Killer obstructive DM, nintendo hard games, and shift in gamer culture

[EggKookoo]

That's a very... dictatorial approach to DMing. I would not want to play with a DM like that. It also begs the question why you need rules at all. After all, you are "a DM who is comfortable winging DCs", so wouldn't you be better off not using the DMG/MM rules? You could wing every number, and not be limited by the rules at all.

In your view, you're the only one who's sets DCs and decides outcomes, so there's no need for rules to provide consistency between people. And from that perspective, rules that would provide structure and consistency are merely limiting. However, in my view, all players--and that includes the DM--are in this game and this setting together, and the rules aren't just providing tools for the DM, they provide a framework that allows different players' contributions to fit together. The game and the world/setting should be open to everyone to tinker with.

So is this an example of reductio ad absurdum?

It's not dictatorial. Setting DCs is the DM's job. Just like deciding PC actions is the player's job. The DM should never infringe on player agency (aside from in-fiction effects like charms and whatnot). I mean, as a player, if you said "I do the thing," and as the DM I said "no, I think you go do the other thing because I'm more prepared for that," that would be bad, right? I would hate that if I were playing as a player, and I certainly never do that as a DM.

Some elements of the game are firmly in the player's domain, others are in the DM's. More things (by far) are in the DM's than the player's, because the DM has to "play" the entire world outside of the PC. One thing that's in the DM's domain is setting things like DCs for various checks and saves. In some cases, the DM has very clear rules for that. A spell's saving throw DC, for example, is provided by a formula. In 3e, monster attack abilities are defined by a formula. In 5e, passive scores (which can function as DCs) are set by a formula. Almost every other DC, though, is not. The example DCs in the 3e DMG are not rules. They're examples, meant to provide something to use when the DM is unable or unwilling to invent one.

I'm not asserting or paraphrasing this. It's literally in the DMG. Go find a copy. In particular, check out "Difficulty Classes" on page 94 (I have the 3e DMG, not sure if it moved to a different page in 3.5).

About the whole "working together" thing, yes, of course. We're all working together. But that doesn't relieve the DM of his responsibilities. I still have to curate the gameplay experience, ideally toward maximum enjoyment on the part of the players. I don't tell them all the plot points up front, for example, because they have more fun working things out for themselves. They have a sense of victory when they figure out what's "really" going on with a mystery. Or when they win a fight through luck, daring decisions, and smart tactics. I could throw underpowered monsters at them so that they "win," but they'll eventually get just as dissatisfied with that as they would if I made things too hard all the time. It's a balancing act.

Setting DCs is just one more example of this. Just like working out what the right CR range is for my players. If they have objections, I listen, of course. But in the end, if I made a decision about a DC or any other element in the game (as long as it doesn't interfere with their agency), I probably made it for a reason. I'm not doing it to tweak anyone's broken daddy issues or to trigger anyone's preexisting authority-figure trauma. I just have a job to do.

[Imbalance]

Because it means training your climbing, before you even start the game, may or may not be pointless and you don't know which.

Why would it be pointless? If you've trained a specific skill, you're likely better at it than anyone else in the party and subsequently have the best odds of success whether the DC is concrete or not. It's still up to a dice roll plus bonus no matter what the DC, which is why those who are unskilled can still have a chance to overcome the same obstacle. Just like the DC can be consistently low and the skilled party member can still fail repeatedly with bad rolls. Is the training pointless then? How about when the DC is raised so that everyone with no skill and statistically average rolls fails, but the skill bonus is just enough to beat the statistical results? Does that feel as pointless, given the equal odds, if the dice result is below average for the skilled character?

[prabe]

Because it means training your climbing, before you even start the game, may or may not be pointless and you don't know which.

Aren't you taking that chance anyway, since you don't know how often you'll be needing to climb in a given game? At least in 5E it's Athletics, which has multiple uses.

[kyoryu]

That's a very... dictatorial approach to DMing. I would not want to play with a DM like that. It also begs the question why you need rules at all. After all, you are "a DM who is comfortable winging DCs", so wouldn't you be better off not using the DMG/MM rules? You could wing every number, and not be limited by the rules at all.

I think you're reading this in an extreme way. I'm pretty sure he's open to healthy discussion, rather than arguing

Healthy:
GM: "Okay, the DC for the wall is 15"
Player: (presumign they don't say okay) "Hey, you described this wall as being super craggy, and last one of those was DC10. Don't you think that's more appropriate?"

GM: "Yeah, you're right"
-or-
GM: "No, this one's a bit tougher, it's really 15."
Player: "Cool."

Arguing:
GM: "Okay, the DC for the wall is 15."
Player: "No, it's 10. It says in the book that the DC for rough stone is 10."
GM: "Yeah, but it's crumbling."
Player: "That's not a rule. It's 10, and if you don't make it 10, you're wrong."


On the other hand, what you're concerned about is:
GM: "Okay, the DC for the wall is 20"
Player: "Hey, you described it as being really easy to climb. That seems a bit high. Last time we had a similar wall it was 10."
GM: "Too bad. Don't argue with me. It's 20. Deal with it or it'll be 25."

I don't think anybody has an issue with the "healthy" variants, either of them. I don't think rules prevent the jerk GM example in any effective way, and I think they enable the jerk player.

Because it means training your climbing, before you even start the game, may or may not be pointless and you don't know which.

I submit that, to a great extent, this is a D&D 3.x-centric problem where the character build game is very deep and there's a huge range of skill levels you can buy with varying degrees of investment. As a contrast, I play Fate. In Fate, your skills are between 0 and +4, and you get a certain amount of them at each level. The GM knows explicitly what levels are achievable, as there's really no variation beyond that level. Similar in D&D5, you're either trained, or not. There's not a lot of variation for how much investment you make in a skill.

[Unavenger]

Why would it be pointless? If you've trained a specific skill, you're likely better at it than anyone else in the party and subsequently have the best odds of success whether the DC is concrete or not. It's still up to a dice roll plus bonus no matter what the DC, which is why those who are unskilled can still have a chance to overcome the same obstacle. Just like the DC can be consistently low and the skilled party member can still fail repeatedly with bad rolls. Is the training pointless then? How about when the DC is raised so that everyone with no skill and statistically average rolls fails, but the skill bonus is just enough to beat the statistical results? Does that feel as pointless, given the equal odds, if the dice result is below average for the skilled character?

If all walls are at least hard enough to make climbing them not the best possible action irrespective of whether you're trained or not, then it becomes pointless to train, and if all walls are automatically climbable with no roll, it makes it also pointless to train.

Aren't you taking that chance anyway, since you don't know how often you'll be needing to climb in a given game? At least in 5E it's Athletics, which has multiple uses.

You should have no shortage of things to climb if you really want to climb, in most games. And for some inexplicable reason, how many walls there are to climb varying from session to session doesn't bother me as much as the difficulty of two identical walls varying from session to session.

I submit that, to a great extent, this is a D&D 3.x-centric problem where the character build game is very deep and there's a huge range of skill levels you can buy with varying degrees of investment. As a contrast, I play Fate. In Fate, your skills are between 0 and +4, and you get a certain amount of them at each level. The GM knows explicitly what levels are achievable, as there's really no variation beyond that level. Similar in D&D5, you're either trained, or not. There's not a lot of variation for how much investment you make in a skill.

It's not a problem in 3.5 at all, but it's not because of the ability to train something partially. The problem is not knowing whether or not your training will actually matter.

[kyoryu]

If all walls are at least hard enough to make climbing them not the best possible action irrespective of whether you're trained or not, then it becomes pointless to train, and if all walls are automatically climbable with no roll, it makes it also pointless to train.

You should have no shortage of things to climb if you really want to climb, in most games. And for some inexplicable reason, how many walls there are to climb varying from session to session doesn't bother me as much as the difficulty of two identical walls varying from session to session.

It's not a problem in 3.5 at all, but it's not because of the ability to train something partially. The problem is not knowing whether or not your training will actually matter.

So what you seem to want is:

1) Walls to climb every session. Preferably a similar number of them
2) Walls that are the perfect difficulty to highlight your abilities while neither being so hard you cannot climb them, nor so easy others can.
3) Difficulties to be precisely what you expect them to be based on whatever description is given

[NorthernPhoenix]

If all walls are at least hard enough to make climbing them not the best possible action irrespective of whether you're trained or not, then it becomes pointless to train, and if all walls are automatically climbable with no roll, it makes it also pointless to train.

That's a very interesting choice of words, because in my mind, a combination of rules and culture that encourages the player to deliberately choose to do what is not the "best possible action" sounds great to me.

As an extension of that in the culture discussion, outside of forums like this i think there has been a move away from the idea that every move the player makes has to be the "best possible action", at least compared to 3.5 or 4e, which is obviously great for people like me.

[Pex]

Pex, have you ever DMed? Would you ever consider it?

Ever since 2E. I've certainly made my own mistakes but don't do them anymore. I used to be heavy into puzzles for players to solve. One can still come up, but it's a more logical place to exist and rare. I also once created a one shot adventure purposely designed not to have any combat. It wasn't a disaster, but I knew not to make that mistake again. I'm glad I don't remember what it was.

