Math That "Just Works"

[Username17]

So when 4e came down the pipe, one of the things they promised that the math would "just work". And of course, we now know that was a lie, but it was a good lie, because it turned out to be what a lot of people wanted to hear. Because frankly, doing the math to check to see whether a particular giant spider is going to eat the party or get taken down is hard. And it's also time consuming, and not really what most DMs want to do. What they really want is to be able to grab a monster from the monster book and use it as-is according to the level guidelines and know that the PCs are going to have a kind of tough time and still come out on top. And that in turn gives Mister Cavern more time to worry about shit like NPC personalities, maps, backstory, clues, and world interaction. And that's good, because that other stuff is really important and the game can't necessarily help Mister Cavern deal with it, save by freeing up their time spent on other stuff.

Now, unfortunately your system has to be used by actual humans, and humans kind of suck at arithmetic and risk assessment. The average human simply stalls out when asked to do repeated math functions - even if they are simple addition. And players will be straight up confused when their character doesn't live through something that they had a 90% chance of living through... even after attempting it ten times in a row. So with that in mind, here are some math don'ts:

• Don't use fractions. I once had this alternate save system where people added 2/5 or 3/5 to their saves each level so that good and bad save progressions would add up - it was mathematically kind of pretty but it was a complete cluster fuck. As Mister Cavern I had to redo everyone's save bonuses every level. People just couldn't wrap their heads around adding .4s to things at all. So I don't give a fuck how nice the math comes out adding some kind of fraction to things, just don't do it. Whole numbers only unless you want players to look at you like lost lambs every time they have to interact with the numbers.
• Always use linear addition. For various reasons it is sometimes necessary to have a big bonus at the beginning of a progression and then a more measured bonus after that. It may be tempting to add these bonuses in some kind of logarithmic fashion or to have bonuses add up to arbitrary values that are then cross referenced to a table or to add half of subsequent bonuses or whatever. Do not succumb to this temptation, because that kind of shit paralyzes people. Players have enough problems adding 4 and 3, the moment you ask them to add 5 and half of 4 they are drooling vegetables.
• Don't let numbers get too large. It is a fact of mathematics that numbers raised to an exponent have the same relation as numbers that are lowered by the same exponent. That you could have perfectly identical mathematical relationships between levels by constantly raising things to the same exponent. And that shit works just fine in a computer game. But humans lose track of numbers when they get big. Dong repeated subtraction from a 3 digit number is hard for people, and doing repeated subtraction from a 4 digit number might as well be pushing Sisyphus's rock. Sometime try watching a Mister Cavern deal with an epic level Solo against a group of PCs, it's hilarious, yet also faintly sad.

But while that is fascinating in its way, it merely shaves an infinite number of possible numeric progressions off of an even larger infinite number of possible numeric progressions. To get farther, one has to make positive assertions as well as negative one. Here are some:

• The numbers have to start large enough that they can get smaller. Player characters can't really start in the AD&D "single hit die" crowd, because it is sometimes game mechanically relevant for there to be children or cats. Basically this means that a first level character who begins life with less than 10 hit points or so feels ridiculous in the face of potential hazards that are supposed to be substantially weaker than they are (like familiars or poisonous snakes).
• Numbers actually shouldn't diverge very much as levels continue to rise. This is not to say that an 8th level character has to take shit from a 4th level character, but that two 8th level rogues need to have fairly similar abilities with lock opening for an "8th level lock" to have much meaning.
• Numbers should be pretty tight at 1st level too. The entire RNG is only 20 points long, so the days of a Halfling Rogue getting +5 for Dex, +5 for Skill Training, +2 for Racial Bonus and +3 for Skill Focus at 1st level while a Dwarven Fighter gets a -1 Dex modifier to the same task really has to end. Any task that players within the same party are expected to all perform, need to be relatively tight in total bonus one to another.
• Any ability gained at any level needs to be competitive at the level they have it. Which in turn means that abilities need to either go obsolete or stay numerically competitive in a predictable fashion.
• And finally, characters need to be different one from another. Despite the fact that them diverging much is what makes the game fall apart and the math stop "just working" - it is precisely the existence of the difference at all that makes one character feel different from another. Players seriously do want their characters to have a different Sneaking bonus than another character.

