New errata for core books, dated 7/2/2008

[sukael]

Oh, and here's a snippet of it, for anybody who doesn't want to download the PDF.

Actions the Rules Don’t Cover [Revision/Deletion]
Dungeon Master’s Guide, page 42
In the fourth sentence of the Other Checks section, replace “10 (easy), 15 (moderate), or 20 (hard)” with “5 (easy), 10 (moderate), or 15 (hard).”

In the first sentence of the second paragraph of the Example section, replace “an easy DC” with “a moderate DC” and replace “DC 15” with “DC 14.” Also, remove “, but it’s a skill check, so make it DC 20” from the same sentence.

Difficulty Class and Damage By Level [Revision/Deletion]
Dungeon Master’s Guide, page 42
In the table, change the Difficulty Class (DC) Values section as follows:

[b]Easy  Moderate  Hard[/b]
5     10        15 
7     12        17 
8     14        19 
10    16        21 
11    18        23 
13    20        25 
14    22        27 
16    24        29 
17    26        31 
19    28        33

Step 2: Level and Complexity [Revision/Deletion]
Dungeon Master’s Guide, page 72–73

In the table, replace all values in the Failures column with “3”

In the second sentence of the third paragraph, remove “, and how many failures end the challenge.”

So, they want skill challenges now to be X successes before 3 failures, and with much easier DCs.

 

[Mistwell]

So it looks like for Skill Challenges, you no longer roll initiative unless the situation is combat oriented. Not everyone has to participate, and if they do participate and use an appropriate secondary skill it's no longer defaulted to a hard difficulty level for that secondary skill. DCs are now a heck of a lot easier to hit, with first through third level getting DCs 10 easier than they were before (so easy is 5 instead of 15, moderate is 10 instead of 20, and hard is hard is 15 instead of 25). The rest of the table is also easier, sometimes as much as 13 easier than it was before. In addition, it now requires 3 failures to fail a skill challenge, regardless of complexity of the challenge.

 

[Fredrik Svanberg]

Wow, a lot of good changes in this update!

My favorite:
[Blade Cascade change]

Wusses.

 

[Fredrik Svanberg]

So it looks like for Skill Challenges, you no longer roll initiative unless the situation is combat oriented. Not everyone has to participate, and if they do participate and use an appropriate secondary skill it's no longer defaulted to a hard difficulty level for that secondary skill. DCs are now a heck of a lot easier to hit, with first through third level getting DCs 10 easier than they were before (so easy is 5 instead of 15, moderate is 10 instead of 20, and hard is hard is 15 instead of 25). The rest of the table is also easier, sometimes as much as 13 easier than it was before. In addition, it now requires 3 failures to fail a skill challenge, regardless of complexity of the challenge.

I expect Stalker0 to come around and let us know how they messed up this time in less than 10 posts.

 

[Pickles JG]

Keywords [Revision]


​

BEAUTIFUL! No need to bother damage splitting anymore.

Excellent I was planning to house rule this as I was impressed by the same rule in Helldorado

 

[Kraydak]

I expect Stalker0 to come around and let us know how they messed up this time in less than 10 posts.

They did, of course. The system keeps its extreme sensitivity to small DC/skill modifiers, with the *new and added* bonus that to succeed at high complexity checks you now need an even higher success rate/check which puts you even nearer the edges of a d20 (and so magnifies the sensitivity even worse). At least they now allow players to not participate in the challenge.

 

[Mistwell]

They did, of course. The system keeps its extreme sensitivity to small DC/skill modifiers, with the *new and added* bonus that to succeed at high complexity checks you now need an even higher success rate/check which puts you even nearer the edges of a d20 (and so magnifies the sensitivity even worse). At least they now allow players to not participate in the challenge.

They changed the DCs pretty drastically however, so I don't think we can conclude this is a problem until we run the numbers again.

 

[Kraydak]

They changed the DCs pretty drastically however, so I don't think we can conclude this is a problem until we run the numbers again.

It is worse than I first thought. To have an "interesting" (about 50/50) chance at a high complexity SC, you need about an 85% success rate/check. Note that this is *only* a +3 away from a 100% success rate (less than 2 aid-others...). How sensitive is that? Well, if you have an 85% chance at level 1, pump the relevant stats at every level and take demi-god than by lvl 30 you will have a skill modifier +15 (level)+5 (stats) higher than at lvl 1. Moderate and Difficult skill check DCs at lvl 30 are 18 points higher. You now have a 95% chance/check (and, coincidentally, above a 95% total success rate).

Further, note that someone who is trained in a skill with a stat that they are pumping will succeed at moderate skill checks 100% of the time. Trained OR stat pumping will auto-succeed at easy checks. So if your party has someone who is trained and stat pumping a skill, and that skill works for your skill challenge, the difficulty *has* to be set to hard or he will auto-pass the challenge. Even *if* it is set to hard, if he gets even a +2 he might well still auto-pass the challenge.

If by "fixing" skill challenges you mean "making skill challenges impossible to fail if you work at all at it, and impossible to succeed if you don't", WotC did a bang-up job. Of course, in addition to the above, you retain the previous versions *extreme* sensitivity to small modifiers that makes them very hard to use.

 

[Mistwell]

It is worse than I first thought. To have an "interesting" (about 50/50) chance at a high complexity SC, you need about an 85% success rate/check. Note that this is *only* a +3 away from a 100% success rate (less than 2 aid-others...). How sensitive is that? Well, if you have an 85% chance at level 1, pump the relevant stats at every level and take demi-god than by lvl 30 you will have a skill modifier +15 (level)+5 (stats) higher than at lvl 1. Moderate and Difficult skill check DCs at lvl 30 are 18 points higher. You now have a 95% chance/check (and, coincidentally, above a 95% total success rate).

Further, note that someone who is trained in a skill with a stat that they are pumping will succeed at moderate skill checks 100% of the time. Trained OR stat pumping will auto-succeed at easy checks. So if your party has someone who is trained and stat pumping a skill, and that skill works for your skill challenge, the difficulty *has* to be set to hard or he will auto-pass the challenge. Even *if* it is set to hard, if he gets even a +2 he might well still auto-pass the challenge.

If by "fixing" skill challenges you mean "making skill challenges impossible to fail if you work at all at it, and impossible to succeed if you don't", WotC did a bang-up job. Of course, in addition to the above, you retain the previous versions *extreme* sensitivity to small modifiers that makes them very hard to use.

You're not running all the numbers, you're just half-assing it at a glance and declaring a conclusion. Color me unimpressed. You might well have a point, but if you want to make that point it's probably better to go to the thread now dedicated to it and run the numbers the same way that everyone else did for the last set of numbers.

 

[FireLance]

They changed the DCs pretty drastically however, so I don't think we can conclude this is a problem until we run the numbers again.

I just did a quick running of how a level 1 moderate skill challenge (DC 10) is likely to play out assuming a trained character (+5) with a decent ability score (+2).

The base success rate per check is 90%.

At complexity 1 (equal to a standard monster), the character has a 98.4% chance to succeed, and a 1.6% chance to fail.

At complexity 5 (equal to a solo monster), the character has a 84.2% chance to succeed, and a 15.2% chance to fail.

The odds of overcoming a skil challenge seem to have turned in the PCs' favor. Some might say too much - but then, we're notoriously hard to please, aren't we?