What are the practical limits of d20+mod vs DC?

[pemerton]

But only in an artificial environment will you have a 8382 + d20, and be asked to beat 8392. If that's your high jump skill, and you can jump 8382 + d20 feet, you can jump to the top of a cliff 8382 feet tall with no problem and can't jump to the top of a cliff 8402 feet tall with those in middle giving you problems.

<snip>

If your DC is always in the 8382-8402 range, what's the point in having a skill (or whatever) that high? It doesn't mean anything; your character is no better at doing things related to that skill in practice then when they had a 0 and DCs were 0-20.

You seem to be assuming - with your high jump example, for instance - that the function of a skill bonus is to model the limits and parameters of some fictional capacity. That may be true for Runequest, Rolemaster, d20, GURPS, HeroQuest, etc. But it is not true for HeroWars/Quest or Maelstrom Storytelling. And it is only partially true for Burning Wheel or (in my view) 4e.

As to the question of what is the point of having higher numbers, if the scaling ensures that the situations in game remain as challenging as ever? At least one answer to that question is the one that I think applies in 4e - it makes a difference to the story. Assuming that a 4e GM uses the monsters that the system provides for him/her (in the MM, MV etc), and follows the encounter building guidelines in the DMG/DM Kit, then low level PCs will fight kobolds, orcs etc while high level ones will fight pit fiends, Orcus etc. Thus the growing numbers produce a significant change in the fiction - and produce a campaign whose backdrop, very roughly, is "the story of D&D" - start with humanoids, end with demon princes.

 

[prosfilaes]

As to the question of what is the point of having higher numbers, if the scaling ensures that the situations in game remain as challenging as ever? At least one answer to that question is the one that I think applies in 4e - it makes a difference to the story.

I buy that for a value of 30 or so. I have a hard time believing that when your BAB is 62 that you're really going to be thrilled about going to 63, especially since you know that all the demons you're facing have leveled up too. I find it ludicrous that anyone would take a skill of 8382 + d20 seriously. Adding a four digit number to every dice roll to carry on the illusion that you're doing something different then when you had a skill of 10 just isn't going to fly. Gee, what's the DC this time? Eight thousand three hundred and ninety what?

 

[Desdichado]

As to the question of what is the point of having higher numbers, if the scaling ensures that the situations in game remain as challenging as ever? At least one answer to that question is the one that I think applies in 4e - it makes a difference to the story. Assuming that a 4e GM uses the monsters that the system provides for him/her (in the MM, MV etc), and follows the encounter building guidelines in the DMG/DM Kit, then low level PCs will fight kobolds, orcs etc while high level ones will fight pit fiends, Orcus etc. Thus the growing numbers produce a significant change in the fiction - and produce a campaign whose backdrop, very roughly, is "the story of D&D" - start with humanoids, end with demon princes.

It's easy to see how that's a very unsatisfying way to structure the game for a lot of folks, though, which is why level issues with D&D remain a sore spot that will probably always rub a lot of folks the wrong way as long as "the story of D&D" continues to be told the way that it is. It simply doesn't make a lot of sense from any point of view other than a strictly gamist one. The DCs (or targets, or what-have-you have to keep pace with bonuses, otherwise the game isn't fun to play--well the cosmetic change to everything in an attempt to keep everything the same isn't really satisfying either. Not to mention that it's supremely inelegant.

I know D&D is really sold on the concept of leveling, and probably for good reasons. But it seems that there's got to be a better way to flatten the power over levels. I know that was a design goal of 4e--stated, even--but I don't know how well that it was accomplished (I don't play 4e, although I have read through a bit of the books.) Probably not nearly as well as it still needs to be.

In addition, I recall seeing some survey results from WotC--I wish I had them in front of me still, but I don't know where they went or where I saw them to begin with--that suggested that very few games actually utilize the majority of the levels in D&D. Whether that's because of percieved problems with higher level D&D or some other reason I don't know, but I find it curious. It seems to me, anyway, that there's a general and very rough consensus of sorts that D&D is really only good for about half--maybe less--of the levels that it provides, after which point the game behaves poorly due to the numbers issue and because of game-breaking spells. An elegant design would either fix the other levels, or simply do away with them entirely and focus on the part of the game that most gamers are utilizing anyway.

