Opinion: Will D&D ever acheive caster vs martial balance?

[Pex]

The moment someone sits down in that chair and starts running the game, they are acting as a game designer. They might be a bad one or a flawed one certainly. And if they're reluctant to take on that role, then yes I'd say that's going to make them a bad GM, full stop.

You think a GM doesn't need to know basic iterative probability calculations? Lets say you've got a locked down game where 'moving across a narrow ledge is a DC 15 Balance check'. So when the rogue is moving across the castle crenellation, one GM runs it as a single ledge and a single DC 15 check, another GM calls for a check for each separate ledge on the map, another GM calls for a balance check every move action distance, another GM is like 'you know what, there's no lip, this is a Climb check instead'. The same task ends up with wildly different difficulty. In those kinds of cases, a GM should understand the consequences of choosing to adjudicate something a certain way and make a decision about which way it should be adjudicated with the quality of the game going forward in mind. That is something that requires understanding iterative probability, and yes, it's game design.

If you make someone 'in charge of creating the scenario', or even just 'in charge of the game running smoothly', they're going to be making design decisions. Better to approach that with the mindset of 'yes, this person does have to be informed that they will be acting as a game designer and how to think about that role' than try to hide it and say 'no, no, GM's just execute the real designers' will'. Don't pretend everyone will run a game worth playing the first time they sit down with the books. I don't care what the system is, that isn't going to be true.

That is why the game designers should have done their job and define how Acrobatics works with a DC table. Then the DM wouldn't have to figure it out with different DMs doing it different ways. The DM could focus more on why the ledge was there and the results that happen upon success or failure of that check.

[Sneak Dog]

Why? Do they also stop attacking just because monsters have high ACs?

I know I have. Better to then run, take total defence actions, start making skill checks for goofy results or anything where I'm not just rolling a d20 to see if it's 18+ and passing turn in two seconds.

For regular skill checks I'd stop even earlier. Because failure on a skill check isn't just the opportunity cost of wasted time/resources, but frequently also a risk of actively negative results.

[NichG]

That is why the game designers should have done their job and define how Acrobatics works with a DC table. Then the DM wouldn't have to figure it out with different DMs doing it different ways. The DM could focus more on why the ledge was there and the results that happen upon success or failure of that check.

Even if you lock down exactly how Acrobatics works to the most minute detail, you can never escape that the GM decisions about the scenario can vastly impact the actual game. Ultimately, it's a GM decision that determine whether Acrobatics could or would come up. Any modifiers that are permitted are again something that GM decisions can influence - if they decide that it rained the previous night, if they decide that the defenders poured oil on the battlements, if they decide that the castle is in the mountains or the forests or on an island in the ocean. Having a number in a table and very precise rules does not make it so that the GM doesn't have to understand the consequences of their decisions with regards to the game as a whole, any more than the player of a fighter can get away without understanding the consequences of weapon choice or their positioning on the battlefield with regards to 'who can I attack?'.

Basically the only real way to escape that is to go to something GM-less, in which case you still have a choice to make - do you want the flexibility to be able to go off-script (in which case now everyone at the table has to think like a designer sometimes rather than just one person, but you have the social dynamics of group negotiation rather than hierarchical negotiation in the case of breakdown of responsibilities, which may or may not be preferable), or you can sacrifice that too and basically get something that caps out around the level of the more complex boardgames out there.

[Ignimortis]

Why? Do they also stop attacking just because monsters have high ACs?

Yes? It's called adapting to the situation. In fact, part of why I dislike default D&D martials is because they don't have a built-in way to adapt. As a caster, you have several saves to target and often ways to assist even without attacking the target. But if I make an AC30, Athletics +20 enemy? Congratulations to me, I have just stopped most martials from contributing to the fight at all unless I also design a contrivance that lets them bypass those issues - in that fight only, of course.

It's also part of why I liked martial adepts - Emerald Razor deals with one enemy type (hard armor/natural armor, doesn't dodge that well), Nightmare Blade series deals with the other (skill checks are ludicrously easy to boost, and while Nightmare Blade usually doesn't do as much damage, doing half damage to a target you wouldn't hit otherwise is still good), Mountain Hammer let you ignore DR when needed, White Raven Tactics lets other people act sooner so that they can do something about the enemy I'm having issues with...

The idea was for each wizard to pick different schools to have together 100% of the spells(and thus have all the game breaking tools from things like permanent illusion(level 6 so still available) to scry or dimension door or even fabricate) and it seems you did not understand what I was trying to express.

I understand that. But out of combat utility would be dealt with by Rituals, for the most part. Fabricate would be just gone, I see no real reason to have that in the game outside of "well, magic CAN do that too". Dimension Door needs a simple nerf - you need line of sight to the target.

As for the existence of the artificer it was considered so important that they did remake it in 5e while they did not remake *the other classes*

My general idea is that Psion did not pass the popularity test (a lot of people dislike psionics), and Artificer was remade because 1) Eberron was due to come out with a major 5e setting book; 2) it could be realized with the least amount of new mechanics involved. Binder and Truenamer would have both involved a completely new mechanic that doesn't really function like anything before, and which would have design considerations far removed from the usual 5e calculus of "ok, how much spellcasting does it get and what other resources does it have".

EDIT: Also the notion that you need to understand "iterative probability calculations" to be a game designer is ludicrous.

The notion that you can afford to NOT understand iterative probability calculations if you plan to deal with TTRPGs which heavily rely on dice rolls for resolving scenarios in game is ludicrous. You can avoid that if you design a diceless game that does not use RNG to function. But D&D is not that game, never has been either.

[Satinavian]

There is no need to go for absolutes. There is a lot of place between "DM tells a story in freeform" and "Tables rule everything". But that does not mean that everything that is between those poles is in the right place.


The nonmagical noncombat part of D&D is increadibly weak. And the resulting unpredictability and DM-arbitrarity leads to people avoiding it, when possible. This effect is so strong that it is responsible for a guge part of the perceived caster-martial imbalance, which is why it bleeds again and again in this discussion.

[Sneak Dog]

Even if you lock down exactly how Acrobatics works to the most minute detail, you can never escape that the GM decisions about the scenario can vastly impact the actual game. Ultimately, it's a GM decision that determine whether Acrobatics could or would come up. Any modifiers that are permitted are again something that GM decisions can influence - if they decide that it rained the previous night, if they decide that the defenders poured oil on the battlements, if they decide that the castle is in the mountains or the forests or on an island in the ocean. Having a number in a table and very precise rules does not make it so that the GM doesn't have to understand the consequences of their decisions with regards to the game as a whole, any more than the player of a fighter can get away without understanding the consequences of weapon choice or their positioning on the battlefield with regards to 'who can I attack?'.

Basically the only real way to escape that is to go to something GM-less, in which case you still have a choice to make - do you want the flexibility to be able to go off-script (in which case now everyone at the table has to think like a designer sometimes rather than just one person, but you have the social dynamics of group negotiation rather than hierarchical negotiation in the case of breakdown of responsibilities, which may or may not be preferable), or you can sacrifice that too and basically get something that caps out around the level of the more complex boardgames out there.

So you go to an inbetween, so that a player can decide to choose a rogue because at level 5 their athletics bonus lets climb a generic city/castle wall quite reliably, and at level 15 they can climb a glacier upsidedown. Even if the glacier of howling winds has a higher DC and the glacier of soft ice a lower one, and the royal fortress is made out of smoothened granite making it quite a lot harder.

Ballparks. 5e doesn't have even those.

[NichG]

There is no need to go for absolutes. There is a lot of place between "DM tells a story in freeform" and "Tables rule everything". But that does not mean that everything that is between those poles is in the right place.

The nonmagical noncombat part of D&D is increadibly weak. And the resulting unpredictability and DM-arbitrarity leads to people avoiding it, when possible. This effect is so strong that it is responsible for a guge part of the perceived caster-martial imbalance, which is why it bleeds again and again in this discussion.

I guess to bring my point around to this, I think teaching DMs to understand that 'it's in your interest that the players have the ability to predict how things will go', that players knowing how their stuff works is a good and useful thing and showing specific examples of how to make use of that to achieve gaming ends, would help move the mindset underlying that kind of arbitrary and unpredictable adjudication such that 1) DMs who are very much in the 'it's my world and I want license to render it my way' wouldn't be so afraid of giving players information about how their own stuff works, even if how stuff works ends up different than what is printed and 2) Those things which do make it into tables would themselves be less the sort of 'exhaustive list with too many entries to be practical' style of thing that some people are complaining about, and would be more focused at specifically each thing being something where it's important in particular that players know how easy or hard that thing is.

