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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 5782604" data-attributes="member: 3192">I think we're talking about a few different things and it helps to differentiate them. First, there is character difficulty which is sort of easy to describe. It's the odds on a die roll to achieve a desired outcome. Is the Difficulty 5% or 95% for or against? We can change this for greater granularity and also bend linear probabilities by adding more dice. There are plenty of ways to play with dice mechanics.Second, I think Difficulty can mean the amount of interface the players are dealing with. This can depend upon their choices for the PC and it sounds like 5Es Complexity rating will primarily be about this kind of difficulty. If you look at the old PC sheets they have maybe a dozen statistics on them and a few places for lists like equipment. Maybe they even include a spot for a picture. As Monte and Mike have said, later edition PC sheets have grown in size and complexity. 4E innovated cards for many of the powers. 3.x had separate sheets depending upon character class. Statistics of monsters and other challenges grew considerably too. Because of this I think this kind of Difficulty should be divided between that for the Players and that for the DM.Thirdly, there is an old kind of Difficulty based upon the complexity of the game world that fell within the scope of a PCs class. This really isn't used anymore, but I believe it was rated by XP class totals. So a Thief had about 1250 difficulty at 1st level and 2500 at 2nd. The Magic User though began the game at difficulty 2500. As the game went along and more and more of the challenges were surpassed by the Players/Characters the higher the PCs' levels increased. Of course, so to did the complexity difficulty of those challenges they faced. This method of difficulty is really dependent upon the design of the world, so it's not likely to be included in the next D&D. A fourth kind of difficulty could be emotional difficulty. These are more easily recognized in emotionally charged games like horror. The difficulty is definitely one faced by the players, but I feel there needs to be some kind of safety word or agreement beforehand on when and how to dial up or dial down the emotional impact of what is occurring in the game. This one isn't so much a mechanical dial to enact vast yet quick changes to the whole system. It's more of a agreement about content and what's in and what's out and when to push more and when not to.</blockquote>

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