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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Saeviomagy" data-source="post: 7247486" data-attributes="member: 5890">Right... but it's usually pretty easy to work out what skills apply. The only difference this really makes is whether the player talks the DM around to a different skill being used, or whether the DM just randomly made things much harder because he didn't decide on an applicable skill and the skill rules don't actually say to change DCs based on that...20% is plenty if the consequences are bad. The DMG has very little advice about consequences except to say that they might be one reason to call for a check instead of allow automatic success.A rogue or bard with expertise is still sitting at a 10% failure chance. Which is better, to be sure, but bear in mind we're now talking about only two character classes, in their focussed skills with the best available stats in place, still failing at an 'easy' task.Also that first level is actually "1-4th level". Our friend the super-specialized, maxxed primary stat rogue or bard won't get to 100% surety until he hits 5th. Finally - in what bizarro world does a non-scaling difficulty system that says a task is 'easy' not actually mean a task is 'easy'? That's the sort of poor communication I'm talking about.That's a possibility. Or it could have 'easy' checks that are actually 'easy' rather than 'the best possible character at this check still fails 10% of the time with no confounding factors'.I'm personally not surprised that the game isn't self-aware enough to realize that it's rules necessitate this.Right, but that just ends up with characters walking into a room and failing what is described as an easy task because the DM decided a roll was necessary because of 'consequences' and assigned an 'easy-but-actually-fairly-risky-if-you-think-about-it' DC, then rolled against it and failed. You've just hidden the final numbers, not the result.Right. But even previous editions of D&D did a better job at making DCs conform to expectations, through the devious mechanic of simply making a starting trained character have a high enough modifier to automatically succeed at an easy DC.</blockquote>

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