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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 9745810" data-attributes="member: 467">One of the issues with this, particularly when using the old school rules, is that much of it is driven if not by GM whim, by pure chance. At least skills and feats help weigh the chances in the character's favor. Much of the GM advice in old versions of D&D amount to "flip a coin" (or, rather, roll a d6 as a sort of yes/no oracle).Part of it is clear communication between play(s) and GM, but there is also the issue that the GM is final arbiter and has their own biases, experiences and preconceptions. A player comes up with what to them is a perfectly reasonable plan of action, but the GM decides that they know better and boom, gotcha. What set DCs and the like do is help alleviate that very common, very natural problem.Just by way of example: I was a US Army infantryman a lifetime ago and I carried a lot of heavy gear through a very unpleasant environment under stress (not combat stress, thankfully). I have an idea of how hard that is and what one needs to do to "survive" that situation. When a player suggests a plan obviously informed by a lifetime of action war movies, I am not going to give them the chance of success they think they deserve. Our conceptions of the problem and the solutions just vary too much. But if we are playing 3.5, I can just look up the DC for a Survival check to To The Thing. That isn't the player mashing the win button. They still came up with the plan. What it is doing is removing the bias (or, at least, leaning on the bias of the designers, but at least consistently).</blockquote>

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