Well, Mike Mearls got promoted. Any hope for 5e?

[CapnTthePirateG]

It makes DCs the same across all levels. An expert task is always expert level. We don’t need to shift difficulties assuming that your bonus continually increases because some characters can remain untrained. The system works by removing the link between difficulty class and level. Instead, we just use a simple, descriptive system as applied to reality.

I got that from the whole "we don't need to shift difficulties" thing.

However, rereading the article, I notice that the DM still picks the ability score used on the skill. So, the bullshitting continues. Your wizard will still be using vector calculus to calculate jumping so you can try to bullshit the DM into allowing you to use your intelligence score. Your druid is going to use his wisdom because he's in tune with nature and calculating the wind. The sorceror uses his cha because he jumps from force of will. I fully expect the charop boards to come up with bullshit excuses for every stat to be used on every skill. I know I would.

[shadzar]

His latest article still is going in a direction in opposition of where it SHOULD be going, which would be REMOVE crap like feats/skills/NWPs/etc form the game unless it is the defining quality of a class as a special trick that class possesses...IE rogue climb walls.

Having general rules for situations that often come up regardless of character class (e.g. climbing, swimming, jumping) is a good thing, not a bad thing -- even if the rule is just a one-liner like "make a Str check". Whether you call those skills or NWPs or whatever is irrelevant.

I always said that the ability scores should have a function outside of jsut providing bonuses, and that fucntion doesnt make some skill system automatically exist.

the NWPs, like most earlier things including a "skills system" were NEVER originally playtested as LW didnt allow gaming at the office, so books jsut came out without any testing, jsut as ideas. Lots of stuff worked, but some jsut didnt fit.

"make an ability score check" was always there, so you didnt need to add ome finite list of things that could be done. the list was mostly suggestion and ideas of what things use what ability. secondary skills was a much better system because it didnt try to make some finite list of things the PC can do based on an arbitrary number created for a class, or with 3rd, jsut an arbitrary number based on level.

that is why those "skills"/NWPs were optional if people were getting stuck with their own ideas, and why they should have never been added permanently for 3rd or 4th as skils and or feats. they were a list of ideas, not a list of rules.

yes to the person above hogarth, but lost your post to quote...i get some people dont trust their DM, and dont even understand why they play with them if they trust them so little to mention MTP.

[Ice9]

Actually this latest one doesn't seem that horrible. Based on the fact that there is a chart of skill ranks, I presume you can increase your position on said chart - else there would be no need for anything between Expert and Impossible. So really, it works pretty much the same as the existing system would if you fixed the numbers, except that it replaces the "90% chance to succeed" and "10% chance to succeed" brackets with auto-success/auto-failure.

Now I'm not actually seeing how it "makes the DCs the same across all levels" - I mean, yes, an Expert task can stay Expert level, but then the PCs who have achieved Master level will auto-defeat it - much the same as would happen with a DC 20 task at 12th level. I guess if some PCs don't advance their skills, it would remain challenging for them - the same as how it is in 3E. I suppose it might be an easier presentation - you know just by the difficulty rank whether something will be impossible/challenging/trivial.

[hogarth]

It makes DCs the same across all levels. An expert task is always expert level. We don’t need to shift difficulties assuming that your bonus continually increases because some characters can remain untrained. The system works by removing the link between difficulty class and level. Instead, we just use a simple, descriptive system as applied to reality.

I got that from the whole "we don't need to shift difficulties" thing.

Ah...I see. I think he's just contrasting it to the bizarro 4E system where target DCs change by level; he's not saying that skills can't change by level. At least that's my interpretation.

[Username17]

Yeah, Mearls is basically saying that using the 3e system of having DCs being specific numbers for specific tasks is something that works at all. That is significantly different from the 4e system that doesn't. But it's pretty depressing that he is passing that off as a new insight.

-Username17

[Daztur]

Yeah, Mearls is basically saying that using the 3e system of having DCs being specific numbers for specific tasks is something that works at all. That is significantly different from the 4e system that doesn't. But it's pretty depressing that he is passing that off as a new insight.

-Username17

I think being able to pass off really obvious stuff that anyone with half a brain knows as some new insight is the most important skill for writing columns. Just look at Thomas Friedman.

[PhoneLobster]

I still think that what is needed with skill DCs is a flexible level based system with static DC guidelines.

Having a giant static table of static DCs is unworkable.

Having a small table of DCs in broad wobbly groups is not much different to just telling the GM they can fuck the players over or not as they desire. It doesn't hurt and could provide GMs some ideas as to what descriptions to give obstacles of various DCs but it doesn't help much either.

Having the GM just "wing it" leads to potential fucking over whether they mean it or not.

