KarinsDad said:
Absolutely, it should be a set DC. But, since nobody ever has enough points for Sense Motive, does that mean that the DC should always be less than 20? Otherwise, they will never make the roll and why bother with it. Or, if there is a Rogue in the group, should the DC be higher sometimes?
I wouldn't think DC. I would think of how insistant that Guard is and set the DC accordingly. If he raises his voice and keeps on telling that said tavern is best even after he ran out of reasons to do so, the DC would be around 5. If he just mentions the tavern once and says it's his personal preference, the DC would be 20 or so. No matter how good the players' sense motive bonuses are. If they aren't able to get the hint, their adventure will be a little harder, and if they suspect that the guard has some reason to send them there, it won't help to much anyway: he could be the son of the landlord, he could be bribed by the landlord, he could be blackmailed by some evil bloodsucking vampire ghosts that slaughtered all the wenches and wait for the paladin to arrive to drink his blood, transforming him into a good-like being. But the adventurers wouldn't know. I'd say they could deduce the general reason for the guards action, but the DC should be so high that only a real good judge of charakter (someone who actively pursued the sense motive skill, maxing it out and having it on the class skill list) could make the roll.
They are two different things. Practically every character in a party should be able to hear the same faint noises. The difference is in either skill (WotC method), or experience and skill (my method) to both pay attention to it and recognize that it might mean something.
How many times in real life does someone say “Hear that?”? Practically every time, most people can hear it, it is just the observant people who actually notice it in the first place. The Listen skill is about noticing things, not improving your ears.
Yea, now I got your meaning. And it is in fact a good argument why listen should be a prober skill: everyone can hear the stuff, and many can notice sounds that are quite easy to notice, but if you want to be a good listener you have to practise your talents, which is represented by placing skill points in it, skill points that can't be spend somewhere else.
They should be good due to experience. Doing the same job (adventuring) day in and day out should automatically increase characters ability to recognize danger signs, look in the appropriate places for problems, etc.
The problem in this discussion is that you do not consider Spot and Listen and potentially Sense Motive as skills that adventurers would learn automatically over time. I do.
Just like a woodsman would learn over time to not sleep in the rain or to not stay out in the sun too long or to seek high ground when dark clouds come in so that he does not get caught in a flash flood, adventurers would also learn to look behind doors, look above doorways, listen carefully at closed doors, etc.
Well, we already had the example of driving several times: if you cause a crash, you should learn that you have to drive more cautiously. But some people have to learn it the hard way by having an accident another time. And other people never learn and destroy one car after the other (I heard about people who have 6 cars a year, and they sold none of them....)
What you do is as follows: you increase the number of skill points for the classes (I said I would allow that) and add the three skills to some class skill lists (although I wouldn't do that: you already have more skill points, so it won't be so bad to have it as a cross class skill. And if you insist on having it as a class skill, you have to multiclass, forsaking some benefits of a higher level in your old class!). Then people can take those skills more easily. If they don't want to, make them learn the hard way! If they are ambushed thrice a game session and still don't consider taking ranks in listen and spot, or if they're fooled by every second person they meet and still take no ranks in sense motiv, then they are stupid and deserve it!
The game is designed to have certain classes be blind as bats and dumb as posts. Idiocy.
If you make listen, spot, and sense motive inherent features like bab, then _everyone_ will have a certain aptitude for them sooner or later. I don't think that's right.
The “only a Rogue with this level of Searching can find this level of traps” is a stupid rule. So is the Find Traps spell.
No it ain't: the better you are, the more devious traps you can find. Almost everyone will notice that big hole in the ground with only a couple of twigs and nearly not enough foliage over it, but you have to be a master in your craft to notice that 1-mm-depression in the floor.
Sure, the rule that only rogues can find and disarm traps with a DC of over 20 is not perfect. But they have to have an advantage with traps - it's a thief ability and probably has been since OD&D (though I can't say for sure since I only know AD&D2 and D&D3). We could raise the DC's for everyone else by 10 points or so, but rogues have to be better in dealing with traps.
Oh, you mean like swinging a weapon?
Just because WotC did not make weapon fighting a skill does not mean that it isn’t one.
However, the game works better with the BAB concept.
The game would also work better with the BPB concept (Base Perception Bonus).
Fighting has always been a very important part of D&D and "deserves it's extra rules. But if we start to take the skill system apart again, after it was brought together only in the most recent edition of the rules, we would be right back to AD&D.
In AD&D there were "thief skills" which could ONLY be learned by thieves, and that included climb walls and hear noises. Other characters _maybe_ had a wisdom check for that. 3e incorporated all that into a single skill concept. And that's good. It keeps it all easy. Your system would incorporate additional columns into the class tables, after BAB, FORT, REF, WILL.
BAB, and with that, fighting, is, as I said, an important part of D&D (which is combat oriented) and deserves an extra system for this alone. Also, it's something you are doing with adrenaline in the veins, there is an enemy right in front of you who attacks you. There's always the factor of luck (with natural ones and twenties) because of this.
Saves deserve to be handled differently, too: They are a pure reaction, and failure always means that something bad happens to you (you're poisoned, dead, charmed, scared, paralyzed...). Also, you have the factor of luck with natural 1 and 20.
But skills, including spot, listen and sense motive are there to accomplish something, and don't cause harm by themselves if you fail. You won't die because you didn't hear that guy up in the trees. You'll die (maybe) because he then can sneak attack you, cutting your throat or something.
In fact, if 3E had come out with this, I doubt you would be arguing against it.
We'll never know. But I say that I would be annoyed by class that have 8 columns consisting only of numbers. (Level, BAB, Fort, Ref, Will, Spot, Listen, SenMot). That's one of the things that annoy me with the monk: a damn big table. And now imagine the monks table with 3 more columns.
So, two of the most important skills in the game are effectively beyond the reach of most characters. Yes, you can take a rank or two of it here and there, but typically enough to not make a difference, especially at higher level.
So, although the group of adventurers have been doing this for years, they are still so myopic and get ambushed and surprised all of the time, just because the game system has a stupid design flaw in it.
Logically, it does not make sense that seasoned adventurers would be non-observant. However, the cross class and low skill point features of the game design FORCE that to be the case, even if a given character decides to max out these types of skills, it isn’t enough and it takes up most or all of his skill points.
It’s just a stupid design period. IMO.
If you make it to easy to be on par with the rogues if it comes to sneaking and detecting, you eliminate the possibility of a succesful assassin. That's just no fantasy.
I've read a couple of books and seen a couple of movies with roguish characters in. They went undetected most of the time. That thief could sneak in the palace even if there were guards. If he were caught by every second guard, the film would have been boring.
So make it more easy to have decent values in spot and listen, but don't make it to easy or even something that always happens, _or_ reduce assassins to people who are lousy fighters with the only good thing to say about them that they can open locks and disarm traps, because it's a fact in D&D that rogues are known to be able to sneak up on the fighter most of the time, just as it is a known fact fighters hit rogues most of the time. If you make the "defense" against sneaking an automatic thing, make the "defense" against being hit (AC) an automatic thing by providing everyone with a +1 to AC every X levels. So we end up with a game where everyone is good at everything and at the next step we get rid of classes and levels, eventually of rules. Would be good for my bank account: these rulebooks cost money. Would be better we just sit around a table with a set of 5 normal dice (found in the ludo box), say what we do and on a 6 it succeeds. Easy and fair. Without weaknesses for the players, without excitement.
