D&D General GMing and "Player Skill"

[Burnside]

This is a very real problem, and fixed DCs is one possible solution to it. Though, they do come with their own drawbacks - in defining the DC of an action, you necessarily limit the possibility space, as well as creating negative space. To unpack that a bit, the long lists of DCs in 3e discouraged a lot of 3e DMs from allowing actions that didn’t have DCs listed, very similarly to how the existence of attack powers in 4e discouraged a lot of 4e DMs from allowing players to improvise maneuvers in combat outside of their set Powers.

My preferred solution is to set DCs on a case by case basis, but tell the player the DC before making them commit to the action. So, if a player describes some sort of survival action, expecting it to be Easy or Medium based on their experience with action movies, but your military experience tells you would be Hard or Very Hard, telling the player “that will require a DC 20 Survival check” gives them the opportunity to say “oh, that’s harder than I expected. Can I try something else instead?” or to spend additional resources to shore up their chances (e.g. spending Heroic Inspiration, drinking a potion of Enhance Ability, etc.)

Some DMs are uncomfortable with that approach because a DC is highly specific metagame knowledge that, in their view, the character doesn’t have access to. In my view, the DC is an abstraction of the actual difficulty of the task, and telling it to the player (who needs to make the actual decision of what to do) helps close the information gap between them and the character (who needs to actually perform the task). The character doesn’t know the DC, because that’s not a thing in the fiction. But they do have experience in the world, and knowing the DC approximates, in an abstract way, the knowledge the character ought to have about the difficulty of the task in a world governed by the judgment of someone with your military experience.

For those who are still uncomfortable with the precision of the information a DC provides, potentially allowing the player to calculate their exact odds of success, I recommend telling them the difficulty in qualitative terms (Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard, etc.) and giving those categories ranges. So, for example, instead of Easy, Medium, and Hard always being 10, 15, and 20 respectively, Easy could cover a range from 8-12, Medium 13-17, and hard 18-22, etc. You could even introduce a small random element to setting the DC, for example making Easy 5+2d4, Medium 10+2d4, and Hard 15+2d4.

I'm working on an actual play right now sponsored by Green Ronin that uses their Adventure Game Engine, which has mechanics that pretty much mandate telling the player the DC (in AGE's case "Test Level" but it's the same concept) number for effectively any skill roll they try to make (and such roles are like 95% of the games mechanics). Granted, I tend to be fairly comfortable with play styles that are too game-ist for some, but revealing all the target numbers hurt immersion for this group way less that I maybe expected.

 

[Charlaquin]

Lots of OSR-sphere GMs don't want character statistics to be used to resolve actions at all, ever. I've seen a number of people who prefer any roll to be an x in 6 or a percentile with no influence from a character's ability scores. They will decide solely on whether an action is reasonably possible without considering stats or numbers, if anything relying on a character's identity or background (You're a magic user, so you can read these runes), over any kind of statistic. What is possible is determined solely on they and their table's opinions of what is reasonable.

I’m only on the periphery of the OSR, so I’ll take your word for it that this is a sentiment that exists in that space, but it does come across as rather extreme to me. What are the character statistics for if they don’t play any role in determining success or failure? To my knowledge, there has never been an edition of D&D where character statistics haven’t had at least a small impact on success and failure, though in past editions class has often played a bigger role than ability scores. So, loath though I am to do so, I might suggest that for people who hold this opinion, D&D might not be the right system for facilitating the play patterns they are interested in.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

What are the character statistics for if they don’t play any role in determining success or failure?

Great question.

So, loath though I am to do so, I might suggest that for people who hold this opinion, D&D might not be the right system for the play patterns they are interested in.

This has never stopped OSR fans in the past and never will.

 

[payn]

I’m only on the periphery of the OSR, so I’ll take your word for it that this is a sentiment that exists in that space, but it does come across as rather extreme to me. What are the character statistics for if they don’t play any role in determining success or failure? To my knowledge, there has never been an edition of D&D where character statistics haven’t had at least a small impact on success and failure, though in past editions class has often played a bigger role than ability scores. So, loath though I am to do so, I might suggest that for people who hold this opinion, D&D might not be the right system for facilitating the play patterns they are interested in.