So really the guideline should be a "Just select a DC for climbing the wall" BUT there should be strict static skill DC guidelines. They should say things like "At this level you should encounter about X skill based (whatever skill) obstacles of Level +X, but also about X obstacles of Level and X of Level -X". The guidelines should include above level appropriate DCs so you can show off your specialist skills or see a measuring stick you later return to and defeat, and level appropriate DCs for to reward some basic generalist skill distribution. And lower than level appropriate rewards so you can see where you used to be at and win it without checks, except for that one guy who REALLY sucks at swimming.

The actual nature of the obstacles for various can then be decided by incomplete massive lists, or small vague lists, or no lists at all. That's largely cosmetic. Which skills are used to overcome obstacles whether it's swimming, climbing, lying or ball room dancing are relatively unimportant to. What is important is that the mechanical aspect where in players get solid reliable rewards for investment and can point at the obstacle guidelines and say "Hey why the fuck is EVERYTHING climbing related that you throw at me a Level+X+Y?" is the important bit.

[Swordslinger]

People aren't worried about the DM setting things too high; they are worried about unnecessarily putting character resources into a thing and having it rendered meaningless by the DM.

I mean, let's say you want to be good at climbing. You dump skill points into it, you spend feats, and have high attributes.... and the DM still adjusts the DCs so you have a 25% chance of success.

I understand, but, don't you trust your DM at all? I mean if you're going to be paranoid that he might fuck you over, why play at all? The DM can throw uber monsters at you. If he wants to create unclimbable walls, he can. It's important to give him a table of guidelines so he knows that the DC he just gave you is crazy high for someone of your level, but beyond that, yeah if the DM has a table saying "This dc is impossible for a 5th level character" and picks it anyway, that's just part of the adventure design.

And the tables don't adjust to a specific character, they adjust to a specific level. It's not like any RPG system, 4E or otherwise is specifically telling the DM to look at the orc barbarian's athletics check and set the DC such that he needs a 15 or better. There are 3 levels of DCs, easy, medium, hard, and people who invested more skill points in a task are unsurprisingly more likely to succeed.

Now if your DM goes ahead and says "These guys are trained in athletics so all the athletics checks are going to be hard difficulty" there's nothing you can do to stop that. It's the same as if your DM knows you have an adamantine dagger and starts making doors out of adamantine too.

The principle is simple, if the DM wants to hose you, he will. The rules can't stop him from doing so. If he wants a DC 35, either he directly picks a DC of 35 or an obstacle with a DC of 35. The most important thing the rules can do is let him know the ramifications of what a DC 35 means to characters of the PC's level. It's not necessarily bad to pick an impossible DC for a task, it can be part of adventure design to have some bad ways of solving problems. The one thing you don't want is the DM picking a DC and not realizing how hard it is.

[Chamomile]

A GM who makes all DCs impossible is unstoppable. Nothing can stop him from ruining your game except refusing to play it. But a GM who is setting all encounters such that you have a 25% chance of success no matter how many resources you've dumped into the skill is not necessarily doing that. He might simply think to himself that 25% is a pretty good odds for climbing a wall, and maybe even setting the difficulty to 25% has had good results for him before and he's doing it now because everyone had fun the last time he did it. What this GM isn't realizing is that between then and now, one of his players spent significant resources getting better at climbing walls, and it's frustrating to have all the walls in the world suddenly get better with him. So clearly he hasn't thought things all the way through, but so? GM is a volunteer position. You can expect some basic decency from them, because otherwise the game is guaranteed to fail, but you can't expect them to be particularly talented.

Point of all this being that making it explicitly clear that characters get higher success rates for investing resources into one thing instead of another thing and that this should not be cancelled out by Team Monster automatically improving to compensate is not a bad thing.

[PhoneLobster]

Now if your DM goes ahead and says "These guys are trained in athletics so all the athletics checks are going to be hard difficulty" there's nothing you can do to stop that.

Like hell there fucking isn't.

You specifically in the rules tell DM's not to do exactly that.

Then if they do it. Players can hold up the rules and say "Stop it" and if need be "You fucking asshole you suck as a DM!".

And then if that doesn't work your DM is clearly incompetent and not sticking to the agreed upon game.

In the mean time your trust your DM line is BULLSHIT. DMs are not gods. They are not even reliably benevolent. But even when they MEAN to be helpful if the rules don't tell them how to properly use skill obstacles many of them WILL NOT KNOW.

What is this nonsense. "Trust the DM to get everything right. Even when no one ever tells him it is wrong!".

Purely ridiculous.

A GM who makes all DCs impossible is unstoppable.

But if he has to actually break the rules in order to do so his life just became a great deal harder.

There is nothing you can do about a GM who outright breaks every rule in the book. But assuming you have anything short of that asshole having an explicit, clear, objective and difficult to misinterpret rule in the book to tell him the behave correctly isn't just "not harmful" it is actively better than the alternative.