Less 'wandering prostitute table for the lulz' design, more 'I want players to know that only 5% of people in this setting are born with the ability to use magic, so that when they see an inn with 10 patrons, five of whom are wizards, they can draw the conclusion that something is up'. Design more along the lines of 'its DC X to use your Perception to detect the influence of latent magical auras' or 'its DC Y to determine where an invisible creature moving around you is' that explicitly lets people know that something is on the table that they wouldn't have assumed or that they would have assumed they explicitly could not do, and less punitive stuff like 'here's how you calculate the fact that you can't see a city across a flat field from a high vantage point 5 miles away because of distance penalties'

Edit:

So you go to an inbetween, so that a player can decide to choose a rogue because at level 5 their athletics bonus lets climb a generic city/castle wall quite reliably, and at level 15 they can climb a glacier upsidedown. Even if the glacier of howling winds has a higher DC and the glacier of soft ice a lower one, and the royal fortress is made out of smoothened granite making it quite a lot harder.

Ballparks. 5e doesn't have even those.

My reply was about whether it was wise to try to pretend that GMs don't have to make game design decisions, or to embrace that and make the system give them the structure to teach them how to make those decisions well. I'm notably not arguing against there being tables or DCs or anything like that. I'm arguing against the fiction that somehow you can protect yourself from bad GMs by having enough tables.

[Psyren]

The notion that you can afford to NOT understand iterative probability calculations if you plan to deal with TTRPGs which heavily rely on dice rolls for resolving scenarios in game is ludicrous. You can avoid that if you design a diceless game that does not use RNG to function. But D&D is not that game, never has been either.

You keep telling yourself that, and the game will remain accessible to anyone who wants to DM without a math degree regardless.

Quite bluntly, you're saying that the skill system should be running on very soft reasoning based primarily on DM adjudication, making it so that anyone doing anything with skills doesn't really ever have safe "I can do X" understandings until multiple sessions in based on calling for checks to test the waters of what this particular DM lets the skills do.

Two DMs being allowed to differ on what their tables can do with a check is a feature of the system, not a bug.

And quite bluntly, you're vastly overstating the degree to which most DMs would differ on most checks. To say nothing of the degree to which "multiple DMs differing" is even a problem for most people. I'd be surprised if most D&D players played in more than 1-3 concurrent campaigns over the course of an edition at all. What matters is what you and your DM agree on being allowed so you can both have fun, not some hypothetical spread of hundreds of other DMs you'll never even meet much less play with.

[Ignimortis]

You keep telling yourself that, and the game will remain accessible to anyone who wants to DM without a math degree regardless.

For GMs? Certainly. Especially if actual game designers have a solid grasp of probability and establish, within their system, commonly used parameters that provide examples for GMs who might not be as good at probabilities as they are. And you certainly don't need a math degree. High school level understanding of statistics and a bit of research are enough for most game designers, because, frankly, they don't need a lot of precision. Ending up in the right ballpark should not take too much effort, especially with diligent playtesting.

And yet, somehow, we ended up with DC15 being "Medium" difficulty - an error on two levels of design - mathematical and UX both. Mathematically, it's far from "Medium" if a noticeably talented and at least somewhat proficient (+3 stat, +2 prof bonus) person succeeds at that 50% of the time. It's even less "Medium" when you realize that it still carries a 15% chance of failure for one of the best experts with superhuman aptitude (+5 stat, +6 proficiency). And on the UX level, "Medium" tells me absolutely nothing about the check. "Easy", "Medium" and "Hard" are always relative, those measurements are not objective and, in fact, seem to imply that DC is supposed to be tailored to the one trying, except we have had confirmation that it's not actually designed that way.

I simply cannot see how having a basic table for most skills (especially in regards to things that are pretty much "interacting with basic physics" like Athletics and Acrobatics) would make the game worse. Do they take away the GM's ability to say that those rules don't apply to their game?

[Sneak Dog]

My reply was about whether it was wise to try to pretend that GMs don't have to make game design decisions, or to embrace that and make the system give them the structure to teach them how to make those decisions well. I'm notably not arguing against there being tables or DCs or anything like that. I'm arguing against the fiction that somehow you can protect yourself from bad GMs by having enough tables.

My apologies, that's an entirely fair point I concur with. There's a lot going on in this thread simultaneously?

Two DMs being allowed to differ on what their tables can do with a check is a feature of the system, not a bug.

And quite bluntly, you're vastly overstating the degree to which most DMs would differ on most checks. To say nothing of the degree to which "multiple DMs differing" is even a problem for most people. I'd be surprised if most D&D players played in more than 1-3 concurrent campaigns over the course of an edition at all. What matters is what you and your DM agree on being allowed so you can both have fun, not some hypothetical spread of hundreds of other DMs you'll never even meet much less play with.

Unless imbalances within the two non-combat pillars of D&D and several rogue class features being complete unknowns until you've figured out your GMs ability check DC's for this campaign are features, I would call it a bug. And while I can't speak about most GMs (who can?), I can say that that a task that is DC 10 for one GM is DC 20 for another. Which is a significant variance.
Some ballpark DCs to teach DCs with actual examples would be good guidance for GMs and players alike.

Ability checks aren't some add-on subsystem you can ignore, or a component every class relies on somewhat equally. It actively competes against and synergises with spells and class features which are doled out in unequal fashion. Without some semblance of balance, games of D&D will suffer. Maybe not yours, and balance doesn't have to be incredibly tight, but...

[Telok]

Why? Do they also stop attacking just because monsters have high ACs?

Yes, they switch to saves and opposed checks. Because waiting five minutes for your rolling two d20 attack, not seeing any 18+s and declaring your turn over is a pretty depressing way to spend an hour long combat.

Huh? My player's 10 yro son plays with us, his math and rule knowledge are what you'd expect from a 10 yro and definitely don't cover iterative probability calculations. He's talking about running a 1 shot with a custom system to do a Blood Bowl sort of thing. I fully support him.

Oh, so the 10 year old designed a third of the system and its working great? Or is he being handed the whole system and the expectation is it will just work without him having to make up new rules on the fly? Would you want him to run a D&D module with a bunch of printed DCs and make the "does this need a roll" descision each time for every character in the party? Isn't Blood Bowl literally a board game with nice tight rules that don't need people to make stuff up all the time? Oh wait, Blood Bowl is a combat and D&D combat works fine.

5e's combat works out of the box because the DM doesn't have to make up DCs from nothing or decide if the PCs need to auto-hit ot auto-miss every goblin, wolf, or bandit they fight. 5e's non-combat system doesn't just work without the DM apparently running a whole flowchart of decisions every time a PC tries anything, the DM can't read an official D&D module and apply the DCs because iterative probability makes lots of rolling a silly high failure rate and most DMs out there don't know why it doesn't just work.

Most DMs aren't and don't want to design a bunch of the D&D rule set. They didn't pay for the DMG in order to design D&D rules or find they need to know anything about probability in order to not **** up their games. They want clear rules where they can say "I don't know if the PCs should succeed", call for a roll, and not get -1 check characters blowing the +10 check characters out of the water several times a session. Saying "the DM's job is to fix this before it happens" is the same as saying "its not a problem because the DM can fix the problem". I've never seen a live game where this wasn't a problem. 5e combat works without premptive DM fixing & constant fiating hits & missed, non-combat could too.

[Psyren]

I can say that that a task that is DC 10 for one GM is DC 20 for another. Which is a significant variance.

If your GM has narratively justified that task to require substantial talent and training to succeed at - after having gone through the steps to ensure calling for a check is appropriate in the first place of course - then DC 20 is appropriate. If they haven't, then you have the right to discuss the discrepancy with them like adults. And if they don't care about your ability to have fun, then they're a donkey cavity and no amount of book examples will change that.

Some ballpark DCs to teach DCs with actual examples would be good guidance for GMs and players alike.

"Ballpark DCs" undermine the entire point of the open-ended check system. At best, they should have an end-to-end example or two of the whole process, including at least one example of deciding not to call for a check at all - and even that I don't see as strictly necessary.

