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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RFisher" data-source="post: 3437256" data-attributes="member: 3608">Agreed.Although, based on a conversation between Gygax, Kuntz, & Mornard on the Pied Piper forums, I get the impression that at least the wargamers in Lake Geneva already had that idea firmly established, even before Arneson & company showed them Blackmoor.The more I look into it, the more I wonder how many of the things we often take as RPG innovations were really already there--& already bones of contention--among the grognard wargamers.One of the things that keeps me (repeat...me) from playing 3e in the style I'd like to is this: If I set low DCs & assume Take 10 for certain things to try to fit 3e to my style, then the players are going to start to notice that putting a bunch of ranks into Spot is a waste. In the short term, a player who put ranks in Spot at the expense of other skills may get very annoyed by this. In the long term, the players will stop putting ranks into skills that--because of my DMing style--don't make a difference, thus having more ranks to put into other skills & altering the balance built into the system.So, if the game has a Spot skill, as DM I'm going to feel obligated to make it enough of a factor in the game to make the players not regret having put ranks into it.Sure, I can house-rule or take other measures to compensate. The easiest measure, however, is to try to pick a system that's a better fit for my style, though.Although, the max ranks based on level mitigates this to a certain extent. This is an area where 3e's hybrid of class & level with point-based may pay off. Of course, you have people who rail against that rule...For what it's worth, I didn't mean to imply you did.But you don't need to have an idea. The people at the table just have to come up with an answer that is good enough for them. Sure, the DM may have the burden of making the final call, but--as it's a game--it's a fairly light burden. (^_^)I'm not even sure that on many issues you could get an objective answer at all. Consult three respected scholars, & you'll probably get three different answers. But if you got them together in a D&D game, they'd all accept whichever of the three answers the DM choose & get on with the game.& I'm not convinced that picking a DC--even when you do have a good list of example DCs to go by & bother to reference them--is significantly different. I think you're still as likely to be just as far off the mark.I've lost count of the number of times with comprehensive & detailed systems that we've played it very close to the book & ended up with results very far from our expectations. (Though, I probably still need to be better about overruling the rules in cases like that.)</blockquote>

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