DMing 5E now. First time I DMed 5E I was getting exhausted trying to think up numbers for the various skill checks. By the end of the session every skill check DC was player roll high - success, player roll low - fail, player roll in the middle - eh maybe, what's the first thought I think of now that I'm bothering. Now many are DC Yes just because I don't want to think of a number, but I will think 10, 15, or 20 if it's something I specifically want a player to roll.

My DMing style is naturally trying not to be everything I hated about DM styles when I'm a player. I have killed PCs, but I'm not trying to. My game style is definitely light hearted. For example, one of my adventures is Brady Bunch of the Corn. It's exactly what it sounds like. They're all bards commanded by evil cleric Oliver. There's a preliminary fight before they encounter the children. In the cornfield the party fights a scarecrow, a helmed horror, and a dire lion (using dire tiger statistics). Hmm. I have Oliver as a Nature Cleric. I might try him as a Druid next time.

[Zarrgon]

I agree with you, but I think it's important to keep in mind that a number of players (and I suspect Pex is in this category) consider GM judgement to be inherently questionable and a suboptimal fallback that should be used as infrequently as possible.

Yea, but to me this seems to be asking a bit too much. I would be great if every DM was perfect and we all lived in a prefect world...but that is not going to happen. There is no way to "rule this problem away" as a DM will always be a person. So until the invent the Super-intelligent Artificial Intelligence DM(Aka SkyDM), you are stuck with people. So the best you can do is simply pick a DM that you at least mostly agree with and like.

That's a very... dictatorial approach to DMing. I would not want to play with a DM like that. It also begs the question why you need rules at all. After all, you are "a DM who is comfortable winging DCs", so wouldn't you be better off not using the DMG/MM rules? You could wing every number, and not be limited by the rules at all.

Hope it's not too much of a shock or anything, but I'd guess at least half of all RPGs ever played have been played the above way.

In your view, you're the only one who's sets DCs and decides outcomes, so there's no need for rules to provide consistency between people. And from that perspective, rules that would provide structure and consistency are merely limiting. However, in my view, all players--and that includes the DM--are in this game and this setting together, and the rules aren't just providing tools for the DM, they provide a framework that allows different players' contributions to fit together. The game and the world/setting should be open to everyone to tinker with.

But, again, all DCs and rules don't matter much as a DM can just make stuff up at will (one of the basic jobs of a DM) and can even make up stuff that will pass the average hostile players litmus test. If the DM wants a DC to be X, they can just use the rules to make it X. It's that simple. The hostile player will still complain, even if the DM shows the player what they did to get the DC of X. Because, after all, then the hostile player will just shift to complaining about what, why and how the DM used the rules....plus the oh so classic "I can't believe you used something from THAT source".

And again where do you get this whole ''player consistency" thing? No two DCs (or ACs or HPs, etc) are going to be consistency the same for everything in the game. The game simply does not work like that. Even just five kobold sorcerers will have five different spell save DCs depending on a lot of things about each like level, ability scores and feats just to name a few. So two kobolds cast the exact same spell, but one has a DC of 12 and one has a DC of 15, so what you complain that the "game is not contestant!?"

GM: "No, this one's a bit tougher, it's really 15."
Player: "Cool."
.

It's this right here. And after very low level of game play, the reason why a DC is X is not always visually obvious. So the player can't just know why the DC is X, unless they want to do the "discover the DC minigame" if they feel they really "must" know.

[Pex]

I'm curious, as a person who DMs in this style, as to what the grievance is, exactly. The DM's job is to interpret player intent into mechanical effect, and a DM who can do that with confidence and speed should be better, right? Since every table is varied anyways, then mechanical variance between tables can be explained in the same way encounter variance is explained: every DM has their own philosophies, guidelines and intuitions. If the player's actions are being resolved and the game is moving forward, what's the matter if this DM has a DC 15 wall where another one would give the wall DC 20?

It matters that the choices I make for my character don't matter. In one game I'm warlock Tarzan (DC yes to climb) and another I'm monk George of the Jungle (DC 20 to climb) while both characters have the same 10 strength and lack of proficiency in Athletics. In another campaign I was playing a paladin with 18 ST and proficiency in Athletics. Climb Tree DC was 15. If my paladin was in the warlock game the ST and Proficiency are superfluous. Still need it for combat, yes, but for skills meaningless since I don't roll to take advantage of being so good at it. If my paladin was in the monk game I'm now worse at climbing stuff by virtue of DM fiat. If my warlock or monk was in the paladin game, my warlock is no longer Tarzan and both struggle to climb trees but at least monk now has some hope. My characters' statistics remain the same, but their ability to climb stuff changes depending on who is the DM.

[prabe]

And after very low level of game play, the reason why a DC is X is not always visually obvious. So the player can't just know why the DC is X, unless they want to do the "discover the DC minigame" if they feel they really "must" know.

OTOH, it's not unreasonable to allow a PC with Proficiency in the skill (Athletics in the case of climbing) to know the DC of a climb. It's also not unreasonable to not allow someone with that Proficiency to know it. It doesn't do anything about helping the player to decide where the Proficiencies go, but it helps the character make rational decisions in the game. Obviously, that's not a universal approach to GMing.

[Unavenger]

That's a very interesting choice of words, because in my mind, a combination of rules and culture that encourages the player to deliberately choose to do what is not the "best possible action" sounds great to me.

As an extension of that in the culture discussion, outside of forums like this i think there has been a move away from the idea that every move the player makes has to be the "best possible action", at least compared to 3.5 or 4e, which is obviously great for people like me.

Replace with "Not worthwhile" or "Not reliable enough to play into a character concept of your design", then. I say this while tabbed out of Assassin's Creed 2, I really like to know whether my character will actually be able to climb around like Ezio or whether attempting to do so is so unreliable that I may as well not bother before I waste a skill proficiency on it. I also want to know, mind you, whether or not I'll actually have to roll to climb at all, or whether someone with no climb ranks can just freely climb things and actually that athletics proficiency is pointless when it comes to climbing. I don't think that wanting to know whether that character concept is viable before I try to make it is so wrong?

It's like asking someone to make a sorcerer without telling them what their spells do until after they've chosen them and are attempting to cast one. And if you want to houserule a spell, a monster or a weapon to do something different, or not to have a clearly-defined effect at all, then you can... but imagine if fireball did something different with every DM: you wouldn't have a clue whether or not it was a spell you were interested in taking until after you were already using it. That doesn't appeal to me.

I don't mind not being able to be Ezio. I don't mind everyone suddenly being Ezio. But I do mind not having a clue whether or not my character can be Ezio until it's far, far too late.

[SunderedWorldDM]

It matters that the choices I make for my character don't matter. In one game I'm warlock Tarzan (DC yes to climb) and another I'm monk George of the Jungle (DC 20 to climb) while both characters have the same 10 strength and lack of proficiency in Athletics. In another campaign I was playing a paladin with 18 ST and proficiency in Athletics. Climb Tree DC was 15. If my paladin was in the warlock game the ST and Proficiency are superfluous. Still need it for combat, yes, but for skills meaningless since I don't roll to take advantage of being so good at it. If my paladin was in the monk game I'm now worse at climbing stuff by virtue of DM fiat. If my warlock or monk was in the paladin game, my warlock is no longer Tarzan and both struggle to climb trees but at least monk now has some hope. My characters' statistics remain the same, but their ability to climb stuff changes depending on who is the DM.

First off, I find it funny how everyone is using climbing walls as their example. The locks remain unpicked and the rivers remain unswam (unswum?), I suppose...

Second of all, that's a pretty extreme stance. Athletics covers such a wide range of things that you probably won't get stuck without a use for it? Unless you're making a character that is SPECIFICALLY built to climb trees, but that's so hyperspecific that odds are you've told your DM your plan beforehand or are willing to take that chance. Optimizing towards any skill will usually have enough dividends to make it worthwhile no matter the DC or what your DM rules. It feels to me like you're comparing a very broad skill to something like a language: a language is a choice you make pretty much in the dark that could have anything from 0 consequences to absolutely massive repercussions. The difference here is that languages aren't a really core part of the game, while things like combat builds and skill specializations are. The game, and the assumptions about how to build encounters and adventures, were designed around using these skills. Unless your DM is REALLY off the deep end, you should be able to find a use for them and get a ruling and resolution just like anything else. How that ruling and resolution works very well might be as idiosyncratic as the rest of the DM's job.

[EggKookoo]

DMing 5E now. First time I DMed 5E I was getting exhausted trying to think up numbers for the various skill checks. By the end of the session every skill check DC was player roll high - success, player roll low - fail, player roll in the middle - eh maybe, what's the first thought I think of now that I'm bothering. Now many are DC Yes just because I don't want to think of a number, but I will think 10, 15, or 20 if it's something I specifically want a player to roll.

