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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cynlas" data-source="post: 4442441" data-attributes="member: 34699">Learning Roll QuestionHi again; I now have a question regarding the learning roll itself. The DC calcualtion makes sense, but what is unclear is what the PC gets to add to the roll to beat the DC. Is the Blue Mage using the same knowledge skill that they used to identify the beastie to also make the roll? Or are they making an unmodified D20 roll? Or, is it an INT check? I assumed, on first reading, that you'd use the appropriate Skill to make the learning roll, however, in such a case the DC seems too low to me, as a 10 INT Blue Mage will likely have a constant 50% chance of learning a power, which I think may be a little too low. A 'competent' Blue Mage (who should have a higher than 10 Int) will have an even easier time of it. I guess it depends on what you end up going with on the powers side, but this might make it too easy. For example, if you are allowing the learning of any & every power seen/used by a mob, then you need to increase the difficulty of learning the powers a bit. If, however, you go with a reduced, finite list of powers capable of being learned, like in the FFXI version, then I think the DC 15+ should be about right. Afterall, we don't want to cripple the Blue Mage player any more than we want to hand them powers on a silver platter. On the rolling side, consider the difference in what can be added and how it affects the chances of hitting a dc 15: Skill Roll: Int Mod + 5 (Skill training) + 1/2 Level : At least 45% (down to 30% if a 16 INT or 20% if INT is 20) failure rate at first level.  INT Roll: Int Mod + 1/2 Level : 70% failure rate (down to 45% if a 20 Int). D20 Roll: starting failure rate of 70%, and grows each even level by 5%, until a maximum 95% failure rate for a level 10 mob (if a natural '20' always suceeds at this roll, and assuming you dont add the level bonus of the character to the base roll). Naturally, I think the base "D20 Roll" won't work, so I only put it out there as one of the possibilities for completeness' sake. The "Int roll" method might be best if you decide to allow all powers to be learned by the blue mage, and it helps allow for the individual Blue Mage's capabilities to impact the result. The "Skill Roll" method I think only works if you increase the DC, or you have a limited/restricted list of possible powers that can be learned from mobs. Keep in mind that, for a first level character, a DC 15 is considered an "easy" task by the DMG for a Skill check, but a "moderate" difficulty for a Stat check. See page 42. I don't think that the Blue Mage's learning ability should be easier than "moderate", and if I remember FFVII's version correctly, I'd say "Hard" is more appropriate (although, to be accurate, a 4E campaign will not have the endlessly available random encounters seen in most of the pre-FFXI games, so the lower frequency of available encounters should be reflected by a lower difficulty in learning, hense my suggestion at setting a "Moderate" difficulty level DC for the task.) Oh, in case I was unclear, by a 'restricted list' of available powers, I meant a defined list of what monster powers can be learned, NOT how many powers the Blue Mage can actually learn themseves.</blockquote>

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