Martial Power!!! (Give the martials something to do other than "attack again")

[OldTrees1]

Going off other games that use this approach successfully, this is mostly 5e being terrible at giving you guidance for doing stuff outside of the explicit rules, and hides the fact that you're "allowed" to do that in combat in a small box on page 193.

It also doesn't help that D&D's conditions tend to be very variable in terms of how powerful they are, so you can't just say something like "improvised actions can inflict an appropriate condition with a successful ability contest" or whatever.

The GM is the players' eyes into the world. Likewise the GM is the players' eyes into the implicit abilities.

I do not know if a strong Barbarian can smash an enemy and try to send that enemy flying as part of their attacks. So I suspect the enemy won't go flying.

I would like to learn from your experience with those other games:

Let's pretend you are the GM. Can a Barbarian do that? How far? Is there a check? What DC?

Let's pretend you are the game developer. What advice do you give, where, and to whom, so the player knows the answer before they ask?

[Pex]

It's buried in the DMG, but beyond that there's a problem of a conflict between explicit and implicit abilities. For example, you might think, reading mage hand's description, that you could use it to pick a lock at range. But mage hand legerdmain says that it grants the ability to pick locks with mage hand. Which means that the implicit use of mage hand... isn't real? Because the explicit text of legerdmain implies it isn't?

Overall this creates a pattern of "if its not explicit you can't do it." And really, I'm at peace with that. It's how DND operates. People trying to argue for what they see as 'logical implications' of their abilities are tiresome in a system that has as many weird and wild abilities as DND does and things get way out of control if you let people do this with spellcasting in particular.

Now, obviously this is how Ability Checks and the Improvised Actions blurb work. But the general cultural assumption prevails, and what guidance exists is buried in the DMG where none of my players will ever see it anyway. I'm chill with improvised actions. But they're never ever happening at my table because players don't want to be power gamers, they want to stick to their explicitly enumerated powers. Even if my players want to throw someone across the room and trust that I won't make it a waste of their action... well, there's social pressure to not be a powergamer, not to waste everyone's time trying to give yourself new abilities. It's not worth it.

So where does that leave me? I just tell them "You can improvise something"? They won't. Not my players anyway, not very often. They'd much rather stick to boring options than to be seen as powergamers. So what I do instead is I make explicit abilities that are balanced and scaled appropriately and publish the (vain) hope that it will help other people who are having similar problems.

That's an interesting other side of the coin. Usually it's the DM who doesn't like the improvising because he's afraid it would set precedent. It's the DM worried about something not explicitly allowed by the rules to be too powerful, so the DC is No or Rule of Cool Just This Once.

[strangebloke]

The GM is the players' eyes into the world. Likewise the GM is the players' eyes into the implicit abilities.

I do not know if a strong Barbarian can smash an enemy and try to send that enemy flying as part of their attacks. So I suspect the enemy won't go flying.

I would like to learn from your experience with those other games:

Let's pretend you are the GM. Can a Barbarian do that? How far? Is there a check? What DC?

Let's pretend you are the game developer. What advice do you give, where, and to whom, so the player knows the answer before they ask?

Not Amechra, but I have two examples

One is FATE. In FATE, a player can describe any action and the player and GM decide mutually which skill would be appropriate. Obviously there's an element of gaming your descriptions to match the skills you're good in but generally that's not too restrictive. Then the player can decide whether one of their traits applies to the check in a positive fashion. So if the player had written "not tired of being nice, still kind of wants to go ape****" as one of their traits, they could spend one of their 'fate' points and add a bonus to the check. You can stack any number of traits as long as they can be argued to apply, but of course you'll run out of fate points.

The GM can also apply your traits to checks you make in a negative fashion, something like "you have the 'greedy' trait, so I will just say you fail this check because you're distracted by money." If the player goes along with it, they get a fate point back. If they don't go along with it, they have to pay a fate point.

So its weird. In a sense you're incentivized to give yourself bad traits and go along with forced fails because it lets you build up loads of points for the climax.

What's really fun is you can extend FATE to pretty much any character concept and I do mean any. Come up with a skill list that's relevant to kaiju, slap on some traits, and suddenly you're a pack of monsters trashing tokyo.

The second is Amber. In Amber, everyone's a demigod and the game is built around the race for the throne. Stats are auctioned off with points. Whoever bid the most for strength can automatically win any direct confrontation against any other PC. The second highest bidder can beat everyone who bid lower than the number one and so on. Whoever bid the most for war can win any confrontation through proxy. Whoever bid the most for Influence can win any confrontation through indirect means.

At the end of the game, everyone alive is awarded points based on the objectives they achieved. Some of these objectives were open and available to everyone...

But every player also had unique objectives that were secret. Also for the skills, only the top bidders are known. You know who the top Strength guy is but not who the fourth strength guy is. So the game is this weird dance of attempted alliances and betrayals and lies. It makes for a very fun game if you've got a good crew. You can narrate your actions any way you like because they don't matter. If you win you can win any way you like and ultimately you're a demigod.

That's an interesting other side of the coin. Usually it's the DM who doesn't like the improvising because he's afraid it would set precedent. It's the DM worried about something not explicitly allowed by the rules to be too powerful, so the DC is No or Rule of Cool Just This Once.

One flows into the other. The DM doesn't want to set bad precedent so they get stressed and overcompensate. The players don't want to stress the DM, or fear its going to be pointless to ask so they just don't. When a DM hasn't improvised in a while because of the silent law against using abilities for off-brand things, they get comfortable, and become all the more unprepared when something like that does come up, which makes them tighten up even more.

Whereas, if you're used to improvising you're just like "nah, I just can do this and I won't be a jerk about it."

[Brookshw]

That's where DM adjudication, "rulings", come in. That is when it's the DM's job to figure it out.

Agreed.

If the DM can't figure it out from benchmarks how do you expect the DM to figure it out when there no guidelines at all?

Those exist, they're on pg 174 of the PHB, though they're not very granular (which I believe is your concern).

They have 3E helps further where depending on the table it will give plus or minus numbers to apply to the DC.

Nope, not with you there. 3e was just as bad at this, a plus or minus didn't help, too many apples and oranges to compare that just left DM's having to use their best judgement.

In 3E the DC to climb a tree is 15. Is it for every tree? If the DM wants, but it's not unreasonable to think that's for the oak and similarly looking trees. A palm tree could be harder. However, a climber could wrap his arms, so despite no branches at the bottom and rough bark it's not quite the same as a dungeon wall which is DC 20.

Is it? Which dungeon wall? Poorly mortared? Rough hewn? Why wasn't wrapping arms around an oak tree an option as well to determine the DC on that one? What if the tree's wet? What if it's a bone tree from the Dry Lands or unnaturally brittle? We're back in the guessing game trying to determine how to establish a baseline and relying upon our judgement. I get where you're coming from, but do not see 3e as having really offered all that much.