That's something of a tall order actually, although there are still infinite numbers of potential things that could fit that.

But there's another thing about level appropriate challenges that is only tangentially about the math. People fucking hate it when you tell them that a Level 8 character should be climbing a DC 23 wall. They have no problem at all being told that an Ice Wall is DC 23 Wall and is appropriate for an 8th level character. The 4e difficulty system would have offended people even if it had provided usable DCs, simply because the presentation of those DCs was offensive. Difficulties need to be task oriented rather than level oriented or no tasks you compete will ever feel at all meaningful.

-Username17

[Doom]

I agree with all your "don'ts", hell, I'm half tempted to dress up as a fraction for Halloween as it is.

But one thing I'm curious about, since your essay isn't strictly 4e/3.x/d20, and yet you omit what seems a possible viable positive assertion:

Why not say "to hell with D20" and just go to a percentile system? Every d20 system chokes up at some point, if not at many points, due to the narrow RNG. Widening things won't necessarily eliminate any problems, but it might move a few further off in the distance. For example, your 'numbers should be pretty tight' point isn't nearly so devastating if you were referring to percentage points instead of d20 mods.

So, in short: what would be your advice for someone building/rebuilding a system, basing it around percents?

[MfA]

• Don't use fractions. I once had this alternate save system where people added 2/5 or 3/5 to their saves each level so that good and bad save progressions would add up - it was mathematically kind of pretty but it was a complete cluster fuck.

Or you could print out a two dimensional table and let people look it up during leveling without needing to do any math at all. Math which can be hidden behind tables is not a problem as long as it's restricted to leveling.

[Sashi]

Percentile systems don't "widen the RNG", they make the RNG more granular, so people can add 10 to something in a percentile system and it changes the odds by 10%, as opposed to adding 10 to a d20 and having it change the odds by 50%. Percentile systems also have all kinds of THAC0-like bullshit that goes along with them, because they're usually presented as "You have an X% chance of succeeding, modified by [bullshit]"

The d20 is basically the perfect single-die RNG because it's granular enough to let you apply multiple modifiers without blowing shit off the RNG, but still has small enough numbers that people can do the math in their heads. Plus, the divisions correspond to 5% changes, which is one of the few numbers most people can efficiently do mental multiplication with.

The problem isn't the d20, it's that designers seriously just refuse to do any math and end up allowing FIRST LEVEL characters to accumulate skill bonus differences the size of the RNG. Switching to a percentile system might incidentally fix this by lessening the value of stacking obscure +5 bonuses, but you could also end up with those obscure bonuses turning into +25% and nothing is fixed.

[Red_Rob]

Or you could print out a two dimensional table and let people look it up during leveling without needing to do any math at all. Math which can be hidden behind tables is not a problem as long as it's restricted to leveling.

My players bitch at me for using the Tome "+1 to already good saves at first level" multiclassing rule, because they can no longer just read down all the columns and add them together, they have to remember to take 1 away now and again.

I would say complicated math can be excused at Character Generation (see: Hero System)because most players expect to do that once or twice a campaign, but cross referencing numbers off charts every level would get old fast.

[hogarth]

Ah...brings back fond memories of Villains & Vigilantes. To find out your melee damage, just calculate [(Strength/10)^3 + (Endurance/10)] * (weight in lbs.)/2 and consult the carrying capacity table. It's just that easy!

[souran]

So frank presents an awesome case for getting the math right. On that point I think there can be NO arguing.

However, it does bring up a number of questions. The 4e math that doesn't work right - why doesn't it? Are tasks to easy to hard?

Most games have somewhere above "3" difficulty settings:
They might for instance be

Trivial
Easy
Normal
Hard
Extreme

However, in most games such a slate of difficulties is totally useless because "trained" characters trivialize everything up to hard tasks and untrained characters often fail at even supposedly "easy" tasks. Which means most games suffer from obvious up front math failure.

So instead of trying to have loads of difficulty levels lets just examine the concepts of easy, normal or nominal, and hard.

So, Frank: Assuming a level 1 or Just Created Character what percentage chance of success should be assigned to each catagory?