Definitely no tables or lists of a bunch of DCs like prior editions. If you want those so badly and don't want to make them up yourself, then there's always homebrew or third-party.

Ability checks aren't some add-on subsystem you can ignore, or a component every class relies on somewhat equally. It actively competes against and synergises with spells and class features which are doled out in unequal fashion. Without some semblance of balance, games of D&D will suffer. Maybe not yours, and balance doesn't have to be incredibly tight, but...

I'm aware that ability checks are important, keeping them open-ended is just as important.

[Sneak Dog]

If your GM has narratively justified that task to require substantial talent and training to succeed at - after having gone through the steps to ensure calling for a check is appropriate in the first place of course - then DC 20 is appropriate. If they haven't, then you have the right to discuss the discrepancy with them like adults. And if they don't care about your ability to have fun, then they're a donkey cavity and no amount of book examples will change that.

Somehow the words the GM handbook uses seem to not get the message across. I'd say they are too vague and non-descriptive, and rely on the GM's judgement on a great variety of subjects too much.

"Ballpark DCs" undermine the entire point of the open-ended check system. At best, they should have an end-to-end example or two of the whole process, including at least one example of deciding not to call for a check at all - and even that I don't see as strictly necessary.

Definitely no tables or lists of a bunch of DCs like prior editions. If you want those so badly and don't want to make them up yourself, then there's always homebrew or third-party.

I'm aware that ability checks are important, keeping them open-ended is just as important.

Bounded accuracy undermines the ability check system more than spells do, and the highly detailed, reliable, specific and affordable spells undermine the ability check system more than any DC table would.
Because spells set the tone of your campaign. They're rigid and hard to homebrew and tweak a little to fit your campaign. There's a ton of them and they're core features to most classes. They declare the abilities of your PC's. The rules let you use ability checks from anywhere between wuxia and untrained commoner, but spells don't. They make you play D&D. So why would it be bad for ability checks to make you play D&D, so that we can then evaluate things like rogues' ability check bonuses in 5e?
D&D isn't an open-ended system since 3e. 5e just has an open-ended ability check system tacked onto it.

[Pex]

Even if you lock down exactly how Acrobatics works to the most minute detail, you can never escape that the GM decisions about the scenario can vastly impact the actual game. Ultimately, it's a GM decision that determine whether Acrobatics could or would come up. Any modifiers that are permitted are again something that GM decisions can influence - if they decide that it rained the previous night, if they decide that the defenders poured oil on the battlements, if they decide that the castle is in the mountains or the forests or on an island in the ocean. Having a number in a table and very precise rules does not make it so that the GM doesn't have to understand the consequences of their decisions with regards to the game as a whole, any more than the player of a fighter can get away without understanding the consequences of weapon choice or their positioning on the battlefield with regards to 'who can I attack?'.

Basically the only real way to escape that is to go to something GM-less, in which case you still have a choice to make - do you want the flexibility to be able to go off-script (in which case now everyone at the table has to think like a designer sometimes rather than just one person, but you have the social dynamics of group negotiation rather than hierarchical negotiation in the case of breakdown of responsibilities, which may or may not be preferable), or you can sacrifice that too and basically get something that caps out around the level of the more complex boardgames out there.

The call for the check was asked because the player chose to interact with the ledge, so the DM activated the resolution. The game rules define how something works, but as they're just rules on paper a person needs to invoke them. That's not the DM deciding anything. That's the game being played.

[NichG]

The call for the check was asked because the player chose to interact with the ledge, so the DM activated the resolution. The game rules define how something works, but as they're just rules on paper a person needs to invoke them. That's not the DM deciding anything. That's the game being played.

The DM decided there was a ledge rather than a sheer drop, or a hillside near a second-story window that would make for a more convenient access point, or a crack in the wall that might have to be squeezed through, or just that the guards have a rotation that's easy to time and if you sneak through the front gate at night during the right interval you can get in that way. The DM decided the location of the guard positions which in turn determine whether 'breaking in by walking along the crenellation' is an Acrobatics check or if its Acrobatics plus Stealth (another iterated probability difficulty hike issue...), or just an outright bad idea entirely since you'd be walking across a sight-line with no cover and no possibility of movement. The DM also decided who had what information about whatever it was that is motivating the party to break into the castle, whether it was in the dungeons or high up in the tower, whether it was locked away or carried around by someone who could be ambushed, whether there was even a castle in the first place.

For a fixed module, you might argue that those things were all decided by the designer of the module. But if you really commit to that position as the only valid play, you're also committing to a hard-railroad standard since that would mandate that the DM ensure the party never goes off-script enough to ever require them to make a decision about something.

[PhoenixPhyre]

For a fixed module, you might argue that those things were all decided by the designer of the module. But if you really commit to that position as the only valid play, you're also committing to a hard-railroad standard since that would mandate that the DM ensure the party never goes off-script enough to ever require them to make a decision about something.

Exactly. Flexibility to decide what the world is at the level the characters encounter it is the only thing that allows open ended games. If there is agency, any fixed list of possibilities and robotic "just invoke the mechanics" DM'ing will fail.

------------

Beyond this, tables and lists don't actually teach people how to DM. In fact, as a pedagogic technique, they prevent learning. They're the bad kind of crutch, same as a cheat sheet on a test. They constrain the imagination and shortcut the process. Once you've learned how you, personally, and your tables are comfortable with checks being set, you're good. You never have to relearn it or really think about it more than incidentally. It becomes an automatic process. If all you have is didactic "memorize these" tables...you're stuck. You constantly have to reference those, and if you stray from the tables even in the slightest, you're floundering.

Do I agree that the (5e) DMG could do a better job of describing things and giving worked examples? Absolutely. Do I think that the right solution is to constrain everything to fixed tables[1]? No. Far from it.

[1] and yes, tables do constrain. At least they'd have to in order to satisfy the people here who value inter-table uniformity. Because if the tables are merely examples and aren't actually intended to be used as such, then (a) they're useless wastes of time and space and (b) you wouldn't get uniformity. There is a strong desire expressed in these threads for everyone else to be required to play the way the interlocutor wants. AKA bad-wrong-fun. For me, inter-table consistency of DCs is actively a negative. Heck, even within table consistency (at different points in the campaign) is a (weaker) negative. Because the world is more complex than that. If I want mechanical DMing that doesn't actually consider the whole scenario, I'll play a computer game.

[Psyren]

Bounded accuracy undermines the ability check system more than spells do, and the highly detailed, reliable, specific and affordable spells undermine the ability check system more than any DC table would.
Because spells set the tone of your campaign. They're rigid and hard to homebrew and tweak a little to fit your campaign. There's a ton of them and they're core features to most classes. They declare the abilities of your PC's. The rules let you use ability checks from anywhere between wuxia and untrained commoner, but spells don't. They make you play D&D. So why would it be bad for ability checks to make you play D&D, so that we can then evaluate things like rogues' ability check bonuses in 5e?
D&D isn't an open-ended system since 3e. 5e just has an open-ended ability check system tacked onto it.

Neither of the things you mentioned (bounded accuracy and open-ended skills) stopped 5e from being the most successful D&D edition... well, ever. So declaring that those things "aren't D&D" doesn't really resonate.

Moreover, you can "evaluate a rogue's bonuses" just fine. You don't need uniformity across all tables to do that.

[Brookshw]

Unlike most of a character's skills, a PC's attack modifier increases as the levels progress so an AC 20 eventually is not a problem. Even so, yes, when an AC is too high players stop. At least the spellcasters can. They can stop making spell attacks and instead cast spells using saving throws. Warriors not so much. Unless they can get Advantage easily, such as barbarians and bow rogues who like to hide, they're out of luck. They have to think of other means, such as grappling or shoving to help other players. This is not a bad thing. However, this doesn't happen every combat. Many combats a warrior has a decent chance to hit the AC of a monster a few misses won't discourage. When every skill use DC is 15 or 20 because the DM made it up and the character will only ever have a +0 or +1, they stop trying.

A characters skills go up, even when they aren't proficient in them, as long as they choose to invest your stats every 4 levels, not even considering how you might become proficient in additional skills Assuming standard stat distribution, Tasha's floating stats, and proficiency, you're looking at, assuming ACs of 15-20 as with the stats, the same 55-30% chance of hitting, it's no change, so not sure why one is discouraging and not the other. Also, +0 or +1 is pretty much worst case scenario, dunno why someone in that situation would expect to do well in those circumstances.