 

[pemerton]

It's easy to see how that's a very unsatisfying way to structure the game for a lot of folks, though, which is why level issues with D&D remain a sore spot that will probably always rub a lot of folks the wrong way as long as "the story of D&D" continues to be told the way that it is. It simply doesn't make a lot of sense from any point of view other than a strictly gamist one. The DCs (or targets, or what-have-you have to keep pace with bonuses, otherwise the game isn't fun to play--well the cosmetic change to everything in an attempt to keep everything the same isn't really satisfying either. Not to mention that it's supremely inelegant.

I know D&D is really sold on the concept of leveling, and probably for good reasons. But it seems that there's got to be a better way to flatten the power over levels. I know that was a design goal of 4e--stated, even--but I don't know how well that it was accomplished (I don't play 4e, although I have read through a bit of the books.)

I think you've picked out two important issues for D&D.

One is "what does level gain mean"? Is it a mechanical benefit, or a story benefit? Classic D&D tends to present it as a mechanical benefit first, a story benefit second (eg I get to build my stronghold). 3E tends to present it as a mechanical benefit, with the story elements being stripped out (as I understand the game), but with its CR rules in fact makes it a game of "running to stand still". In 4e, the absence of mechanical benefit from levelling becomes transparent - or, rather, the mechanical benefit consists simply in having a more complex/interesting PC, not a numerically more powerful one. So I think 4e has clearly returned to the idea of levelling as a story benefit - and when you look at the tier descriptions in the PHB this is signalled pretty clearly, although the adventures that WotC are publishing don't really bring this out.

I'm sure there are other good ways to do story benefits without levels. Though - probably out of habit as much as anything - I have a certain fondness for levels as one way of doing it. I don't know that it's that inelegant.

The second issue, about flattening the scaling, fits with the story perspective on levelling in this way: how quickly does the story change? In 4e, a monster of a given level remains viable as a foe across a range of 4 or more levels, and it is mathematically very simple to adjust a monster level by 1 or 2 on the fly (more than that and you might want to check the numbers in advance). This is closer to classic D&D than to 3E, I think. It also opens up the possibility of level gain counting as a mechanical benefit in the short term - the monsters I fought last level are still viable foes, so the GM is likely to keep using them, but I am noticeably mechanically stronger against them than I was. I had this exerience in my own game - my players fought Goblin Skullcleavers (a level 3 monster) at every level from 1st to 5th or so. At 1st level the Skullclearvers were dangerously strong. By 5th level they were dropping in a round or two. So the story that is progressing via the scaling also has a sub-story about the PCs getting stronger against fierce goblins.

The one thing you say that I think I disagree with is that "scaling as story progression" makes sense only from a gamist perspective - though I'm not quite sure what you mean by "gamist" here (I don't think you mean it in the Forge sense of "playing the game to demonstrate skill/chutzpah"). Anyway, I think this sort of "story scaling" makes sense as long as you're prepared to decouple the numbers from the gameworld - ie they're not a model or a measure of anything, so much as a framework for working out who wins conflicts how often and how well. The fiction of the gameworld is to be settled by reference to the outcome of those mechanically-resolved conflicts (or, where appropriate, by free roleplaying), but won't just be read off the numbers. It's taking the same attitude towards bonuses and scalings as anyone who doesn't treat hit points as meat takes towards damage rolls (ie a damage roll of 8 means something different, in the fiction, against a skilled duelist compared to a first-level mage, and means something different against the duelist who was at full hit points, compared to the duelist when struck on 1 hp).

 

[pemerton]

I buy that for a value of 30 or so. I have a hard time believing that when your BAB is 62 that you're really going to be thrilled about going to 63, especially since you know that all the demons you're facing have leveled up too. I find it ludicrous that anyone would take a skill of 8382 + d20 seriously.