Second: As a character raises in level or other within the games defined advancement - should the percentage chance of success to succeed at a level appropriate task change? (i.e. If we decide that a level 1 hard task is one where there is only a 15% chance of success on dice alone, should a level 20 hard task, being performed by a level 20 character have a 15% chance of success, a greater than 15% chance of success, or a less than 15% chance of success?)

I also have some direct comments?

• Don't use fractions. I once had this alternate save system where people added 2/5 or 3/5 to their saves each level so that good and bad save progressions would add up - it was mathematically kind of pretty but it was a complete cluster fuck. As Mister Cavern I had to redo everyone's save bonuses every level. People just couldn't wrap their heads around adding .4s to things at all. So I don't give a fuck how nice the math comes out adding some kind of fraction to things, just don't do it. Whole numbers only unless you want players to look at you like lost lambs every time they have to interact with the numbers.

There is an exception. Most people understand odds and evens. This means that 50% is a friendly fraction.

[*] Numbers should be pretty tight at 1st level too. The entire RNG is only 20 points long, so the days of a Halfling Rogue getting +5 for Dex, +5 for Skill Training, +2 for Racial Bonus and +3 for Skill Focus at 1st level while a Dwarven Fighter gets a -1 Dex modifier to the same task really has to end. Any task that players within the same party are expected to all perform, need to be relatively tight in total bonus one to another.

This seems to me to have two obvious corollaries:

1: The "if something is benefial give the player +2" needs to be rethought.
Giving a player a +2 circumastance bonus is fine, as long as there is only 1. If players can paste a bunch of circumstance modifers on they can trivialize level appropriate tasks. Sometimes this is ok, othertimes its not.

This is pushing into the grounds of how valuable bounuses are and that has caused flame wars, so for simplicty:

Restrict circumstantical bonuses to some fixed value. If players have multiple positive circumstances, make them reach thresholds (say 3 or 5 postitive circumstances) and hand out a larger but declining bonus. Also if a player has enough bonuses to trivialize the task DON'T MAKE THEM ROLL FOR IT. JUST LET THEM WIN.


2: In order to keep the bonuses tight it is important to have other benefits that feel like strong advancement. Rerolls are excellent becuase they offer advancement without really effecting the difficulty of an action (or at least it makes it so that characters are much less likely to fail at easy tasks and not much more likely to succeed at hard tasks all without moving the rng at all).

But there's another thing about level appropriate challenges that is only tangentially about the math. People fucking hate it when you tell them that a Level 8 character should be climbing a DC 23 wall. They have no problem at all being told that an Ice Wall is DC 23 Wall and is appropriate for an 8th level character. The 4e difficulty system would have offended people even if it had provided usable DCs, simply because the presentation of those DCs was offensive. Difficulties need to be task oriented rather than level oriented or no tasks you compete will ever feel at all meaningful.

-Username17

The problem with this is that the Mister Cavern DOES NEED to know what level of difficulty will provide what kind of challenge to a character of X level.

Yes it seems "more fair" to say "all walls of solid ice are DC 23" However, that doesn't tell the MC SHIT about when he should be having his players assault the ice citadel.

If you then say say All walls of ice are DC 23 [Appropriate for about levels 8-12] you effectively put all ice citadels in the 8-12 level range and off limits to everybody else.

I know it dives you nuts Frank, but the MC MUST have in his toolbox a simple way of knowing what NUMBERS represent various degress of challenge at corrasponding levels.

Even if this leads to a situation where "walls of solid ice" were used in Brian's adventure to challenge level 5 pcs and later Eric used "solid walls of ice" for an adventure with level 16 characters and it was not different except for passing difficulty.

That situation is BETTER than one where because "solid walls of ice DC 23" is written in the fucking DMG Brian uses it at level 5 and everbody fails and Eric uses it at level 16 and everybody didn't give a crap because it was trivail.

[Username17]

Why not say "to hell with D20" and just go to a percentile system? Every d20 system chokes up at some point, if not at many points, due to the narrow RNG. Widening things won't necessarily eliminate any problems, but it might move a few further off in the distance. For example, your 'numbers should be pretty tight' point isn't nearly so devastating if you were referring to percentage points instead of d20 mods.

