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<blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 9228563" data-attributes="member: 6785785">I can assure you that in my case, it has nothing to do with &quot;certain DMs&quot; or a &quot;lack of trust&quot; or &quot;desire to force the DM to play a certain way for them to feel comfortable&quot;. That framing is a supposition on your part. And an odd one since you've stated your preference on how this is handled is entirely about your comfort.It is about transparency. It's about not hiding information from the players of a game when they're expected to make decisions about how to approach play. It's also about using the game's mechanics to help communicate the situation in the fiction. If a steep climb on a slick surface means the Athletics DC to climb is 18, then why not just say 18? Doing so simply communicates &quot;steep&quot; and &quot;slick&quot; how they relate to a game's mechanics. It removes the vagueness of simple description and gives the player a clear understanding.Not doing so simply because hearing numbers breaks immersion... I don't know. Seems odd. I mean... how do we know how good a character is at climbing? What does it say on the character sheet, &quot;pretty darn good&quot; or &quot;+8&quot;? What does the die roll tell us, &quot;a valiant effort, but not quite&quot; or &quot;4&quot;?Seems really odd to be comfortable with all the math that comes into play with a game like D&amp;D, except with Difficulty Classes.But then when you don't share the DC, the player will know there's something unobserved at play, which their characters won't know!!!Which makes it just as likely they'll base their decision on what they don't know... so metagaming is unavoided!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="hawkeyefan, post: 9228563, member: 6785785"] I can assure you that in my case, it has nothing to do with "certain DMs" or a "lack of trust" or "desire to force the DM to play a certain way for them to feel comfortable". That framing is a supposition on your part. And an odd one since you've stated your preference on how this is handled is entirely about your comfort. It is about transparency. It's about not hiding information from the players of a game when they're expected to make decisions about how to approach play. It's also about using the game's mechanics to help communicate the situation in the fiction. If a steep climb on a slick surface means the Athletics DC to climb is 18, then why not just say 18? Doing so simply communicates "steep" and "slick" how they relate to a game's mechanics. It removes the vagueness of simple description and gives the player a clear understanding. Not doing so simply because hearing numbers breaks immersion... I don't know. Seems odd. I mean... how do we know how good a character is at climbing? What does it say on the character sheet, "pretty darn good" or "+8"? What does the die roll tell us, "a valiant effort, but not quite" or "4"? Seems really odd to be comfortable with all the math that comes into play with a game like D&D, except with Difficulty Classes. But then when you don't share the DC, the player will know there's something unobserved at play, which their characters won't know!!! Which makes it just as likely they'll base their decision on what they don't know... so metagaming is unavoided! [/QUOTE]

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