I hadn't realised that the 4-digit number was intended literally. The claim was that large modifiers make the die roll irrelevant. My point was that they don't, provided that they are correlated with appropriately scaling DCs. Or to put it another way (and I think someone else said this upthread) what matters, when judging the limits of d20 as a resolution system, is not the absolute mods, but the difference between the mods and the DC.

 

[Desdichado]

So I think 4e has clearly returned to the idea of levelling as a story benefit - and when you look at the tier descriptions in the PHB this is signalled pretty clearly, although the adventures that WotC are publishing don't really bring this out.

I think it's still an open question how well they met that goal, though.

I'm sure there are other good ways to do story benefits without levels. Though - probably out of habit as much as anything - I have a certain fondness for levels as one way of doing it. I don't know that it's that inelegant.

I think they are, still, when you have to make the claim that a +8342 bonus vs. a target DC of 8352 makes the die roll of a d20 still relevant. That's true, I suppose, but the artificiality of the target DC is supremely inelegant.

The one thing you say that I think I disagree with is that "scaling as story progression" makes sense only from a gamist perspective - though I'm not quite sure what you mean by "gamist" here (I don't think you mean it in the Forge sense of "playing the game to demonstrate skill/chutzpah"). Anyway, I think this sort of "story scaling" makes sense as long as you're prepared to decouple the numbers from the gameworld - ie they're not a model or a measure of anything, so much as a framework for working out who wins conflicts how often and how well. The fiction of the gameworld is to be settled by reference to the outcome of those mechanically-resolved conflicts (or, where appropriate, by free roleplaying), but won't just be read off the numbers. It's taking the same attitude towards bonuses and scalings as anyone who doesn't treat hit points as meat takes towards damage rolls (ie a damage roll of 8 means something different, in the fiction, against a skilled duelist compared to a first-level mage, and means something different against the duelist who was at full hit points, compared to the duelist when struck on 1 hp).

By gamist I mean the same artificiality. It's a goal that rubs the game design side of the hobby, ignores any other considerations, and in fact possibly has significant deleterious effects on some of them. For a person who approaches the game with a more narrative perspective, the fact that DCs are supposed to scale with bonuses so that the difficulty of accomplishing meaningful tasks at any given level remains the same regardless of bonus--the "running to stand still" as you call it--it is the blatant artificiality and the blatant, "we're playing a game here" is a major "take you out of the moment" event.

I don't think the solution is necessarily that levels have to go, just that what it means to level up needs to change. What you describe for 4e seems to be a small, hesitant step in the right direction--although frankly, I hadn't heard that perspective from many who've played 4e yet, and I wonder still how well 4e did at accomplishing that goal--and I wonder still if even if it does, it's enough. Frankly, it may be that for a lot of folks who still like playing D&D, "the story of D&D" as you call it just isn't the story that they want to tell with D&D. Paradoxical as that may appear to be.

 

[pemerton]

Frankly, it may be that for a lot of folks who still like playing D&D, "the story of D&D" as you call it just isn't the story that they want to tell with D&D. Paradoxical as that may appear to be.

That's probably true.

These days I only play with my own group, so my sense of the wider D&D community is derived from these (and similar) forums. And one thing that surprises me is how many people seem to be trying to make D&D deliver a game that would be more easily acheived using another system - particularly when I see people playing highly exploration-focused, somewhat gritty games, I wonder why they don't use Runequest or HARP or even something like The Burning Wheel.

For a person who approaches the game with a more narrative perspective, the fact that DCs are supposed to scale with bonuses so that the difficulty of accomplishing meaningful tasks at any given level remains the same regardless of bonus--the "running to stand still" as you call it--it is the blatant artificiality and the blatant, "we're playing a game here" is a major "take you out of the moment" event.

I think that's an area where mileages vary. My approach to my 4e game is basically what the Forge would call "narrativist" - Story Now, but with story being the result not of any one person (player or GM) aiming at story, but rather me (as GM) doing my job, of setting up engaging situations for the players, and the players dong their job of playing their PCs to the hilt in those situations.