Yeah, sounds exactly like my approach. Basically the player rolls low and they know they rolled low; I use that as my cue to say they failed. They rolled high and they're psyched, okay, you get a cookie. It makes it about player vs. dice rather than player vs. DM, which makes us all happier in the long run. I don't do combat that way. It's interesting. Once a fight happens, everyone at the table becomes a strict rule-abiding player. I even did the cardinal sin of fudging an attack roll to try to prevent a near-dead 1st level PC from dying, and the player caught me, and told me not to. Turns out we had briefly forgotten they had gotten their hands on a healing potion, so it turned out okay in the end. But for skill checks, everyone's relaxed and "hey, sure, whatever" about the DCs. Attack rolls bring out the slide rules.

When I first started DMing 5e, I would DC "yes" a lot. I've actually backed off on that now and call for checks more often. I think it's very table-dependent but I'm finding my players want me to call for checks at a certain level of frequency, but not to call for checks for every little thing. This is sort of independent of the idea that the DM should only call for checks when the PC is under stress or something. Even casual things sometimes get checks now. I think I get that. Too much pure narrative turns the players into an audience, even if they're nominally controlling their PCs. A little bit of random uncertainty wakes up those special parts of the brain.

My DMing style is naturally trying not to be everything I hated about DM styles when I'm a player. I have killed PCs, but I'm not trying to. My game style is definitely light hearted. For example, one of my adventures is Brady Bunch of the Corn. It's exactly what it sounds like. They're all bards commanded by evil cleric Oliver. There's a preliminary fight before they encounter the children. In the cornfield the party fights a scarecrow, a helmed horror, and a dire lion (using dire tiger statistics). Hmm. I have Oliver as a Nature Cleric. I might try him as a Druid next time.

That sounds great, and I'd probably have a blast playing at your table. I'm going to put my gang through Wild Sheep Chase when they hit 5th level. Followed probably by a heavily customized trip to see Strahd, just for the whiplash.

[ExLibrisMortis]

Long reply to quotes from SunderedWorldDM, EggKooKoo, and kyoryu. Probably more than a little off-topic, and possibly a bit too theoretical. Proceed with appropriate care.

Spoiler: Long

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I'm curious, as a person who DMs in this style, as to what the grievance is, exactly. The DM's job is to interpret player intent into mechanical effect, and a DM who can do that with confidence and speed should be better, right? Since every table is varied anyways, then mechanical variance between tables can be explained in the same way encounter variance is explained: every DM has their own philosophies, guidelines and intuitions. If the player's actions are being resolved and the game is moving forward, what's the matter if this DM has a DC 15 wall where another one would give the wall DC 20?

Well, first of all, I'd disagree that it's the DM's job to interpret player intent mechanically. In the interest of speed and agency, that's the player's job. The player provides the idea, the appropriate mechanics, the resolution, and the narration. The DM oversees this, calls for checks the player could not see coming, and provides information that the player does not know--information that might translate into a different DC, of course. In addition, players (including DM) can chime in if they feel that the narration and the mechanics are particularly far apart. The DM is the final arbiter in these cases, but it is ultimately the table that decides by which pre-set standards the DM judges.

Let's take the wall as an example. I've asked the DM about the wall, or heard about the wall during a description, so I have a decent idea what the DC is like. I decide I want to Climb (not "climb") the wall, and I roll a Climb check against a DC I submit to the DM and the group for approval (with the understanding that I'm a grown-up player who isn't looking to game the system by lowballing the DC). Depending on the result, I then narrate "my character climbs/fails to climb the wall", inserting character-specific flavour as appropriate. The DM acknowledges this, and intervenes if the wall is unusual, providing a reason to adjust my result. For example, the DM might say "remember, the wall is wet, it's been raining", and I'll adjust the DC as appropriate. Any player might remind me of the same, and participate in the game that way.

The idea here is that it's a lot more efficient to do the narration and resolution inside one's head than in a back-and-forth with the DM, and it allows a lot more detailed flavour, since you're actually narrating your own actions all the time. Of course, it does require some solid standards to rule DCs by, because you don't want mismatched expectations between players (not too much, anyway).

The example of the wall is a bit limiting. Walls form a pretty smooth continuum from "basically a walk uphill" to "basically an ideal plane", and there's not much to them besides that. I want an example of what a robust system can do for you. So, let's take this bit I've done:

Spoiler

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It's fun to tinker around with low-level builds. The 3.5 rules, in all their glorious intricacy, often throw up interesting world-building hooks. Tonight, I thought I'd share some blacksmiths I've statted up.


Assumptions
The smiths are a mix of NPCs and PCs at levels 1 and 2, and one third-level legendary smith. They're built using the standard array (13/12/11/10/9/8) and the elite array (15/14/13/12/10/8) for NPCs and PCs respectively.

I've avoided some things that I think would make it too easy, primarily spells above first level (guidance of the avatar, especially) and stacking Aid Another. On the other hand, several smiths are over WBL, and I've used a houserule: Knowledge (architecture and engineering) provides a +2 synergy bonus on Craft (blacksmithing) and becomes a dwarf paragon class skill. It may seem a little silly to add this houserule in an otherwise fairly RAW exposition, but one of the things I like about the 3.5 skill system is the little synergy skill-bump at level 2, and in this case, the houserule helps cement the difference between 1st- and 2nd-level smiths.

Spoiler: Notes

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Alternate Races
Any dwarf can instead be an earth dwarf, increasing their racial bonus on Craft checks by 2 to +4.

A human with Lesser Dragonmark (Mark of Making) equals a dwarf in all these builds. For the Forge Director, the lack of a Charisma penalty increases the aura’s granted bonus by 1.

Any race with an Intelligence bonus can do almost as well as a dwarf, especially if they have a Director and no racial Charisma penalty.

Artificer's Guild
The Artificer’s Guild is essentially a mercantile guild with Craft (blacksmithing) and Use Magic Device as associated skills. The default Mercantile guild doesn't have UMD, and the default Arcane Guild only has Craft (alchemy).

Buff Spells and WBL
For the purposes of this thread, I’ve assumed that only a bonus that remains active for the entirety of an eight-hour work day (or near enough) contributes towards the final craft check. This is not because of RAW reasons, but because of fluff reasons.

Magecraft is, for some reason, not an artificer infusion. As such, artificer smiths need a minor schema, scroll, (eternal) wand, or other item to get the benefit, which puts the first-level artificer well over WBL, and makes them require UMD to boot.

Skill enhancement is an artificer infusion with a duration of ten minutes per level, meaning that only Sindri can reasonably use it, and then only by going well over WBL with duration enhancers. I suppose this buff is only used when it’s really necessary.

Unity wine is a massively flavourful cleric spell with a duration of one hour per level. It provides a bonus to all skill checks, so it can be used to improve Appraise, Knowledge (architecture and engineering), and Use Magic Device as well. Here's the best part: you cast it on some wine, giving you four doses—but you have to share them, the duration starts right away. So with this spell, you have a good reason for your dwarven smiths to get together for a cup of mead every hour.

Basically, any four first-level clerics can provide unity wine for one another, each using their two first-level spell slots to create wine in turn, for eight hours total. Any two second-level clerics can provide unity wine for themselves and two others.

Artificers can access unity wine with spell-storing item or by activating a scroll or minor schema. It takes eight minor schemas to buff four artificers for an entire day. Generally speaking, it is easier to cooperate with two second-level clerics.

Item Familiar
Any third-level smith can take Item Familiar for an additional +6 or +7 bonus to Craft. This does require a rather high-priced item for the level (2000 GP out of 2700 GP WBL), but that’s not out of the question for such a focused character.

Taking Skill Focus (Diplomacy) at level 1 and then Marshal 1 at level 3 allows you to take both feats that require three levels to qualify: Item Familiar and Words of Creation.

Traits
Any smith can take the Illiterate trait and gain +1 to Craft, then spend two skill points to become literate.
Any smith can take Specialized to gain +1 to a specific Craft skill, and -2 to all others.
The priest, elder, and director can take Spellgifted (transmutation) to increase the duration of unity wine by one hour.

Spoiler: Materials and Sources

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Item	Source
Apprentice	Dungeon Master's Guide II
armour enhancements, nonmagical	Dragon #358
artificer	Eberron Campaign Setting
cloistered cleric	Unearthed Arcana
commoner	Dungeon Master's Guide
Craft domain	Spell Compendium
dwarf paragon	Unearthed Arcana
dwarvencraft item	Races of Stone
earth dwarf	Unearthed Arcana
expert	Dungeon Master's Guide
fairy dust	Complete Mage
Favored	Cityscape
Flaws	Unearthed Arcana
guild system	Cityscape
Item Familiar	Unearthed Arcana
magecraft	Eberron Campaign Setting
magewright	Eberron Campaign Setting
masterwork tool	Player's Handbook
metamagic rod, lesser	Dungeon Master's Guide
minor schema	Magic of Eberron
Primary Contact	Cityscape
skill enhancement	Eberron Campaign Setting
Skill Focus	Player's Handbook
spell-storing item	Eberron Campaign Setting
unity wine	Player's Guide to Eberron
Wealth domain	Spell Compendium
Words of Creation	Book of Exalted Deeds

Mundane Blacksmiths
All NPCs, and no magic in sight. Your regular apprentices, journeymen, masters, and grandmasters.

