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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6279022" data-attributes="member: 5143">I know my players plan for NOTHING.  They walk in blindly hoping their skills and abilities will save them.  If I assumed they needed to plan for things, I think I'd kill them off every session.  Instead they still end up in situations where the non specialized need a 10+ to succeed at getting away from certain death.  I just don't want this situation to mean they need a natural 20 or it's certain death.The average situation they walk into sounds something like this: "Here is a map to an ancient dungeon written on a cocktail napkin by a drunk guy.  Want to go there?"  And there answer is yes without asking any questions or buying anything in preparation for their journey.Most of the time ships appear in my game whenever the PCs need to cross water for any reason.  The PCs have no idea how many times they'll need to cross water in their lifetimes.  They don't know how risky a boat trip will be each time they get on one.  It could be attacked by the Leviathan and they could all drown or it could make it safely to its destination without any issues at all.Also, if we're assuming D&D Next rules there is no way to train in Swimming(Athletics) after 1st level without multiclassing.  You can't decide to train in it later.  Some people will be forever bad at it and some will be forever good.  If the ship capsizes and they are forced to swim for it, I don't want a situation where the poor swimmers immediately fail and the good ones immediately succeed.  The difference should be small enough that they both have a chance.Honestly, there's no way of telling how often they will happen.  It depends what system you are using.  After all, if you want something to be tough for someone with +25 to a skill, you need to set the DC to 35 or higher.  How rare they encounter these things is purely up to the DM.  One DM might use them every session while another one never uses them.But using the example above, let's say they walk blindly into the dungeon scrawled on the napkin and they find a room with a really thin beam as the only way to cross a room.  There was no way to actively avoid it since they didn't know it was there until they arrived at the room.Now, there's a number of ways they could avoid having to make the check or make the check easier.  I'd give them credit for coming up with interesting ideas.  However, if they decide to simply balance across, I don't want that to mean immediate death if they fail.  I also don't want it to be so hard that they turn back.  I want it to be dangerous enough that there is risk involved but easy enough that even the people bad at balancing have a good enough chance to succeed that they'd think of trying it.</blockquote>

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