Now imagine the problem when a warrior player wants to do something more fantastic such as Acrobatics to avoid AoO or Athletics to jump over a 25 ft wide chasm or Knowledge Arcana to cut through a Wall of Force or perhaps know how deep to dig underneath one and make a tunnel.

You and I diverge on a few of those, I'm not a fan of using a skill check to invalidate or go around existing rules; to Strange's point, once a rule function is bounded most people in my experience will stay within those bounds and I'm fine with that, though they shouldn't feel constrained and unable to consider or attempt approaches/actions which aren't already addressed within the scope of the rules (simultaneously, the DM should be giving them a heads up how they'll handle the attempt before anyone wastes their action/turn/whatever).

[Pex]

Is it? Which dungeon wall? Poorly mortared? Rough hewn? Why wasn't wrapping arms around an oak tree an option as well to determine the DC on that one? What if the tree's wet? What if it's a bone tree from the Dry Lands or unnaturally brittle? We're back in the guessing game trying to determine how to establish a baseline and relying upon our judgement. I get where you're coming from, but do not see 3e as having really offered all that much.

Which dungeon wall? A typical dungeon wall, generic, it just is, a run of the mill nothing special dungeon wall. DC 20 per climb skill 3E PHB page 65

If it's rough hewn, then it's harder, like a rock or brick wall, DC 25 per climb skill 3E PHB page 65

Climb skill only says trees are DC 15 to climb, DM fiat, a ruling, made a difference between oak, which has low thick branches a person can easily reach and a palm tree which has no branches until the very top. DM made a ruling as per his prerogative, so he chooses harder than a normal tree and uses DM's best friend to add +2 to the DC.

Tree is wet? Add +5 to the DC for being slippery, as per the climb skill 3E PHB page 65

Tree is bone, easier grip? -5 to the DC if DM thinks it's as easier as if bracing against the corner of two walls to climb per climb skill 3E PHB page 65. If not that easy or really aren't sure use DM's best friend of -2 to the DC.

If the tree is so brittle it would collapse under weight then the tree collapses, autofail. If the character is trained (i. e. has at least one rank) in Knowledge Nature the DM could be generous and give him a check on that to notice it is brittle before he climbs. DM choice to let him roll or consider his Take 10 result. DM needs to decide if it's easy, basic, or hard to notice it is so brittle. That has to be a DM call. DC 10, 15, 20 respectively per knowledge skill 3E PHB page 71.

[Psyren]

Going off other games that use this approach successfully, this is mostly 5e being terrible at giving you guidance for doing stuff outside of the explicit rules, and hides the fact that you're "allowed" to do that in combat in a small box on page 193.

It also doesn't help that D&D's conditions tend to be very variable in terms of how powerful they are, so you can't just say something like "improvised actions can inflict an appropriate condition with a successful ability contest" or whatever.

5e might not be as good at this as more narrative games, but it's done the best so far of any D&D edition. In 3.5 the most we got was "consider a +2 circumstance bonus maybe?" Whereas 5e actually encourages you to think outside the handbook when describing actions the designers didn't think about.

And for that matter - why can't you say "improvised actions can inflict an appropriate condition?" The GM sets the DC after all, so you can index the condition(s)) inflicted to how impressive the stunt was quite easily. "It was a DC 20 to knock him out, but you got an 18 total, let's say you stunned him for 1 round instead," e.g.

[Brookshw]

Which dungeon wall? A typical dungeon wall, generic, it just is, a run of the mill nothing special dungeon wall. DC 20 per climb skill 3E PHB page 65

If it's rough hewn, then it's harder, like a rock or brick wall, DC 25 per climb skill 3E PHB page 65

Climb skill only says trees are DC 15 to climb, DM fiat, a ruling, made a difference between oak, which has low thick branches a person can easily reach and a palm tree which has no branches until the very top. DM made a ruling as per his prerogative, so he chooses harder than a normal tree and uses DM's best friend to add +2 to the DC.

Tree is wet? Add +5 to the DC for being slippery, as per the climb skill 3E PHB page 65

Tree is bone, easier grip? -5 to the DC if DM thinks it's as easier as if bracing against the corner of two walls to climb per climb skill 3E PHB page 65. If not that easy or really aren't sure use DM's best friend of -2 to the DC.

If the tree is so brittle it would collapse under weight then the tree collapses, autofail. If the character is trained (i. e. has at least one rank) in Knowledge Nature the DM could be generous and give him a check on that to notice it is brittle before he climbs. DM choice to let him roll or consider his Take 10 result. DM needs to decide if it's easy, basic, or hard to notice it is so brittle. That has to be a DM call. DC 10, 15, 20 respectively per knowledge skill 3E PHB page 71.

So, that's starting at a base 15, up through maybe a 25, with possible +/-5 depending. That's still leaving the DM to have to decide on quite a bit to climb this palm tree and figure out the DC. I don't see how that's any better.

If the tree is so brittle it would collapse under weight then the tree collapses, autofail. If the character is trained (i. e. has at least one rank) in Knowledge Nature the DM could be generous and give him a check on that to notice it is brittle before he climbs. DM choice to let him roll or consider his Take 10 result. DM needs to decide if it's easy, basic, or hard to notice it is so brittle. That has to be a DM call. DC 10, 15, 20 respectively per knowledge skill 3E PHB page 71.

So all things a DM needs to decide with little guidance on where to place the DC, and if its even possible in the first place. Again, I don't see how that's any better.

And climbing is one of the easier ones to sort through in 3.5...

[strangebloke]

Can we not do the skill checks boogaloo again Pex?

The real problem with the skill check system is that there are no things impossible at low levels that can be done consistently at mid-to-high levels, so there's no manner in which powerful skill uses can be 'unlocked.' You can't say "with a DC 30 athletics you rip open a force cage" because PCs can do that at level one with a bit of luck (expertise + guidance + BI + help) and that's silly. So when getting 30 is pretty doable on average, there's nothing up there that is that exciting despite your large investment. Even if you put in suggested DCs for specific tasks this bit would remain.

It's one of the limits of bounded accuracy.

[Xervous]

I’m getting a bit of dejavu posting this (again?) D&Ds noncommittal stance on setting and expectations feels like it gets in the way of declaring actions beyond the rules as a player. With no starting reference point you have to learn the table/GM. And the system doesn’t directly address that details and relevant tropes need outlining. I hear we’re playing Shadowrun(if not the system, even just the setting), it’s pink mohawk street level play. Even if I knew nothing about Shadowrun and cyberpunk to begin with I’ve just been given easily sourced reference points. “It’s like this book or that movie or that game” gets me to the ballpark of capabilities far faster than playing 1d20 questions with the GM. That’s not to say 1d20 questions is bad, but it can be frustrating for players as there is frequently no guiding feedback on why proposed actions are denied.