Because your GM might just be a marginal asshole or might just not know better. The rule deals with those guys. The "but he is nice so you can trust him with everything" is bad design.

And it is also more completely unnecessary work load for your GM making him run in circles without such rules.

[Fuchs]

I think it's easy for a (lazy) DM to fall into the "I'll simply check what he rolled and if it's above 10 before modifiers he succeeded" trap if they don't give out clear DCs to the player.

[PhoneLobster]

I think it's easy for a (lazy) DM to fall into the "I'll simply check what he rolled and if it's above 10 before modifiers he succeeded" trap if they don't give out clear DCs to the player.

Which is why if I am working with some sort of flexible DC system I personally like to determine an appropriate DC in advance of the roll and openly state it. THEN we can work out what number needs to be rolled and do that bit.

That should really be in the rules "DCs are determined and declared in advance and at player request BEFORE actions". Because yeah. Among other problems solved, the over 10 thing. Far too tempting. Sooooo tempting...

[Fuchs]

Well, the truly lazy DM will simply have the player tell him what he got, since looking at the die to check the actual roll is too much work

[Swordslinger]

Like hell there fucking isn't.

You specifically in the rules tell DM's not to do exactly that.

Then if they do it. Players can hold up the rules and say "Stop it" and if need be "You fucking asshole you suck as a DM!".

Right you can write down a chart of suggested DCs you're supposed to give PCs of a certain level, but the DM can just go ahead and ignore that if he wants. At that point, the players have the option of quitting.

But you can never force a DM to run an adventure the right way. Trying to pretend rules can do that is stupid. The point of the rules is to let the DM know he's making a DC that's impossible or very hard. At that point he can choose that DC anyway, but at least it's an informed decision. He knows he's creating an impossible challenge.

The point of rules is to help the DM, not work against him. A novice DM may well not know a DC of 35 is impossible for 5th level character, and if you have a table to help clarify that for him, that helps him run the game. And actually that helps him a lot more than listing a bunch of sample world objects and their DCs.

It's too easy to fall into the trap of: "Well this guy is a serious villain, I want him to have an adamantine door." without realizing the ramifications of that. You're better to teach novice DMs to get the numbers right first, then worry about putting flavor onto it. As opposed to the other way around.

[shadzar]

A GM who makes all DCs impossible is unstoppable. Nothing can stop him from ruining your game except refusing to play it.

And that is what you have to do to get rid of the bad DMs. trying to whip someone with something in a book, isnt going to make them a fair DM. You serve yourself and everyone else better by NOT playing with those DMs and letting them go away.

[tussock]

Wait, are people really arguing bad rules are fine because All True Scotsmen will see them for what they are and make up better house rules on the fly? No True Scotsman is he who uses the rules as written?

Guys, the 4e skill rules are shit. They tell the GMs to make sure you always need to roll a 12+ to do basic, ordinary plot-furthering stuff, five times on end, and ten levels later you still need a 12+ to do that same stuff because Giant Frog. Them's the rules, which the designers house rule to be "everyone gets a puppy anyway".

It is possible to write better rules than that. One might suggest it's hard not to, and that DMs who play the game as written without being omniscient will benefit thereby.

[Josh_Kablack]

Guys, the 4e skill rules are shit. They tell the GMs to make sure you always need to roll a 12+ to do basic, ordinary plot-furthering stuff, five times on end, and ten levels later you still need a 12+ to do that same stuff.

Except that the 4e skill rules are so bad that the MC cannot even do that, because two PCs can have skill bonuses which diverge by 17 points on a d20 roll at level 1. Ten levels later you've added increased divergence from items, powers and diverging ability scores, so even figuring a DC where someone needs to roll a 12 is impossible - because at first level that's a 28 DC for the max skill character and an 11 DC for the unskilled guy with the relevant stat as dump stat.

[K]

Like hell there fucking isn

You specifically in the rules tell DM's not to do exactly that.

Then if they do it. Players can hold up the rules and say "Stop it" and if need be "You fucking asshole you suck as a DM!".

Right you can write down a chart of suggested DCs you're supposed to give PCs of a certain level, but the DM can just go ahead and ignore that if he wants. At that point, the players have the option of quitting.

It's not about the DM. Forget the DM.

It's about the system rendering skill advancement meaningless. At some point, players are going to say "you know, we are never going to get better than a 25% success rate on opening Hard-difficulty locks. Let's blow a little gold on some item that auto-opens locks because the skill system for this game sucks ass."

The problem is that the skill system was a terrible idea on first principles. You don't have to be a genius to realize that if the difficulty of skill checks lowers as you get more skill points, dramatic tension on those checks is going to vanish as you level.

The solution of raising the DCs of the same actions in order to preserve tension has the additional effect of making the whole skill system meaningless. At that point you might as well not have a skill point allocation system and just have static DCs modified by attributes and feats and powers. A whole section of the character sheet could be wiped off and replaced with a little picture of your character or something.