Spoiler: Mundane Blacksmiths

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Apprentice Blacksmith

Dwarf commoner 1
Abilities: 12/8/12/13/11/7
Feats: Apprentice (Craftsman)
Skills: Appraise +5 (4 ranks), Craft (blacksmithing) +11 (4 ranks), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) +5 (4 ranks)
Items: Masterwork blacksmithing tools

Craft (blacksmithing)

+4 ranks
+1 intelligence
+2 circumstance (tools)
+2 competence (Apprentice)
+2 racial (dwarf)
+11 total

Can buy raw materials with a 10% discount (Apprentice).


Journeyman Blacksmith

Dwarf commoner 1
Abilities: 12/8/12/13/11/7
Feats: Apprentice (Craftman), Skill Focus (Craft), any one flaw
Skills: Appraise +5 (4 ranks), Craft (blacksmithing) +14 (4 ranks), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) +5 (4 ranks)
Items: Masterwork blacksmithing tools

Craft (blacksmithing)

+4 ranks
+1 intelligence
+3 Skill Focus
+2 circumstance (tools)
+2 competence (Apprentice)
+2 racial (dwarf)
+14 total

Can buy raw materials with a 10% discount (Apprentice).


Master Blacksmith

Dwarf expert 1
Abilities: 12/8/12/13/11/7
Feats: Favored, Primary Contact, Skill Focus (Craft), any two flaws
Skills: Appraise +5/+7 (4 ranks), Craft (blacksmithing) +15 (5 ranks), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) +5 (4 ranks)
Items: Masterwork blacksmithing tools

Craft (blacksmithing) bonus:

+5 ranks
+1 intelligence
+3 Skill Focus
+2 circumstance (tools)
+2 competence (Favored)
+2 racial (dwarf)
+15 total

Can buy raw materials with a 10% discount (Blacksmith’s Guild).
Can sell items at a 5% markup in cities with a guildhouse (Favored).

A journeyman becoming a master retrains Apprentice into Favored and Commoner into Expert.


Grandmaster Blacksmith

Middle-aged dwarf expert 2
Abilities: 11/7/11/14/12/8
Feats: Favored, Primary Contact, Skill Focus (Craft), any two flaws
Skills: Appraise +7/+9 (5 ranks), Craft (blacksmithing) +19 (6 ranks), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) +7 (5 ranks)
Items: Masterwork blacksmithing tools

Craft (blacksmithing)

+6 ranks
+2 intelligence
+3 Skill Focus
+2 circumstance (tools)
+2 competence (Favored)
+2 racial (dwarf)
+2 synergy (Knowledge (architecture and engineering))
+19 total

Can buy raw materials with a 10% discount (Blacksmith’s Guild).
Can sell items at a 5% markup in cities with a guildhouse (Favored).

There are lots of interesting things to say about these smiths:

• The guild structure makes you a better smith. A non-guild smith has one rank less than a guild smith (Primary Contact).
• A smith who’s never had training (no Apprentice) loses out on a +2 competence bonus, unless they managed to get into good standing with a guild without apprenticeship (Favored).
• A smith who doesn’t have Knowledge skills (i.e. a commoner without Education) loses out on a +2 synergy bonus, but that doesn’t become relevant until you’re a really good smith (five ranks at second level).
• A poor smith is likely to stay poor. Masterwork tools cost 50 gp, and it takes a year before they start being profitable. Joining a guild costs 25 gp up front, and you need Favored to earn a profit. Can't afford them? Enjoy having a +12 bonus against the guild's +15.

To emphasize the last point, let's calculate some sample incomes.

Spoiler: Crafting Income

Show

Craft can be used Profession-style to earn half your check result in gp per week, but we don’t want to use that option. Firstly, it’s more profitable to earn through the crafting rules. Secondly, guild benefits don’t show up until you can calculate sale prices and material costs.

A master smith (Craft +15) can take 10 to craft a DC 15 item, accelerated, making 625 sp’s worth of progress.
Their material expenses are 208 sp, reduced by 10% to 187.5 sp thanks to the guild.
Their sale price is increased by 5% to 656.25 sp, thanks to Favored.
Their profits before dues are thus 468.75 sp. The guild takes a 15% tax on profits, which is 70 5/16 sp (leaving a net profit of 398 7/16 sp). The guild benefit is only 20 ⅚ + 31 ¼ = 52 1/12 sp per week, so they’re actually losing money! But clever accounting is older than Rome, and they can probably get the tax down a bit by calculating labour costs, write-offs on the workshop, travel expenses, and so on. It’s reasonable to assume that another third of the weekly take goes up in costs (218.75 sp, for convenience), resulting in a tax of 37.5 sp, and a net monthly profit of 80 gp (versus 50 gp with Profession-style crafting).

The same smith not in a guild will only have a +12 bonus (+14 if they have Apprentice, but there's no DC 14 item to craft). They can take 10 to craft a DC 12 item, accelerated, making 484 sp’s worth of progress. Their material expenses are 161 ⅓ sp, their sundry expenses are the same, so their net profits are 161 ⅓ sp, about 64 gp per month (versus 44 gp with Profession-style crafting).

Note that the +5% sale price is the benefit of Favored, not regular guild membership. A non-Favored smith without Primary Contact won’t earn more than a non-guild smith.

It's nice how the numbers work out, and only a little (very reasonable) creative bookkeeping is required . The game mechanics—quite accidentally, I'm sure—provide reasonable explanations for all the differences between the various blacksmiths in the world.


Magesmiths
Still NPCs, but now with a little magic.

Spoiler: Magesmiths

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Magesmith

Dwarf magewright 1
Abilities: 12/8/12/13/11/7
Feats: Favored, Primary Contact, Skill Focus (Craft), any two flaws
Skills: Appraise +3/+5 (2 ranks), Craft (blacksmithing) +18 (5 ranks), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) +5 (4 ranks)
Items: Masterwork blacksmithing tools

Craft (blacksmithing)

+5 ranks
+1 intelligence
+3 Skill Focus
+2 circumstance (tools)
+5 competence (magecraft)
+2 racial (dwarf)
+18 total

Can buy raw materials with a 10% discount (Blacksmith’s Guild).
Can sell items at a 5% markup in cities with a guildhouse (Favored).


Master Magesmith

Middle-aged dwarf magewright 2
Abilities: 11/7/11/14/12/8
Feats: Favored, Primary Contact, Skill Focus (Craft), any two flaws
Skills: Appraise +4/+6 (2.5 ranks), Craft (blacksmithing) +22 (6 ranks), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) +7 (5 ranks)
Items: Masterwork blacksmithing tools

Craft (blacksmithing)

+6 ranks
+2 intelligence
+3 Skill Focus
+2 circumstance (tools)
+5 competence (magecraft)
+2 racial (dwarf)
+2 synergy (Knowledge (architecture and engineering))
+22 total

Can buy raw materials with a 10% discount (Blacksmith’s Guild).
Can sell items at a 5% markup in cities with a guildhouse (Favored).

Interestingly enough, the overlapping competence bonus of magecraft and Favored means these smiths are only +3 ahead of the non-magical competetion. Luckily, they can simply pick another skill to apply the Favored bonus to, such as Appraise, which is cross-class for magewrights and thus lagging behind a bit.


Exemplary Smiths
More dwarven than most. PC-classed.

Spoiler: Exemplary Smiths

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Exemplar

Dwarf paragon 1
Abilities: 12/8/12/15/13/12
Feats: Favored, Primary Contact, Skill Focus (Craft), any two flaws
Skills: Appraise +6/+8 (4 ranks), Craft (blacksmithing) +19 (5 ranks), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) +6 (4 ranks)
Items: Masterwork blacksmithing tools

Craft (blacksmithing)
+5 ranks
+2 intelligence
+3 Skill Focus
+2 circumstance (tools)
+2 competence (Favored)
+2 racial (dwarf)
+1 racial (paragon)
+17 total

Can buy raw materials with a 10% discount (Blacksmith’s Guild).
Can sell items at a 5% markup in cities with a guildhouse (Favored).


Paragon

Middle-aged dwarf paragon 2
Abilities: 11/7/11/16/14/13
Feats: Favored, Primary Contact, Skill Focus (Craft), any two flaws
Skills: Appraise +8/+10 (5 ranks), Craft (blacksmithing) +22 (6 ranks), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) +8 (5 ranks)
Items: Masterwork blacksmithing tools

Craft (blacksmithing)

+6 ranks
+3 intelligence
+3 Skill Focus
+2 circumstance (tools)
+2 competence (Favored)
+2 racial (dwarf)
+2 racial (paragon)
+2 synergy (Knowledge (architecture and engineering))
+22 total

Can buy raw materials with a 10% discount (Blacksmith’s Guild).
Can sell items at a 5% markup in cities with a guildhouse (Favored).