“I want to shoot lasers from my eyes”

D&D: “Well there’s magic for that but you aren’t a caster. Might find an item down the road.”

Shadowrun: “That’s some nasty ‘ware, ain’t going to be cheap and certainly isn’t legal. But you know that’s in/beyond your budget and good/bad for the theme of the campaign”

Paranoia: “mutant power? Experimental R&D implant? Go have fun, you’ll probably kill a few clones.”

Using FATE for WW2 fighter pilot drama: “uh hello, that doesn’t fit.”

It’s the tricky thing with D&D. People claim it’s a versatile system but it’s got all these baked in assumptions. It doesn’t hold much of them up as default assumptions even though the Devs were working with those assumptions. There’s so many people fooled into thinking “let’s play D&D” is anywhere near sufficient explanation for what to expect. Most of the time it’s no issue, but eventually one blind man is going to talk to another blind man about the elephant that he’s feeling.

[Yakk]

Before you move that goalpost any further, I didn't say anything about martials throwing braziers - or even other monsters - at level 20.

You gave it as an example in response to page 42, which is all about how much damage you should do at a given level in an improvised action in order for it not to suck for PCs.

This is when I was talking about the problem that PCs doing improvised actions is often a bad idea, because DMs in practice seem to find it hard to make the improvised action worth doing. Page 42 was (is) a tool to ensure that (at least the damage) impact of the action is in-line with other things the PC could be doing.

[Brookshw]

I’m getting a bit of dejavu posting this (again?) D&Ds noncommittal stance on setting and expectations feels like it gets in the way of declaring actions beyond the rules as a player. With no starting reference point you have to learn the table/GM. And the system doesn’t directly address that details and relevant tropes need outlining. I hear we’re playing Shadowrun(if not the system, even just the setting), it’s pink mohawk street level play. Even if I knew nothing about Shadowrun and cyberpunk to begin with I’ve just been given easily sourced reference points. “It’s like this book or that movie or that game” gets me to the ballpark of capabilities far faster than playing 1d20 questions with the GM. That’s not to say 1d20 questions is bad, but it can be frustrating for players as there is frequently no guiding feedback on why proposed actions are denied.

“I want to shoot lasers from my eyes”

D&D: “Well there’s magic for that but you aren’t a caster. Might find an item down the road.”

Shadowrun: “That’s some nasty ‘ware, ain’t going to be cheap and certainly isn’t legal. But you know that’s in/beyond your budget and good/bad for the theme of the campaign”

[...]

Using FATE for WW2 fighter pilot drama: “uh hello, that doesn’t fit.”

It’s the tricky thing with D&D. People claim it’s a versatile system but it’s got all these baked in assumptions. It doesn’t hold much of them up as default assumptions even though the Devs were working with those assumptions. There’s so many people fooled into thinking “let’s play D&D” is anywhere near sufficient explanation for what to expect. Most of the time it’s no issue, but eventually one blind man is going to talk to another blind man about the elephant that he’s feeling.

Doesn't it? It has stuff right in the PHB and DMG about refluffing things (e.g., your longsword is now a katana, etc.), and Tasha's brought in even more of that. Want laser eyes? Sure, your firebolts can spring out from your eyes. Done.

Paranoia: “mutant power? Experimental R&D implant? Go have fun, you’ll probably kill a few clones.”

You're not cleared to posses that level of information citizen. Please report to re-educational surgical suite C-16 and notify your next of kin. Compliance is mandatory.

[Psyren]

“I want to shoot lasers from my eyes”

D&D: “Well there’s magic for that but you aren’t a caster. Might find an item down the road.”

DM: "If refluffing your cantrip isn't good enough for you, find me a decent laser eyes homebrew and I'll consider allowing it."

Tell me, why do the designers have to spoonfeed every concept? Their job is consistency and approachability, and they have limited resources for both of those things. Creating a feature that turns every Fighter into Cyclops isn't that. Do that at your table, it's not hard.

You gave it as an example in response to page 42, which is all about how much damage you should do at a given level in an improvised action in order for it not to suck for PCs.

This is when I was talking about the problem that PCs doing improvised actions is often a bad idea, because DMs in practice seem to find it hard to make the improvised action worth doing. Page 42 was (is) a tool to ensure that (at least the damage) impact of the action is in-line with other things the PC could be doing.

Imposing disadvantage is nearly always worthwhile, and so are many conditions. Damage is a lot less important, and most environmental features should not be doing a ton of damage past low levels anyway when you're up against high-level and high-CR opponents (see the "What are HP" thread.)

[GreyBlack]

Doesn't it? It has stuff right in the PHB and DMG about refluffing things (e.g., your longsword is now a katana, etc.), and Tasha's brought in even more of that. Want laser eyes? Sure, your firebolts can spring out from your eyes. Done.

You're not cleared to posses that level of information citizen. Please report to re-educational surgical suite C-16 and notify your next of kin. Compliance is mandatory.

I could imagine a 5e game where all characters start with a choice of boons based on their class. Or, if you don't want to cherry pick for each class, you can divide boons into something like "Scoundrels," "Martial," "Natural," "Divine," and "Arcane," and let them pick from one of those lists.

Example: Each character gets 2 Boons to start the game to represent their mutant power.

Fighters can pick 2 Boons from the Martial boons, Paladins could pick from both Martial and Divine, etc.

[Yakk]

Imposing disadvantage is nearly always worthwhile, and so are many conditions. Damage is a lot less important, and most environmental features should not be doing a ton of damage past low levels anyway when you're up against high-level and high-CR opponents (see the "What are HP" thread.)

No, imposing disadvantage on a CR 20 creature's next attack is not worth expending an action. CR 20 creatures often have many many attacks -- sometimes 6 or more per round -- and making a single one miss in exchange for doing nothing else on your turn (in fact, having a CHANCE to make one miss in exchange for doing nothing else on your turn) is a bad idea.

So you are given an example of someone who, as a DM, doing something improvised as an actions is a bad idea.

Which is why page 42 would be good, as it might convince you not to do that.

It appears your position is in effect "high level martial characters shouldn't be improvising off the environment, because doing so should suck".

In my opinion, improvisation at level 20 based off the environment should be viable. For it to be viable, doing something dramatic using a Level 20 PC's capabilities should be capable of doing significant damage. The barbarian pulling the roof down on someone, the fighter impaling someone on a crystal pillar, the rogue tripping someone into lava; all can be justified as doing 50+ damage without much effort on the part of the DM.

It is also trivial for the DM to just say "no" or make the attempt so hard or so ineffective there is no point in trying.

Now, maybe you aren't saying what kind of improvised environmental attacks should work at level 20, but you actually have a bunch that are awesome and I'm wrong.

I just don't see evidence of that. I see you saying improvised actions should do bad damage, and that you think that imposing disadvantage on a single attack is high value at all levels.