[tzor]

Of course skill advancement is meaningless. That's not the problem, the problem is how you state that skill advancement is meaningless.

Let's use a real world example here, and for the moment I'm going with BASEBALL. Imagine a kid in little league. He steps up to the plate against a little league pitcher. He does well. He bats "300" or less than 1/3 of the time he is going to get a hit.

He goes to Jr High School and faces a Jr High School pitcher. He does well. He bats "300" here again. Of course he is better, but so it the pitcher.

He then goes on to High School, then on to College, then on to A baseball, then AA baseball, then AAA baseball then finally to the major leagues.

Of course by now he is massively better than he was at little league. Every pitch of a little league pitcher would result in a home run for him. But he never faes a little league pitcher ever again, he faces a major league pitcher. Power against power, skill against skill. Even facing AAA pitchers is rare, and generally only because of rehab assignments.

But the skill targets are still nthe same 300 is a pretty good number to get no matter what level you are.

In every case your opponents rise in regard to your own level. Now the allure of the majors is in and of itself its own reward. So instead of I can stand toe to toe with a major league player instead of saying I can go toe to toe with a little league pitcher, we have characters who can go toe to toe with a huge dragon instead of going toe to toe with a kobold.

NO, seriously, A-Rod is not going to step up to the plate to face a little league pitcher and no one in his right mind would even consider that a viable option. All characters reach their level of challenging adventure. The adventure constantly changes (ever upwards) but the basic targets ... more of less the same ... slightly above the level needed for "awesome" and definitely well beyond the level needed for "boring."

[Stubbazubba]

So D&D would be better off if it switched to opposed rolls wherever possible?

[tzor]

D&D tended to go with the notion of only one person rolling the die. Opposed rolls (I add my stuff to my die, you add your stuff to your die, we roll add and compare) might be far easier to explain but goes against the general tendency to want to roll only one die and makes NPC/NPC interactions that more difficult because the DM has to roll both dice.

On the opposite side we have the Time Lords model. Determine the basic skill level and the target level. Determine the difference between the two. Then with one roll of two dice, beat that difference on the difference of those two dice. The result is similiar to opposed rolls only you don't know who threw which die. The distribution curve is definitely interesting.

[Josh_Kablack]

Yeah, the problem comes in when it's not a batter facing a pitcher but a rock climber facing a wall.

Sure, climbing K-2 is harder than climbing a fake rockwall at the local sportoplex but it gets weird when all the level 8 dungeon walls are extra sheer and at level 12 they are all coated in oil, and at level 18 they add gale-force winds.

Pretty much anything that doesn't include both some scaling and some non-scaling difficulties is going to offend someone's suspension of disbelief.

[Swordslinger]

Yeah, the problem comes in when it's not a batter facing a pitcher but a rock climber facing a wall.

Sure, climbing K-2 is harder than climbing a fake rockwall at the local sportoplex but it gets weird when all the level 8 dungeon walls are extra sheer and at level 12 they are all coated in oil, and at level 18 they add gale-force winds.

Pretty much anything that doesn't include both some scaling and some non-scaling difficulties is going to offend someone's suspension of disbelief.

I don't understand why this "problem" is so insurmountable for you dudes to solve. The solution is the exact same thing you'd do with monsters.

USE A LOWER LEVEL CHALLENGE!

You can put a level 8 wall in a level 12 dungeon, just the same that you can have the party encounter level 1 monsters at level 8.

[Chamomile]

Yeah, the problem comes in when it's not a batter facing a pitcher but a rock climber facing a wall.

Sure, climbing K-2 is harder than climbing a fake rockwall at the local sportoplex but it gets weird when all the level 8 dungeon walls are extra sheer and at level 12 they are all coated in oil, and at level 18 they add gale-force winds.

Pretty much anything that doesn't include both some scaling and some non-scaling difficulties is going to offend someone's suspension of disbelief.

Considering dungeons are typically the lairs of D&D supervillains, I'm really not so sure about that. If climbing a wall grants a significant advantage and wall-climbing is a common skill amongst my opponents, I'll certainly invest in huge buckets of oil with which to coat my walls and a few really, really big fans strategically placed in my corridors.

[Stubbazubba]

And that's the thing; wall-climbing usually does not grant a significant advantage. It's little more than a "you-must-be-this-tall" stick to get to the good parts of the game. And dying because you fail a climbing check, slip, and fall on to the jagged rocks below is unacceptable for most players.

Of course, by the time the villains are coating their walls in oil, the PCs can Fly, and by the time you've got magitech hurricane simulators installed, they're just Teleporting. Hence, skills are redundant past early-mid level, and we're to the point of the skills being superpowers thread.