I've encountered some folks who dont like the use of skill systems and feats. Part of the reason why is it effects both sides of the screen. The player might think doing something is not possible unless the character has invested in said thing. The more a particular action is outlined in the rules, the less room for GM to arbitrate the situation. Thats going to be a pro or a con depending on how you prefer to play.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

Part of the reason why is it effects both sides of the screen. The player might think doing something is not possible unless the character has invested in said thing. The more a particular action is outlined in the rules, the less room for GM to arbitrate the situation

Generally the more you define skills and specific actions in your ruleset, the more 'incompetent' PCs become. If you have no skills or statistics, anyone can try to do anything with reasonably similar success chance.

 

[payn]

Generally the more you define skills and specific actions in your ruleset, the more 'incompetent' PCs become. If you have no skills or statistics, anyone can try to do anything with reasonably similar success chance.

I think that has a lot to do with how the system is developed. In 3E where PC A has a use rope +3 and PC B who has use rope +30, yeaaaah... PF2 uses skill proficiency and feats which is like the worst of both worlds. Though, with bounded accuracy of 5E you can actually bridge that gulf in a more generally useful skill system. The trick there is how to make the expert shine. So, id say the system has to be both robust and have a reasonable easy to understand threshold for players and GMs.

 

[Reynard]

I've encountered some folks who dont like the use of skill systems and feats. Part of the reason why is it effects both sides of the screen. The player might think doing something is not possible unless the character has invested in said thing. The more a particular action is outlined in the rules, the less room for GM to arbitrate the situation. Thats going to be a pro or a con depending on how you prefer to play.

I think tis makes sense when specifically talking about the dungeon exploration game. Every PC there is a professional tomb robber and dungeon delver. Most of the situations they encounter will "make sense" in that context (however senseless certain dungeon aspects might seem). As such, you don't need "skill lists" because everyone is equally competent at the job. So how they approach things is the defining factor.

As soon as the game is not about that, or not just about that, the whole lack of individual character quantifiable skills thing starts to fall apart.

 

[CreamCloud0]

What are the character statistics for if they don’t play any role in determining success or failure?

this is what bothers me so much when people try to eliminate using social skills/checks in the game and just determine success/failure through the RP'ing character conversations at the table level.

 

[Charlaquin]

I've encountered some folks who dont like the use of skill systems and feats. Part of the reason why is it effects both sides of the screen. The player might think doing something is not possible unless the character has invested in said thing. The more a particular action is outlined in the rules, the less room for GM to arbitrate the situation. Thats going to be a pro or a con depending on how you prefer to play.

Yeah, that’s a perspective I have come across, but I think it’s rather different than “character statistics shouldn’t play any role in determining success or failure.” What folks who hold this perspective usually prefer is broad categories for character statistics (e.g. just the six ability scores), and very simple catch-all mechanics for action resolution, such as roll under the relevant ability score.

Personally, I really like the middle ground 5e allows for with its “Ability score (skill) framing. Ultimately, uncertainty is always resolved with a d20+ability mod roll (be it an ability check, saving throw, or attack roll), and proficiencies are potential modifier to a subset of these d20+ability mod rolls (or “d20 tests”). Skills aren’t actions you can take per se, and “skill checks” aren’t even really a thing, skills are just the type of proficiency that most commonly applies to the subset of d20 tests known as ability checks.

Granted, in practice a lot of 5e DMs don’t use skills this way, and the 2024 core rulebooks obfuscate this relationship between skills and abilities even more than the 2014 core rulebooks did (which themselves obfuscated it more than the D&D Next playtest material did). But, fundamentally I think it’s a really solid system, in spite of its weird insistence on hiding the fact that it works this way.

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

I think tis makes sense when specifically talking about the dungeon exploration game. Every PC there is a professional tomb robber and dungeon delver. Most of the situations they encounter will "make sense" in that context (however senseless certain dungeon aspects might seem). As such, you don't need "skill lists" because everyone is equally competent at the job. So how they approach things is the defining factor.

As soon as the game is not about that, or not just about that, the whole lack of individual character quantifiable skills thing starts to fall apart.

Yes, broadly competent characters tend to work best when you have a narrow campaign frame, like dungeon delving.