New Legends and Lore:Difficulty Class Warfare

[pemerton]

Complexity Without Payoff: Hooray, everything now needs two elements to measure difficulty: a DC AND a difficulty rating.

As MerricB pointed out, the difficulty rating replaces DC-setting - the only time a die is rolled is if skill rank = difficulty, in which case the DC is a static 15.

"Impossible": Do you for reals need a rating for something the DM just tells you you can't do?

In Burnning Wheel, say yes or roll the dice can be applied by the GM to him/herself - ie "There is no confict here, because that is impossible, therefore no dice need to be rolled".

HeroQuest has a "credibility test" in scene framing - which is to be negotiated between participants, with the GM taking the lead, and with genre considerations as the main constraint.

"Impossible", in Mearls' scheme, seems to me to occupy the same conceptual space.

No Surprising Results: So I guess I can't even try to be awesome with a good die roll? No? You're just gonna shut down my fun right there? Great. Thanks. Guess I'll keep chugging along on this railroad you've helpfully laid for me. Choo Choo.

I'd call "surprising results" a feature of skill systems that, when engaged, change the in-game situation in a pleasing and unexpected way. Is that what D&D needs in a skill system, though?

<snip>

You'll still get surprising results, but they will come from the player's ingenuity, not a lucky die roll. Focusing the skill system to make player skill an priority is a good thing in D&D, in my opinion.

I think LostSoul is right here. In addition, it seems to me that this sort of system could easily be drifted by allowing the "advantage ranks" or "penalty ranks" to derive from emotional/thematic factors rather than mere cleverness. (A bit like the bonus dice from Spiritual Attributes in TRoS.)

So I don't see the railroading at all. In fact, by making the situation mechanically transparent to the players, it seems to me to facilitate them making meaningful choices.

 

[Sammael]

FWIW, I think the talk about separating actions from skills was in part talking about how a rulebook should be organized. If I want to check the rules for Climbing, I shouldn't have to know that Climbing is under the Climb skill, or under Athletics skill, or under Cliffhopper feat. There should be a chapter on exploration (or a similar broad topic) which should cover all actions that are usually used in exploration. Each action description would then mention which skills/feats that particular action is tied to/dependent on.

 

[Anselyn]

And yet there is no mention of level in the system Mike describes here. Possibly the skill system is going to be divorced from level.

Or related to tier? So upper limits for Heroic/Paragon/Epic could be Expert/Master/Grandmaster. Possibly with lower bound floating up too?

I guess that even epic characters can't do the impossible otherwise we'll all having breakfast at Milliways.

I suppose that you can always retain fumbles and criticals to allow characters to fall below or rise above their normal limits. Although the trapeze artists don't fall 5% of the time. You can slip down one level but not two? That's a bit like the mastery system in HeroQuest I think?

 

[delericho]

Two things:

1) I can see a system like this causing major arguments: the DM declares a difficulty of X, the player is adamant it should be Y (because at X he has no chance to succeed, while at Y he at least gets to roll).

2) When writing a pre-gen adventure, what should the difficulties for tasks be? There's no tie between the difficulties Mearls has put forward and character level, nor is there a clear rate at which PC ability increases. So, where do you pitch the difficulties?

(Incidentally: I'm not a fan of this system. I never liked "Trained Only" skills in 3e, since I'd much prefer that PCs at least have a chance to perform the action. This system essentially expands the "Trained Only" model a whole lot further.)

 

[vagabundo]

mmmm I wonder if WotC have taken on Freelancers - like Monte - in secret for the 5e project. Is this Mike dropping hints.. lol

Anyway, the skill system seems soild enough, something I could get behind. I like the idea of having novice, journeyman, etc on my player's sheets rather than a number. Sounds better to me.

I hope he will still use the skill talents as an optional extra, as I think they would add some nice options for fleshing out a skill monkey character.

This discussion about surprising results makes me think about what, exactly, the skill system is being used for.

I'd call "surprising results" a feature of skill systems that, when engaged, change the in-game situation in a pleasing and unexpected way. Is that what D&D needs in a skill system, though?

From the article:

It encourages smart play and engagement. A player with a clever idea can shift the DC one level and turn a check into an automatic success, or an impossible challenge into one with a chance of success. I personally like this because it gives the DM a lot of leeway to use the system to shape his or her game.​

I think that is a better goal for a D&D skill system. You'll still get surprising results, but they will come from the player's ingenuity, not a lucky die roll. Focusing the skill system to make player skill an priority is a good thing in D&D, in my opinion.

That was one of my favourite bits from the article. I'm going to want to allow something, I like to see the PC perform awesome stuff, but I'll want them to think of something clever to lower the Difficulty rank for a situation. It will get them more engaged in the action or story. It gets more details and hooks into the game. I get a lot of "I roll dipolmacy to talk to the Orcs - rolls high - that's 31.". "Yeah, but what do you actually say?? What's your tack?".

 

[Balesir]

Hmm. The "words not numbers" thing strikes me really as semantics. The system as described is essentially identical to having each level of training give +15 to the d20 roll (and each level of DC be 15 higher than the one below). The only issue there seems to me to be granularity.

