your intentions.
4. Determine how it actually effects play.
5. Make adjustments when effect and intention do not align.

And an additional frustration here is it is easier for players to weaponize, as unlike the top example, these are all the DMs decisions, it made sense to them before, why not now. It puts the DM in the position of having to agrue against themselves, for what would be a relatively simple thing to houserule otherwise.

[Psyren]

I don't know how to explain it any other way except the way I already have. I thought the example of the invisible stairs helped facilitate the point pretty well. The book has space to explain in more depth how a DM can approach various scenarios.

The invisible stairs are exactly where they belong, in a module. I have nothing against modules containing as many printed DCs as printed DC proponents could possibly want.


So don't do it because the guidance is enough, and also don't do it because the guidance is bad. Seems like we're just trying to preserve the "don't do it" conclusion.

"Don't do it in the DMG" doesn't mean "don't do it anywhere."


There have been suggestions to lower the DCs in this thread. If we're discussing issues with the DMG, we can lump this in as well.

I was one of the people in favor of lowering the DC labels, so this is one we agree on.


Not sure who you're referring to. Like...what group are you lumping me in with?

The "current zeitgeist" you believe exists.


Are you suggesting that because it wouldn't occur to you it therefore wouldn't occur to anyone else?

I was questioning where your assumption that "a normal new DM would apply disadvantage" to something that doesn't even require a check to begin with, traversing stairs, came from.


It doesn't have to be about the stairs (as I said in that post), and it doesn't have to be concrete. It's just walking a DM through how they can handle these types of checks. Like Blatant Beast's comment above that a check being performed every turn should probably remain easy, and your comment that the check in and of itself is demonstrative of the challenge so resist the urge to increase the difficulty. These things would be very helpful for newer DMs.

Again, "increase the difficulty" from what? What is the normal difficulty of taking the stairs?

[Dr.Samurai]

The invisible stairs are exactly where they belong, in a module.
I've said twice now, including in my original response to your example, that the specific case of "invisible stairs" isn't needed in the DMG. I see now I've been baited into a pointless back and forth. Shame on me :smallsigh:.

[Blatant Beast]

Mike Mearls, (whom lead the design team that designed 5e), just dropped this PDF today on DCs: https://c10.patreonusercontent.com/4/patreon-media/p/post/97007944/265b3b82c2ae4e4798e30ab9b880eece/eyJhIjoxLCJwIjoxfQ%3D%3D/1?token-time=1706313600&token-hash=WtBcRFS0SVqwJBuVLE7Q-JkyF0F_JbXfYISFG-PDk-4%3D

Mike’s recommendation is to lower the DC in the DMG Chart by 5.

[Psyren]

Mike Mearls, (whom lead the design team that designed 5e), just dropped this PDF today on DCs: https://c10.patreonusercontent.com/4/patreon-media/p/post/97007944/265b3b82c2ae4e4798e30ab9b880eece/eyJhIjoxLCJwIjoxfQ%3D%3D/1?token-time=1706313600&token-hash=WtBcRFS0SVqwJBuVLE7Q-JkyF0F_JbXfYISFG-PDk-4%3D

Mike’s recommendation is to lower the DC in the DMG Chart by 5.

Thanks for linking!

I agree that DC 10 is a better sweet spot for most starting DCs than 15 (Larian did this too). And I absolutely agree with his "+4 or higher = player intends to be competent" yardstick.

I'm definitely interested in that next installment he mentioned.

[Theodoxus]

One might think Mike reads these boards... very timely with 2 different threads asking for assistance. And yes, the next installment does sound quite intriguing.

[Dr.Samurai]

Thanks for sharing Blatant Beast!

I wonder if they had a different goal when 5E was being designed, and 10 years of playing has provided insight, or if there was a misstep in what they thought the system should do and how they tried to implement it.

This sort of guidance is very useful and should be in the DMG. I mentioned previously that reading the DMG may give you the takeaway that you're shooting for a 50% success rate and, as Mearls mentions here, that doesn't feel competent.