I know what they chose to do. I find what they chose to do a mistake. They were wrong to cling so heavily on "rulings not rules".

I know what you mean, but lots of people are fine with it and have been since the days of D&D, can't say "wrong" other than in the context of for a particular table.

Not as hard coded as you think. The reason we have skills at all today is because when they didn't exist people wanted to do stuff out of combat but the lack of rules for it made it troublesome. Many DMs just said "No". Others had to figure out how and no one was satisfied. Then we got non-weapon proficiencies. They helped, but it still meant "No" for everything else that you were not proficient in. 3E opened the door wide for non-combat stuff. You don't have to like how it was implemented, but it showed it was possible in D&D.

The more game designers did their job in saying how things were done the easier it was on the player to do things and the DM to say why things exist and establish the results of the players doing stuff.

Disagree, exactly as hard coded as I think. DM's have always been able to change any rule they want (and have been advised to do so for the tables enjoyment and to cover gaps), technically they could cut out all the rules, toss in GURPS' rules, and they'd still be playing D&D and correctly DMing (an absurd example, but still correct). Don't forget that there were slots and skills back in D&D outside of AD&D, and that they essentially functioned the same as 5e does, i.e., the DM decides when a skill is rolled, if the objective was actually possible, how frequently they were rolled, and, though the targets were based on attributes rather that a DC, that distinction was meaningless because the DM was to hand out bonuses or penalties based on how difficult they thought the task would be, to the point that you needed a 1 to succeed (a 20 in the modern version), it was effectively what we have now. We didn't need to wait for 3e, and 3e's skill system left DMs having to guess at difficulty just as much as before. You and I have had this specific discussion about 3e using climbing trees, turned out a DM might have to choose from broad ranges to figure out how difficult it was (I believe it was a range of 12 integers).

Oh, so the 10 year old designed a third of the system and its working great? Or is he being handed the whole system and the expectation is it will just work without him having to make up new rules on the fly? Would you want him to run a D&D module with a bunch of printed DCs and make the "does this need a roll" descision each time for every character in the party? Isn't Blood Bowl literally a board game with nice tight rules that don't need people to make stuff up all the time? Oh wait, Blood Bowl is a combat and D&D combat works fine.

Last time he described it to me, he was planning a bunch of new rules, e.g., passing and intercepting, fumbling the ball, cheering, sneaking the ball, etc., basically a mix of combat and skill rules. He's put a surprising amount of thought into it, sounded like it could be fun. Considering D&D's a game, that's pretty much all you need, and it turns out kids know how to have fun even without knowing a bunch of math. Insisting they, or anyone, would need to posses specific skill sets aside from a desire to have fun to DM is just gatekeeping. I'll pass.

[Lord Raziere]

Neither of the things you mentioned (bounded accuracy and open-ended skills) stopped 5e from being the most successful D&D edition... well, ever. So declaring that those things "aren't D&D" doesn't really resonate.

Hm. If the only identity DnD needs is success, then I'm not sure DnD is much of anything at all.

Define DnD other than being successful or popular please. Because if the gameline's only value is success, only measure is popularity, only identity is its success, then it has none for it gladly cast whatever it is aside to be whatever will make it more money.

What is the identity of DnD that you will say needs to be preserved, regardless of money made or success? That is a most important question to ask and to answer, I'd say.

[warty goblin]

I mean I made up a sort of semi- competitive RPG for two when I was like 11. The rules, maps, monsters, artwork, item, everything. The math was gawdawful, but my buddy and I had a ton of fun with it.

Which is ultimately the point of a game, a social lubricant that leads to fun and enjoyment for all participants. I suspect of one engages with D&D (or any other RPG) 9n those grounds, rather than theoretical whiteboard standards, it works a lot better. Given how wildly popular D&D is right now, I'd say it seems to do exceedingly well as an enjoyable form of social interaction.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I mean I made up a sort of semi- competitive RPG for two when I was like 11. The rules, maps, monsters, artwork, item, everything. The math was gawdawful, but my buddy and I had a ton of fun with it.

Which is ultimately the point of a game, a social lubricant that leads to fun and enjoyment for all participants. I suspect of one engages with D&D (or any other RPG) 9n those grounds, rather than theoretical whiteboard standards, it works a lot better. Given how wildly popular D&D is right now, I'd say it seems to do exceedingly well as an enjoyable form of social interaction.

Exactly. My 10 year old nephew (then) ran several successful campaigns for his cousins in a world he created. Their grasp of the formal rules and mechanics was...poor...but they had tons of fun. And bonded. And that was successful D&D for them. I've found that personally, the more I let go of the "rules are a binding contract and should be followed" concept and lean into "rules are tools to be used where they're useful and discarded everywhere else", the better my games flow. Which means never asking the rules a question where there are options that aren't fun. And the only ones who can judge fun are the living people at the table. The developers can't--they're not at the table. The rules can't, they're inanimate printed words on paper (or electrons on a device). And I'd expect what options are fun will differ sharply between tables.

[NichG]

Exactly. Flexibility to decide what the world is at the level the characters encounter it is the only thing that allows open ended games. If there is agency, any fixed list of possibilities and robotic "just invoke the mechanics" DM'ing will fail.

------------

Beyond this, tables and lists don't actually teach people how to DM. In fact, as a pedagogic technique, they prevent learning. They're the bad kind of crutch, same as a cheat sheet on a test. They constrain the imagination and shortcut the process. Once you've learned how you, personally, and your tables are comfortable with checks being set, you're good. You never have to relearn it or really think about it more than incidentally. It becomes an automatic process. If all you have is didactic "memorize these" tables...you're stuck. You constantly have to reference those, and if you stray from the tables even in the slightest, you're floundering.

Do I agree that the (5e) DMG could do a better job of describing things and giving worked examples? Absolutely. Do I think that the right solution is to constrain everything to fixed tables[1]? No. Far from it.

[1] and yes, tables do constrain. At least they'd have to in order to satisfy the people here who value inter-table uniformity. Because if the tables are merely examples and aren't actually intended to be used as such, then (a) they're useless wastes of time and space and (b) you wouldn't get uniformity. There is a strong desire expressed in these threads for everyone else to be required to play the way the interlocutor wants. AKA bad-wrong-fun. For me, inter-table consistency of DCs is actively a negative. Heck, even within table consistency (at different points in the campaign) is a (weaker) negative. Because the world is more complex than that. If I want mechanical DMing that doesn't actually consider the whole scenario, I'll play a computer game.

The lesson I'd like to be presented to GMs (via DMG or sidebars or whatever) is text talking about specifically what giving something a fixed DC in advance of that particular thing being called for can be used to achieve, alongside fixed DCs in the rules and explanation for what the designers in particular were trying to achieve by putting that particular thing in the player-accessible text.

I think the biggest weakness of the make-it-up-as-we-go-along DMs comes from entering a sort of reflexive and defensive stance with respect to setting DCs. That is, I think its easy to get into a pattern where being provoked to set a DC by a player leads to creating a precedent that causes problems later, and the reflexive reaction to that is to be defensive about letting players know the DC for basically anything until the DM is in a position to see how the players might be trying to abuse that. There's a lot of bad dynamics in that cycle - setting DCs based on whether you want the players to succeed or not (or choosing first the chance of success and then trying to figure out what DC would create that chance), players then exploiting that by asking for a DC early in the campaign and relying on the DM setting it relative to their current strength, so that it will end up getting locked in and be trivial later on, etc. There's a lot of mess basically, and as much as you might say 'well I and my group have an understanding', this kind of experience also creates overall player-vs-DM and even just overt anti-DM sentiments when people end up in a game where this kind of thing is being used as part of power struggles at the table.

So I'd much rather DMs understand early on that there are more reasons to set a DC than 'it came up during play', and many of them benefit from doing so well in advance. I'd want the culture to get out in front of that and make it not feel scary or like a loss of control or like being taken advantage of to communicate the DC for something (or the way it should be calculated) well in advance of it actually coming up. I want text that teaches DMs that broadcasting how something will work enables players to use it for planning and that in turn enables - and is even mandatory for - certain forms of play such as heists, strategic (vs tactical) encounters, base defense scenarios, etc. I want text that advises DMs that communicating a DC that is currently too high for the group to make can be used as a way to offer a concrete reward for building in a certain direction rather than in other directions, and as such as a tool to enable and encourage organic builds and to connect the mechanics to in-character motivations for power-seeking and self-improvement.

