D&D 5E 50/50 chance is 'easy'?

[GX.Sigma]

Yeah, frankly, your right. The categories are badly named.

There are historic reasons for this, but that's not actually a great excuse.

Use this instead:

Task Difficulty = DC
Easy = 5
Average = 10
Quite hard = 15
Hard = 20
Very hard = 25
Nearly impossible = 30

Except those definitions are useless for the reasons I described in post #2. The point of the difficulty adjectives is so the DM can quickly decide which of the three basic DCs (10, 15, 20) to use. No DM asks himself "should this be average, quite hard, or hard?"

Now, if your argument is that it's more important for the game-rules-terminology to be a technically accurate description of the gameworld than to be a tool to help the DM run the game, then we'll agree to disagree.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

No DM asks himself "should this be average, quite hard, or hard?"

I do! But, I also don't limit myself to those options; "Deific" and "violates thermodynamics" are also difficulty levels.

 

[Stalker0]

a DC of 10 means anyone, even untrained and with bad stats, can succeed on the task with a bit of work. Yeah, I think it's correct to call that easy.

The context of the check actually greatly changes the perceived difficulty as well.


I might have an 80% chance to make an athletics check....but if a failure means I fall off the cliff and take big damage I wouldn't call that easy.

Further, I might only have a 10% chance to break those ropes DC...but since there is no penalty for failure and I can try until I roll a 20...I would say that task is actually trivial (the burst DCs on standard rope are REALLY low if you haven't noticed).

 

[Stalker0]

"Deific" and "violates thermodynamics" are also difficulty levels.

Actually that's an interesting question...what is the current highest check a mortal can get?


I see we have: 20 (die roll) + 5 (stat) + 12 (rogue prof bonus) + 4 (cleric guidance) = 41. So a 42 DC might be considered "beyond mortal limits".


Any bonuses I am missing? We can probably assume a +2-+4 more somewhere for Feat X, spell Y, etc etc I would imagine.