...

Without some certainty, improvised attacks reduce to "DM may I". And without guidance, DMs often produce really bad estimates of how good an improvised action should be. They aren't game designers, and the game designers didn't provide something like page 42 in 5e D&D to help them out.

So we end up with "improvised attacks are a trap". And the idea that such improvised attacks provides options for a martial PC is not a good solution.

Even DMs who want to do this, barring game design chops or a page 42, can find it really hard to do in the moment.

[Psyren]

No, imposing disadvantage on a CR 20 creature's next attack is not worth expending an action. CR 20 creatures often have many many attacks -- sometimes 6 or more per round -- and making a single one miss in exchange for doing nothing else on your turn (in fact, having a CHANCE to make one miss in exchange for doing nothing else on your turn) is a bad idea.

And yet again, if you're level 20, you should be doing more impactful things than throwing a brazier at a storm giant. Working as intended.

And if you do make use of an environmental feature that matters at that level - like kicking them into a planar portal or wild magic anomaly - the conditions or consequences imposed should reflect that. Common sense.

[Yakk]

And yet again, if you're level 20, you should be doing more impactful things than throwing a brazier at a storm giant. Working as intended.

And if you do make use of an environmental feature that matters at that level - like kicking them into a planar portal or wild magic anomaly - the conditions or consequences imposed should reflect that. Common sense.

So, as a DM, how much damage should a "decent damage" environmental feature cause in a T3 fight?

What kind of status effects will make the action not-a-waste-of-time?

If your answer is common sense, please note that it is a common problem that improvised actions result in abysmally inefficient results in many people's actual play experience, so much so that they give up on doing improvised actions.

And I'm arguing that actual guidelines about how large an impact an improvised action using tier-appropriate environmental effects should be would help reduce this problem. It would make the DM's job easier.

If the wild magic anomaly is a T3 threat and it does 3d6 damage to creatures pushed into it, is that a waste of a PCs time to burn an attack to shove them into it? (A: yes; any decent melee PC who burns an attack to have a chance to deal 3d6 damage is wasting their time).

Actual DMs in actual practice don't know the right value for "an environmental threat that is appropriately dangerous".

Now, for people who are unable to understand what a "T3 environmental danger" is, the DMG could instead have a pile of environmental dangers stated up, and talk about how as players advance in level the kinds of environments they are adventuring in should become more extreme on average.

A page 42 table, and a DM who understands what a tier a given environmental danger is approximately, makes both improvisation and preparation easier for the DM here.

The table can also be used backwards.

For example, suppose I want a cliff that is not guaranteed deadly, but a serious threat? Given my "page 42" above, we can look up the "limited" damage expression (things you can do once in a fight), work out how many feet that corresponds to, and put a cliff that tall. That cliff will be a serious threat if you are knocked off it, but isn't a guaranteed kill.

Or, there is lighting around the edge of a world-threatening portal to the far realm. How much damage does it do? I could use high T4 damage.

I am on the back of an ancient red dragon. I grow to large, drink a potion of growth, then pin its wings so it impales itself onto a huge stalagmite. The DM calls for a pile of checks, and I pass them. The DM can use a page 42 like table to work out how much damage impaling the dragon on the giant stalagmite might do, plus make the creature restrained with DC 25 strength check to escape.

[Psyren]

So, as a DM, how much damage should a "decent damage" environmental feature cause in a T3 fight?

Enough to matter, if I'm putting it in the encounter. Conservation of narrative.

If something is just set dressing / not impactful, I will generally tell the player that. Like if there is a T3 fight in a chamber with torches on the wall, and the martial wants to grab a torch and try to use it as a weapon, I will let them know that the torch is unlikely to be effective. "Are you sure, here's what your character knows" is the GM's friend.

EDIT: See also DMG 249: "Improvising Damage" if you want to put harmful environmental features into your encounters at various tiers.

[Brookshw]

I could imagine a 5e game where all characters start with a choice of boons based on their class. Or, if you don't want to cherry pick for each class, you can divide boons into something like "Scoundrels," "Martial," "Natural," "Divine," and "Arcane," and let them pick from one of those lists.

Example: Each character gets 2 Boons to start the game to represent their mutant power.

Fighters can pick 2 Boons from the Martial boons, Paladins could pick from both Martial and Divine, etc.

You could certainly do that, I did something similar for a campaign in 3.5. Works okay, though I still think it should be something optional. Alternatively, you might want to consider letting players swap feats for boons if it's appropriate to the campaign.

[Pex]

So, that's starting at a base 15, up through maybe a 25, with possible +/-5 depending. That's still leaving the DM to have to decide on quite a bit to climb this palm tree and figure out the DC. I don't see how that's any better.

So all things a DM needs to decide with little guidance on where to place the DC, and if its even possible in the first place. Again, I don't see how that's any better.

And climbing is one of the easier ones to sort through in 3.5...

Because the DM had a starting point in the first place. It didn't need to be that complicated. It was just a tree, so DC 15. In 5E the DM has no starting point. That's why my monk was George of the Jungle and my warlock Tarzan despite both being equal in competence in climbing. That's just for climbing a tree. Now the problem arises when contemplating what can a warrior do for more fantastical stunts. The DM doesn't know where to begin because the game doesn't tell him. The DM is afraid of making it too easy, so DC 10 is out of the question. However, even giving it a DC at all means that it can always be tried. Once he says it's DC 20 for Super Awesome Stunt, then from now on any PC can do it at DC 20. Since the game isn't offering Super Awesome Stunts, we're adding them in theoretical design as the topic of this thread, the DM will err on not allowing the Super Awesome Stunt at all or Just This Once when in his game a player improvises one. Ergo warriors drool spellcasters rule because spells specifically tell the DM this character can do this particular Super Awesome Thing, but warriors are denied them because the DM won't let them do it.

The idea is we want the game to give warriors Super Awesome Stunts. Since it's not magic they need to be done when a player wants to do them. Accepting that shouldn't be autosuccess for every instance of wanting to do them a DC number needs to be assigned. When the game gives DC numbers, then when a player wants to improvise something the DM has a better frame of reference of what the game thinks is acceptable to be done whenever a player wants to do it and a reference point as to what DC to apply to the improvisation. Devil in the details of what the Super Awesome Stunts are and how to implement them in game mechanics, but that's not important for the purpose of discussion of this idea existing at all.

Can we not do the skill checks boogaloo again Pex?

It's not my fault if they keep feeding me.

[Talakeal]

Isn't that exactly the problem that the whole thread is about, though? That the game as-is has a fundamental issue in the way it portrays (or fails to portray) martials? If the premise is that martials (and/or what accommodating them does to the rest of the game) don't feel good enough in some level range or play pillar of 5e, how could the solution be anything other than changing something fundamental about the way the game works at those levels or in that pillar from base 5e?