Priest-smiths
PC-classed smiths with divine crafting abilities.

Spoiler: Priest-smiths

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Priest of the Forge

Dwarf cloistered cleric 1
Craft domain, Wealth domain, Knowledge domain
Abilities: 12/8/12/15/14/11
Feats: Favored, Primary Contact, Skill Focus (Appraise)^B, Skill Focus (Craft)^B, any one flaw
Skills: Appraise +10/+12 (4 ranks), Craft (blacksmithing) +17 (5 ranks), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) +7 (4 ranks)
Items: Masterwork blacksmithing tools

Craft (blacksmithing)

+5 ranks
+2 intelligence
+3 Skill Focus
+2 circumstance (tools)
+2 competence (Favored)
+1 morale (unity wine)
+2 racial (dwarf)
+17 total

Can buy raw materials with a 10% discount (Blacksmith’s Guild).
Can sell items at a 5% markup in cities with a guildhouse (Favored).


Elder of the Forge

Middle-aged dwarf cloistered cleric 2
Craft domain, Wealth domain, Knowledge domain
Abilities: 11/7/11/16/15/12
Feats: Favored, Primary Contact, Skill Focus (Appraise)^B, Skill Focus (Craft)^B, any one flaw
Skills: Appraise +12/+14 (5 ranks), Craft (blacksmithing) +21 (6 ranks), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) +9 (5 ranks)
Items: Masterwork blacksmithing tools

Craft (blacksmithing)

+6 ranks
+3 intelligence
+3 Skill Focus
+2 circumstance (tools)
+2 competence (Favored)
+1 morale (unity wine)
+2 racial (dwarf)
+2 synergy (Knowledge (architecture and engineering))
+21 total

Can buy raw materials with a 10% discount (Blacksmith’s Guild).
Can sell items at a 5% markup in cities with a guildhouse (Favored).

Magic-blooded Blacksmiths
PC-classed smiths with need for extra Charisma.

Spoiler: Charismatic Smiths

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Artificer

Magic-blooded dwarf artificer 1
Abilities: 12/8/12/15/11/14
Feats: Favored, Primary Contact, Skill Focus (Craft), any two flaws
Skills: Appraise +6/+8 (4 ranks), Craft (blacksmithing) +19 (5 ranks), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) +6 (4 ranks), Use Magic Device +10 (4 ranks)
Items: Masterwork blacksmithing tools, masterwork arcanometer (UMD tool), minor schema of magecraft

Craft (blacksmithing)

+5 ranks
+2 intelligence
+3 Skill Focus
+2 circumstance (tools)
+5 competence (magecraft)
+2 racial (dwarf)
+19 total

Use Magic Device

+2 charisma
+2 circumstance (tools)
+2 competence (Favored)
+10 total

Can buy raw materials with a 10% discount (Artificer’s Guild).
Can sell items at a 5% markup in cities with a guildhouse (Favored).


Master Artificer

Middle-aged magic-blooded dwarf artificer 2
Abilities: 11/7/11/16/12/15
Feats: Favored, Primary Contact, Skill Focus (Craft), any two flaws
Skills: Appraise +8/+10 (5 ranks), Craft (blacksmithing) +23 (6 ranks), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) +8 (5 ranks), Use Magic Device +11 (5 ranks)
Items: Masterwork blacksmithing tools, masterwork arcanometer (UMD tool), minor schema of magecraft

Craft (blacksmithing)

+6 ranks
+3 intelligence
+3 Skill Focus
+2 circumstance (tools)
+5 competence (magecraft)
+2 racial (dwarf)
+2 synergy (Knowledge (architecture and engineering))
+23 total

Use Magic Device

+5 ranks
+2 charisma
+2 circumstance (tools)
+2 competence (Favored)
+11 total

Can buy raw materials with a 10% discount (Artificer’s Guild).
Can sell items at a 5% markup in cities with a guildhouse (Favored).


Forge Director

Middle-aged magic-blooded dwarf marshal 1/cloistered cleric 1
Minor Aura (Motivate Intelligence), Craft domain, Wealth domain, Knowledge domain
Abilities: 11/7/11/15/12/16
Feats: Favored, Primary Contact, Skill Focus (Appraise)^B, Skill Focus (Craft)^B, Skill Focus (Diplomacy)^B, any one flaw
Skills: Appraise +11/+13 (5 ranks), Craft (blacksmithing) +23 (6 ranks), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) +8 (5 ranks)
Items: Masterwork blacksmithing tools

Craft (blacksmithing)

+6 ranks
+2 intelligence
+3 charisma (Minor Aura)
+3 Skill Focus
+2 circumstance (tools)
+2 competence (Favored)
+1 morale (unity wine)
+2 racial (dwarf)
+2 synergy (Knowledge (architecture and engineering))
+23 total

Can buy raw materials with a 10% discount (Blacksmith’s Guild).
Can sell items at a 5% markup in cities with a guildhouse (Favored).

Sindri, Legendary Blacksmith
The greatest blacksmith alive, and still only third level.

Spoiler: Sindri

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Sindri, legendary blacksmith

Venerable magic-blooded earth dwarf cloistered cleric 1/marshal 1/artificer 1
Minor Aura (Motivate Intelligence), Craft domain, Wealth domain, Knowledge domain
Abilities: 4/2/8/18/14/17
Feats: Favored, Practiced Spellcaster (artificer), Primary Contact, Skill Focus (Appraise)^B, Skill Focus (Craft)^B, Skill Focus (Diplomacy)^B, Words of Creation, any two flaws
Traits: Spellgifted (transmutation)
Skills: Appraise +14/+16 (6 ranks), Craft (blacksmithing) +39 (7 ranks), Knowledge (architecture and engineering) +11 (6 ranks), Spellcraft +11 (6 ranks), Use Magic Device +14 (6 ranks)
Items: 300 gp’s worth of fairy dust, lesser metamagic rod of extend spell, masterwork blacksmithing tools, masterwork arcanometer (UMD tool), minor schema of magecraft

Craft (blacksmithing)

+7 ranks
+4 intelligence
+3 charisma (Minor Aura)
+3 Skill Focus
+2 circumstance (tools)
+4 circumstance (skill enhancement)
+5 competence (magecraft)
+4 sacred (Words of Creation)
+1 morale (unity wine)
+4 racial (earth dwarf)
+2 synergy (Knowledge (architecture and engineering))
+39 total

Use Magic Device

+6 ranks
+3 charisma
+2 circumstance (tools)
+2 competence (Favored)
+1 morale (unity wine)
+14 total

Can buy raw materials with a 10% discount (Artificer’s Guild).
Can sell items at a 5% markup in cities with a guildhouse (Favored).

Cooperation
For the purposes of this thread, I'll assume a blacksmith can benefit from at most one Aid Another bonus, but an assisted smith can assist a third smith. This becomes important when the assisted smith has a bonus just a little too low to hit the next point of Aid Another bonus.

Spoiler: Aid Another

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Any smith can use Aid Another to provide a +2 bonus to any other smith. All smiths have at least +9 to their check, so success is guaranteed. But there’s more: per Complete Adventurer page 96, any smith who can hit a DC 20 check can provide a +3 Aid Another bonus. Beyond that, a DC 30 check provides a +4 bonus, a DC 40 check a +5 bonus, and so on. Both the assister and the assistee must have 5 ranks in Craft (blacksmithing) to benefit from bonuses higher than +2.

With the scaling Aid Another bonuses, Sindri's forge has an organizational structure like this:

An apprentice (Craft +14) assists a master smith (Craft +20).
The master smith assists a forge elder (Craft +27).
The forge elder attempts (90% chance) to assist a master artificer (Craft +30-31)
Several master artificers attempt (55-60% chance) to assist Sindri (Craft +43-44).
Sindri takes 10 and crafts 53 × 50 = 2650 SP worth of masterwork component in one week, for a profit of 176 GP… except that it’s split between four smiths, and they used 2100 gp’s worth of fairy dust. Yes, crafting is still terrible money.

A little more seriously: Sindri can hit a DC 50 check every week—with plenty of help, but without fairy dust—so there are some pretty epic pieces in the dwarven armoury. When it's really necessary, fairy dust is unlimited, and nobody's whining about ruined materials, it's possible to craft an item requiring a DC 60 check, which is probably the most expensive mundane item ever made.

Using Dragon #358 material (minus the feat requirement, that's just crazy), you can actually determine what you get for a DC 50 check.
A DC 50 check is required to make a razor sharp, perfectly balanced, ornate dwarvencraft greatsword from folded metal and with a blood groove, which costs 2550 gp, though if I were going to that effort, I'd pay for adamantine, as well. Mainly, the sword gets +6 hardness and +10 hp, and the wielder gets +2 to Diplomacy or Intimidate, and +1 to damage.
A DC 51 check can also craft you a reinforced lightweight mithral dwarvencraft suit of full plate caster armour (13 500 gp), which is notable for having a +9 armour bonus, +4 maximum dexterity bonus, 20% ASF, and weighing only 40 lb.