So, in short: what would be your advice for someone building/rebuilding a system, basing it around percents?

The big thing to understand with a percentile system is that it isn't any "bigger" than a d20 or any other uncurved die roll. While you could add +4% or +6% instead of +5%, most people can't really tell the difference. The RNG is still exactly twenty 5%s long no matter what you do.

Now a percentile system has a lot of advantages. The most salient of course is that percentages are how people in Western Nations consider odds and ratios in their heads, which means that percentages are about the best way to possibly convey odds and ratios to players. They still get stupid about rare events with large effects (in both directions), but at least they can tell you accurately whether 45% is likely to happen or not.

Those advantages are maximized at the point where you apply all modifiers before you roll, then you add your bonus to your roll, and the target number is always 100. This is good because it means that your totally modified bonus is exactly equal to your chance to succeed, and that opposed rolls can be handled without ever resorting to double subtraction to find degree of success.

But remember, it's still just a flat die roll and has exactly the same properties in terms of relative bonuses as a d20 system does. What you gain is player intuition about numbers and what you lose is that your RNG becomes more fiddly to deal with because you are rolling two d10s at a time and you're adding numbers that are physically larger.

-Username17

[MfA]

My players bitch at me for using the Tome "+1 to already good saves at first level" multiclassing rule, because they can no longer just read down all the columns and add them together, they have to remember to take 1 away now and again.

I can imagine that, there is no consistency with the base system it's bolted on to.

For a rewritten 3e it wouldn't have to work like that. The class table wouldn't even have BAB/Save progression any more ... it would just say which were good/normal/poor. The character sheets would have some extra boxes. For each save, one containing levels with good saves, the other poor. For BAB you would have three boxes, levels with good, normal, poor.

There is no more getting confused with the class table, since it wouldn't be there. Only the set of 2D tables which you always use in a completely consistent way. Also no math apart from adding full BAB levels to the lookup for normal/poor.

[Sashi]

The problem with this is that the Mister Cavern DOES NEED to know what level of difficulty will provide what kind of challenge to a character of X level.

Yes it seems "more fair" to say "all walls of solid ice are DC 23" However, that doesn't tell the MC SHIT about when he should be having his players assault the ice citadel.

If you then say say All walls of ice are DC 23 [Appropriate for about levels 8-12] you effectively put all ice citadels in the 8-12 level range and off limits to everybody else.

I know it dives you nuts Frank, but the MC MUST have in his toolbox a simple way of knowing what NUMBERS represent various degress of challenge at corrasponding levels.

Even if this leads to a situation where "walls of solid ice" were used in Brian's adventure to challenge level 5 pcs and later Eric used "solid walls of ice" for an adventure with level 16 characters and it was not different except for passing difficulty.

That situation is BETTER than one where because "solid walls of ice DC 23" is written in the fucking DMG Brian uses it at level 5 and everbody fails and Eric uses it at level 16 and everybody didn't give a crap because it was trivail.

You don't understand what Frank was saying, like, at all.

For a perfect example of a GOOD way to present DC's to the players look at Open Lock and Jump. An "average" lock is DC 25. And players are fine with that. They know that a first level Rogue with full training and 18 dex and masterwork tools will have a 30% chance of opening that lock and a 10th level Rogue with 20 DEX and masterwork tools will have an 80% chance. The trick is that you don't present this to the player as "Level 1 difficult lock: DC 25" and "Level 10 easy lock: DC 25". You present it as "An average lock is DC 25" and then give Mister Cavern a table of DC's that shows him a DC 25 challenge is hard for a first level character and easy for a 10th.

So if you have a 5th level party assault the Ice Fortress, he knows that regular walls of ice are DC 23, but a "hard" challenge for 5th level characters is DC 20, so any ice walls he intends the party to climb need things like large cracks for handholds or chimneys to brace against and reduce the DC to level-appropriate values. And if he wants to throw a wall of ice that will be difficult for a level 16 party, then he needs to make it particularly featureless and have an overhang to jack up the DC. Players should never feel like they're walking up to a wall that's Hard and has a variable DC based on the level of the person trying to climb it, because then there's never a feeling of accomplishment.

