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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4669988" data-attributes="member: 5143">I disagree.  You can write an entire adventure without having any idea who is going to play it, WOTC and the RPGA do it all the time.  It works much better in 4e than it does in 3.5e, because you can more accurately predict the chance of success without knowing the characters.I argue it is equally less fun to be the guy who spent 10 ranks in Diplomacy at level 20 because you wanted to be pretty good at it only to find out that the DC to succeed is 40, since it is adjusted for the guy who spent 23 ranks in his Diplomacy and Skill Focus.  You find out that everyone in the game hates you just as much as the Half-Orc with no ranks in Diplomacy.  Except, strangely enough, when the guy with 23 ranks in Diplomacy is missing, when all the DCs drop to levels you can succeed at.It's also equally less fun the have the DCs set to 40 when you have +30 to your Diplomacy skill because the DM doesn't want you to succeed all the time.It is also equally less fun to spend 23 Ranks in Diplomacy only to have the guy who spent 2 ranks in Diplomacy succeed every time.If he ends up dangling but is pulled up and doesn't fall, then it wasn't a failure, it was just descriptive text.  Especially if guy with 10 ranks in jump, 2 ranks in jump and no ranks in jump ALL end up dangling from the edge with rolls of 1 through 30.  People catch on pretty quickly that they can't fail.  Their failures mean nothing but a short period of inconvenience.Either that or they end up punishing the rest of the group by failing.  Removing someone from the group for any reason is NOT an acceptable option for me.  No one gets put in the dungeon unless they get released within 15 minutes of real time.  No one loses their way unless they find their way back within 15 minutes of real time.  They can get lost for days or imprisoned for days in game, but nothing interesting should happen to the rest of the group while they are gone.  Which means, for me, ALL skill checks have to be a yes or no for the whole group.It is certainly not interesting to be forced to watch other people play the game.  This is equally true for the 4 other players forced to sit around and watch the DM play you through a solo adventure as it is for the 1 person who has to watch the other 4 play while he is lost.</blockquote>

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