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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bagpuss" data-source="post: 9233525" data-attributes="member: 3987">It isn't a case of challenging the GM we are talking about here, but what the actual rules say. Sure the GM can set whatever DCs they like, they could make free climbing the North Face of the Eiger,  DC 5 if they like but that isn't what the rulebook suggests.That's because the vast majority of the 3.5 rules are in the PHB (which everyone has access to), with some additional rules in the MM, the DMG is mainly guidance, while it has useful information it is entirely possible to play without ever referring to the DMG.Not saying anything about the GM's agency to set whatever DCs they like, I'm just asking for some evidence to your claim that PHB rules are just their for the players to have a spitball idea of the DC, and the the DC's were generally easy to make.Right so the DC is set by the DM looking at the skill rules which are in the PHB. So there is a bit conflict here between expectation, guidance and the rules. The rules for some particular skills could easily push the DCs into the 20 to 30+ range, while the guidance was generally avoid those levels of DCs. They other problem is opposed skills, players generally only had a small handful of skill point to spend across an number of skills, but opposition NPCs in published scenarios often specialised their skills in the opposing skills like Sense Motive, Perception and the like. So if a player didn't focus they would fail in those skills at lot of the time (didn't help that NPCs were often higher level than the PCs in order to make them a challenge for a party of 4).Certainly I recall published scenarios at the time where taking 10, would never succeed, and unless you had put all your skill points into a skill, and like had a positive attribute bonus take 20 would fail too. To be fair the game almost assumed taking 20 in a number of skills like opening locks.My experience as a player and a GM (running published scenarios) at the time was unless you constantly upped your skills each level they quickly became irrelevant, and failure even with a character putting all their ranks in a skill, was common.</blockquote>

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