New Legends and Lore:Difficulty Class Warfare

[AeroDm]

IMHO this is a good thing. Being 20th level in itself is awesome there isn't a need to become a jack of all trades based purely on level. A physically weak wizard doesn't suddenly sprout a Mr. Olympia physique at high level.

Basic areas of weakness shouldn't dissappear due to level. It might be possible for a character to evenly distribute training across many types of skills being competent at many but master of none.

For this to be a worthwhile thing, adventures will need to feature a wide variety of challenge difficulties so that hyper specialization isn't considered mandatory just to be competent.

I don't disagree with what you wrote, but that wasn't my point... Let me try again.

This variant makes it easy to set a DC, but it doesn't help you know if it was a *good* DC. In older editions it is hard to say if this should be a 17, or a 19, or a 20, but you had a good idea of how different characters of different levels would interact with those DCs. In this variant, you can confidently argue "this is a Journeyman DC" and feel good about the decision. But you have no idea if it will be too hard, too easy, or just right for your party. So the fix (easy to pick a DC) sort of misses the real problem of the current system where it is hard to pick a *good* DC.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I don't disagree with what you wrote, but that wasn't my point... Let me try again.

This variant makes it easy to set a DC, but it doesn't help you know if it was a *good* DC. In older editions it is hard to say if this should be a 17, or a 19, or a 20, but you had a good idea of how different characters of different levels would interact with those DCs. In this variant, you can confidently argue "this is a Journeyman DC" and feel good about the decision. But you have no idea if it will be too hard, too easy, or just right for your party. So the fix (easy to pick a DC) sort of misses the real problem of the current system where it is hard to pick a *good* DC.

I understand the concept but I don't believe every single thing in an adventure needs to be tailored to a specific sized hoop of competence just to insure all the PCs can jump through it.

If adventures are designed without "must pass" choke points, there is room for the trivial, the challenging, and the nigh (or actually) impossible. Keep in mind that some things that are beyond the reach of a party at the present time can be revisited later when skills and circumstances have improved.

For example, when figuring out the difficulty of detecting and disabling a trap don't waste time thinking about who might trigger it, concentrate on who designed and built it. If it was designed by your typical not-so cunning kobold it is likely to be easily avoided (except by other kobolds). A lethal trap set by a master of the thieves guild will be difficult to detect or disarm (master level perhaps).

Once you have a good idea about these two traps and the difficulty is set based on a solid foundation they will appear where they need to be.

 

[Markn]

Don't run toward the cliff? lol

Seriously. Don't run toward the cliff.

This is called fictional positioning.

LOL. Ok. My point is this - there ARE times where time is of the essence, and if someone can't do something how is that handled? There are tons of examples out there. On another note - can you assist someone with this system?

Don't get me wrong, I like the system but I'm just not seeing the whole picture yet and my drow sense is tingling with some vague warning I can't quite place yet.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I understand the concept but I don't believe every single thing in an adventure needs to be tailored to a specific sized hoop of competence just to insure all the PCs can jump through it.

If adventures are designed without "must pass" choke points, there is room for the trivial, the challenging, and the nigh (or actually) impossible. Keep in mind that some things that are beyond the reach of a party at the present time can be revisited later when skills and circumstances have improved.

I'm wishy washy on this question. I like the 4E approach better than the 3E approach, in that "things that aren't challenging aren't worth rolling for, and so why do you need a DC at all?" standpoint. But I think the 4E approach did have to go this extreme because it collapsed a distinction in order to make the difficulty obvious to the DM. How hard is X? Well, what level are the characters, and do you want X to be a challenge? Then it is N hard.

What the DM (or adventure writer) really wants is a way to set up something reasonable--such that a standard party will at least have a decent shot of dealing with it. That has proved difficult to do with simply having an increasing number associated with DCs, because of the reasons listed in the article. With a level of indirection, however, you can split the difference between 3E and 4E on this question.

That is, if I am writing an adventure, even for my own group where I know their capabilities, unless ability power is tightly constrained, as with 4E, then I don't really know that a DC 20 Diplomacy check is N tough. (Sure, for my own group, I can determine this. But for every check, for an adventure I might be writing ahead of time? Let's get real. I'm going to eyeball it.)