What I would like to see is less 'go fish' game design where DCs are a mechanism for DMs to try to create tension or difficulty in the moment by asking for rolls until someone fails and then playing off of the failure, and more thought about specifically how to utilize telegraphing and offloading of mechanical resolution as DM-ing techniques. Skills shouldn't be about defending against the DM's probes, but they should be about something where investment positively allows the character to increase the set of things they can know that they can reliably do.

Edit: And on the subject of rules, something that prompts DMs to think of rules as opportunities or ways to promise things to the players, rather than 'the way to figure out what happens' would be great. Promising things is a wonderful tool for getting people to be more confident stepping out somewhere which would otherwise be uncertain, and as such can be an incredible tool especially when trying to produce genre conventions that go against logic. For example, promising 'characters will not die without the players agreement' can be used to vastly increase how likely players are to engage in risky heroic behaviors.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The lesson I'd like to be presented to GMs (via DMG or sidebars or whatever) is text talking about specifically what giving something a fixed DC in advance of that particular thing being called for can be used to achieve, alongside fixed DCs in the rules and explanation for what the designers in particular were trying to achieve by putting that particular thing in the player-accessible text.

I think the biggest weakness of the make-it-up-as-we-go-along DMs comes from entering a sort of reflexive and defensive stance with respect to setting DCs. That is, I think its easy to get into a pattern where being provoked to set a DC by a player leads to creating a precedent that causes problems later, and the reflexive reaction to that is to be defensive about letting players know the DC for basically anything until the DM is in a position to see how the players might be trying to abuse that. There's a lot of bad dynamics in that cycle - setting DCs based on whether you want the players to succeed or not (or choosing first the chance of success and then trying to figure out what DC would create that chance), players then exploiting that by asking for a DC early in the campaign and relying on the DM setting it relative to their current strength, so that it will end up getting locked in and be trivial later on, etc. There's a lot of mess basically, and as much as you might say 'well I and my group have an understanding', this kind of experience also creates overall player-vs-DM and even just overt anti-DM sentiments when people end up in a game where this kind of thing is being used as part of power struggles at the table.

So I'd much rather DMs understand early on that there are more reasons to set a DC than 'it came up during play', and many of them benefit from doing so well in advance. I'd want the culture to get out in front of that and make it not feel scary or like a loss of control or like being taken advantage of to communicate the DC for something (or the way it should be calculated) well in advance of it actually coming up. I want text that teaches DMs that broadcasting how something will work enables players to use it for planning and that in turn enables - and is even mandatory for - certain forms of play such as heists, strategic (vs tactical) encounters, base defense scenarios, etc. I want text that advises DMs that communicating a DC that is currently too high for the group to make can be used as a way to offer a concrete reward for building in a certain direction rather than in other directions, and as such as a tool to enable and encourage organic builds and to connect the mechanics to in-character motivations for power-seeking and self-improvement.

What I would like to see is less 'go fish' game design where DCs are a mechanism for DMs to try to create tension or difficulty in the moment by asking for rolls until someone fails and then playing off of the failure, and more thought about specifically how to utilize telegraphing and offloading of mechanical resolution as DM-ing techniques. Skills shouldn't be about defending against the DM's probes, but they should be about something where investment positively allows the character to increase the set of things they can know that they can reliably do.

Edit: And on the subject of rules, something that prompts DMs to think of rules as opportunities or ways to promise things to the players, rather than 'the way to figure out what happens' would be great. Promising things is a wonderful tool for getting people to be more confident stepping out somewhere which would otherwise be uncertain, and as such can be an incredible tool especially when trying to produce genre conventions that go against logic. For example, promising 'characters will not die without the players agreement' can be used to vastly increase how likely players are to engage in risky heroic behaviors.

A few responses:

I agree that rules set expectations. Which is one reason I'm against fixed DC tables--they set bad expectations (specifically that every tree is identical +-10%, every door lock is the same, and that it's all a numbers game to beat). But I use the idea of rules as fixed expectations quite a lot. I've got one rule where I promise that if you hand me a backstory character, I won't fold, spindle, mutilate, or kill them unless your character is in a position (both knowledge and opportunity) to intervene if they choose. Is that a narrative imposition? Sure. But it's worth it to me.

As for DCs...in my experience the game is like a river. It flows onward. No situation repeats twice, and the situations are critical to accurately setting a DC. So saying "this task is too hard for you...yet" (which is what setting an explicit DC above what they can do is doing) is identical to saying "no, you can't do that task". Because if they go away, level up, and try again...it's a different task at that point. With a logically different DC. I don't believe, in my heart of hearts, that DCs are really possible to set in the abstract. Opening a locked door? By itself, in a vacuum, it's not a check at all. It's only the framework around it (what happens if you fail on your first attempt? What happens if it takes 2x or 10x as long?) that makes it meaningful as something to even attempt to roll for. And those factors vary. And knowing it for one door doesn't help you at all for a different door, and the chances of coming back to the same door later under the same circumstances are just...basically zero. Not worth spending paper on.

Generally, I prefer if players think as little as possible in mechanical terms. Instead of trying to calculate "ok, I've got a X% chance right now, if I do XYZ I'll have a Y% chance..." I want them to be thinking in narrative terms. What would my character do? If the only way to reasonably succeed is to go meta and act like your character knows their in a game and knows the (very artificial) mechanics being used to translate between that fictional world and the world of the players[1], that's an actively jarring thing for me. I'll say that one of the smoothest[2] and most enjoyable one-shots I ever ran was one where basically no one knew any of the rules. They were handed character sheets, told "If I ask you to roll something, roll that die [pointing to the d20] and add the number next to that thing on your sheet. Higher is better." And you know what? They engaged with the fiction almost entirely. They didn't think in terms of actions, of chances, they simply acted like their characters. Including using ability checks for things--"Say's here I'm a soldier. Can I use that common bond to try to get the (former soldier) bandits to surrender?" or "Says I'm a religious person. Can I talk the priest into helping us by drawing on that shared bond?" Etc. Instead of treating their characters as playing pieces, designed to have the optimal chances of success, they acted like they were real people. Including doing things that were in-character, yet obviously sub-optimal from a rules standpoint. And it was tons of fun for everyone.

From that, I took the knowledge that rules are really just scaffolding. The ultimate reality of RPGs is free-form. But free-form is way too much work for just about any group. So we build rules to assist us. And the shape of those rules depends on the structure being built. Insisting that all scaffolds look the same or have the same features just makes them useless. Insisting that rules have inherent, rather than just instrumental, value produces play that I'm not fond of at all.

[1] because that's what mechanics do--they act as a UI or translation layer. They're not fundamental to either world, but they serve as the interface protocol where that protocol is needed.
[2] albeit one of the more exhausting ones, because I had to do all the translations back and forth in mechanical terms. Rules are useful, don't get me wrong. And having player-facing rules lightens the load on the one running things. But they're helps, they're not actually the important part of the game. The game itself, the fiction in which the characters are immersed, that is the important thing.

[NichG]

A few responses:

I agree that rules set expectations. Which is one reason I'm against fixed DC tables--they set bad expectations (specifically that every tree is identical +-10%, every door lock is the same, and that it's all a numbers game to beat). But I use the idea of rules as fixed expectations quite a lot. I've got one rule where I promise that if you hand me a backstory character, I won't fold, spindle, mutilate, or kill them unless your character is in a position (both knowledge and opportunity) to intervene if they choose. Is that a narrative imposition? Sure. But it's worth it to me.

As for DCs...in my experience the game is like a river. It flows onward. No situation repeats twice, and the situations are critical to accurately setting a DC. So saying "this task is too hard for you...yet" (which is what setting an explicit DC above what they can do is doing) is identical to saying "no, you can't do that task". Because if they go away, level up, and try again...it's a different task at that point. With a logically different DC. I don't believe, in my heart of hearts, that DCs are really possible to set in the abstract. Opening a locked door? By itself, in a vacuum, it's not a check at all. It's only the framework around it (what happens if you fail on your first attempt? What happens if it takes 2x or 10x as long?) that makes it meaningful as something to even attempt to roll for. And those factors vary. And knowing it for one door doesn't help you at all for a different door, and the chances of coming back to the same door later under the same circumstances are just...basically zero. Not worth spending paper on.

