D&D 5E D&D Next Q&A: 03/14/2014

[Hussar]

No, nobody said that. They just said "Its the Abyss" as if that would explain the higher DCs. And that is a common pitfall, especially in 4E where the DCs indeed scaled with the level and where a location is de facto leveled (both with monsters and skill encounters).
For the skill system I am arguing for to work, the location or level must not affect the DCs. You can have calm water in the Abyss with level 20 PCs and you can have storms on the prime with lvl 5 PCs. And unlike 4E, the DC would be higher in the latter example.

No the location is not de facto levelled in 4e. It's that you likely would not expect 3rd level parties to be sailing in the Abyss. In any edition.

And why is that? Why is every adventure in every edition which features travel to the abyss for high level characters?

 

[Li Shenron]

I think it works well even with skills. You just need to keep the difficulty numbers in a smaller range as well. DC 5 for easy, DC 10 for medium, DC 15 for hard, DC 20 for extremely hard and DC 25 for "nearly impossible".

Yes but this is the problem after all... that there you end up with a difference of 20 between trivial and nearly impossible, so the same character could drown in a bathtub but also swim up a waterfall.

Maybe the guidelines about not asking for a check will come in handy, but they do sound a little bit like saying "when our skill system sucks, don't use it"

 

[Giltonio_Santos]

I still don't understand how having characters with +4 to a given roll and others with +35 for the same task (and also, DCs in the same spread) improves the game.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Yes but this is the problem after all... that there you end up with a difference of 20 between trivial and nearly impossible, so the same character could drown in a bathtub but also swim up a waterfall.

Maybe the guidelines about not asking for a check will come in handy, but they do sound a little bit like saying "when our skill system sucks, don't use it"

Yeah, well, if you are going to use a d20, you have to accept that it has a bunch of variation. I don't think I'll ever use a DC lower than 10 for almost anything in D&D Next, since I agree with the regulation that if an average person would succeed more half the time then you don't roll at all. Which roughly translates to "if the DC is lower than 10, don't bother making it a check, everyone succeeds".

 

[Klaus]

Yeah, well, if you are going to use a d20, you have to accept that it has a bunch of variation. I don't think I'll ever use a DC lower than 10 for almost anything in D&D Next, since I agree with the regulation that if an average person would succeed more half the time then you don't roll at all. Which roughly translates to "if the DC is lower than 10, don't bother making it a check, everyone succeeds".

I agree... with a caveat: if the player has disadvantage on a check, I'd ask him to roll even if the DC is, say, 5. For instance: a barbarian stuck with a debilitating poison is suffering from disadvatage on Str checks and saves. If he comes across a stuck door in a dungeon, I'd ask him to roll even though the door's DC is 5.

 

[Quentin3212]

I like my skill challenges to be challenging, and as a result I dislike when certain players have an inordinate ability to succeed with skills over others, as people have stated above it's not very fun for anyone when the party walks into a dungeon and the guy/girl with spot's DC allows him/her to easily spot every trap in the room in every room. At that point you almost have to rely on creatures who are going to force the players to activate traps if you want the traps to be a threat at all, and then your just getting into the realm of playing a miniatures combat game over a tabletop role playing game.

I like modifiers to be small and to rely on things like a variation of Majoru's if the DC is less than ten anyone trained succeeds method.

 

[Rhenny]

Yeah, well, if you are going to use a d20, you have to accept that it has a bunch of variation. I don't think I'll ever use a DC lower than 10 for almost anything in D&D Next, since I agree with the regulation that if an average person would succeed more half the time then you don't roll at all. Which roughly translates to "if the DC is lower than 10, don't bother making it a check, everyone succeeds".

If something is trivial, I don't make the player roll. If it is easy, I will ask for a roll. A "1" adds a complication. It is amazing how much tension rolling not to roll a "1" generates.

Other than that, DC 10 is the lowest DC I use.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I think the scope of PC build choices is a separate issue too. I think there are good reasons for the game to discourage excessive specialisation in PC build, both for reasons that @ExploderWizard has given, and also because too much specialisation undermines party play. (As the PCs can't all participate in a particular ingame situation.) And party play is pretty integral to D&D.

This is why I don't think the Leverage model for a party of adventurers works well in actual play. Either the party splits up so that each team member can kick major butt performing their specialty or stay together as a group and take turns watching a specialist do their thing.

I still don't understand how having characters with +4 to a given roll and others with +35 for the same task (and also, DCs in the same spread) improves the game.

Absolutely. If the spread within the same group spans from auto success to don't even try there will be all kinds of issues. What if the character with the +35 gets killed in a landslide and the party hasn't quite gotten to the place where that expertise becomes critical? Overspecialization leads to challenge bloat which can feed back into yet more specialization to point where organic character growth becomes a non-viable option. Breadth of training becomes a plan for widespread failure because the ever increasing challenge levels demand the targeted depth of one trick ponies.