It's all a matter of presentation, you need to do everything possible to prevent the players from feeling like DC's are scaling to fit their level even though that's exactly what's happening.

[souran]

For a perfect example of a GOOD way to present DC's to the players look at Open Lock and Jump. An "average" lock is DC 25. And players are fine with that. They know that a first level Rogue with full training and 18 dex and masterwork tools will have a 30% chance of opening that lock and a 10th level Rogue with 20 DEX and masterwork tools will have an 80% chance. The trick is that you don't present this to the player as "Level 1 difficult lock: DC 25" and "Level 10 easy lock: DC 25". You present it as "An average lock is DC 25" and then give Mister Cavern a table of DC's that shows him a DC 25 challenge is hard for a first level character and easy for a 10th.

Yeah, this is exactly my example. If you FIX the dc of locks then you end up with EQUALLY STUPID things like every lock in the entire fortress of evil being a "demon crafted super lock" because you have to have a table of locks with more impressive sounding names and dcs.

However, the imporant part is where you say:

and then give Mister Cavern a table of DC's that shows him a DC 25 challenge is hard for a first level character and easy for a 10th.

Which shows that all you have done is add window dressing. You now have two tables, one with locks with DCs and Descritptions and one with player levels and suggested DCs for hard, nominal, and easy difficulty.

The thing is: The second table is INFINATELY more useful than the first. Because while its cool to have a chart that says that DC 45 locks are made of humanoid skulls and actively bite people trying to pick them, its not neccessary because most players will accept that no matter their level or ability there exists a kind of lock that is HARD for them to open.

So if you have a 5th level party assault the Ice Fortress, he knows that regular walls of ice are DC 23, but a "hard" challenge for 5th level characters is DC 20, so any ice walls he intends the party to climb need things like large cracks for handholds or chimneys to brace against and reduce the DC to level-appropriate values. And if he wants to throw a wall of ice that will be difficult for a level 16 party, then he needs to make it particularly featureless and have an overhang to jack up the DC. Players should never feel like they're walking up to a wall that's Hard and has a variable DC based on the level of the person trying to climb it, because then there's never a feeling of accomplishment.

Again, pointless windowdressing. If Brian uses a wall of ice at for his level 5 adventure and then Brain wants to use a wall of ice at level 16 he better add some description: "Its ice as smooth as glass" or "Its actually frozen souls." However, if he has not used "wall of ice" before then its not an issue unless Brian has had them climbing things that would seem harder than a wall of ice.

The fact of the matter is, either way, its once again the Level Vs. Difficulty table that is MOST important, not the arbitrary "climb difficulty" table.

It's all a matter of presentation, you need to do everything possible to prevent the players from feeling like DC's are scaling to fit their level even though that's exactly what's happening.

What your forgetting is that from the MCs side of the screen the tools need to be as easy to use as possible. Mister Cavern should be providing the detail to add believeability to the DCs. The MC guide book doesn't need to lay out the law on what is harder to climb than some other thing.
Scaling will be apparent to any player who really looks for it. One of the other rules is to NOT require lookup tables. Why is it ok to void that just because you have figured out that the DM is making things hard for you?

Frank wants a game with Task oriented difficulty settings for the actions the players take. The problem is that such a system is FUCKING USELESS to mister cavern. MC needs a table that tells him REAL data: a hard task is a task that on straight die roll has a 15% chance of success after scaling for level, and here is the chart showing what that number actually is so that you don't fuck up the math.

That tells the MC something he can use to write adventures and develop encounters. Its then the MCs job to provide a believeable reason for the difficulty of the action.

[Sashi]

Again, pointless windowdressing. If Brian uses a wall of ice at for his level 5 adventure and then Brain wants to use a wall of ice at level 16 he better add some description: "Its ice as smooth as glass" or "Its actually frozen souls." However, if he has not used "wall of ice" before then its not an issue unless Brian has had them climbing things that would seem harder than a wall of ice.

It's not pointless window-dressing. It is entirely necessary window-dressing. Players need to feel like they are climbing the glass-smooth wall because of their personal training and achievement allows them to do it, not that they reached 16th level and so now all the walls they face have been made more difficult to climb ("The castle wall you climbed at level 4 is "hard" and now you're level 10 ... so I guess it's been re-grouted and doesn't have finger and toe holds anymore. If you come back at level 16 it'll be coated in lard."