Which, speaking of, because no one ever seemed to give you an explanation that satisfied you, I would say that, if we're still trying to define what makes something "high-level," we should get away from the distraction of specific spells or numbers and go back to the personal car vs bus metaphor. IE, if you want lunch and you have no car, you're at the mercy of whichever food is near you, or whether the bus schedule lines up with your lunch hour and you can get back in time for your next meeting. If you have a car, you could still go to any of those places, but you could also just be like "today I want burritos" and go find some, or take an early lunch when the bus isn't running, which is a huge difference in and of itself... but more importantly the car is also a solution to other, non-food problems. You can go visit your brother in the next city without taking a day off just to sit in a Greyhound. You can take your cat to the vet the instant she starts acting weird. You can put some music on and just go drive somewhere green in order to blow off steam. You can go to the weird hobby store on the edge of town that is not within walking distance of any bus stop. It is not just an answer to a specific problem ("how do I feed myself lunch"); it is a powerful multipurpose tool that can be leveraged in many important, potentially difficult situations. The difference between "low" and "high" levels here is about being able to act rather than reacting. The car allows you to create your own schedule and work around your own priorities, and to do entire new categories of problem-solving that were totally barred to you before. On a surface level, sure, it's just "transportation, but faster," but if you look at all the new things it opens up, it isn't just bigger numbers at all, it's a complete paradigm shift.

Plane Shift is certainly an example of this kind of thing - not because it allows the trivial "go to the City of Brass where the DM was going to put us anyway," but because it allows you to say "I need to protect this thing/I'm looking for an expensive diamond/I want to impress the Duke/I need to cheer up an orphan" and then say "I can dump it in the Modron Vault/I can get one from the Plane of Earth/I can take him to Bytopia as a show of both beauty and power/We can go to the Demiplane of Infinite Puppies for a day" - but as has also been mentioned already upthread, there are many other ways to get equivalent agency that do not require the same means. Wonder Woman, a martial by any standard, is also the divine embodiment of Truth, augmentable by her equipment, which allows her to solve diverse problems like "break mind control," "recover important information," "talk a bad guy into reforming," and "improve allied morale." Aragorn has the ability "heir of Isildur," which solves diverse issues like "resist spiritual assault by divine evils," "convince a powerful Elf-Lord to agree to never see his daughter again," and "even the odds for an impossibly outnumbered army." Odysseus, like most trickster archetypes, has absurd diplomancy and can solve literally anything with bald-faced lies, but notably "unbreakable siege" and "trapped by a witch" and "outmuscled by several giants."

So you can see the "high-level" vibe in these non-spell examples. Some of those problems could maybe have been solved in a much more difficult way by other means (a years-long redemption arc or a deep investigation, recovering a Silmaril or finding some way to mine the bay before the Corsairs were able to land), others would have been fundamentally out of reach (humans without Numenorian blood straight go comatose when they strike Nazgul, mind control is similarly supernatural weirdness with no non-supernatural solution, and in the real world literally nobody is falling for "let's bring this mysterious horse into our city no questions asked" or "my name is Nobody"), but all are noteworthy for being resolved in a clean, fast, effective, awe-inspiring way well beyond the reach of a guy at the gym, showcasing their own unique abilities and strengths, and asserting change on their own terms.

A lower-level character like Conan can't do that sort of thing; if he wants to fight an army, he has to go beg or buy or fight his way onto a throne until another actual army is willing to follow him, and then they kick him out on his butt in the next book anyway. Someone like Merry Brandybuck has even fewer levers to pull; if he wants to fight an army, the absolute best he can do is beg a tree for help and then wait and hope. They might be better fighters or more sneaky than real life people could ever be, but ultimately the actual options available to them in any given situation are exactly the same as those available to you and I. They don't have access to that "I just make this happen because I'm awesome" paradigm that defines high-level heroes.

Unfortunately, given the aforementioned lack of non-combat system depth in D&D, I have no idea what non-combat paradigm-shifting stuff would even begin to look like if it isn't either "essentially spells that just work" or "as a class ability, you get Favored By Elves and Pull An Army Out Of Your Butt," though, which I agree aren't great things to be class-locked. ("Pull a Supernatural Army Out Of Your Butt" maybe, but I imagine most people wouldn't think that felt very "martial," the Oathbreaker example notwithstanding.) I suppose "Resist Nazgul" is doable, since that's basically aura of courage, but you'd need it to get big enough to cover the better part of an army if you want to accurately represent the way Gandalf, Faramir, or Aragorn inspire other troops to resist the Ringwraith miasma, and that's definitely in-combat anyway.

Sorry its been so long getting back to you; vacations, illness, and broken devices, and thanks again for taking the time to write this.

I really do think "high level" is a really confusing term to use, as afaict it has nothing to do with actual levels. Much like Mr. Gygax, whoever coined that term really needed a thesaurus.

Ok, so I think your car ability is pretty good, but I come to a fundamentally different conclusion from it. Having your own car DOES NOT increase the number or nature of the places you can visit, it only makes it more convenient. You can always walk, take a cab, take a bus, hitchhike, ride a bike, bum a ride from a friend, etc. and get to the same place in almost as short a time. Likewise, most of these so-called "high level" abilities are merely matters of convenience.

I fully admit there are things a martial will never do on their own like controlling the weather, or moving to other planes, or traveling through time, or bringing back the dead. That's true, but D&D is a team game about exploring a magical world, killing monsters, and getting treasure. You just need one member of the party to do this stuff, and if you don't have someone who can, well, you can still accomplish it on your own. Hire an NPC, find a magic item, find a natural magical phenomenon, or heck, beat up a magical being until his agrees to your service. Mythology has several stories about warriors literally storming the afterlife to bring back the dead with no magic of any kind.

As far as player agency and giving the finger to the DM's plot, I think Plane Shift is actually a uniquely bad example. Anyone can simply go someplace else at any time, and plane shift specifically requires the DM to provide an attuned focus AND chooses precisely where you end up. I really can't imagine how boring a world must be that you need to leave the plane to find all that cool stuff you mention.


Its weird that you mention Odysseus as "high level" though, because he is exactly why I want to play a "low-level" character; he uses his cleverness and mundane abilities to solve problems rather than simply resorting to supernatural "win buttons". "I just make this happen because I'm awesome" as you say it isn't really a game I would want to play at any level.

[Brookshw]

It's not my fault if they keep feeding me.

Guilty as charged.

Because the DM had a starting point in the first place. It didn't need to be that complicated. It was just a tree, so DC 15. In 5E the DM has no starting point.