The DCs don't impede this, because the players aren't looking to the DCs to get their sense of the gameworld. They're looking directly at the fiction - the fiction that I'm narrating as GM, and that they create through their own endeavours at action resolution. And 4e is quite rich in this, in my view, because it has very evocative mechanics, for those who like that sort of thing - for example, in 4e a wight with a horrific visage gets an attack that inflicts psychic damage and pushes foes away - so the story is revealed not just through description, but through mechanical resolution of the action. It's really secondary to the play experience whether the wight's attack bonus or AC or damage roll is 1 point higher or lower - it's the keywords (psychic damage) and the effects (a fear-typed push) that define the fiction.

In some ways its like HeroQuest or Maelstrom Storytelling - the DCs (with their scaling) don't objecively measure the world, but rather set the relative difficulty for the PCs. But it's got the tactical crunch in combat that (at least some) traditional RPGers enjoy.

I'm in no way saying it's the only, or even the best, way to set up DCs and scaling. I've GMed a lot of RM, which uses objective target numbers, and where PC bonuses really mean "mechanical progression" and not just "story progression". And if I was to start running a different game from 4e, it would probably be Burning Wheel, which uses objective target numbers as well, and in its GM guidelnes emphasises the use of objective target numbers to build immersion in the setting in the way that (I think) you have in mind.

There's definitely more than one good RPG in this world!

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'm in no way saying it's the only, or even the best, way to set up DCs and scaling. I've GMed a lot of RM, which uses objective target numbers, and where PC bonuses really mean "mechanical progression" and not just "story progression". And if I was to start running a different game from 4e, it would probably be Burning Wheel, which uses objective target numbers as well, and in its GM guidelnes emphasises the use of objective target numbers to build immersion in the setting in the way that (I think) you have in mind.

The BW scaling was one of the things in the back of my mind when I asked the original question. For those that don't know, BW uses a dice pool system, where your "obstacle" (OB - AKA "difficulty") is usually in the 1 to 4 range for reasonable tasks, only going higher when opposed or doing very tough things. You skills and attributes can't go any higher than 10, which is 10 dice in the pool. You need one success per OB to succeed. Naturally, there is a whole host of other things that modify the OB and how the dice pool works, but that is the heart of the system.

This doesn't, by itself, create much room for scaling. But relevant to this topic, the BW equivalent of tiers is black, gray, and white dice. White is very rare, and would be reserved for superpowerful characters and/or very aged ones. Black is mundane, and Gray is the stuff in the middle--a dragon might have Gray armor and claws, for example. But characters don't move into a tier wholesale--they move from black to gray and gray to white with individual abilities.

There is, of course, a mathematical effect from changing to gray or white. Mainly, whereas a black die only succeeds on a 4-6 (on d6), the gray succeeds on 3+ and the white on 2+. You can calculate the odds of this, and except for being a bit confusing for those who aren't used to die pools, could be simulated with any number of mechanics. However, where it really shines in the sense of scaling is in the differences that happen by change in "tier".

For example, a character that manages the very difficult task of getting gray reflexes is incredibly fast in the "Fight" subsystem. More interesting, gray armor pretty much stops damage from black weapons. But the best aspect is that even a starting character that is very skilled has the option to trade a lot of dice for an upgrade in tier. There is a huge difference in play between a gray 3d6 and a black 8d6. The gray character is sacrificing current ability for future, greater mastery.

So if we assume for a moment that d20 + mod should limit the mods at around 10 (as several have suggested), and that DCs should be set accordingly, a corresponding system might be adding multiple d20s when "skill" gets high enough. This still preserves the possibilities of failure on normal DCs, but radically shifts the odds towards success. But mainly, like BW, if you name those shifts to 2d20, 3d20, etc., then you can attach meaningful new effects, that will change the nature of how the game feels.

I rather suspect that blind mathematical scaling without much in the way of overt changes to mechanics is what makes 4E feel a bit blah in this regard (and 3E a bit out of control). (I'm aware that 4E has extra powers at the tiers which change things, but we are talking strictly the feel of the mechanics here. I'm sure there is something equivalent in 3E, but those don't change the mechanics either.)

