Opposed Skill Roll disparity over Levels

Starfox · Mar 26, 2009

There have been numerous threads here about PC - Monster disparity in attacks and defenses. But skill disparity worries me even more. My game is only at level 8 yet, but I can see this coming.

A PC at lvl 30 gains the following skill modifiers
+15 for level
+4 in an ability constantly increased (+1 in a stat with minimal increase)
+6 item bonus in a skill you favor heavily (these things are costly!)
+3 if you go for Skill Focus

This is a spread from +16 to +28, with almost all skills getting +16 to +20.

A monster at level 30 gains the following improvements
+15 for level
+15 for ability increase

This is +30 to all skills. (I included skill training, as both characters and monsters can have that at level 1).

We thus have a disparity of 2 to 14 points. This makes opposed skill checks fairly much impossible at higher levels, at least in skills you do not put every effort into keeping high. If you use the new expertise and defense feats, you will have precious few feats to put into skills.

Can people who have actually played at these levels chime in; does my hypothetical model hold true, or is there some unforseen factor I havn't seen.

Nikosandros · Mar 26, 2009

I've only played at the heroic tier.

However, I decided to make a quick check with an ancient red dragon. He has perception +26. A character with trained stealth and a starting 18 dex (raised every time) ends up with a +28.

Oompa · Mar 26, 2009

So what skills should a level 30 monster in combat need to use?

Terrasque: Perception +19
Ancient Red Dragon: Perception +26, Bluff +24, Insight +26, Intimidate +29
Godforged Colussus: Perception +26
Runescribed Dracolich: Arcana +24, Endurance +27, History +24, Insight +25,
Intimidate +23, Religion +24

I think monsters of level 29/30 have skill of around +25

So a monster would roll around 26 - 45 and a pc with only skill training (5) and half level (15) and a +6 from ability would roll 27 - 46

No problems as far as i can see?

And if you are not trained in the skill it is just harder to beat the check, as it should be..

Starfox · Mar 26, 2009

The Wisdom of that red dragon is 22, which is awfully low if its supposed to have gained a +15 bonus over levels - it indicates a level 1 Wis of 7. The level 7 Red Dragon has a Wis of 14. This gives the lvl 30 dragon +1/3 levels to Wisdom rather than +1/2 levels.

Maybe this is the solution; the monster don't follow the guidelines in the DMG for creating your own monsters. I saw pretty early on a fan-written article on monster creation; it suggested that monsters get a -1/5 levels penalty to basically everything, specifically including stat modifiers and level bonuses.

The Ancient Red has a Will defense of 42. That is 20 points higher than its Wis modifier.

Runestar · Mar 26, 2009

Shouldn't the idea be that the PCs will find some way to max out the skills they deem important, then calculate monster's skill ranks based off that?

For example, at lv30, a PC might have...
+15 level
+5 trained
+6 item
+3 skill focus
+2 racial
+9 stat
+1 background
For +41. It is like virtually auto-success...

Wolfwood2 · Mar 26, 2009

Runestar said:
Shouldn't the idea be that the PCs will find some way to max out the skills they deem important, then calculate monster's skill ranks based off that?

What calculation should we employ? If a PC has gone to that much trouble to max out a particular skill, then arguably a near autosuccess is appropriate. Do we give a monster a 10% chance of beating a maxed PC? A 5% chance?

Alex319 · Mar 27, 2009

Starfox said:
There have been numerous threads here about PC - Monster disparity in attacks and defenses. But skill disparity worries me even more. My game is only at level 8 yet, but I can see this coming.

A PC at lvl 30 gains the following skill modifiers
+15 for level
+4 in an ability constantly increased (+1 in a stat with minimal increase)
+6 item bonus in a skill you favor heavily (these things are costly!)
+3 if you go for Skill Focus

This is a spread from +16 to +28, with almost all skills getting +16 to +20.

A monster at level 30 gains the following improvements
+15 for level
+15 for ability increase

This is +30 to all skills. (I included skill training, as both characters and monsters can have that at level 1).

We thus have a disparity of 2 to 14 points. This makes opposed skill checks fairly much impossible at higher levels, at least in skills you do not put every effort into keeping high. If you use the new expertise and defense feats, you will have precious few feats to put into skills.

Can people who have actually played at these levels chime in; does my hypothetical model hold true, or is there some unforseen factor I havn't seen.

I think your calculation of "+15 for level, +15 for ability increase" is flawed. Monsters do gain +15 for level between levels 1-30, but in order to gain +15 in "Ability modifier" their abilities would have to increase by 30 points over the course of levels 1-30, which doesn't actually happen.

It is possible that you are confused because monster stat blocks include the half level bonus under the stat modifier. For example, a Rimefire Griffon (level 20 skirmisher, PHB 147) has a listed Wisdom of 18 (+14). The +14 includes the +4 stat modifier and the +10 half level bonus. However this half level bonus is not "added twice" in the case of a skill. In the same example, the Griffon's Perception is +14 - the same as his listed Wisdom "modifier", not that plus a half level bonus.

Basically, the two +15's in your calculation are really the same +15 (the half level bonus), that you're trying to count twice.

Starfox · Mar 27, 2009

DMG1 said:
3. Determine Ability Scores. It’s helpful to think of ability scores in pairs, each pair corresponding to one of the three defenses (Fortitude, Reflex, and Will). Ability scores also help determine the monster’s attack bonuses, ability and skill checks, and Armor Class. On average, the highest ability score of a pair is equal to 13 + one-half the monster’s level. For example, the target score for an 8th-level monster is 17 (13 + 4). However, set the ability that governs the monster’s primary attacks to be 3 higher, or 16 + one-half the monster’s level. An 8th-level monster that relies on melee attacks should have a Strength of 20.

This is what my entire argument is based on. If this is not how actual MM monsters are done (I've not crunched the monster stats), then the design guidelines are wrong and I might be barking up the wrong tree.

Tuft · Mar 27, 2009

Here is a spreadsheet I threw together to compare skills over levels against target numbers over the same levels:

4E Skill vs TN comparison - Google Docs

I did it rather quickly, so I hope I got the calculations down correctly

deleteme123456 · Mar 27, 2009

MM monsters follow the guidelines if you remember that guideline != rule. There are HUGE discrepancies between the formulas and the actual outcomes. There were numerous threads on this back with 4E first came out, and eventually it died down with the consensus (in so far as there was one) being "this is not 3.5. there are not strict rules for how to make monsters. you have these guidelines, and can tweak from there as needed to make an effective monster." the MM stats thread has some analysis of "how well do monsters meet the expectations" ... that is, what is the average of (AC - level) for all the monsters... you'd expect it to be 0 if they all followed the rules 100%... and it's not. There's some over/under... I think it's off by less than 1, but not by much... when you consider that to be off by 1, over what, 200+ monsters? requires a lot of variance.