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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5966414" data-attributes="member: 54877">One of the reasons BW works so readily the way pemerton discusses above is that its difficulties ("obstacles") are exponential when compared to in-game reasoning, and there are rarely more than 10 of them.  Modifiers can drive an obstacle up higher, but even an OB 6 is very difficult to pull off, and never a routine matter.   So it is pretty easy to remember:  OB 1 - easy, OB 2 - routine stuff by competent creatures, OB 3 - somewhat harder, OB 4 -tough --and then it goes up rapidly from there.  In practice, you might need to look up the OB5+ values to be sure, but you can pretty much guess everything below that, once you get moderately familiar with the system. It's all in the context of a normal, competent creature; so it doesn't move, either.  Of course, the math for skills in BW maps well to that, whereas a linear d20 + mod never would.  That's one of the drawbacks of a linear system. I've wondered more than once if D&D wouldn't be well served by putting the exponential part on the DC side instead of the check.  Namely, use the multiple check mechanic not for time or distance, but for difficulty, then assign all the base DCs for a low-level, common range.   For example, let's say that the DC for a competent person to sneak by a competent guard in an reasonablely hidden environment is DC 10.  Since that's an opposed check, it is functionally DC 10 + opposing Wis mod verus your Dex (+ Sneak) mod.  Instead of being able to go your speed or similar 3E/4E reading, make the check, you get by.  However, if the distance is long or you have to spend a lot of time or there are multiple guards or you have little cover, you roll multiple checks and must succeed on all of them (i.e. a lot like having disadvantage but with stacking). In previous play, stacking dice this way is bad, because people don't get the scaling odds.  You have to roll every 30 feet (despite the great cover and darkness giving you a +5), and it turns an "easy" check into something hard.  This method would reverse that, so that you learned that 1 dice is standard, 2 dice (disad version) is difficult, etc.  Then for easy, you go the other way.  Now the DCs are static (per relatively normal people) but the dice change on an easy to remember determination.   The labels attached to each set of dice would need to be clear, but if 3 dice of disad is "hard", that will get set in people's mind pretty quick as, "not gonna happen unless I'm really good at this or get incredibly luck"--which does map pretty well to "hard". <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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