 

[Desdichado]

These days I only play with my own group, so my sense of the wider D&D community is derived from these (and similar) forums. And one thing that surprises me is how many people seem to be trying to make D&D deliver a game that would be more easily acheived using another system - particularly when I see people playing highly exploration-focused, somewhat gritty games, I wonder why they don't use Runequest or HARP or even something like The Burning Wheel.

Reasons vary, but one that I think is frequently left off the list--but which in my opinion probably impacts a lot more tables than any other--is that no other system does everything you want it to either. Maybe Burning Wheel or Runequest or HARP delivers on that particular aspect of what I'm looking for, but disappoint on a number of other levels. Picking a system isn't as simple as looking through a bunch of them and finding one that does everything I want it to and delivers exactly the experience I want. I have to make compromises and settle for things that sit a bit uncomfortably with me, and it's more of an art than a science in deciding which quirks and flaws (from my point of view and for what I'm looking for a system to deliver, that is) I can live with or easily avoid or houserule away and still enjoy the game vs. those that are going to be too aggravating to deal with over time.

You also get to a point where it just isn't worth the effort anymore. My current homebrew setting, that I've been tinkering with for several years, comes with one of the campaign models from d20 Past as its "endorsed and supported" system of choice, with a custom XP chart that way slows down advancement, and no expectation that the game will ever get above, oh, I dunno, 10th level or so. I actually think that in many ways, Savage Worlds might be a better fit for the setting, but I just don't want to go to the effort of figuring out Savage Worlds enough to run it I'm happy enough with a slight applique of houserules to d20 Modern, or a more significant applique of houserules to 3.5 D&D when my players would rather go that route. Unless you're a real system junkie (I'm not) then a system that is good enough is... well, it's good enough. I've given up looking for the Holy Grail system that does everything I want exactly as I want it, and that's OK. I just don't want to mess with new systems anymore.

That doesn't mean that there aren't still a handful of issues I have with my "good enough" system that I still tinker with to try and mitigate. The impact of leveling changing "the story of the game" is one of them.

And while it's neither here nor there, the difficulty in running combat without a map and figures or some kind of representation of the combat on a grid is another.

 

[howandwhy99]

d20+8,382 vs DC...... what? Who cares! The high roll is almost 42 times the modifier. So is the low roll.

That should be "the modifier is almost 42 times the roll results for the highest roll." Don't post tired I guess. Or too casually

Also, my post wasn't meant to be against anything in 4E. Their tier system is why they d20 vs. DC roll works for 30 levels. They have 10 levels of d20+x for Heroic and d20+x+ ?? 20? I'm not sure. This adds to the practical difficulty of addition for players, but it's still in the double digits. Not rocket science. I think they do it so 11th level Paragons can still face 10th level Heroic challenges for example. It blends well.

With the 8382 modifier I was trying to say it makes the roll irrelevant (or mostly to whatever degree) because the game becomes a compare-your-scores diceless game. The higher the numbers involved the more rarely a d20 die need be rolled. Why spend the time? Auto-success and auto-failure are the name of the game for many diceless or randomizer free games.

One drawback I was trying to point out about going over 18 as a modifier limit is lower level challenges stop being challenges. For example, a level 1 foe with DC 10s [not airplanes] stops being a challenge versus anyone with a modifier of 9. They have auto-success. In retrospect I guess auto-success would happen routinely starting with DC 2s, so we might try having all DCs at 10 or over and then use a mod limit of 9.

Is making low level challenges auto-successful bad? Not really, but I would say, like any rule set, it molds to some playstyles better than others. Can we go back and face the level 1 kobolds at level 20? Yes, but there is no chance of failure. There may even be 0% chance of being hit. We've "tiered" out of the kobolds effectiveness. I said stuff like this were mosquitoes, but in-game mosquitoes already are in this condition. (Really, who runs a challenge vs. a CR 0.00000001 mosquito? or any CR below 1?) Most any game already presumes a low end of what is challenging as well as a high.

Whatever the choice, in design terms I think knowing how dice and numbers change the game in terms of relevancy as well as practicalities at the table helps.