Let's talk skill challenges for a moment.
At 1st level, an "easy" skill DC is 15. Well...how easy is that.
Let's pick our best guy for the job. We'll give him a +4 from his primary stat, and +5 for being trained, a pretty reasonable assumption. So he has a +9 to the roll, meaning if he can't take 10, then he will fail the check 25% of the time.
25% failure doesn't sound easy to me. Now let's take a guy with training but not the best at the skill, he only has a +2 from his stat. That's a 35% failure. I succeed only 2 out of every 3 times, doesn't sound very easy.
Now let's look at a moderate DC, which at level 1 is a 20. With our +9 guy, he needs an 11 or better, a straight up 50/50 chance to make a check. Let's also not forget that with this DC, you can't take 10, as it wouldn't be enough. Well...personally if I'm walking a tightrope and I have a 50/50 chance of falling off, I would consider that pretty hard.
How this really effects the players is with skill challenges. For the most part, skill challenges have moderate DCs for the challenge, and you cannot take 10. That means with every check you have a 50/50 shot at making it. This is assuming of course you are using one of your absolute best skills. Considering that you need twice the number of successes as you need failures....that means MOST skill challenges will statistically end in failure!!
For example, let's say you have a complexity 1, level 1 skill challenge for level 1 PC. About as straight forward as you can get right?
Let's assume moderate skill challenges for the board, and assume every player is rolling with a +9. Aka, everyone is got a good skill to roll on this one. The players chance of winning the challenge is....15.6%.
That's right, about a 1 in 6 chance for the most basic of challenges.
At 1st level, an "easy" skill DC is 15. Well...how easy is that.
Let's pick our best guy for the job. We'll give him a +4 from his primary stat, and +5 for being trained, a pretty reasonable assumption. So he has a +9 to the roll, meaning if he can't take 10, then he will fail the check 25% of the time.
25% failure doesn't sound easy to me. Now let's take a guy with training but not the best at the skill, he only has a +2 from his stat. That's a 35% failure. I succeed only 2 out of every 3 times, doesn't sound very easy.
Now let's look at a moderate DC, which at level 1 is a 20. With our +9 guy, he needs an 11 or better, a straight up 50/50 chance to make a check. Let's also not forget that with this DC, you can't take 10, as it wouldn't be enough. Well...personally if I'm walking a tightrope and I have a 50/50 chance of falling off, I would consider that pretty hard.
How this really effects the players is with skill challenges. For the most part, skill challenges have moderate DCs for the challenge, and you cannot take 10. That means with every check you have a 50/50 shot at making it. This is assuming of course you are using one of your absolute best skills. Considering that you need twice the number of successes as you need failures....that means MOST skill challenges will statistically end in failure!!
For example, let's say you have a complexity 1, level 1 skill challenge for level 1 PC. About as straight forward as you can get right?
Let's assume moderate skill challenges for the board, and assume every player is rolling with a +9. Aka, everyone is got a good skill to roll on this one. The players chance of winning the challenge is....15.6%.
That's right, about a 1 in 6 chance for the most basic of challenges.
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