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<blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 7876092" data-attributes="member: 53980">I disagree. It's not ambiguous so much as leveraging the greatest strength any RPG has - the ability to rely on the human mind for decision making.You can avoid inconsistency by being consistent in your rulings as a DM. Sure, if Steve Urkel and Dwayne Johnson arm wrestle, and one week I declare that Johnson auto-wins while the next week I have them dice off for it (with no meaningful differences between the two bouts) that's inconsistent. If I'm consistent in my rulings each time, I'm being consistent.The DM is also free to assign advantage and disadvantage as they see fit. So maybe rather than having Urkel auto fail, I give Urkel disadvantage on the check or Johnson advantage, or both. At that point, while some possibility may exist of Urkel beating Johnson, it will be fairly miniscule to be certain.So you're saying that a 5e character with a +6 athletics bonus trying to climb a wall produces unreasonable results?But a 3e character with the same +6 bonus in climb produces reasonable results?IME, d20 was capable of producing outright insane results. Characters who, through various combinations had such high bonuses that they couldn't fail at tasks that should be virtually impossible. And conversely, high level characters who had never invested in a skill who would essentially auto fail any level appropriate check because any DC intended to challenge the skilled guy meant the unskilled guy might as well not touch their dice.I certainly didn't find the results produced by d20 to be more reasonable.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Fanaelialae, post: 7876092, member: 53980"] I disagree. It's not ambiguous so much as leveraging the greatest strength any RPG has - the ability to rely on the human mind for decision making. You can avoid inconsistency by being consistent in your rulings as a DM. Sure, if Steve Urkel and Dwayne Johnson arm wrestle, and one week I declare that Johnson auto-wins while the next week I have them dice off for it (with no meaningful differences between the two bouts) that's inconsistent. If I'm consistent in my rulings each time, I'm being consistent. The DM is also free to assign advantage and disadvantage as they see fit. So maybe rather than having Urkel auto fail, I give Urkel disadvantage on the check or Johnson advantage, or both. At that point, while some possibility may exist of Urkel beating Johnson, it will be fairly miniscule to be certain. So you're saying that a 5e character with a +6 athletics bonus trying to climb a wall produces unreasonable results? But a 3e character with the same +6 bonus in climb produces reasonable results? IME, d20 was capable of producing outright insane results. Characters who, through various combinations had such high bonuses that they couldn't fail at tasks that should be virtually impossible. And conversely, high level characters who had never invested in a skill who would essentially auto fail any level appropriate check because any DC intended to challenge the skilled guy meant the unskilled guy might as well not touch their dice. I certainly didn't find the results produced by d20 to be more reasonable. [/QUOTE]

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