[Pex]

Mike Mearls, (whom lead the design team that designed 5e), just dropped this PDF today on DCs: https://c10.patreonusercontent.com/4/patreon-media/p/post/97007944/265b3b82c2ae4e4798e30ab9b880eece/eyJhIjoxLCJwIjoxfQ%3D%3D/1?token-time=1706313600&token-hash=WtBcRFS0SVqwJBuVLE7Q-JkyF0F_JbXfYISFG-PDk-4%3D

Mike’s recommendation is to lower the DC in the DMG Chart by 5.

That's a start. Even if I don't get my wish of DC tables having DMs think DC 10 as default and PCs are supposed to be that good, especially at higher levels where making DC 10 is practically automatic as an on purpose feature not everything needs to be "a challenge", at least in theory accomplish two things. 1) Personal pet peeve players will stop demanding only the PC with the highest modifier gets to do a Thing and 2) I'll be Tarzan because I invested in ST and Athletics and George because I didn't, not because of who is DM that day. With DM make it up, DMs will be encouraged to make it up with more reasonable numbers. Whether that will happen is to be determined. I'd still want DC tables to show DMs ink on paper what the game defaults thinks is easy/medium/hard, but maybe DC 10 default will work.

[Aquillion]

One might think Mike reads these boards... very timely with 2 different threads asking for assistance. And yes, the next installment does sound quite intriguing.
I think it's more likely that DND 5.5 feedback on skill-focused classes has consistently hammered people's dissatisfaction with 5e's skill system, so they've been digging into what the problems with it are and how it can be addressed without making dramatic changes (since 5.5e isn't about dramatic changes.)

[Saelethil]

Mike Mearls, (whom lead the design team that designed 5e), just dropped this PDF today on DCs: https://c10.patreonusercontent.com/4/patreon-media/p/post/97007944/265b3b82c2ae4e4798e30ab9b880eece/eyJhIjoxLCJwIjoxfQ%3D%3D/1?token-time=1706313600&token-hash=WtBcRFS0SVqwJBuVLE7Q-JkyF0F_JbXfYISFG-PDk-4%3D

Mike’s recommendation is to lower the DC in the DMG Chart by 5.

This is the type of thing (explaining the math) that should end up in the new DMG. It wouldn’t even need to be all that long if it isn’t comparing the new DCs with the 2014 ones.

[Psyren]

Wait, is Mearls' approach something we all agree on? Mark the calendars!

[Blatant Beast]

I think it's more likely that DND 5.5 feedback on skill-focused classes has consistently hammered people's dissatisfaction with 5e's skill system, so they've been digging into what the problems with it are and how it can be addressed without making dramatic changes (since 5.5e isn't about dramatic changes.)

Mearls was let go by Hasbro in the most recent round of layoffs. Mike has not worked on the D&D side of WotC for some time now, I believe. (Liaison to Larian Studios for BG3 was the last D&D project I think Mearls worked on).

My personal thoughts, is Mearls would not have published this if he still worked at WotC, as Crawford is the D&D Lead, and the PDF steps on Crawford’s toes. Mearls being released, means like a Honey Badger, he don’t give a ……

5e products have had a lack of Design Note Sidebars, and examples of play from day one. The U/A Playtest notes generally have more Designer Notes than the final product.

We do not really know if One D&D will include more examples and designer notes.

[Psyren]

They have a lot of avenues to peek behind the curtain though. We can get designer asides in videos, articles, sage advice, even supplements. Given that they're adding a bunch of stuff to the 3 core books (e.g. more magic items and the Bastion system) but they still expect the final page count to be in line with the current core's 1000 pages, that suggests they don't have a lot of room to work with.

[Saelethil]

Mearls was let go by Hasbro in the most recent round of layoffs. Mike has not worked on the D&D side of WotC for some time now, I believe. (Liaison to Larian Studios for BG3 was the last D&D project I think Mearls worked on).

My personal thoughts, is Mearls would not have published this if he still worked at WotC, as Crawford is the D&D Lead, and the PDF steps on Crawford’s toes. Mearls being released, means like a Honey Badger, he don’t give a ……

5e products have had a lack of Design Note Sidebars, and examples of play from day one. The U/A Playtest notes generally have more Designer Notes than the final product.

We do not really know if One D&D will include more examples and designer notes.

