Fixing high skill checks - the Rule of 3

[Kerrick]

Well then I'll restate my suggestion in a different way: do you really want to fix your problem from the player's side of the DM screen, or from the DM side? In my experience, house rules are much more effective if they operate from the DM's side because players tend to forget house rules beyond the approximate complexity of 'alignment restrictions are not enforced'.

I'll agree with the second part of that - players tend to forget house rules.

In your case, do you want PC skill bonuses to be arbitrarily small or do you want DCs to be arbitrarily high? Either answer is arbitrarily based on your [Kerrick's] perception of what kind of feats PCs of a certain level should be able to do. The only real difference is that the first way creates more house rules for everyone to learn and remember, while the second way only requires the DM to learn and remember.

I want a) to put some kind of a cap on the scaling of DCs; and b) make skills more meaningful over a longer period of play. In short, I want to hew more closely to the table in the PHB. Yes, I know it's kind of arbitrary; I've acknowledged from the beginning that this was a radical idea, and the negative responses in this thread have just reinforced that. But, I feel that putting a set of guidelines in the book and then promptly ignoring them is blatantly stupid, and I think that having to scale the DCs to the skills, instead of the skills to the DCs, is equally dumb.

I don't know if you've ever played Oblivion, but let's draw an analogy here. In Oblivion, all the enemies scale to your level - wherever you go, they'll always be around your level to provide a challenge. This leads to absurdities like bandits in glass and daedric armor, and is very unpopular among Oblivion gamers (I know this because I spend a lot of time on the Bethesda mod forums). There are a couple mods that eliminate the scaling - enemies are NOT level-dependent, but location-dependent. So, for example, a mine near one of the cities has low-level bandits in it, but a cave far from civilization has some really nasty, kick-ass beasties that'll wipe the floor with anything less than a L25 character. The monsters scale a little, but they hit a cap and don't advance any further - those bandits might scale up to L10; if you go there at L20, you'll run right through them. These mods are extremely popular because they use a logical set of guidelines - no bandits in daedric armor, for example - and it vastly improved immersion and suspension of disbelief.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

I want a) to put some kind of a cap on the scaling of DCs; and b) make skills more meaningful over a longer period of play. In short, I want to hew more closely to the table in the PHB. Yes, I know it's kind of arbitrary; I've acknowledged from the beginning that this was a radical idea, and the negative responses in this thread have just reinforced that. But, I feel that putting a set of guidelines in the book and then promptly ignoring them is blatantly stupid, and I think that having to scale the DCs to the skills, instead of the skills to the DCs, is equally dumb.

I don't know if you've ever played Oblivion, but let's draw an analogy here. In Oblivion, all the enemies scale to your level - wherever you go, they'll always be around your level to provide a challenge. This leads to absurdities like bandits in glass and daedric armor, and is very unpopular among Oblivion gamers (I know this because I spend a lot of time on the Bethesda mod forums). There are a couple mods that eliminate the scaling - enemies are NOT level-dependent, but location-dependent. So, for example, a mine near one of the cities has low-level bandits in it, but a cave far from civilization has some really nasty, kick-ass beasties that'll wipe the floor with anything less than a L25 character. The monsters scale a little, but they hit a cap and don't advance any further - those bandits might scale up to L10; if you go there at L20, you'll run right through them. These mods are extremely popular because they use a logical set of guidelines - no bandits in daedric armor, for example - and it vastly improved immersion and suspension of disbelief.

Never played Oblivion; is there some in-game reason that foes scale with PC level? 'Cause that's just bizarre otherwise.

Anyway, I guess I just don't see tweaking skill DCs as equivalent to scaling foes with level. It's not like you'd be saying 'a heroic DC is 15 + PC level', you'd be resetting the DC to a more appropriate number. Doesn't challenge my suspense of disbelief any more than RAW. Which is to say, not at all.

TS

 

[Kerrick]

Never played Oblivion; is there some in-game reason that foes scale with PC level? 'Cause that's just bizarre otherwise.

In-game reason? No, not really. That's just the way Bethesda made it.

Anyway, I guess I just don't see tweaking skill DCs as equivalent to scaling foes with level. It's not like you'd be saying 'a heroic DC is 15 + PC level', you'd be resetting the DC to a more appropriate number. Doesn't challenge my suspense of disbelief any more than RAW. Which is to say, not at all.

I guess you could do it that way, too. I was thinking about this earlier, and I think I have a better way of explaining it. See, when the PCs start out, DC 20 (or "heroic" would be well beyond their reach. As time moves on and they become heroic themselves, they can make DC 20, 25, or even 30 checks with greater regularity. It's something to reach for. If you scale the DCs with the PCs' level, they'll never achieve that plateau - they'll forever be reaching like Tantalus.

It's like epic levels: one of the most common complaints about epic is that everything is bigger and badder, but not better - skill DCs scale into the stratosphere, monsters have thousands of hit points and ACs of 50+, etc. D&D wasn't designed to scale into infinity like that, and the ELH proves it. Once you get past the range of a d20, the system pretty well falls apart. That's why we've got rules like the telescoping die roll (from the ELH) and the Rule of 10 (from these boards) to try to fix it.

Also, to answer your previous question re: DM vs. player rules... it's more of a DM-based rule. All the players have to do is divide their skill total by 3 - they can even write it on the sheet and forget about it. The rest of it falls on the DM, who has to reduce the higher-end DCs to fit the system.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

It's like epic levels: one of the most common complaints about epic is that everything is bigger and badder, but not better - skill DCs scale into the stratosphere, monsters have thousands of hit points and ACs of 50+, etc. D&D wasn't designed to scale into infinity like that, and the ELH proves it. Once you get past the range of a d20, the system pretty well falls apart. That's why we've got rules like the telescoping die roll (from the ELH) and the Rule of 10 (from these boards) to try to fix it.

Oh, I see now what you're trying to fix! Well you've plainly settled on your solution to the problem.

TS

 

[Kerrick]

Oh, I see now what you're trying to fix! Well you've plainly settled on your solution to the problem.

More or less. I'm going to keep it as an optional thing unless and until it can get thoroughly playtested, though.