FitzTheRuke
Legend
That's a big and important (IMO) distinction. There's a danger in this style of feeling too rote. It doesn't take a LOT of options to fix that issue, just a few.
D&D General The Resurrection of Mike Mearls Games.
- Thread starter darjr
- Start date
cbwjm
Seb-wejem
Xargath and the wisps is an interesting concept, not having to roll initiative for monsters/NPCs is a good idea as it's slightly less work for the DM (I've been tempted to just use 10 + dex mod for baddie initiative). I like Xargath's different phases, he'd mess up the PCs quite a bit I think considering a party of level 5 PCs and is certainly more interesting than a regular dragon.
Shardstone
Hero
I think Mearls is smoother IMO. It's also a lot more flexible.
teitan
Legend
If they actually read the DMG they would know the idea is to change the rules to suit your needs and it offers a ton of wonderful suggestions that can be used to modify the game to play how you want and it's... part of the rules.
EthanSental
Legend
Glad to see people signing up as paid members, up to 65 now. I’m certainly enjoying the post and ideas so far, thanks Mike!
Agreed
FitzTheRuke
Legend
This is similar to how I've thought of checks for quite some time. I usually see it like this:
Check: "Success Level" (Description)
to 4: -1 (Failure + Complication)
to 9: 0 (Failure; though sometimes I use "Partial Success" or "Success with Complication")
to 14: 1 (Easy Success)
to 19: 2 (Medium Success)
to 24: 3 (Hard Success)
to 29: 4 (Very Hard Success)
30+: 5 (Stupendous Feat)
In "Skill Challenge"-style group checks, you can literally add up the successes until you reach a certain value (10 being what I usually use) but while narrating all individual checks. When I create these challenges, I don't usually have any solutions in mind - just the problem, and I let the players come up with their own solutions, with a "Yes, and..." attitude.
Check: "Success Level" (Description)
to 4: -1 (Failure + Complication)
to 9: 0 (Failure; though sometimes I use "Partial Success" or "Success with Complication")
to 14: 1 (Easy Success)
to 19: 2 (Medium Success)
to 24: 3 (Hard Success)
to 29: 4 (Very Hard Success)
30+: 5 (Stupendous Feat)
In "Skill Challenge"-style group checks, you can literally add up the successes until you reach a certain value (10 being what I usually use) but while narrating all individual checks. When I create these challenges, I don't usually have any solutions in mind - just the problem, and I let the players come up with their own solutions, with a "Yes, and..." attitude.
Greenwheat
Explorer
Actually, crunching the numbers on the skills thing, aiming for about a two-thirds success rate means you want the kind of character that's supposed to find the skill check a decent challenge means you want success on an 8 on the die.
With the proposed modifiers for a first-level character, that looks like:
DC 4 - Very Easy, it's almost impossible to get a lower modifier than -4 so pretty much everyone succeeds 65% or better of the time
DC 8 - Easy, a character with no particular aptitude or skill can do it most of the time
DC 12 - Medium, a character with a reasonable level of aptitude and skill can do it
DC 16 - Hard, a characracter needs both aptitude and expertise to reliably do it
Thereafter, it does seem reasonable to carry on using the 4-point increment, rather than the 5-point increment, to judge the difficulty of a task.
With the proposed modifiers for a first-level character, that looks like:
DC 4 - Very Easy, it's almost impossible to get a lower modifier than -4 so pretty much everyone succeeds 65% or better of the time
DC 8 - Easy, a character with no particular aptitude or skill can do it most of the time
DC 12 - Medium, a character with a reasonable level of aptitude and skill can do it
DC 16 - Hard, a characracter needs both aptitude and expertise to reliably do it
Thereafter, it does seem reasonable to carry on using the 4-point increment, rather than the 5-point increment, to judge the difficulty of a task.
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