Whereas I'd look at the situation and say 'I observe that this player is interested in this thing that is currently beyond what their character can reasonably do. This is an opportunity to get the player more motivated and connected with the game! If I make the promise that, should the player encounter something even close to this situation again, they can guarantee that they can do it as long as they pay the cost of a certain number of build resources or a certain amount of in-character preparation, then that is to my advantage as a GM. This is a great opportunity to increase engagement and produce emergent gameplay!' Rather than looking for a reason why I should not be bound to a decision I made now as a GM (because yes, the details *could* be different), I think its better to look at this as an opportunity - what could I accomplish as a GM if I concede a promise that should this happen again, the details won't be different?

I know how to craft arguments, even to fool myself. Just because I could argue something from, say, a position of realism doesn't mean it's in my interest or in the interest of the game to argue it. Maybe as a point of game design its okay if every stone wall is equally difficult to climb, and we don't really need +5s and -5s for rain or ice or ivy or crumbling stonework or whatever. Is the game improved by including that detail? What is gained, and what is lost? How will the experience of play be shaped by that choice?

I want GMs to be thinking about that, rather than just acting reflexively based on the most immediate argument that comes to mind (often this is something like 'realism' or 'verisimilitude' where in the end it comes down to personally choosing to be bothered by a detail or not). I'm not saying 'always take a gamist stance' here, but rather saying that abstraction is inevitable and its better to understand what the tradeoffs and make a conscious choice than to let oneself be motivated by reflexive reactions.

Generally, I prefer if players think as little as possible in mechanical terms. Instead of trying to calculate "ok, I've got a X% chance right now, if I do XYZ I'll have a Y% chance..." I want them to be thinking in narrative terms. What would my character do? If the only way to reasonably succeed is to go meta and act like your character knows their in a game and knows the (very artificial) mechanics being used to translate between that fictional world and the world of the players[1], that's an actively jarring thing for me. I'll say that one of the smoothest[2] and most enjoyable one-shots I ever ran was one where basically no one knew any of the rules. They were handed character sheets, told "If I ask you to roll something, roll that die [pointing to the d20] and add the number next to that thing on your sheet. Higher is better." And you know what? They engaged with the fiction almost entirely. They didn't think in terms of actions, of chances, they simply acted like their characters. Including using ability checks for things--"Say's here I'm a soldier. Can I use that common bond to try to get the (former soldier) bandits to surrender?" or "Says I'm a religious person. Can I talk the priest into helping us by drawing on that shared bond?" Etc. Instead of treating their characters as playing pieces, designed to have the optimal chances of success, they acted like they were real people. Including doing things that were in-character, yet obviously sub-optimal from a rules standpoint. And it was tons of fun for everyone.

From that, I took the knowledge that rules are really just scaffolding. The ultimate reality of RPGs is free-form. But free-form is way too much work for just about any group. So we build rules to assist us. And the shape of those rules depends on the structure being built. Insisting that all scaffolds look the same or have the same features just makes them useless. Insisting that rules have inherent, rather than just instrumental, value produces play that I'm not fond of at all.

[1] because that's what mechanics do--they act as a UI or translation layer. They're not fundamental to either world, but they serve as the interface protocol where that protocol is needed.
[2] albeit one of the more exhausting ones, because I had to do all the translations back and forth in mechanical terms. Rules are useful, don't get me wrong. And having player-facing rules lightens the load on the one running things. But they're helps, they're not actually the important part of the game. The game itself, the fiction in which the characters are immersed, that is the important thing.

I guess I take the view that it isn't either/or. The mechanics exist to make the narrative reality concrete and accessible to people who are not actually physically immersed in it. They are a way to abstract and summarize narrative realities in a way that allows players to act with the confidence that you or I could act with regards to things we do as fully embodied inhabitants of physical reality. I think not everything should have an exposed mechanic, because uncertainty and discover is something that can be part of the fictional reality too, and those things are interesting to explore. But there should be things which you do not want the players to have to ask you as the GM to tell them whether or not those things are reasonable. Mechanics are a way of creating that ability to reason and plan and resolve things independently of the GM. Explicit narrative control powers (dramatic editing points, etc) are another way. 'No god-modding' promises common to freeform online gaming are another way to do it - if someone says 'my character climbs that tree' then its no one's business other than the player of that character.

But one way or another it is a need that must be resolved, otherwise you're limited to stories about people who effectively are young children for whom every single thing is a new and uncertain experience. I like some of that in my gaming, but I wouldn't want that to be the everything of it.

[Pex]

The DM decided there was a ledge rather than a sheer drop, or a hillside near a second-story window that would make for a more convenient access point, or a crack in the wall that might have to be squeezed through, or just that the guards have a rotation that's easy to time and if you sneak through the front gate at night during the right interval you can get in that way. The DM decided the location of the guard positions which in turn determine whether 'breaking in by walking along the crenellation' is an Acrobatics check or if its Acrobatics plus Stealth (another iterated probability difficulty hike issue...), or just an outright bad idea entirely since you'd be walking across a sight-line with no cover and no possibility of movement. The DM also decided who had what information about whatever it was that is motivating the party to break into the castle, whether it was in the dungeons or high up in the tower, whether it was locked away or carried around by someone who could be ambushed, whether there was even a castle in the first place.

For a fixed module, you might argue that those things were all decided by the designer of the module. But if you really commit to that position as the only valid play, you're also committing to a hard-railroad standard since that would mandate that the DM ensure the party never goes off-script enough to ever require them to make a decision about something.

Yes, that's what I've been saying. The DM decides why a Thing is there and determines the results of players interacting with that Thing. That's creating the gameworld, not creating the game. The game rules determine how the resolution of the interaction happens. The player decides to interact with the Thing.

A module is an author deciding why a Thing is placed. Some DMs need that assistance. "Need" is probably too strong a word. Other DMs prefer to homebrew their own world. I remember way back when playing 2E enjoying the games people were running. I wanted to try DMing myself. I was having a hard time trying to make up adventures. It stunk. For the longest time I thought I was just a bad DM. After years of practice learning what I was doing wrong and what was the players just not liking my style I got better. It would only be a few years ago, DMing my homebrew game in 5E, that I got a revelation. Having running out of ideas a player offered me old modules that were converted to 5E. As I was reading them over I had deja vu. Everything was familiar. It wasn't deja vu. It was actual memories. I played almost every module the player gave me. That was why those 2E DMs had such great adventures while mine sucked. They weren't DM geniuses. They were simply running a module. I had no clue there was such a thing back then. It was just the Player's Handbook, DMG, and Monster Manual. Eventually there were the Class Handbooks and Tome of Magic. Adventure modules? Never heard of them. Never saw them. It explained everything. I'm now running a new campaign. I started with Dragonheist and continuing with Undermountain. I still have my personal quirks for my own gameworld since I don't use Forgotten Realms, but I am definitely a lot better DM than I was. Ideas spark I wouldn't have thought of myself. Bless the DMs who can create and run their own adventures. I have enjoyed such campaigns. My barbarian game I loved so much was such a campaign. For those DMs, like me, who could use the assist from published modules, hooray for us.

Exactly. Flexibility to decide what the world is at the level the characters encounter it is the only thing that allows open ended games. If there is agency, any fixed list of possibilities and robotic "just invoke the mechanics" DM'ing will fail.

------------

Beyond this, tables and lists don't actually teach people how to DM. In fact, as a pedagogic technique, they prevent learning. They're the bad kind of crutch, same as a cheat sheet on a test. They constrain the imagination and shortcut the process. Once you've learned how you, personally, and your tables are comfortable with checks being set, you're good. You never have to relearn it or really think about it more than incidentally. It becomes an automatic process. If all you have is didactic "memorize these" tables...you're stuck. You constantly have to reference those, and if you stray from the tables even in the slightest, you're floundering.

Do I agree that the (5e) DMG could do a better job of describing things and giving worked examples? Absolutely. Do I think that the right solution is to constrain everything to fixed tables[1]? No. Far from it.