This kind of worldbuilding is something I like about D&D, and I would totally put this in any game I play in (I would use this as backstory for my equipment, I mean, though I might play Blacksmith Accountant too, when it comes to it). I'm prepared to admit it's probably an accident that the rules work out this way, but it's pretty awesome that they do. So when a DM shows up who eyeballs GP values and is off by 1000%, I'm understandably not too thrilled. As far as I'm concerned, the players should work within the pre-established mechanics and expectations of the world as much as possible (whatever expectations these are--they don't have to be the book ones), presenting a consistent, predictable (at the micro level) world that players can plan their actions in, allowing deep, strategic gameplay. The guidelines on skill DCs are part of that.

You'll also note that without the consistency and robustness of the rules, you wouldn't have nearly as many roleplaying hooks as you would have eyeballing it.

So is this an example of reductio ad absurdum?

I think you're reading this in an extreme way. I'm pretty sure he's open to healthy discussion, rather than arguing

Yes, it is, and yes, I am. I suppose I am more of an extreme delegate-to-player-ist than Egg is a dictator. Still, stripped of absurdity, it is something to talk about.

About the whole "working together" thing, yes, of course. We're all working together. But that doesn't relieve the DM of his responsibilities. I still have to curate the gameplay experience, ideally toward maximum enjoyment on the part of the players.

Absolutely, but none of that means you can't off-load most of the mechanics and narration (i.e. work) to the players. You can leave the players the floor, and only step in to moderate when things are going beyond a certain point (which, as an experienced DM, you eyeball, of course). For example, if your player eyeballs a wall at DC 16 based on your description, and you had a 14 or an 18 in mind, you probably don't need to step in at all. First rule of improv, and all that: always say "yes" and roll with it. The more robust the system is, the more precise you can be. In combat, you can use exact AC, because the system is very detailed and every single point can be explained mechanically. For walls, that's not really a thing (though it could be, in a more complex system). Also, in combat, you can narrate the monster's response directly, whereas narrating a wall's response is... unlikely to charm your players (it's generally null, only the climber acts in the narrative).

A system like this is helped a great deal by pre-set standards on what kind of things a wall of type X does, because with clear standards, you can be precise without needing to intervene very much. For Sindri's forge above, I can figure out exactly what the Break DCs, hit points, and hardness of various parts of the building are. I can figure out how difficult it is to Climb the walls, Pick the locks, Swim the canal, or lift the anvil (and how much damage it deals when thrown). And the beauty is that I can show my work, because it's right there in the book, and I can be reasonably certain that other people would arrive at similar results. I'm playing in a world that exists somewhat independently of the DM's mind, or the player's mind, or even my own mind.

I submit that, to a great extent, this is a D&D 3.x-centric problem where the character build game is very deep and there's a huge range of skill levels you can buy with varying degrees of investment. As a contrast, I play Fate. In Fate, your skills are between 0 and +4, and you get a certain amount of them at each level. The GM knows explicitly what levels are achievable, as there's really no variation beyond that level. Similar in D&D5, you're either trained, or not. There's not a lot of variation for how much investment you make in a skill.

Yes, it probably is. And I like that kind of mechanical complexity/depth (in fact, the various D&D skill systems could do to be more complex, especially with regard to social skills). Matching the mechanics to the world is fun. If the mechanics are too vague or generic, it's too easy to match, and therefore boring, which is not fun.

[Jay R]

Raises hand. I wanted to climb a tree to hide from oncoming hostiles. I had to roll Athletics DC 20 with 10 ST and no proficiency. Don't remember what I rolled, but I know it was not a 20. Different campaign. Granted I had to take off my armor for swimming, but the party wanted to swim across a moat, climb a small hill of rocks to reach an empty Keep, climb the wall to get to a low window, and go inside before approaching hostiles could see us. I have 10 ST and no proficiency in Athletics. The number of checks the party needed to make: 0. We got into the Keep because we wanted to.

Oh, I know about those kinds of things. DMs are human. They make mistakes all the time. But that's not what I was asking about -- or if they were, you left off that part.

But are these really enough to make a bad gaming experience? Really? That one moment turned an otherwise fun, exciting, challenging game into a bad gaming experience?

In the first case, it spoiled one combat for one character. Is this suppose to be important enough to upset anybody? And in the second case, the DM was trying to get you quickly to the approaching hostiles, and didn't take up game time on something that wasn't intended to be the challenge. Why is this bad?

These kinds of things happen all the time in every game. Move on.

Well there was the time that it took 3 sessions to discover that the sun didn't move...

Ya want jankey DCs that pissed people off though, we played Out of the Abyss. There was a climb check for a 5' high natural rock ledge at dc 11, the thief acrobat character failed that three times just trying to get somewhere for a clear bow shot and again after combat ended. Then, much later, a beholder lair featured a 100' vertical shaft carved and smoothed by magic as a defensive feature that was dc 10 to climb the whole thing but you only rolled during combat. Bad experience.

OK, I agree that the DM isn't very good. But why is that a bad experience? You had a harder time than expected once, and an easier time later. Does a good game become bad because the DM made a couple of mistakes?

In any game, if you want to focus on DM mistakes, you can do so. Or you can focus on the adventure, and the character you're paying.

I suggest that you can make your games more fun by focusing on the fun, instead of on the minor issues.

Assume that the overly difficult wall is crumbling, or moss-covered, or otherwise more difficult than it appeared, and get back into the game.

[King of Nowhere]

Aren't you taking that chance anyway, since you don't know how often you'll be needing to climb in a given game?

that's a wrong approach. you don't "need" to climb in a given game. you have some problems, and you have a set of things that your character can do that you can use to solve those problems. climb, acrobacy, bluff, power attack, spellcasting, those are all tools that you can give. be creative. You'd be surprised how often i had chances to use a monk's slow fall, simply because i consider it as another tool in my problem-solving toolkit. if i was only using it to avoid damage when falling in a pit, i'd still be waiting.

[prabe]

that's a wrong approach. you don't "need" to climb in a given game. you have some problems, and you have a set of things that your character can do that you can use to solve those problems. climb, acrobacy, bluff, power attack, spellcasting, those are all tools that you can give. be creative. You'd be surprised how often i had chances to use a monk's slow fall, simply because i consider it as another tool in my problem-solving toolkit. if i was only using it to avoid damage when falling in a pit, i'd still be waiting.

Fair enough; I'll rephrase it: Aren't you taking that chance anyway, since you don't know how often climbing will be relevant in a given game?

Sure, every thing the characters can do is a potential problem-solver, and it's good to use them creatively. I don't see how more-detailed DC tables help with that.

[Telok]

OK, I agree that the DM isn't very good. But why is that a bad experience? You had a harder time than expected once, and an easier time later. Does a good game become bad because the DM made a couple of mistakes?
.....
Assume that the overly difficult wall is crumbling, or moss-covered, or otherwise more difficult than it appeared, and get back into the game.

The looney dcs and failure were the dm reading straight from the official wotc adventure. The different people who wrote different parts of the adventure didn't even know what the dcs represented. This isn't some rare or unusual thing, my experience was that all new gms did these kind of random buttpull dcs because they had no standard or guidance to hang things on. One of them quit dming because we kept having this issue. My experience with current d&d has been univerally negative with new dms because of the lack of clarity and guidelines for stuff beyond attacking things in melee.

On the second point retconning a shoulder high rock ledge into something else "harder to climb" doesn't work well when it's one person with low dice rolls. You start moving towards Three Stooges and Monty Python style results when you have your "experts" flailing around and no-skill mooks succeeding because "roll high" matters more than anything you try to do or say. And if you're constantly doing that then what's the point in describing the scene with any detail since you're just going to retcon the place to fit higher or lower dice rolls? Its fine in Paranoia, thats supposed to be slapstick. Roll high or fail like a chump is jarring when you've billed imthe game as heroic adventure and the dice roll the other way half the time.

[Pex]

Replace with "Not worthwhile" or "Not reliable enough to play into a character concept of your design", then. I say this while tabbed out of Assassin's Creed 2, I really like to know whether my character will actually be able to climb around like Ezio or whether attempting to do so is so unreliable that I may as well not bother before I waste a skill proficiency on it. I also want to know, mind you, whether or not I'll actually have to roll to climb at all, or whether someone with no climb ranks can just freely climb things and actually that athletics proficiency is pointless when it comes to climbing. I don't think that wanting to know whether that character concept is viable before I try to make it is so wrong?

It's like asking someone to make a sorcerer without telling them what their spells do until after they've chosen them and are attempting to cast one. And if you want to houserule a spell, a monster or a weapon to do something different, or not to have a clearly-defined effect at all, then you can... but imagine if fireball did something different with every DM: you wouldn't have a clue whether or not it was a spell you were interested in taking until after you were already using it. That doesn't appeal to me.

I don't mind not being able to be Ezio. I don't mind everyone suddenly being Ezio. But I do mind not having a clue whether or not my character can be Ezio until it's far, far too late.

