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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ourph" data-source="post: 1627050" data-attributes="member: 20239">IMO, players should develop a sense of how capable their character are in actual game play by playing the game, not by reading their chances for success in the rulebook before they've even generated their character.  Like I said, coming into the game with a preconceived notion of how effective your character is going to be just leads to frustration when the DC you expect isn't the DC you have to beat.This I wholeheartedly agree with.  My problem is that I see players getting their ideas of what they think the difficulty is from the books, rather than from the DM (who is really the final arbiter and the only accurate source of information).  Far too many times while running a 3rd ed game I've had players go ahead with an action thinking they know all the information about what kind of difficulties they are facing, despite the fact that they haven't really communicated with ME about what's going on or how difficult a specific action might be.  I think the sample DCs being so readily available to players tends to discourage player/DM communication, which inevitably leads to misunderstanding and conflict.  The best course of action for a player is to always communicate with their DM about how difficult their character thinks a specific task might be before they attempt it.  Want to jump that 10ft gap, don't assume the DC is that listed in the book, because the DM may be taking into account modifiers you're unaware of unless you ask (ex:  run up to jump is over broken, stony ground +4 to DC, edge of the chasm is wet and slippery stone +2 to DC, ceiling in jumping area is relatively low +2 to DC).  So while you're thinking the DC for a 10ft Jump is 15, it's really 23.  You won't know for certain what the numbers indicate, but if you talk to the DM about your action before you do it you'll have all the information and likely (at least if I'm running the game) a warning that, despite the short distance it's going to be a very difficult jump.So the answer to bad DMs is to turn all players into ruleslawyers?  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f615.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":confused:" title="Confused    :confused:"  data-smilie="5"data-shortname=":confused:" /></blockquote>

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