It is vitally important that players feel like the wall has been constructed and then assigned a DC, not assigned a DC and then constructed, even though that's totally a lie.

[Manxome]

and what you lose is that your RNG becomes more fiddly to deal with because you are rolling two d10s at a time and you're adding numbers that are physically larger.

Bonus points for creative use of the word "physically".

Frank wants a game with Task oriented difficulty settings for the actions the players take. The problem is that such a system is FUCKING USELESS to mister cavern. MC needs a table that tells him REAL data: a hard task is a task that on straight die roll has a 15% chance of success after scaling for level, and here is the chart showing what that number actually is so that you don't fuck up the math.

But your version is useless to the PCs. Unless you're going full-metagaming and MC strait up tells the players "this is a wall you are supposed to climb, and therefore it has a level-appropriate difficulty", then the players need some way of deciding whether climbing a given wall is going to be trivial, difficult, or suicidal so that they can plan around it. The only way you can do that in-character is if there are benchmarks for what in-world tasks can feasibly be accomplished by a character of a particular skill level.

When the players hear that the fortress walls are made of smooth ice, they need to know "OK, our particular characters would need grappling hooks in order to climb that. Therefore, we should [stock up before we leave / plan enough time for us to go up one at a time using the one rope we have / find another way in]."

Or, "OK, our characters can climb that and the monsters guarding the fortress can't, so that gives us a tactical advantage we can somehow exploit."

Yes, that means you need two separate tables. That's because there are seriously two separate channels of information, one of which is mandatory for storytelling and the other of which is mandatory for balance, and a typical tabletop RPG wants to have both of those things.

[souran]

Yes, that means you need two separate tables. That's because there are seriously two separate channels of information, one of which is mandatory for storytelling and the other of which is mandatory for balance, and a typical tabletop RPG wants to have both of those things.

The problem is that the the game maters difficulty table matters a whole crapload more than the other table(s). Its so much more important that it can poop in their backpacks and take their lunch money.

The other table just acts to restrict the MC and create fights as to weather or not what is in front of the players is possible, or could ever be as difficult as described.

How is better to have a system that gives a bunch of ammo to argue that the MC is setting the difficulty of tasks all wrong than it is to have one where things are a little transparent.

[mean_liar]

You can do it on one table, and although I found 4e's presentation of scaled DCs offensive, that's only their presentation.

Level - hard DC - description of challenge corresponding to DC

Yes, that means that you're going to have "demon super locks" aplenty at high levels. Deal. The point is not that the characters are level 16 and therefore the DC is X, its that the characters are level 16, you want an appropriate challenge (DC X), and therefore the following is an appropriate challenge: "description of challenge corresponding to DC".

This doesn't need to be an either/or question.

[Sashi]

It's not that you have "Demon Super Locks" scattered everywhere, it's that if you're good enough at picking locks that you succeed on "average" locks by breathing, then the fact that all the locks in a castle are giving you trouble should mean something more than just "you are high level".

[DMReckless]

I think the point here should be at some point locks, doors, and walls shouldn't fucking matter any more.

So say you want to climb a wall at level 16 and you're a rogue. Guess what? You get to . Walls are so 5th level. Hell, at 5th level, the wizard just flew over the damn wall in the first place.

At some point, determined by the math, lower level obstacles should just be irrelevant. Move on to doing something more important than climbing a goddamn wall.

At some point, you should be able to say "There isn't a wall I can't climb, a lock I can't pick, or a knob I can't polish."

And that point should be some time before or at the same time as a Wizard can say "Hey, I have an app for that."

Otherwise, there is no incentive to play anything other than a wizard.

[DMReckless]

In fact, if you keep putting points into climb up to 16th level as a Rogue, you should be able to hold onto the wall with one foot while shooting a bow and kicking the orc below you in the face with the other foot. After all, the Wizard has already been disintegrating things with his words for 5 levels.

[souran]

I think the point here should be at some point locks, doors, and walls shouldn't fucking matter any more.