It's in the PHB, we covered that. Your concern was that it's overly subjective, we just ran through why subjectively is still an issue even with the starting point (and heaven forbid you wanted to know something about an enemy in 3e, who knows if you might know something relevant to you). But, whatever, we disagree about the value of providing a DC. I think the outcome you're looking for, at a minimum at least, is more examples to be provided in the PHB about what can be done with a skill. Okay, fair, but that leaves us with the issue of different expectations/opinions of what a martial should be doing in D&D, i.e., which examples would be too powerful? Not to be a downer, but doesn't seem like we've moved the needle here (or either of the other threads on the topic).

[Mjolnirbear]

Because the DM had a starting point in the first place. It didn't need to be that complicated. It was just a tree, so DC 15. In 5E the DM has no starting point. That's why my monk was George of the Jungle and my warlock Tarzan despite both being equal in competence in climbing. That's just for climbing a tree. Now the problem arises when contemplating what can a warrior do for more fantastical stunts. The DM doesn't know where to begin because the game doesn't tell him. The DM is afraid of making it too easy, so DC 10 is out of the question. However, even giving it a DC at all means that it can always be tried. Once he says it's DC 20 for Super Awesome Stunt, then from now on any PC can do it at DC 20. Since the game isn't offering Super Awesome Stunts, we're adding them in theoretical design as the topic of this thread, the DM will err on not allowing the Super Awesome Stunt at all or Just This Once when in his game a player improvises one. Ergo warriors drool spellcasters rule because spells specifically tell the DM this character can do this particular Super Awesome Thing, but warriors are denied them because the DM won't let them do it.

The idea is we want the game to give warriors Super Awesome Stunts. Since it's not magic they need to be done when a player wants to do them. Accepting that shouldn't be autosuccess for every instance of wanting to do them a DC number needs to be assigned. When the game gives DC numbers, then when a player wants to improvise something the DM has a better frame of reference of what the game thinks is acceptable to be done whenever a player wants to do it and a reference point as to what DC to apply to the improvisation. Devil in the details of what the Super Awesome Stunts are and how to implement them in game mechanics, but that's not important for the purpose of discussion of this idea existing at all.



It's not my fault if they keep feeding me.

Surely that's the easiest part?! Just assign an attack roll or saving throw as appropriate using existing rules for either.

Fighter used his Architecture in a fight to bring down the roof on his opponent? Int bonus + proficiency +d20. Or more likely, the enemy needs to roll a con or dex save DC 8+int bonus +prof.

Because you don't really need to know how well-made that column was and how much damage had been already inflicted or whether the roof was buttressed or...

You just need to know how well Not-Roy's plan works, which is a simple dice roll.

...

Why am I feeding the DC troll? ;)

[Pex]

Surely that's the easiest part?! Just assign an attack roll or saving throw as appropriate using existing rules for either.

Fighter used his Architecture in a fight to bring down the roof on his opponent? Int bonus + proficiency +d20. Or more likely, the enemy needs to roll a con or dex save DC 8+int bonus +prof.

Because you don't really need to know how well-made that column was and how much damage had been already inflicted or whether the roof was buttressed or...

You just need to know how well Not-Roy's plan works, which is a simple dice roll.

...


What's the DC? You say it's an opposed roll, but another DM disagrees and says it's DC X. Another says DC Y and uses strength. It's Mother May I. I'm a hero or zero all upon DM whim. There already exists discrepancy on how difficult it is to climb a tree. It just gets worse the more fantastical Awesome Warrior Shtick it becomes. There needs to be a neutral arbiter to decide what awesome deeds can be accomplished and the difficulty level to do it, which can include the possibility gating it behind needing to be a certain level and/or a certain class. Devil is in the details. To decide all this is the job of the game developers, presuming 5.5E or 6E will do this. For now all we got is whatever any one wants to do for homebrew. That's great for their table but is useless for all the games played not at their table.

Why am I feeding the DC troll? ;)

Nom! Nom! Nom!

[Talakeal]

Woah, it has taken me way longer than I expected to get back to this, my apologies. Rough couple of weeks!

That seems like short-selling "meteor". If "orbital bombardment" seems like something that would do less damage than "badass normal stabs you", I question the degree to which your definition of "badass normal" is meaningful.

My apologies, I thought we were talking about the spell "meteor swarm". If we are talking about actual orbital bombardment, that would have to be an epic level spell. Even so, I double down on what I originally said, it is more powerful than a sword, but far less useful.

Meteors are far away enough and varied enough in size, velocity, and composition that calling one down on your target will require a lot of calculation, divination, and patience, and is likely going to be nearly impossible against a mobile foe, especially without a lot of collateral damage.

And even so, unless we are talking about a direct hit from a massive meteor, I can still see a creature who could survive one being felled by a guided hit from a magical sword in its weak-spot, in much the same way that I can see a creature who is tough enough to reliably survive shrapnel from a grenade blast still being taken down by a gunshot to the eye despite the fact that grenades have overall much more energy behind them than bullets.

You can, unless you add an explicit constraint like "cannot have supernatural powers". If the Fighter is allowed to be supernaturally good at combat, he can continue gaining blade powers (even blade powers that are aesthetically gritty if that's what you want) at a rate that stops the gish from surpassing him. But if you postulate that there is a hard ceiling on what Fighters are allowed to do, that means that every combination of powers that adds up to more than that (which is a lot of combinations of powers) must be excluded from the game.

My point is that all character's have limits, and that doesn't make a character weak just because you can make up a hypothetical character who has all of their powers + more.

If a level twenty fighter is a pure martial, and a level to cleric is a pure divine caster, then a level 20 paladin, who is by definition both a martial and a divine caster, will be weaker than either one of them.

This argument only works in some hypothetical game which has limits to how far someone can progress in any given class but not to total character level; not something present in any edition of D&D.

And yeah, maybe your fantasy is "the best fighter BUT ALSO a powerful wizard" but that's just not fair to the other players. And note that this applies regardless of the whole caster martial thing; "best fighter in the world BUT ALSO best rogue in the world" is just as unfair to pure fighters, and "best cleric in the world BUT ALSO the best wizard" is just as unfair to other casters.

My point is that changing the setting at all breaks that. Similarly, any higher level characters at all break it. If Conan is a 10th level Barbarian, the existence of 20th level Barbarians invalidates his claim to the title of "Best Barbarian" just as surely as the existence of 20th level Barbarians with the Thunder King Paragon Path and the Hero of Ragnarok Epic Destiny does. And it's not even like you can say that we're somehow taking away the prospect of advancement from him, because he's allowed to turn into both of those characters, and his story (by definition) does not show him becoming more powerful than he does in his story, so you can't really say that Thunder King is somehow the "wrong path" for Conan to advance along.

Total agreement here.


My problem is with the unspoken assumption that people shouldn't mind having their character's entire aesthetic / play-style completely changed around to better fit with someone else's idea of what said paragon paths need to look like.

That seems like a cop-out. Maybe you can't name twenty (though between just Harry Potter and Doctor Strange, I think you get somewhere in the teens). But can you name as many for "badass normal" as you can for "wizard"?

