D&D 5E Is 5E Special

[UngeheuerLich]

Again: these things are for when you need to determine what a skill DC should be, once you already know that this is something that is easy, ordinary, hard, etc. for a character of a given level. The following table, for example, was published in the Rules Compendium:



As you can see, these things have fixed DCs. They are NOT scaled to match the party. That's because automatically scaling DCs to match the party is not what the rules do. It's exactly the same as the other charts on page 42, such as the one about how much damage an improvised attack should do. The Page 42 DCs are for aiding improvisation, not for rigid lockstep level-scaling.

Thanks for the table. Seems I forgot about it. So there is some connection between fiction and mechanics.

How are DCs for skill challenges determined or for locks?
And were those DCs in vanilla 4e? This one is couriosity, not doubt.
In many aspects I used to regard essentials as superior to vanilla 4e.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Thanks for the table. Seems I forgot about it. So there is some connection between fiction and mechanics.

How are DCs for skill challenges determined or for locks?
And were those DCs in vanilla 4e? This one is couriosity, not doubt.
In many aspects I used to regard essentials as superior to vanilla 4e.

4e was far from perfect... it was grindy and some set DC were needed and skill challanges needed another year or two of playtests...

 

[UngeheuerLich]

only if you plan on carrying weird extra stuff... a character with an 11 str can carry 165lbs... that puts most marines to shame

If you don't use variant encumbrance of course, which we do. But granted, 11 Str is affordable for most hexblades.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

4e was far from perfect... it was grindy and some set DC were needed and skill challanges needed another year or two of playtests...

As did the rest of 4e actually. Especially the first monster handbook.
Do you have the rules handy. Mine are in the storage. And I think I never got 4e vanilla books, because they were full of editing errors and outdated soon. So i was mostly online builder user until essentials.

 

[Nightfly]

I find it silly--well beyond the point of unreason, even--for someone to get so upset that their damage-dealing, armor-wearing, non-magical, weapon-using character is called "Ranger" rather than "Fighter" by the rules that it makes them unable to play the character anymore.

With you 100%. Not only did this not bother me, but like you, I kind of liked it. But we agree that majority opinion was very much the other way, right? Because it was.

It is absolutely NOT the most user-friendly edition of D&D ever if you consider DMs to be users. That edition was 4e.

Eh...depends. 4e was a lot easier to DM in some ways, yes. But it had too many conditions to track, too much stuff that could happen during another player's turn, and combats were often a brutal slog. I agree that 5e backslid a good bit on making the DM's job easy, but the game itself is smoother and simpler, which counts for something. Overall I think 4e was a good bit easier for DMs to prep, but 5e is in some respects easier to run.

 

[payn]

Eh...depends. 4e was a lot easier to DM in some ways, yes. But it had too many conditions to track, too much stuff that could happen during another player's turn, and combats were often a brutal slog. I agree that 5e backslid a good bit on making the DM's job easy, but the game itself is smoother and simpler, which counts for something. Overall I think 4e was a good bit easier for DMs to prep, but 5e is in some respects easier to run.

Yeap, but man VTT makes games like 4E/PF2 a lot easy to run and play.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Thanks for the table. Seems I forgot about it. So there is some connection between fiction and mechanics.

How are DCs for skill challenges determined or for locks?
And were those DCs in vanilla 4e? This one is couriosity, not doubt.

Yes, they were. DMG pg 64. The 4e RC was just a re-publication to consolidate most stuff.

Skill Challenges I will absolutely admit were...imperfect. I don't remember the exact rules for how they were determined originally. I'll have to look that up.

In many aspects I used to regard essentials as superior to vanilla 4e.

For me, Essentials is a mixed bag. I still strongly dislike the idea of cross-role subclasses, but that ship has sailed and I don't care enough to keep fighting that battle. Likewise, the noticeably much weaker design of several Essentials-era classes and subclasses (Seeker, Binder, Vampire) is not to my taste.

Conversely, I am a huge proponent of offering a variety of options with different skill floor, so long as their skill ceiling is similar. (This was a thing many noted about the 4e Warlock: it had a meaningfully higher skill floor than Sorcerer, and MUCH higher than Ranger, but essentially the same skill ceiling, so it had the same top-end optimization potential but you had to work somewhat harder to get to it.) I also love the idea of the Shadow source manifesting in the form of monster classes, e.g. I would have loved to see Lycanthrope Defender, Gorgon Controller (or some other "evil eye" type being), and maybe a Witch-Doctor Leader? Stuff like that. Go all-out with the "monster of the week" stuff.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

4e was far from perfect... it was grindy and some set DC were needed and skill challanges needed another year or two of playtests...

Completely agreed. 4e launched at least a full year too soon, it needed heavy adjustment to its presentation, the SC rules were sadly half-baked (mostly because they were something super new for D&D in general), the original Stealth rules sucked,* the MM1/2 math was slow and grindy, the first two major adventures (Keep on the Shadowfell and Pyramid of Shadows) were absolutely horrendous, the "expertise" feats were bad and should either never have existed or should have only been the version released with Essentials, etc.

4e had mistakes and missteps. Some of them, loath as I am to admit it, were in the rules. Many of them weren't the rules themselves, but the presentation thereof. Several more were poor management decisions, such as the switch to the GSL (trying to put the OGL lightning back in the bottle--it blew up in their faces very, very badly), since that's literally what created Pathfinder 1e.** A few were problems beyond any ability for WotC to control, though unfortunately these were rather painful, like the horrific murder-suicide on their digital tools team which destroyed any hope of fulfilling their digital tools goals, or the 2007 recession which led to Borders (a prime seller of D&D products) completely shutting down all stores in 2009.

*At least that part of 4e was fully traditional! 5e's Stealth rules also needed updates, and IIRC Stealth was one of the drivers of the 3.5e revision.
**If 4e had kept the OGL and supported Paizo as the official 3rd-party publisher of 4e like it had been for 3e, PF1e straight-up never would have existed, or it would have existed in a far more muted form with Paizo, most likely, producing simultaneous content for both 3e and 4e. Alas, we'll never truly know.

 

[Parmandur]

Completely agreed. In fact, I find it ridiculous to even propose the idea that "narrative balance" is a thing. Narratives are not "designed" the way rules are. You cannot "balance" a novel.

So what on Earth does "narrative balance" even mean, @Parmandur?

Edit: Also, uh..."Bounded Accuracy" has nothing to do with skills. Like, at all. So I'm doubly confused now, because that phrase is irrelevant even within the narrow confines of "5e as it actually exists."

Narrative balance is all characters getting their space.to.do something. Crawford has spoken about this, anon.

Bounded Accuracy has very much to do with Skill DCs: Fighters are very well able to do cool things with their Skills.

 

[Parmandur]

no it doesn't I showed my math

Yes,and it hashed out. That's what balance is.