At some point, you should be able to say "There isn't a wall I can't climb, a lock I can't pick, or a knob I can't polish."

The point at which there are no more challenging walls, locks or traps is the point at which the rogue is no longer fun to play. There needs be ALWAYS a more badass lock, always a more Impregniable wall etc otherwise characters whose deal is defeating walls, traps, and locks become boring.

Now I agree that there comes a point at which some tasks need to be trivial, however, the idea that at 30th level there still cannot be easy/medium/hard tasks is defacto dumping the part of the game where tasks involve challenge.

And that point should be some time before or at the same time as a Wizard can say "Hey, I have an app for that."

Otherwise, there is no incentive to play anything other than a wizard.

This is a totally seperate issue that goes to magic being perfect. If spells always work perfectly then eventually spells will make the whole "skills minigame" irrelevant.

[CatharzGodfoot]

For a perfect example of a GOOD way to present DC's to the players look at Open Lock and Jump. An "average" lock is DC 25. And players are fine with that. They know that a first level Rogue with full training and 18 dex and masterwork tools will have a 30% chance of opening that lock and a 10th level Rogue with 20 DEX and masterwork tools will have an 80% chance. The trick is that you don't present this to the player as "Level 1 difficult lock: DC 25" and "Level 10 easy lock: DC 25". You present it as "An average lock is DC 25" and then give Mister Cavern a table of DC's that shows him a DC 25 challenge is hard for a first level character and easy for a 10th.

Yeah, this is exactly my example. If you FIX the dc of locks then you end up with EQUALLY STUPID things like every lock in the entire fortress of evil being a "demon crafted super lock" because you have to have a table of locks with more impressive sounding names and dcs.

However, the imporant part is where you say:

and then give Mister Cavern a table of DC's that shows him a DC 25 challenge is hard for a first level character and easy for a 10th.

Which shows that all you have done is add window dressing. You now have two tables, one with locks with DCs and Descritptions and one with player levels and suggested DCs for hard, nominal, and easy difficulty.

The thing is: The second table is INFINATELY more useful than the first. Because while its cool to have a chart that says that DC 45 locks are made of humanoid skulls and actively bite people trying to pick them, its not neccessary because most players will accept that no matter their level or ability there exists a kind of lock that is HARD for them to open.

You just need to say what the market price is for a lock based on difficulty, and perhaps who can craft it.

It's fine to have a completely abstract table that tells you how challenging various DCs are (in fact, it's a very good idea). If you cross-reference it with other challenges (or if it's reprinted), it'll be clear how hard it is for a normal person (or a trained acrobat) to cross a rope bridge while carrying a heavy load, or how hard it is for Joe Schmo (or a master locksmith) to disable a clockwork bomb. It's even fine to have locks listed as 'locks, ratings 1 through 7' rather than 'keychain lock, handcuff lock, combination lock, kryptonite lock'.

What gets panties in a bunch is when the lock on the cellar door of the Hamhaven Inn is DC 15 at level 1 and DC 35 at level 10. At that point you should just give up on the idea of scaling DCs or skill bonuses to level.

[DMReckless]

I think the point here should be at some point locks, doors, and walls shouldn't fucking matter any more.

At some point, you should be able to say "There isn't a wall I can't climb, a lock I can't pick, or a knob I can't polish."

The point at which there are no more challenging walls, locks or traps is the point at which the rogue is no longer fun to play. There needs be ALWAYS a more badass lock, always a more Impregniable wall etc otherwise characters whose deal is defeating walls, traps, and locks become boring.

I disagree.
The game needs to come up with new, awesome things the rogue can do with those skills, rather than facing the same old challenge in a new skin. Which means the skill should be "Athletics" instead of "Climb" and "Contrivance" instead of "Pick Lock". Make the skill able to do new things at +16 it couldn't at +5, instead of doing the same thing all the time no matter the level.

A 10th level Rogue should be using his Athletics skill to bounce up to the rooftops, jump from roof to roof, and jump onto the back of the dragon as it flies by to land a killing stroke into the back of its neck, not climbing fucking walls made of ice.

