Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="JamesonCourage" data-source="post: 5967776" data-attributes="member: 6668292">Well, again, this is by permission of the GM. The GM should say &quot;yes&quot; to giving players things (within advice guidelines); the GM can use these guidelines (since they're not the rules of how hard tasks are) if he wants to allow all PCs to be able to complete a task. The things you named are essentially &quot;here's how to be nice to your players for this style of play,&quot; not so much &quot;here, players, have some abilities that allow you to affect the story in a reliable manner&quot; like daily abilities are.It's kind of like saying &quot;the Barbarian player may want to rage, gaining a bonus to attack, damage, and toughness; when he does, you should probably say yes.&quot; Or, you could just give the Barbarian player an ability that lets him fly into a rage, where he gets those abilities, letting him have the power to choose when the effect occurs.Yes, exactly! Even with &quot;objective&quot; DCs, the GM can override them! But, by giving the players a solid baseline that they can work with in the huge majority of cases, they can reliably use their abilities (or even build their characters) to accomplish tasks that they're interested in, and flex their agenda in the fiction by reliably being able to accomplish tasks that they're good at.Is someone trained in a skill with a +5 bonus from ability good at it? Sure, probably, if the GM lets him be. Other times, such as pemerton's case, he'll say &quot;no&quot; when you're only heroic level. Does this make sense from a rules-light, genre-logic perspective? Yes, it's easier that way. Does it particularly empower the player? Not without GM permission, which I don't find inherently empowering.By using &quot;objective&quot; DCs, you give the players the ability to make informed decisions on what they can accomplish, but you can always leave the Rule 0 clause to correct DCs as necessary; &quot;yes, it's normally DC 15, but I'm bumping it to 20 because of this factor.&quot; From my experience, this has never gone over badly with players, especially when it's spelled out that &quot;these DCs might change based on outside factors&quot; (anecdotal, but what else do we have here?).At any rate, while &quot;objective&quot; DCs do have their downsides (it's harder to apply genre-logic to them; it might make a GM's &quot;story&quot; harder, as you pointed out), they're more player empowering than a rules-light system of &quot;here's some guidelines that the GM gets to follow; the GM will decide how hard your task is, or if you can even attempt it.&quot; And, while there's always a place for that in an RPG, it's not particularly good at granting &quot;player agency&quot; in my opinion. As always, play what you like <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="JamesonCourage, post: 5967776, member: 6668292"] Well, again, this is by permission of the GM. The GM should say "yes" to giving players things (within advice guidelines); the GM can use these guidelines (since they're not the rules of how hard tasks are) if he wants to allow all PCs to be able to complete a task. The things you named are essentially "here's how to be nice to your players for this style of play," not so much "here, players, have some abilities that allow you to affect the story in a reliable manner" like daily abilities are. It's kind of like saying "the Barbarian player may want to rage, gaining a bonus to attack, damage, and toughness; when he does, you should probably say yes." Or, you could just give the Barbarian player an ability that lets him fly into a rage, where he gets those abilities, letting him have the power to choose when the effect occurs. Yes, exactly! Even with "objective" DCs, the GM can override them! But, by giving the players a solid baseline that they can work with in the huge majority of cases, they can reliably use their abilities (or even build their characters) to accomplish tasks that they're interested in, and flex their agenda in the fiction by reliably being able to accomplish tasks that they're good at. Is someone trained in a skill with a +5 bonus from ability good at it? Sure, probably, if the GM lets him be. Other times, such as pemerton's case, he'll say "no" when you're only heroic level. Does this make sense from a rules-light, genre-logic perspective? Yes, it's easier that way. Does it particularly empower the player? Not without GM permission, [I]which I don't find inherently empowering[/I]. By using "objective" DCs, you give the players the ability to make informed decisions on what they can accomplish, but you can always leave the Rule 0 clause to correct DCs as necessary; "yes, it's normally DC 15, but I'm bumping it to 20 because of [I]this[/I] factor." From my experience, this has never gone over badly with players, especially when it's spelled out that "these DCs might change based on outside factors" (anecdotal, but what else do we have here?). At any rate, while "objective" DCs do have their downsides (it's harder to apply genre-logic to them; it might make a GM's "story" harder, as you pointed out), they're more player empowering than a rules-light system of "here's some guidelines that the [I]GM gets to follow; the GM will decide how hard your task is, or if you can even attempt it[/I]." And, while there's always a place for that in an RPG, it's not particularly good at granting "player agency" in my opinion. As always, play what you like :) [/QUOTE]

Verification