What is actually being asked here?

Like, ranking different characters from different franchises?

That's really hard, as they are pretty inconsistent between appearances and operate in settings with different rules.

Like, in Harry Potter alone, all I can say is that students seem to get stronger as they learn more magic, and that Dumbeldore and Voldemort seem to be stronger than the other adults. I don't have a clue if Snape is higher level than Bellatrix or if Tonks is higher level than Lucius.

Heck, even in these caster vs. martial threads there is a lot of disagreement on where characters should fall, for example I often see Legolas being used as both an example of a worthless muggle and as the sort of over the top action god high level characters should aspire to be.

It seems like you're saying that you'd be okay with tiering if, instead of tiering, we just compressed D&D down to ten levels instead of twenty. Which seems like it's missing the point. As I've been saying, when you declare that a Great Wyrm Dragon or Demon Lord or Xixecal is a Paragon Tier or Epic Tier enemy, you're not really taking that thing out of Heroic Tier, because the thing that you are writing up as an Epic Tier enemy is different than the way you would write them up if they were Heroic Tier enemies (or if, as D&D typically does, you are putting Paragon/Epic casters in the same game as Heroic martials and hoping no one notices). I mean, really, what's the alternative, that you write up Lolth as a Heroic Tier enemy then write up Super Lolth and Ultra Lolth as Paragon and Epic Tier enemies? That seems kind of silly.

Sort of.

As you have pointed out, there aren't really twenty levels worth of advancement for any class, even casters. Everyone has dead levels, and most iconic abilities at every other level at best (for example, including cantrips you have ten levels of spells, and in 3.X fighter bonus feats, rogue sneak attacks, good saving throws, etc. all went up every other level). The only things you can every level are HP and (in some editions) attack bonus and skill ranks.

Original D&D expected you to retire around ~10th level, and most every monster in the game could be soloed by a tenth level character. The only exceptions were a creatures like krakens, arch-devils, demigods, demon princes, a few of the bigger dragons, and purple worms which would take a 10th level party to defeat.

Rather than trying to stretch that base game out to 20 levels like 3E and 5E do, I would go back to that model, and then make the upper levels genuinely different.

It wouldn't be "super llolth" and "bigger dragons" at epic tiers, it would be fundamentally different sorts of foes; true deities, incomprehensible Lovecraftian entities from other dimensions, abstract universal concepts, that sort of thing. Make the game actually "epic". AFAIK the only attempt to do this was the basic Immortals boxed set, although its execution was questionable and it was never followed up on, instead later editions pretty much just had the epic game be just like the base game with bigger numbers.

What I would absolutely NOT do is just keep the game as is but arbitrarily ban certain classes from certain levels, that's a worst of both worlds solution.

I'm not really sure what you mean by "signature NPCs", but I don't think there's really any one thing you want to do with NPCs. The likes of Raistlin and Elminster are consistently presented as the sort of people who should be running around in something called "Epic Tier". If you mean people like Jozen and Regdar, it seems to me that those characters would be presented as having a full Heroic -> Paragon -> Epic progression, being shown at whatever level is appropriate to the thing they are doing. If that thing is "defeat a bunch of Nezumi Vecna worshippers", that would be Heroic Tier. If it is "ransack Vecna's personal sanctum", that would be Epic Tier.

Basically, you need to have the world designed so that you matter at every tier. If Elminster is a level 30 epic caster, he is off on higher planes of existence dealing with problems you can't comprehend, not mucking around on Toril waving his proverbial staff around. Likewise, if Vecna is too high level for heroic tier people to ever defeat, he isn't out there trying to take over the world, he is trying to wrest the secrets of the multiverse from the gods in an attempt to rewrite the base laws of reality.

High level spells falls in the opposite direction. If someone wants to cast 9th level spells, presumably what they want is to have an adventure that would fall under the Epic or Paragon umbrella. That might not work if the rest of the group is not on board with that, but making it harder to smuggle in character concepts and abilities that don't work with what the group is trying to do is a feature, not a bug.

That is not my experience.

My players enjoy throwing around ninth level spells, but would be utterly lost in even a low level Planescape adventure more often than not.

Again, I think that most people who say they want high level just want bigger numbers and flashier special effects and, imo, one of the virtues of D&D (atleast editions that aren't 3 or 4) is that the balance is close enough and the system is abstract enough that they guy who imagines Conan slaying monsters with Atlantean steel and mighty Thews and the guy who imagines some blue-haired shonen anime protagonist with a three ton buster sword flying around blasting monsters with Ki lasers can both sit at the same table without much friction, even if they are imagining the same scene very differently in their heads.

[Mjolnirbear]

...


What's the DC? You say it's an opposed roll, but another DM disagrees and says it's DC X. Another says DC Y and uses strength. It's Mother May I. I'm a hero or zero all upon DM whim. There already exists discrepancy on how difficult it is to climb a tree. It just gets worse the more fantastical Awesome Warrior Shtick it becomes. There needs to be a neutral arbiter to decide what awesome deeds can be accomplished and the difficulty level to do it, which can include the possibility gating it behind needing to be a certain level and/or a certain class. Devil is in the details. To decide all this is the job of the game developers, presuming 5.5E or 6E will do this. For now all we got is whatever any one wants to do for homebrew. That's great for their table but is useless for all the games played not at their table.

Nom! Nom! Nom!

The point though is you don't need a DC chart. You gave him the info the roof was damaged and the PC used intelligence to exploit that weakness, allowing PC to Do The Awesome Thing.

I mean, sure, you could calculate the hardness of the column and the remaining hit points due to weakness and force PC to make attack rolls to destroy the column (and making his plan obvious). But we're talking about Doing The Awesome Thing, not Yet Another Attack Roll.

And how to pick relevant ability scores to an action is open-ended and up to the DM anyways. Said ability scores actually being greatly influenced by the player themselves, in describing how they do it. Did the PC feint the bad guy into the wrong direction or trick them? Possibly Charisma. Did they literally throw the bad guy into the column? Possibly Strength. Granted the DM might still pick a different ability, but this is a TTRPG, not a video game. There's a lot of potential for variation that is impossible to avoid.

So when martials use the environment against the enemy, treat it like a spell with range "martial's movement". Decide the relevant 'casting stat' based on the player's description and set the DC as you would for a caster's spell save DC. Or the relevant ability scores for a contest; in the GitP comic it would be an opposed strength check (presumably, also a skill challenge since Roy made several relevant moves).

No DC chart necessary. The thing is, this kind of free-form adjudication is what a DM does. Free-form is part of the game. As a DM you have multiple ways to resolve any question. Only if I decide it requires a DC would a set DC chart even be relevant..