A more serious issue to me, which Mike Mearls doesn't really specify, is the scope of individual skills and the scope of the skill list. Extensible skill lists are lovely in theory - and can work well for specific play styles - but they have an issue with "competence reduction". What I mean by this is that any system that allows for newly added skills can effectively progressively reduce the competence of existing characters. The existence of "ranks" in skill tests implies that the whole scope of possible activity must be (theoretically) covered by the existing skills (unless there are possible skills that the characters are simply not allowed to have). A newly added skill, therefore, must take "territory" from an existing skill. In 4E, for example, let's assume that handling a raft is covered by Nature skill. "Joe the Raft Handler", trained in Nature, is then stuffed when the new skill "rafthandling" comes along; suddenly his skill set is suboptimal for the very thing he's supposed to be good at.

Free definition of skills avoids this by the implicit assumption that the extant skills do cover all of the possible expertises, but they just haven't all been named, yet. But this system hides a different issue; the problem of variable potency. Different descriptions - and different interpretations of those definitions - will have, at least potentially, vastly different utility in the game. In some, character or story-focussed styles this may work fine. But a group of optimisers will either have a field day or devolve into nightmare arguments trying to optimise the semantics of skill descriptions...

From the article:

It encourages smart play and engagement. A player with a clever idea can shift the DC one level and turn a check into an automatic success, or an impossible challenge into one with a chance of success. I personally like this because it gives the DM a lot of leeway to use the system to shape his or her game.​

I think that is a better goal for a D&D skill system. You'll still get surprising results, but they will come from the player's ingenuity, not a lucky die roll. Focusing the skill system to make player skill an priority is a good thing in D&D, in my opinion.

This brings up a different issue. "Player Ingenuity" cannot be objectively measured. What is (generally) meant, in practice, therefore, is "whether or not the DM likes the idea". That is not necessarily a problem, but it is definitely an issue that needs to be addressed. Adding magic items, feats or whatever to adjust difficulty is one method already mentioned to move away from this, but it can feel like a tightening noose to flexibility. PrimeTime Adventures addresses the problem neatly by giving all the players a (randomised - 50% chance it counts) vote on "ingenuity" type calls, but D&D creates a problem with this approach if it is intended to be a "team of players" style game; the players vote for "team players" rather than their perception of the quality of an idea.

It's a fraught area, but I'm afraid I don't see any radical improvement with this new scheme - just a move from near one end of the scale (+2 for training) to near another (+15 for training).

Edit: plus a massive increase (+2 to +15 again) in the bonus given for "situational bonuses", aka DM fiat.

 

[TwoSix]

(Incidentally: I'm not a fan of this system. I never liked "Trained Only" skills in 3e, since I'd much prefer that PCs at least have a chance to perform the action. This system essentially expands the "Trained Only" model a whole lot further.)

It's funny, because that's the aspect of the system I like most! I prefer a system where spending character resources makes you markedly better at a skill, and where training trumps natural ability. I hate when the Int 10 fighter knows the mating habits of gelugons because he rolled a 20 and the wizard with 15 ranks of Knowledge(the planes) doesn't because he rolls a 1.

 

[LostSoul]

This brings up a different issue. "Player Ingenuity" cannot be objectively measured. What is (generally) meant, in practice, therefore, is "whether or not the DM likes the idea". That is not necessarily a problem, but it is definitely an issue that needs to be addressed. Adding magic items, feats or whatever to adjust difficulty is one method already mentioned to move away from this, but it can feel like a tightening noose to flexibility.

Edit: plus a massive increase (+2 to +15 again) in the bonus given for "situational bonuses", aka DM fiat.

Can you help me understand what you're getting at when you say, "magic items, feats or whatever to adjust difficulty" - is it that the chance of success (on the d20) is increased by acquisition of these things, thus you don't rely as much on DM judgement?

Anyway. "whether or not the DM likes the idea" is a well-tried method for dealing with the issue. I think problems with that method usually arise when the DM's job/agenda isn't to be an impartial arbiter of the situation (as much as possible for humans, anyway), but instead to make rulings with bias that lead to preferred outcomes.

 

[delericho]

It's funny, because that's the aspect of the system I like most! I prefer a system where spending character resources makes you markedly better at a skill, and where training trumps natural ability. I hate when the Int 10 fighter knows the mating habits of gelugons because he rolled a 20 and the wizard with 15 ranks of Knowledge(the planes) doesn't because he rolls a 1.

That's probably a matter of the Difficulty Class not being set quite right, combined with the excessive swing of the d20 itself. It can probably be fixed by a simple extension of the "take 10" rule, and perhaps various "skill mastery" talents.

But the characters in the books/tv shows/films that I want to emulate forever seem to be pulling all sorts of hidden talents out of the bag whenever they feel the need. The last thing I want is for my players to decide they want to fly off on dragons... only to discover they can't because it's a Master application of Ride and they only trained up to Journeyman level.

 

[TwoSix]

But the characters in the books/tv shows/films that I want to emulate forever seem to be pulling all sorts of hidden talents out of the bag whenever they feel the need. The last thing I want is for my players to decide they want to fly off on dragons... only to discover they can't because it's a Master application of Ride and they only trained up to Journeyman level.

That would also seem to be a case of the Difficulty Class not being set up right.

I would assume that the DM would have a lot of leeway in setting the Difficulty Class, particularly to model something as genre-specific as riding dragons. If a sentient creature like a dragon goes out of his way to make a smooth ride (thinking Falcor from The Neverending Story), that would be novice. A dragon that's resisting you (as in Avatar) I could see as a Master level difficulty.