With the proposed system, I don't care about the DCs when writing the adventure. I care that this stuff is master rank and that other stuff is journeyman rank. To the extent that I do care about what the players have, it is easier to remember. I know they are a bit ahead of the curve with Diplomacy. So then I can take the 3E slant and put in a Diplomacy journeyman problem that I know they'll walk all over (taking the 3E view that it best describes the issue) or I can say, "Hmm, this really is a journeyman problem, but I'll need something tougher here to challenge them," and then change the problem accordingly.

Only when the adventure is getting played and the characters are clever or pulling out their bonuses and so forth do I care about the DCs.

 

[pemerton]

You don't think we'd have granularity for "easy for a Journeyman/moderate for a Journeyman/difficult for a Journeyman"?

I'm just going on what Mearls wrote - it's his system!

It is waaaaay too light on the Random And Fun scale for me. Meaningful choices are all well and good, but rather than being the sole engine of success, they should, for my fun, be allowed to modify the chance of success. If chance doesn't play much of a role, for me, there's little reason to bother with it.

Nothing wrong with that. I might even agree with you!

Because I haven't seen this sytem fully written up, and haven't seen what else it might be integrated with, and haven't tried playing with it, I don't know if I like it either. But I think it is prima facie coherent and interesting.

I am someone who likes the idea that players can get assurance of success in some form when it really matters. But Mearls's suggestion is not the only way to do it. Just thinking about possibilities off the top of my head - one natural alternative to a mechanic that allows auto-successes is one that lets players spend Fate Points at key moments to ensure success (eg HeroWars/Quest). But D&D has tended not to do this.

And another alternative is one in which failure is closer to "success with complications" than the traditional D&D approach of "failure means FAILURE" - Burning Wheel is closer to this, and skill challenges as described in the DMG and DMG2 tend towards this too, although I'm not sure that WotC's published implimentations reflect this. And either of these works well with a "say yes or roll the dice approach", which means that sometimes success is auto because no one has a different view as to how they want events to unfold.

So like I said, I don't see Mearls's system as THE SOLUTION - just an interesting idea.

 

[Sammael]

LOL. Ok. My point is this - there ARE times where time is of the essence, and if someone can't do something how is that handled?

Just like IRL: if time is of the essence, and you don't have the skills needed to make it in time, you either buy more time or you lose. That creates more dramatic tension than making all party members good at something.

Mind you, from a dramatic standpoint, losing is not all that bad. It can create all sorts of plot complications.

There are tons of examples out there. On another note - can you assist someone with this system?

I'd certainly declare that you could.

The Orc Chase Example:

The party is running from an orc warband in the badlands. They make a wrong turn into a narrow canyon and suddenly, they are facing a sheer cliff face with no ledges and few handholds. The DM declares that this is an Expert level challenge and that the orcs will arrive in approximately 5 rounds.

The party is comprised of a Fighter with Journeyman rank in climbing, Rogue with Expert rank in climbing, Mage with no rank in climbing, and Druid with Novice rank in climbing. The actual skill that governs climbing is immaterial and the ranks I listed are effective ranks (they take into account both skills and ability scores).

Since the Rogue is the best at climbing, she can make it to the top of the cliff in one round. She declares that she is spending two additional rounds so that she may drive some pythons pitons here and there into the cliff face.

Meanwhile, in order to buy time, the Mage creates a Silent Image to make it appear as if the canyon is closed off by rocks. The DM declares that since the orcs are hot on their tails and can follow their tracks, it will take them two rounds to recognize the illusion. Still, that's two rounds more than they had to begin with.

The Druid prepares a long rope and ties it around the Mage's waist. The Fighter checks whether the rope is secure, picks it up and ties it to his belt.

At the beginning of round 4, the Rogue is on top of the cliff, and the Fighter now has enough handholds to climb after her (challenge difficulty has been reduced to Journeyman). It takes the Fighter two rounds, since he is less skilled than the Rogue.

While the Fighter is climbing, the Druid casts a spell that increases her Strength, increasing her effective climbing rank to Journeyman. She begins to climb as soon as the Fighter has moved far enough up the cliff.

At the beginning of round 6, while the orcs are still trying to figure out the illusion, the Fighter starts pulling the Mage up.