I’m not expecting much more than what we have with the 2014 DMG but the linked document is exactly the type of thing that belongs in a Dungeon Master’s GUIDE.

[Blatant Beast]

They have a lot of avenues to peek behind the curtain though. We can get designer asides in videos, articles, sage advice, even supplements. Given that they're adding a bunch of stuff to the 3 core books (e.g. more magic items and the Bastion system) but they still expect the final page count to be in line with the current core's 1000 pages, that suggests they don't have a lot of room to work with.

I hate, just hate the videos that D&D officially puts out.
Todd Kendrick and Jeremy Crawford releasing a rambling 20 minute video that might, just might have 3-5 minutes of useful designer notes is not an effective communication tool when compared to Sidebars and Examples in the source material.

The video of Crawford explaining the D&D monsters used in Honor Amongst Thieves, before the film was premiered, caused my wife to ask: “Does Crawford always come across as a conceited ass?”…..that video was pure filler.

Sage Advice itself, is, somewhat, spoiled as a reliable source, as Crawford has alternated between very literal interpretations, (the advice on a 3rd party gripping a magic shield’s edge gets the AC bonus), to more behind the curtain style answers, (Find Familiar advice), and answers that fall in between.

If we add in Twitter responses to the mix, we get more more chaos.

Cut the videos, add Sidebars.

[Dr.Samurai]

I have no idea why anyone would think that new DMs should have to consume all the D&D media to get helpful guidance that can take up a page or two in the DMG. This pushback rings so hollow. Same with the idea that DMs will just "get it", so better guidance not needed. And if they don't, maybe they shouldn't DM and maybe they should play a different game.

It runs absolutely counter to the idea that 5E's strength is its simplicity and streamlined nature to be accessible to new players.

[Psyren]

*snip*

Cut the videos, add Sidebars.

I know video advice isn't perfect, but is also doesn't need to be typeset, doesn't need a copy editor, doesn't increase pagecount, doesn't need to be fit in alongside art and mechanics or face tradeoffs relative to those things etc. Print has considerably more costs, opportunity and otherwise.

Videos are also point-in-time, which allows them to insert rationale for their decisions that isn't universal. For example, if the reason behind a change to druids is that they have data showing they're the least-played class, that makes sense in a video where that's true when they said it, but in a book that's intended to last for multiple years that data may no longer hold up.

But as I mentioned, there are options beyond both videos and the core books themselves to get designer insights across.


I have no idea why anyone would think that new DMs should have to consume all the D&D media to get helpful guidance that can take up a page or two in the DMG. This pushback rings so hollow. Same with the idea that DMs will just "get it", so better guidance not needed. And if they don't, maybe they shouldn't DM and maybe they should play a different game.

It runs absolutely counter to the idea that 5E's strength is its simplicity and streamlined nature to be accessible to new players.

1) Not every piece of D&D media or advice is aimed at every single DM or player. WotC should use the channels for communication they have at their disposal, and be thoughtful about prioritizing which message goes through each one and why. Being thoughtful is as much about what doesn't get into the books as what does.

2) I don't know if that second part is referring to me, but I never said "DMs shouldn't DM and play a different game if they don't get it." What I said is that DMs should be willing to adjust their approach if their players aren't having fun, and that if you end up with a DM who doesn't care about their players' feedback, then you have a problem that no book can solve.

[PhoenixPhyre]

This is the type of thing (explaining the math) that should end up in the new DMG. It wouldn’t even need to be all that long if it isn’t comparing the new DCs with the 2014 ones.

Yeah. I can absolutely get behind using DMG space to explain, with worked examples of play with explanations of thought process, the various pieces of the system's design.

[Witty Username]

This is the type of thing (explaining the math) that should end up in the new DMG. It wouldn’t even need to be all that long if it isn’t comparing the new DCs with the 2014 ones.


Yeah. I can absolutely get behind using DMG space to explain, with worked examples of play with explanations of thought process, the various pieces of the system's design.

Blades in the Dark does some of this, it actually calls out that any character can, and should, have the ability to have a half-chance of success on a given roll and why that matters for play.
And that is a pretty game light system, we should expect at least as much from d&d.