[1] and yes, tables do constrain. At least they'd have to in order to satisfy the people here who value inter-table uniformity. Because if the tables are merely examples and aren't actually intended to be used as such, then (a) they're useless wastes of time and space and (b) you wouldn't get uniformity. There is a strong desire expressed in these threads for everyone else to be required to play the way the interlocutor wants. AKA bad-wrong-fun. For me, inter-table consistency of DCs is actively a negative. Heck, even within table consistency (at different points in the campaign) is a (weaker) negative. Because the world is more complex than that. If I want mechanical DMing that doesn't actually consider the whole scenario, I'll play a computer game.

DC tables no more constrain than every saving throw DC of all class abilities of every kind is 8 + proficiency bonus + appropriate ability score modifier. No more constrained than every non-magical plate mail everywhere gives AC 18. No more constrain than DMG page 244 there is a DC table for tracking, DMG page 245 there is a DC table for conversation reaction, DMG page 246 there is a DC table for object AC, DMG page 247 DC table for object hit points. Heh, I forgot about the tracking DC table. I'm learning there are more DC tables actually existing than I thought. They don't cover all the skills, but it's far from nothing as I thought a few years ago. Mea culpa. Now it's just a matter of adding a few more DC tables to cover all the skills and place them in an easy to find spot. Having these tables be so close to the index it's easy to forget they're there. They should be in the beginning or at least the middle of the book, definitely before all the magic items, unlike after as they are now.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Whereas I'd look at the situation and say 'I observe that this player is interested in this thing that is currently beyond what their character can reasonably do. This is an opportunity to get the player more motivated and connected with the game! If I make the promise that, should the player encounter something even close to this situation again, they can guarantee that they can do it as long as they pay the cost of a certain number of build resources or a certain amount of in-character preparation, then that is to my advantage as a GM. This is a great opportunity to increase engagement and produce emergent gameplay!' Rather than looking for a reason why I should not be bound to a decision I made now as a GM (because yes, the details *could* be different), I think its better to look at this as an opportunity - what could I accomplish as a GM if I concede a promise that should this happen again, the details won't be different?

I know how to craft arguments, even to fool myself. Just because I could argue something from, say, a position of realism doesn't mean it's in my interest or in the interest of the game to argue it. Maybe as a point of game design its okay if every stone wall is equally difficult to climb, and we don't really need +5s and -5s for rain or ice or ivy or crumbling stonework or whatever. Is the game improved by including that detail? What is gained, and what is lost? How will the experience of play be shaped by that choice?

I want GMs to be thinking about that, rather than just acting reflexively based on the most immediate argument that comes to mind (often this is something like 'realism' or 'verisimilitude' where in the end it comes down to personally choosing to be bothered by a detail or not). I'm not saying 'always take a gamist stance' here, but rather saying that abstraction is inevitable and its better to understand what the tradeoffs and make a conscious choice than to let oneself be motivated by reflexive reactions.

Sure, be intentional about it. But fixing DCs comes with expectations. For one, the horrible (IMO) expectation that tasks have atomic, immutable DCs and that doing task X === rolling check Y against DC Z. Why is that horrible? Because
a) it's false and creates absurdity within the narrative
b) it tends to waste tons of table time and produce unfun events
c) it encourages "accounting-style" character building.

(a) is because part of the difficulty of a task is the consequences. And the consequences are not constant. Opening a lock in the privacy and safety of your safehouse, with all the time in the world is a very different task than opening that exact same lock when failure means that an alarm goes off and all the hordes of hell descend upon you. Same lock, vastly different narrative difficulty. Saying that they're the same reduces the world to a cardboard caricature, a bad video game using stock assets. And wastes the entire potential of TTRPGs--the ability to respond to non-programmed things.

(b) is tied in with (a)--if climbing a rope is always a DC 10 check, then unless you have a +9 bonus, you will fail some times when the fiction says you shouldn't. And unless you have a -11 modifier, you will succeed some times the fiction says you shouldn't. Committing to always rolling (which is the commitment that having fixed, absolute DCs implies), says that the fiction doesn't matter. That only the math does. And that's really not fun. It reduces the game to one of "make sure you've got high enough bonuses that you never have to roll at all or face slapstick that breaks your character's fiction." Setting fixed DCs like that generally makes people engage with the mechanic less, by trying to avoid any case where they'll have to roll at all. It also implies really weird things about the world itself. For example, if climbing a rope is a DC 10 check...then cats can't climb a rope reliably. Because their climb modifier isn't that good. So you end up having to put in all these bodges anyway to reduce the absurdity.

(c) describes how 3e was--take X points in Tumble so you auto pass the Z check, P points in UMD so you can UMD ABC...that's the opposite of organic building. That's building to predetermined targets, whether it makes any sense for the character or not. Or be a caster so you don't have to engage in any of that because your spells do everything for you without any kind of a roll.

I guess I take the view that it isn't either/or. The mechanics exist to make the narrative reality concrete and accessible to people who are not actually physically immersed in it. They are a way to abstract and summarize narrative realities in a way that allows players to act with the confidence that you or I could act with regards to things we do as fully embodied inhabitants of physical reality. I think not everything should have an exposed mechanic, because uncertainty and discover is something that can be part of the fictional reality too, and those things are interesting to explore. But there should be things which you do not want the players to have to ask you as the GM to tell them whether or not those things are reasonable. Mechanics are a way of creating that ability to reason and plan and resolve things independently of the GM. Explicit narrative control powers (dramatic editing points, etc) are another way. 'No god-modding' promises common to freeform online gaming are another way to do it - if someone says 'my character climbs that tree' then its no one's business other than the player of that character.

But one way or another it is a need that must be resolved, otherwise you're limited to stories about people who effectively are young children for whom every single thing is a new and uncertain experience. I like some of that in my gaming, but I wouldn't want that to be the everything of it.

Exposed mechanics are scaffolding. And not everything needs scaffolding. Some capabilities are obvious from the fiction--if you're playing a game about superman, he can fly. He doesn't need explicit statements to that effect. Mechanics are for things that would otherwise be highly unclear. And I'm not against mechanics. But I want them to be as clear and as fictionally-grounded as possible. Not just abstract "push button, get result" things. And, in a class/level game, I want all the important ones to come from your class. Ability checks are a secondary system everyone can engage with, and as such, need to be as generalized as possible. Because if you're going down the route of actually trying to build in heavy levels of detail here (which is what you need to make fixed DCs make any kind of sense in any way)...you might as well just go whole hog and do a skill-based/point-buy system. Trying to hack it in to a class/level game is just reinventing the wheel, but kinda rectanguloid. So for me, ability checks should be entirely open-ended. That's where you put things that don't make sense to be class specific, but also can't be tied down to specific details. Because if they can, they should be class features instead. Everyone should interact with these auxiliary systems on an equal footing, while having a primary system that they have some special connection to.

Do they? No. Casters, in particular, have too many ways of boosting their interactions with other systems while still having an exclusive system of their own. That needs to change. More on the original topic, you can't improve balance via the ability check system without first breaking the idea that everyone gets to use it the same way...except casters, who get the same access everyone else has and more. Because any improvement you give generally gives casters more of an improvement, making the disparity worse. They have better ways of hitting higher numbers more reliably, as well as generally having more ways of just avoiding having to make a check at all. That needs to change before anything else can budge. Or any changes will just make the system less usable for everyone and push more people to ignoring martials anyway.

[Morphic tide]

Sure, be intentional about it. But fixing DCs comes with expectations. For one, the horrible (IMO) expectation that tasks have atomic, immutable DCs and that doing task X === rolling check Y against DC Z. Why is that horrible? Because
a) it's false and creates absurdity within the narrative
b) it tends to waste tons of table time and produce unfun events
c) it encourages "accounting-style" character building.

So in other words, you feel it's awful because of it creating rather nearly equivalent results to the spell lists? Investing a specific amount to be sure-enough of accomplishing a specific task is how it should be given how concrete the entire rest of the game mechanics are and especially the fact that the entire point of this discussion is Martial-Caster comparisons ceasing to be a farce. Why should a Rogue who has dumped everything possible into a skill get literally nothing as a concrete no-questions-asked benefit when there's single feats giving short-ranged teleportation to deal with the wide array of things that are shut down by having short-ranged teleportation at least once per day with no questions asked?

Fundamentally, "skills should be fuzzy" is utter garbage with respect to the topic of this thread because spells aren't fuzzy, they have never been fuzzy, and their most basic construction does not support being fuzzy. The entire basis of caster supremacy is that they get explicit crunch to bend narratives over a barrel, while all manner of incredibly obtuse nonsense has been done to deny this to anyone else. 5e's incredibly unreliable skill system is just the latest.