At the end of round 7, just as the screaming orcs figure out the illusion and pour into the canyon, the Fighter manages to pull the Mage up to the top, and the Druid makes it on her own. The Rogue takes a large jug of cooking oil from the Fighter's backpack and pours it down the cliff face, making it extremely slippery - despite the pythons pitons, the cliff is now a Master level challenge and the orcs can just sit and growl in frustration as the party runs away.

All this took 7 rounds, or less than a minute. Time was very much of the essence. The whole party cooperated and managed to pull through.

 

[Sammael]

Gah! Pitons, I say, pitons! XD

 

[LostSoul]

LOL. Ok. My point is this - there ARE times where time is of the essence, and if someone can't do something how is that handled? There are tons of examples out there. On another note - can you assist someone with this system?

I imagine it would be handled by adventure creation - that is, the DM would be advised to allow for meaningful choices on the parts of the players. If, through their choices, the players get themselves into a situation where someone can't do something, they'll have to accept their failure.

That's what I was getting at with my previous response. If the starting situation is the one you described, I don't imagine the DM will have players for much longer. If, on the other hand, the PCs made choices that put them into that situation - deal with it.

*

Assisting others is probably similar to carrying a pole while walking a tightrope. There doesn't need to be any special rule for that; the DM can use his judgement to determine when assistance would be of help and when it wouldn't, just like any other possible modifier.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think the terminology narms me, too. "I have journeyman perception" is meaningless jargon to me (and to any newbies, I imagine), but "When I swim, I roll this dice and get this bonus, and if I get high, I do it well" is pretty intuitive.

I think a lot of the methods here are looking for ways to achieve "auto-success." There's already a way to do that in D&D. It's called Take 10 (or sometimes Passive Skill Checks or sometimes Take 20 or whatever) and it works wonders, since it lets you automatically do easy things, and yet also scales with both your natural skill and your training, and still forces you to try and do hard things.

The way that this falters for many, it seems, is that it doesn't permit as much "Auto-Failure." Someone could roll a 20 on the dice and do something extraordinary just 'cuz they're lucky. Likewise, even someone who is good could get unlucky in an instance where they couldn't use a passive skill check.

For me, this is a feature. I want my heroes to be capable of great, unexpected success, and horrible, unexpected failure. I want to be able to engage in tension-filled moments with every PC, where they have a chance of accomplishing something. Dramatic moments of exploration and interaction. Auto-Success and Auto-Failure actively work against that, since what you have is what you have. The result -- barring heavy DM intervention -- is said and done with. Now, that's often a useful outcome -- I don't necessarily want to have to make the barbarian roll to move a statue around. But that's what passive skill checks ("Take 10" and the like) are for. They don't fail at providing auto-success, what they do fail at is providing auto-failure.

So auto-failure isn't an appealing selling point to me. I don't need to be more empowered to say no.

What is an appealing selling point is reducing the skyrocketing DC's on some of the skills. By and large, if my bonus is over +10, there's almost no point in rolling dice anymore, mathematically. I wouldn't mind that curve flattened, but I'm skeptical that this will accomplish that goal, at least without deeper sacrifices to my fun than I'd be willing to make.

It's also appealing to me to have everyone contribute in a dramatic skill situation, but this method actually decreases the possibility of that happening, since getting it to happen requires plying the DM, which is deeply unsatisfying gameplay for me.

I am a lazy DM. I do not want to have to make thousands of micro-judgments about the permissiveness and results of an action that the rules don't handle. Furthermore, I like players to be empowered to change the world on their own, rather than asking me for permission at each turn. The more active they are, the more reactive I can be, and the easier my job is.

So I guess the two things I see this system potentially accomplishing that the current skill system can't already accomplish are both things that would reduce the fun of the game for me. I don't want to adjudicate permissible actions, and I don't desire stronger rules authority to say "No."

I don't see this system actually accomplishing much of what Mearls sets out to accomplish in the intro, though I'm on board with some of those stated goals in general.

 

[FireLance]

The way that this falters for many, it seems, is that it doesn't permit as much "Auto-Failure." Someone could roll a 20 on the dice and do something extraordinary just 'cuz they're lucky.

...

For me, this is a feature. I want my heroes to be capable of great, unexpected success

...

So auto-failure isn't an appealing selling point to me. I don't need to be more empowered to say no.

What is an appealing selling point is reducing the skyrocketing DC's on some of the skills.

These are the points I particularly agree with.