He should be worrying about placing the bag of sand just so on the platform so the giant rock doesn't kill the party, not spending twenty minutes trying to get the door to the room open because the GM is too lazy to come up with something other than "All teh lockz in diz dungeon iz sooper hard to openz."

It's stupid to have a skill limitted to such a finite task, and some tasks should not have relavence after the levels they are appropriate (example: finding food could be a good 1st level challenge. Not a 16th level challenge "because you're in a really really hot desert that has like no food. In fact, everywhere you go, it's a desert.")

[Sashi]

The game needs to come up with new, awesome things the rogue can do with those skills, rather than facing the same old challenge in a new skin. Which means the skill should be "Athletics" instead of "Climb" and "Contrivance" instead of "Pick Lock". Make the skill able to do new things at +16 it couldn't at +5, instead of doing the same thing all the time no matter the level.

If you want high level characters to do crazy things with skills tie it to level-based feats or talents, not pure numeric bonuses, because then the wizard pulls out some bullshit 2nd level spell that gives him a +40 bonus to climb checks and poaches all the epic Rogue tricks.

[Manxome]

How is better to have a system that gives a bunch of ammo to argue that the MC is setting the difficulty of tasks all wrong than it is to have one where things are a little transparent.

Because the people controlling the PCs are also players in the game and have the right to form rational expectations about how the game works and have those expectations be met. If you don't want the other players to have any control over the story, go write a book.

In your version, the gameworld physics operate entirely based on MC asspull. The PCs decide to do something, so the MC chooses some difficulty for any reason or no reason at all, then the PCs roll and compare to some bullshit DC he just made up. Now, yes, if the MC uses your table, then he knows whether the DC he pulled out of his ass is easy, hard, or impossible for characters of the party's level, and that's a good thing, but the problem is that the players can't possibly know in advance whether they can climb it or not. No matter what the wall looks like, the MC could choose "easy" or "hard" or "impossible", even using your table.

The end result is still that there's no rhyme or reason to which things turn out to be easy or hard. You can come back to the same wall you climbed 10 levels ago and fail to climb it, even though you're off the RNG and the wall hasn't changed.


Having tables with task-oriented DCs only give the players ammo to argue with the MC if the MC is doing it wrong. We expect the reason that you fail to climb a wall to be something like "because it's covered in magical intelligent spikes" and not "because the MC didn't intend for you to go that way, so he chose the 'impossible' DC for your level off of a table." If the MC didn't want you to climb it, he should have chosen a kind of wall that he could reasonably expect you to fail to climb, not chosen a kind of wall that you've climbed a million times before and then arbitrarily raised the DC so that you break your neck climbing a ladder.

Now, yes, that makes the MC's job harder than if he was making up arbitrary bullshit rules for everything in the universe as he went along with no concern for consistency. It means that the MC can be objectively wrong, and it means that the PCs can do things he didn't anticipate and they might actually work even if the MC doesn't particularly want them to.

But it's also an absolute requisite for the players to form rational expectations about what things their own characters can and cannot do.


In other words, giving the players ammo to contest the MC in the event that the MC screws up is precisely the goal, because the MC isn't the only player at the table. That is, in fact, the primary goal of pretty much every rule in the entire game.

[Lokathor]

And that point should be some time before or at the same time as a Wizard can say "Hey, I have an app for that."

Otherwise, there is no incentive to play anything other than a wizard.

Not so much, because the wizard gets very few of those per day as soon as he first gets them (usually 2) and he also sets them before hand. So if he flew over the wall that's half of his level appropriate arsenal for the day. You climbed over the wall, but you could climb over walls all day if you had to.

[DMReckless]

The game needs to come up with new, awesome things the rogue can do with those skills, rather than facing the same old challenge in a new skin. Which means the skill should be "Athletics" instead of "Climb" and "Contrivance" instead of "Pick Lock". Make the skill able to do new things at +16 it couldn't at +5, instead of doing the same thing all the time no matter the level.

If you want high level characters to do crazy things with skills tie it to level-based feats or talents, not pure numeric bonuses, because then the wizard pulls out some bullshit 2nd level spell that gives him a +40 bonus to climb checks and poaches all the epic Rogue tricks.

In a System Where the Math Just Works you don't have bullshit spells like that.