[NichG]

Sure, be intentional about it. But fixing DCs comes with expectations. For one, the horrible (IMO) expectation that tasks have atomic, immutable DCs and that doing task X === rolling check Y against DC Z. Why is that horrible? Because
a) it's false and creates absurdity within the narrative
b) it tends to waste tons of table time and produce unfun events
c) it encourages "accounting-style" character building.

(a) is because part of the difficulty of a task is the consequences. And the consequences are not constant. Opening a lock in the privacy and safety of your safehouse, with all the time in the world is a very different task than opening that exact same lock when failure means that an alarm goes off and all the hordes of hell descend upon you. Same lock, vastly different narrative difficulty. Saying that they're the same reduces the world to a cardboard caricature, a bad video game using stock assets. And wastes the entire potential of TTRPGs--the ability to respond to non-programmed things.

(b) is tied in with (a)--if climbing a rope is always a DC 10 check, then unless you have a +9 bonus, you will fail some times when the fiction says you shouldn't. And unless you have a -11 modifier, you will succeed some times the fiction says you shouldn't. Committing to always rolling (which is the commitment that having fixed, absolute DCs implies), says that the fiction doesn't matter. That only the math does. And that's really not fun. It reduces the game to one of "make sure you've got high enough bonuses that you never have to roll at all or face slapstick that breaks your character's fiction." Setting fixed DCs like that generally makes people engage with the mechanic less, by trying to avoid any case where they'll have to roll at all. It also implies really weird things about the world itself. For example, if climbing a rope is a DC 10 check...then cats can't climb a rope reliably. Because their climb modifier isn't that good. So you end up having to put in all these bodges anyway to reduce the absurdity.

(c) describes how 3e was--take X points in Tumble so you auto pass the Z check, P points in UMD so you can UMD ABC...that's the opposite of organic building. That's building to predetermined targets, whether it makes any sense for the character or not. Or be a caster so you don't have to engage in any of that because your spells do everything for you without any kind of a roll.

Ehh... Again, I think with a shift in how you frame things, these can go from negatives to positives quite easily.

Rather than 'the fiction says' as some absolute, if you see the game more as a negotiation over what the fiction actually is, then a player choosing to achieve a +9 bonus means that they're purchasing the right to say 'the fiction says my character succeeds'. The value of the bid of 'I always fail this' is 11 points negative (meaning that basically that particular system can be read as not encouraging people to bid away any possibility of success at things in that range). Whether those particular ranges and values are desired is another thing entirely, and I would not argue 'yes, this is the best numerical system to do what you want!' at all, but at least once you start to see things this way it helps inform how a mechanical system should be that would actually play well with the kind of fiction negotiation you want to have at a given table. Maybe that means 'everyone can always take 10, but skill modifiers are lower overall' to bring 'always fails' up into range of 'always succeeds'. Maybe that means you want to go with a 4d6 system instead and make use of the narrowed variance relative to a d20. Maybe you like the chaos and want to go with a d100 and make it very expensive to achieve reliability.

I guess my point is, those choices all contribute to mood. You can leave it on the table, but I think you can get better results by embracing it fully and really using how people react to mechanics, how people use mechanics to communicate their wants and needs, etc.

Organic builds to me isn't about just people putting points wherever, its about the places people put points being influenced by what has happened in game so far. So knowing 'I need to invest 10 points to autosucceed on X' isn't specifically organic or non-organic. It's organic if the reason they choose to put 10 points there is because something happened during game and they decided 'actually, I want to autosucceed on this thing more than I want my original plan'.

Exposed mechanics are scaffolding. And not everything needs scaffolding. Some capabilities are obvious from the fiction--if you're playing a game about superman, he can fly. He doesn't need explicit statements to that effect. Mechanics are for things that would otherwise be highly unclear. And I'm not against mechanics. But I want them to be as clear and as fictionally-grounded as possible. Not just abstract "push button, get result" things. And, in a class/level game, I want all the important ones to come from your class. Ability checks are a secondary system everyone can engage with, and as such, need to be as generalized as possible. Because if you're going down the route of actually trying to build in heavy levels of detail here (which is what you need to make fixed DCs make any kind of sense in any way)...you might as well just go whole hog and do a skill-based/point-buy system. Trying to hack it in to a class/level game is just reinventing the wheel, but kinda rectanguloid. So for me, ability checks should be entirely open-ended. That's where you put things that don't make sense to be class specific, but also can't be tied down to specific details. Because if they can, they should be class features instead. Everyone should interact with these auxiliary systems on an equal footing, while having a primary system that they have some special connection to.

Do they? No. Casters, in particular, have too many ways of boosting their interactions with other systems while still having an exclusive system of their own. That needs to change. More on the original topic, you can't improve balance via the ability check system without first breaking the idea that everyone gets to use it the same way...except casters, who get the same access everyone else has and more. Because any improvement you give generally gives casters more of an improvement, making the disparity worse. They have better ways of hitting higher numbers more reliably, as well as generally having more ways of just avoiding having to make a check at all. That needs to change before anything else can budge. Or any changes will just make the system less usable for everyone and push more people to ignoring martials anyway.

I'm not going to leap forward and say 'ability checks for everything' here, because honestly I don't even play or run 5e, so I have no horse in that race... If I'm designing 'stuff you can do' in a void (e.g. not tied to being a patch on a specific D&D edition), I much prefer things like X ranks of investment gives you autosuccess at Y otherwise you can't do it, with the scale of what that 'success' gives you determined by a roll modified by ability score Z, and drop the whole 'roll to see if you succeed' idea entirely. So more like 'skill tricks' than skills or ability checks anyhow. So a player is deciding 'I want to be able to climb sheer walls' rather than 'I want to reduce my failure chance at climbing sheer walls by 20%'.

[Telok]

Last time he described it to me, he was planning a bunch of new rules, e.g., passing and intercepting, fumbling the ball, cheering, sneaking the ball, etc., basically a mix of combat and skill rules. He's put a surprising amount of thought into it, sounded like it could be fun. Considering D&D's a game, that's pretty much all you need, and it turns out kids know how to have fun even without knowing a bunch of math. Insisting they, or anyone, would need to posses specific skill sets aside from a desire to have fun to DM is just gatekeeping. I'll pass.

Sounds like a nice clone of the Blood Bowl boardgame, hope it works out.

Your argument though isn't that 5e is a good system, has a skill system that doesn't need fixing, or hasn't repeatedly failed DMs in my area from start to today. The rest of your argument is that we can play 'cops & robbers: D&D edition' without any rules or shelling out money for dead trees.

Ask: if the 5e combat system works fine for pretty much everyone right out of the box, yet you're still trying to argue the skill/ability check system works only if people read and understand and use it in the exact same way you do while others are saying they still see people struggling with it, why is the combat system with its set DCs & all its tables & that everyone gets working decently well pretty much right away the system that never sees this level of discussion discord and repeated failure with?

[Psyren]

Hm. If the only identity DnD needs is success, then I'm not sure DnD is much of anything at all.

Define DnD other than being successful or popular please. Because if the gameline's only value is success, only measure is popularity, only identity is its success, then it has none for it gladly cast whatever it is aside to be whatever will make it more money.

What is the identity of DnD that you will say needs to be preserved, regardless of money made or success? That is a most important question to ask and to answer, I'd say.

Well, I don't actually have to, because the success proves that the current approach is something a large number of tabletop gamers - perhaps even most of them - seem to want. Or at the very least, are willing to pay for. But to humor you:

I'd say D&D's identity is a game that has room for all three pillars, but is one where the combat pillar gets the most focus and thus the most detailed ruleset. While dungeons are certainly explorable, and dragons can be interacted with, the primary focus of both aspects of the game's title are to facilitate engaging combat.

The other two pillars are left vague/open enough that groups have the freedom to give them as much or as little focus as they want to, and not have to shoulder any expectations foisted onto them by the system itself. If you want to run a campaign centered around, say, painstaking wilderness survival. or labyrinthine political intrigue - well, my first recommendation would be to try a different system. But failing that, my second would be to either to look through third-party approaches, and the third would be to homebrew something of your own. And the best way to facilitate wildly differing approaches to these two pillars is to abstract them, and not mandate either specific DCs or specific results for the effects of the rolls therein.