What I've been saying but with better verbiage.

The looney dcs and failure were the dm reading straight from the official wotc adventure. The different people who wrote different parts of the adventure didn't even know what the dcs represented. This isn't some rare or unusual thing, my experience was that all new gms did these kind of random buttpull dcs because they had no standard or guidance to hang things on. One of them quit dming because we kept having this issue. My experience with current d&d has been univerally negative with new dms because of the lack of clarity and guidelines for stuff beyond attacking things in melee.

I'm intrigued by this point of view on the matter.

[prabe]

Replace with "Not worthwhile" or "Not reliable enough to play into a character concept of your design", then. I say this while tabbed out of Assassin's Creed 2, I really like to know whether my character will actually be able to climb around like Ezio or whether attempting to do so is so unreliable that I may as well not bother before I waste a skill proficiency on it. I also want to know, mind you, whether or not I'll actually have to roll to climb at all, or whether someone with no climb ranks can just freely climb things and actually that athletics proficiency is pointless when it comes to climbing. I don't think that wanting to know whether that character concept is viable before I try to make it is so wrong?

It's like asking someone to make a sorcerer without telling them what their spells do until after they've chosen them and are attempting to cast one. And if you want to houserule a spell, a monster or a weapon to do something different, or not to have a clearly-defined effect at all, then you can... but imagine if fireball did something different with every DM: you wouldn't have a clue whether or not it was a spell you were interested in taking until after you were already using it. That doesn't appeal to me.

I don't mind not being able to be Ezio. I don't mind everyone suddenly being Ezio. But I do mind not having a clue whether or not my character can be Ezio until it's far, far too late.

Maybe it's because I like to think I'm the sort of GM who'd respond well and reasonably to a player who did this, but maybe try talking to the GM? Talk to the GM before the game (at least before you make your character, if you're joining an extant campaign); if things seem a little weird during the game, talk to the GM again--remind the GM of your previous conversation. Maybe you can talk to other players who know the GM better to get a feel for the GM's style, but that sounds a little too much like players-vs.-GM for my tastes.

In 5E, at least, the DM has a lot of flexibility. I think that's a strength of the game, but I understand that the players want A) at least some consistency and B) for their characters to have a chance to shine (or at least for their chargen decisions to matter). It's on the DM to provide those two things, among their other responsibilities.

[kyoryu]

On the second point retconning a shoulder high rock ledge into something else "harder to climb" doesn't work well when it's one person with low dice rolls. You start moving towards Three Stooges and Monty Python style results when you have your "experts" flailing around and no-skill mooks succeeding because "roll high" matters more than anything you try to do or say. And if you're constantly doing that then what's the point in describing the scene with any detail since you're just going to retcon the place to fit higher or lower dice rolls? Its fine in Paranoia, thats supposed to be slapstick. Roll high or fail like a chump is jarring when you've billed imthe game as heroic adventure and the dice roll the other way half the time.

If there's no pressure, and a fairly trivial obstacle, either don't roll, or allow a Take 10/20 under 3.x.

Rolling should be reserved for pressure situations where there's something at stake. Blaming the failure on the situation is also a good way to avoid slapstick.

[Zarrgon]

Replace with "Not worthwhile" or "Not reliable enough to play into a character concept of your design", then. I say this while tabbed out of Assassin's Creed 2, I really like to know whether my character will actually be able to climb around like Ezio or whether attempting to do so is so unreliable that I may as well not bother before I waste a skill proficiency on it. I also want to know, mind you, whether or not I'll actually have to roll to climb at all, or whether someone with no climb ranks can just freely climb things and actually that athletics proficiency is pointless when it comes to climbing. I don't think that wanting to know whether that character concept is viable before I try to make it is so wrong?

But this sounds like you don't even under stand how D&D, most RPGs and even games in general work.

You understand there is no "cheat code", special thing you can do to win the game?

You understand that the whole basic game concept is based around the idea of a living virtual interacting world where the challenges are varied to an extreme, always changing and always increasing in difficulty?

It's like asking someone to make a sorcerer without telling them what their spells do until after they've chosen them and are attempting to cast one. And if you want to houserule a spell, a monster or a weapon to do something different, or not to have a clearly-defined effect at all, then you can... but imagine if fireball did something different with every DM: you wouldn't have a clue whether or not it was a spell you were interested in taking until after you were already using it. That doesn't appeal to me.

Your example falls apart and makes no sense though. Your not talking a skill without knowing what it can do. You, should hopefully under stand what the climb spell lets your character do.

And what your saying about magic in general IS true for EVERY DM. Just for example look over at the Thread titled "Magic Microwave". And magic is about 100% worse then the skill problem as a LOT of players don't read or understand the magic rules. And it's even true of some DMs too.

And a LOT about how useful a skill or spell or any ability is, is all about WHAT a player tries to do with it. If the player wants to have the character hang out at the Happy Tree Apple Farm where all the trees are DC 5 to climb, then the character will be the awesome demi god of climbing. Should the player have the character go to the Black Keep of Evil, they would find the trees there DC 15....and the Cursed Isle of the Undead has DC 25 trees, and undead ents too.

[Saint-Just]

And a LOT about how useful a skill or spell or any ability is, is all about WHAT a player tries to do with it. If the player wants to have the character hang out at the Happy Tree Apple Farm where all the trees are DC 5 to climb, then the character will be the awesome demi god of climbing. Should the player have the character go to the Black Keep of Evil, they would find the trees there DC 15....and the Cursed Isle of the Undead has DC 25 trees, and undead ents too.

I suppose that this gets into simulationism vs story territory. Even if we're talking about heroic exploits like surviving great falls, breaking chains with your bare hands etc. there is still place for relatively precise abilities - hero can survive fall of 100 feet but if he fights near 600 feet chasm he knows that fall would kill him, being able to tear apart your typical manacles does not mean you can break 1-inch adamantium chain and so on. But some subordinate consistency to the narrative - if the city watch needs to hold falsely accused hero he would not be able to get rid of normal manacles, if he needs to escape from Evil Overlord's prison adamantium chains would not be able to hold him.

DCs for the same action getting harder relies on getting PCs into the progressively weirder and more dangerous locations - which is not so widespread as to be default assumption. Challenging encounters (getting ambushed by the high-level NPCs near the capital while delivering urgent news, non-lethally infiltrating treasonous noble's keep in search of the compromising evidence) does not need unusual terrain, and in some case preclude them (forest near the capital is unlikely to be unusual, unless utility magic is widespread (not a default assumption) there's not much reasons for the keep's wall to be harder than DC 25). That is why enough people consider it important to have benchmarks for normal scenery\situations. In most campaigns a tree near the Castle of Doom strongly resemble one on the Happy Farm, so assigning different DC to them is not desirable.

You understand that the whole basic game concept is based around the idea of a living virtual interacting world where the challenges are varied to an extreme, always changing and always increasing in difficulty?

Overall challenge does not necessary mean that producing the same (object-level) result (climb the tree, tie your shoes, deal 10 points of damage) becomes harder, only that it takes more to achieve meta-result of "victory". Even if trees stay the same you still qualify from climbing the trees to take potshots from safety all the way to fighting while running on the treetops.

[Unavenger]

Maybe it's because I like to think I'm the sort of GM who'd respond well and reasonably to a player who did this, but maybe try talking to the GM? Talk to the GM before the game (at least before you make your character, if you're joining an extant campaign); if things seem a little weird during the game, talk to the GM again--remind the GM of your previous conversation. Maybe you can talk to other players who know the GM better to get a feel for the GM's style, but that sounds a little too much like players-vs.-GM for my tastes.

In 5E, at least, the DM has a lot of flexibility. I think that's a strength of the game, but I understand that the players want A) at least some consistency and B) for their characters to have a chance to shine (or at least for their chargen decisions to matter). It's on the DM to provide those two things, among their other responsibilities.

On the DM's side, though, I want, how did Rich Burlew put it, "I want tools that I can use in the game, not a blank check to do what I want. I can already do what I want." Now, granted, he was actually talking about a 3.5 skill (diplomacy), and mind you I'm not a great fan of 3.5 either for some of the same reasons, but that same problem is far, far worse in 5e. If I ask my DM, they don't really know how to answer. And honestly, I don't want to have to spend session zero asking how my skills all work before we can start the game.

If there are guidelines, you can always ignore them. Lack of guidelines doesn't improve "Flexibility". The DM can always do what they want. They're the DM. But 5e doesn't even provide an option for consistency.

But this sounds like you don't even under stand how D&D, most RPGs and even games in general work.

The pot calling the kettle black is one thing, but more so when the kettle is bright white.

You understand there is no "cheat code", special thing you can do to win the game?

Yes.

You understand that the whole basic game concept is based around the idea of a living virtual interacting world where the challenges are varied to an extreme, always changing and always increasing in difficulty?

Virtual interacting world, sure. "Challenges are varied to an extreme, always changing and always increasing in difficulty"? Balls.

Your example falls apart and makes no sense though. Your not talking a skill without knowing what it can do. You, should hopefully under stand what the climb spell lets your character do.

