D&D 5E (2014) Justin Alexander's review of Shattered Obelisk is pretty scathing

[Hussar]

Err...

Guidance is on the spell lists of Cleric, Druid and Artificer.

Incredibly, not on the Bard spell list!

Cheers,
Merric

True, but, he did mention bardic inspiration as a source of skill bonuses.

 

[Ancalagon]

Leveling is kind of pointless in terms of setting challenges, because as the DM you always want to hit that sweet spot where the players have to be clever and there is some risk to keep the game exciting. So as a DM you go from simple latch locks at level 1, to padlocks, to combination locks, to magical locks, or whatever suits the narrative, but the level of challenge remains more or less the same. You still want to push the characters.

So right now my home campaign is level 9. I'm not going to bother with situations where they have to worry about a trap that does 2d6 fire damage or something - what would be the point?

The point of levelling is to allow characters to face different challenges, but not for players to feel less challenged.

Once in a while though... let them wreck something. Like regular brigands or goblins or something attacking them on the road... It doesn't matter if there is no challenge, let them enjoy their power.

 

[Ancalagon]

And, I really need a quote from WotC to show where they said that devils aren't necessarily evil. Sorry, not going to take that one on faith.

I wasn't going to say anything but... yeah, I too would like a quote.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Wizards has actually had to say that Devils are not all necessarily evil. That is kind of at odds with the actual definition of Devil.

If you look at many of the classic adventures from the old days, slavery was featured quite a bit, and maurauding orcs or Goblins or whatever was a common theme as well.

Are you referring to where it's been said that a risen devil can exist like a fallen angel? Redeemed fiends have outright been said to be rarer than fallen celestials.

Also marauding orcs and goblins is still fairly common. The only difference is that it's generally good to make clear that they are raiders who are causing problems.

 

[Clint_L]

Once in a while though... let them wreck something. Like regular brigands or goblins or something attacking them on the road... It doesn't matter if there is no challenge, let them enjoy their power.

Feel free. You know your players.

 

[Lanefan]

This. The world shouldn’t change to match the PCs. The PCs should be exploring the world and discovering some areas are way over their pay grade… for now.

While at the same time discovering some other areas that are way under their pay grade, but wouldn't have been had they got there six levels ago.

 

[Lanefan]

That's what I'm saying. It is absolute. You're just using their level as an index. It's not causative.

I'm not sure if we're agreeing or not here.

If while designing your adventure you're starting with the mindset "the task/check should be 'difficult' for the characters that I know will be in this adventure" and then setting the DC to suit that without also justifying that difficulty in the fiction, then we're not in agreement.

But if you're of the mindset that "the fiction tells me what the difficulty of this task/check ought to be and so that's where I'll set it", completely agnostic of any characters that might ever have to do this task, then I have no disagreement.

So for example: if your adventure contains a slippery cliff that in the fiction would be pretty tough to climb for those without much skill, you might set the DC of climbing it at, say, 19* - whether the adventure was intended for 1st-3rd level characters or for 14th-16th.

* - yes, 19. There is no reason whatsoever to limit DCs only to numbers divisible by 5.

Yes. I literally said so. "You know that it is already supposed to be hard."

The table does not give you justifications. It is there only once you have justifications, and you need to know what number lines up with those justifications.

This isn't complicated. You only pick a DC when you know that the task is supposed to be difficult for its context!

I get this. And as long as that context doesn't include anything about the characters attempting the task, all is good.

This is like saying that giving monsters numbered CRs is causing them to be hard. No! Exactly the reverse! We know the monster must be hard, and so we figure out what numbers that is meant to represent, and then assign a number to communicate that difficulty. That's what the DC table is for. It does not tell you, "When the party is level 24, every single hard check should be X value." That's lunacy!

Conceptually, we agree on this much.

Instead, it tells you, "Oh, you've decided that you need a hard check, in the context that your level 24 character is facing? Alright. A level 24 character would find X value hard."

There's my issue. The fiction you're writing/designing should be what drives the DC, rather than the expected level of the characters that will be encountering it. So, if you're writing a high-level adventure* and you want to put some locks in that pose a real challenge for level-18 thief-types, then IMO you need to justify those stupendously difficult locks in the fiction in order to explain why lesser locksmiths didn't pick them ages ago.

* - and yes, this is a big reason why writing high-level adventures (or writing them well, anyway) is hard work: everything needs to be justified such that when players (in or out of character) ask about it, you've already provided the answer to the DM so she's not left floundering.

The table only comes into play when you already know what you need conceptually, you just need to give it a number so the mechanics can fire. It is literally exactly the same as a GM inventing numbers on the fly by having a really really good intuitive sense of how challenging the Lair of the Demon-Saint should be.

Yet again we're back to agreeing. If I'm designing the Demon-Saint's Lair (or inventing it on the fly, whichever) then yes, there's gonna be some damn tough challenges in there; and the fiction/lore will justify their presence even if I have to invent that on the fly as well. But if I'm running a published module then I-as-DM have a right, I think, to expect that fiction/lore to have been put in place for me: I shouldn't have to invent anything.

And note that the capabilities, levels, etc. of the characters aren't part of the equation; and if some low-level types have, despite warnings, blundered into this Lair then so be it: nice knowin' ya. Flip side: if the Lair proves to be a pushover for the PCs then so be that too.

 

[Lanefan]

Sadly, too many. And it is but one cage among many. The cage of names, for example, is a particularly pernicious one.

Cage of names?

Care to elaborate? What's the cage of names?

 

[Lanefan]

Leveling is kind of pointless in terms of setting challenges, because as the DM you always want to hit that sweet spot where the players have to be clever and there is some risk to keep the game exciting. So as a DM you go from simple latch locks at level 1, to padlocks, to combination locks, to magical locks, or whatever suits the narrative, but the level of challenge remains more or less the same. You still want to push the characters.

So right now my home campaign is level 9. I'm not going to bother with situations where they have to worry about a trap that does 2d6 fire damage or something - what would be the point?

The point of levelling is to allow characters to face different challenges, but not for players to feel less challenged.

While I agree with this to a fair extent, I still want those trivial challenges (e.g. the 2d6 fire trap) to mean something even at high level, even if it's only a minor inconvenience. This is why I don't like how 5e (and 4e, for that matter) have moved so far away from a long-term attrition model.

 

[Lanefan]

Didn't play a lot of thieves, eh?

Thief skills advanced rather slowly and started abysmally low. And nearly every roll was modified by some condition. Some were mentioned in the skill itself, some in the equipment section, and some hidden in the DMG. But if the DM wanted to, there was always a way to penalize thief skills.

In theory, a high level thief was great at thievery. In practice, any challenge worthy of your level was most likely penalized. So it was great if you liked picking on low power, low value targets. But to be honest, I'd much rather have expertise and reliable talent to show off my mastery of thief skills.

This depends, obviously, on the DM. Myself, I'm modifying those rolls all the time, sometimes penalizing the Thief and sometimes giving a bonus, depending on the in-fiction situational specifics.