Because DCs are not the only way to adjudicate an action, a DM needs flexible tools that can adjust. The argument "but what's the DC" ignores all the other options a DM has to adjudicate an action such as this..

Even if I agreed with you about DCs*, a perfect DC chart only answers the part of the problem relevant to DCs. As for neutral arbiter...what, exactly, do you think the DM is doing there? That's her whole reason for existence: to interpret the rules. Otherwise there would be only players. You want an arbitrator to arbitrate the arbitrator? If you can't trust your arbitrator, you need a new table. Arg! I've written this post three times to avoid going back into the DC debate already!

A better description in the DMG/PHB of how to adjudicate/perform actions with explicit examples of 'not-spell DC' actions and other examples of contests as already suggested would be the most important first tool.

* I obviously don't, and I could say so much more on this, but it wouldn't go anywhere

[strangebloke]

look, the lack of sample DCs can be at least theoretically resolved by a quick session zero conversation along with some clear communication between DM and player during the session.

"I want to jump the chasm. Can I?"
"It'd be extremely difficult for a normal person... You think you can do it pretty easily though."

The real problem is that most of any ability score, regardless of level, is going to come from stuff that's accessible in T1 like guidance and a d20 with advantage. The actual things that scale (proficiency/expertise, the ability mod, and BI) do so only slowly meaning that the gap between stuff you can sometimes hit at low level and the stuff you can always hit at high level (say T3) is pretty small.

A level one character with BI+guidance+help+ability mod+expertise can more consistently hit DC 25 than a level 11 character with just ability mod+expertise. It's even worse for stuff like stealth where things like PWT are in play.

What this means is that as a DM you can't gate anything too nutty behind a DC 25 or DC 30 because you'd be opening to door to silliness like a level 1 rogue tearing apart a forcecage. But this simultaneously makes a really high modifier at high levels feel sorta pointless outside of monsters that high enough of a mod to actually contest you (which outside of perception is very rare)

[Pex]

The point though is you don't need a DC chart. You gave him the info the roof was damaged and the PC used intelligence to exploit that weakness, allowing PC to Do The Awesome Thing.

I mean, sure, you could calculate the hardness of the column and the remaining hit points due to weakness and force PC to make attack rolls to destroy the column (and making his plan obvious). But we're talking about Doing The Awesome Thing, not Yet Another Attack Roll.

And how to pick relevant ability scores to an action is open-ended and up to the DM anyways. Said ability scores actually being greatly influenced by the player themselves, in describing how they do it. Did the PC feint the bad guy into the wrong direction or trick them? Possibly Charisma. Did they literally throw the bad guy into the column? Possibly Strength. Granted the DM might still pick a different ability, but this is a TTRPG, not a video game. There's a lot of potential for variation that is impossible to avoid.

So when martials use the environment against the enemy, treat it like a spell with range "martial's movement". Decide the relevant 'casting stat' based on the player's description and set the DC as you would for a caster's spell save DC. Or the relevant ability scores for a contest; in the GitP comic it would be an opposed strength check (presumably, also a skill challenge since Roy made several relevant moves).

No DC chart necessary. The thing is, this kind of free-form adjudication is what a DM does. Free-form is part of the game. As a DM you have multiple ways to resolve any question. Only if I decide it requires a DC would a set DC chart even be relevant..

Because DCs are not the only way to adjudicate an action, a DM needs flexible tools that can adjust. The argument "but what's the DC" ignores all the other options a DM has to adjudicate an action such as this..

Even if I agreed with you about DCs*, a perfect DC chart only answers the part of the problem relevant to DCs. As for neutral arbiter...what, exactly, do you think the DM is doing there? That's her whole reason for existence: to interpret the rules. Otherwise there would be only players. You want an arbitrator to arbitrate the arbitrator? If you can't trust your arbitrator, you need a new table. Arg! I've written this post three times to avoid going back into the DC debate already!

A better description in the DMG/PHB of how to adjudicate/perform actions with explicit examples of 'not-spell DC' actions and other examples of contests as already suggested would be the most important first tool.

* I obviously don't, and I could say so much more on this, but it wouldn't go anywhere

But you're missing the original point that some DMs won't allow the Awesome Thing for fear of allowing something too powerful to be done at player whim, so they'll say No or Just This Once (because of Rule of Cool, for example). They need something official to show that the Awesome Thing is supposed to happen so that when a player wants to do an Awesome Thing that's still not given a specific example published in the rules the DM will know it won't break the game. Example DC numbers of published specific Awesome Things helps the DM assign a number for the spontaneous Awesome Thing the player thought of. However, it doesn't have to be a DC number. It depends on the devil in the details of how published Awesome Things are designed. Maybe it's an alternative use of Second Wind that just happens because the player wants to but uses up that resource. Maybe it uses up a players Action, Move, and Bonus Action to do. The details of how it works isn't important for this discussion, just the idea that there's something official that tells the DM, yes, a martial is supposed to be able to do spontaneous Awesome Things not specifically printed as class abilities. However, the Skill System is an easy way to determine whether a PC can do Awesome Thing; hence the idea of example DC numbers to show DMs how to do it. It's merely an example of how it could be done, not that is MUST be done this way if they can think of something else.

I still want DC tables for normal skill use, but this is about Awesome Things which is a different matter.

look, the lack of sample DCs can be at least theoretically resolved by a quick session zero conversation along with some clear communication between DM and player during the session.

"I want to jump the chasm. Can I?"
"It'd be extremely difficult for a normal person... You think you can do it pretty easily though."

The real problem is that most of any ability score, regardless of level, is going to come from stuff that's accessible in T1 like guidance and a d20 with advantage. The actual things that scale (proficiency/expertise, the ability mod, and BI) do so only slowly meaning that the gap between stuff you can sometimes hit at low level and the stuff you can always hit at high level (say T3) is pretty small.

A level one character with BI+guidance+help+ability mod+expertise can more consistently hit DC 25 than a level 11 character with just ability mod+expertise. It's even worse for stuff like stealth where things like PWT are in play.

What this means is that as a DM you can't gate anything too nutty behind a DC 25 or DC 30 because you'd be opening to door to silliness like a level 1 rogue tearing apart a forcecage. But this simultaneously makes a really high modifier at high levels feel sorta pointless outside of monsters that high enough of a mod to actually contest you (which outside of perception is very rare)

This too, which is why it was proposed earlier in the thread that IF the skill system is to be used to allow Awesome Things that it would be a separate system gated behind being of a certain class and/or level. It was also suggested that a new resource allocation be given to classes to choose which Awesome Things they can do, with non-spellcasters being given a lot more picks than spellcasters. The idea is if a DM says climbing a tree is DC 15 anyone can do that at DC 15. However, only characters who chose Athletics as their resource allocation to do Awesome Things can make a DC 15 Athletics check to jump over a 30 ft wall. Doesn't have to be DC 15, number picked just for example purposes.