You would hope you understood what the climb skill, and more specifically a given roll of the climb skill, allowed you to do. But in 5e, I don't.

And what your saying about magic in general IS true for EVERY DM. Just for example look over at the Thread titled "Magic Microwave". And magic is about 100% worse then the skill problem as a LOT of players don't read or understand the magic rules. And it's even true of some DMs too.

At least there are magic rules. Imagine if there weren't, and Flame Strike just said that it created a pillar of divine fire in a nearby area without any indication of how much damage it did, how big it was, or indeed whether or not it went through walls. If I wanted to play Roll to Dodge, I would.

And a LOT about how useful a skill or spell or any ability is, is all about WHAT a player tries to do with it. If the player wants to have the character hang out at the Happy Tree Apple Farm where all the trees are DC 5 to climb, then the character will be the awesome demi god of climbing. Should the player have the character go to the Black Keep of Evil, they would find the trees there DC 15....and the Cursed Isle of the Undead has DC 25 trees, and undead ents too.

Which would be great if this were specified literally anywhere in the rules.

(I did actually write up an "Area level" system for 5e, where you only have to decide how difficult a challenge is for a challenge that exists in that area, rather than in general, but I'm not sure if I like that - I would sorta rather have two identical trees under identical circumstances in different locations be equally difficult to climb.)

[NorthernPhoenix]

If there are guidelines, you can always ignore them. Lack of guidelines doesn't improve "Flexibility". The DM can always do what they want. They're the DM. But 5e doesn't even provide an option for consistency.

See, this brings us back to the idea of culture, and how it runs things just as much as the rules themselves. Guidelines are great as guidelines, but that wasn't the culture that developed for previous editions of DnD. In order to shift the table culture away from the "guidelines" being seen as tool for fighting the DM, who must be toxic by definition if he didn't adhere to them, they had to be absent from 5e.

Maybe when the culture has been sufficiently shifted, they can be reintroduced.

[Willie the Duck]

If there are guidelines, you can always ignore them. Lack of guidelines doesn't improve "Flexibility". The DM can always do what they want. They're the DM. But 5e doesn't even provide an option for consistency.

Which would be great if this were specified literally anywhere in the rules.

I don't know if I've said it here or in a 5e thread, but I really disagree that this is true. You can easily have consistency (and there are specifically delineated rules). You just say, "You come up to a wall. Given your expertise, you'd say that it is a moderate climbing challenge." The problem only comes in with consistently mapping it to the real-world-type descriptions.

Mind you, I don't have a problem with a TTRPG in general having a direct mapping to IRL descriptions, except for D&D -- because it is has such a broad gamer base that taking a specific stand on how gritty realism/cinematic/mythic the physical actions get to be leaves much of the fanbase's expectations in the dust (at which point they change/ignore it, meaning that the consistency doesn't end up happening anyway).

The pot calling the kettle black is one thing, but more so when the kettle is bright white.

Honestly, I wouldn't bother. This is not a fight worth having. If you'll notice, no one else has jumped up to agree with any of the posturing.

At least there are magic rules. Imagine if there weren't, and Flame Strike just said that it created a pillar of divine fire in a nearby area without any indication of how much damage it did, how big it was, or indeed whether or not it went through walls. If I wanted to play Roll to Dodge, I would.

You are correct. The instant you enter the domain of combat rules (spells included), D&D is incredibly specific about where and when and how. D&D has always done so and the expectations are there for it to be the case and the player base generally agrees upon what everything ought to map to (with some exceptions, such as how hot a fireball is or the like). It doesn't hurt that the primary mechanism much of combat interacts with (Hit Points) is an abstraction.

[Unavenger]

See, this brings us back to the idea of culture, and how it runs things just as much as the rules themselves. Guidelines are great as guidelines, but that wasn't the culture that developed for previous editions of DnD. In order to shift the table culture away from the "guidelines" being seen as tool for fighting the DM, who must be toxic by definition if he didn't adhere to them, they had to be absent from 5e.

Maybe when the culture has been sufficiently shifted, they can be reintroduced.

That's a really terrible excuse. If that was Wizards' reason, they could easily have explained that the guidelines were only tools for the DM to use, and that the players should not assume that they will always be true. They could have finished their skill system and explained that you can always not use it if you don't want to.

"We have a totally great ruleset, and we wish we could share it with you, but the world's not ready for it yet." Ugh, no.

I don't know if I've said it here or in a 5e thread, but I really disagree that this is true. You can easily have consistency (and there are specifically delineated rules). You just say, "You come up to a wall. Given your expertise, you'd say that it is a moderate climbing challenge." The problem only comes in with consistently mapping it to the real-world-type descriptions.

Yes, and that's the part of it that I have an issue with. I'd like the difficulty to depend on the wall, not on the otherworldly force beyond the fourth wall known as Dee Em.

You are correct. The instant you enter the domain of combat rules (spells included), D&D is incredibly specific about where and when and how. D&D has always done so and the expectations are there for it to be the case and the player base generally agrees upon what everything ought to map to (with some exceptions, such as how hot a fireball is or the like). It doesn't hurt that the primary mechanism much of combat interacts with (Hit Points) is an abstraction.

Hit points, like skill rolls, are indeed abstract. One of them, however, leads to a consistent result: The game decides whether or not I live or die without ambiguity, but not whether I can reach the top of the hill or not. I'm not Shrodinger's Cat, I'm the Grand Old Duke of York.

[Zarrgon]

DCs for the same action getting harder relies on getting PCs into the progressively weirder and more dangerous locations - which is not so widespread as to be default assumption.

This "default assumption" is the core of the D&D rules

Challenging encounters (getting ambushed by the high-level NPCs near the capital while delivering urgent news, non-lethally infiltrating treasonous noble's keep in search of the compromising evidence) does not need unusual terrain, and in some case preclude them (forest near the capital is unlikely to be unusual, unless utility magic is widespread (not a default assumption) there's not much reasons for the keep's wall to be harder than DC 25).

To be fair if an encounter does not have any terrain effects then it's no a challenging encounter, it's just maybe a challenging combat.

While one of the big strengths of D&D is anything can happen anywhere anytime...still most challenging encounters will take place in fantastic locations with unusual terrain.

That is why enough people consider it important to have benchmarks for normal scenery\situations. In most campaigns a tree near the Castle of Doom strongly resemble one on the Happy Farm, so assigning different DC to them is not desirable.

Well, this might just be a huge clash of cultures right here. Your saying you want the whole world on a flat DC 'Easy Mode'. So no matter where the PCs go or what they do the DC is always "don't even bother to roll you automatically succeed and can't fail". Now that is a fine way to play the game if that is fun for you, but I doubt too many people play the game that way.

In other games the "normal benchmarks" are a bit useless, as not too long after 1st level the adventure of a PC will not be "normal".

Virtual interacting world, sure. "Challenges are varied to an extreme, always changing and always increasing in difficulty"? Balls.

Just note that this very basic concept is a foundation of the D&D rules. If your gaming culture ignores this, fine, but it is the way most people play D&D.

Which would be great if this were specified literally anywhere in the rules.

Well, it's sure not in the 5E rules.....

[prabe]

On the DM's side, though, I want, how did Rich Burlew put it, "I want tools that I can use in the game, not a blank check to do what I want. I can already do what I want." Now, granted, he was actually talking about a 3.5 skill (diplomacy), and mind you I'm not a great fan of 3.5 either for some of the same reasons, but that same problem is far, far worse in 5e. If I ask my DM, they don't really know how to answer. And honestly, I don't want to have to spend session zero asking how my skills all work before we can start the game.

If there are guidelines, you can always ignore them. Lack of guidelines doesn't improve "Flexibility". The DM can always do what they want. They're the DM. But 5e doesn't even provide an option for consistency.

So, if you were to ask me about my 5E games, I'd say that having Proficiency would probably reduce the number of times you'd have to roll, especially if you weren't under stress of one sort or the other. If you did have to roll, you'd probably have a good idea of the DC beforehand so your character could make a considered decision. I'd tell you that I'd try to keep things consistent, but circumstances are rarely identical. I'd tell you that it's not unusual for me to ask for non-standard combinations of Ability and Proficiency (I even did this in 3.x). I'd say that I sometimes gate things behind Proficiencies, and that I sometimes give Advantage on rolls if a character has multiple Proficiencies that apply. I'd tell you that Tool Proficiencies might come up in strange ways (such as Intelligence(Carpenter's Tools) or Intelligence(Mason's Tools) to figure out how to bring down a building). I'd say that I have a soft spot for skill monkeys and I don't want to nerf someone's character who's playing one.

I wouldn't argue if you decided that a DM who doesn't know how to answer is plausibly not a good DM for you. I would argue that by not asking, you're probably missing out on the DMs who know--and you're not giving those who haven't thought about it a chance to improve (which isn't necessarily the players' job, but I'm all in favor of DMs getting better). Obviously, you can play what and how you want, and with whom, though not everyone has the opportunity to pick and choose.