D&D 5E Justin Alexander's review of Shattered Obelisk is pretty scathing

[Clint_L]

And the funny thing being that in practice there is virtually no difference. A check will always be about a 66% chance of success for most characters. Some might drop down to 25% and some might auto succeed but that 2/3rds will cover most characters.

Functionally, bounded accuracy and 4e’s skills by level are very close.

I’ve run a lot of modules for 5e. I’m struggling to remember a single dc over 20 at any level. I’m sure there are some, but they’re pretty rare.

Usually skill checks over 20 happen when players propose something I hadn't foreseen, which might be vaguely doable.

 

[Staffan]

Leveling is kind of pointless in terms of setting challenges, because as the DM you always want to hit that sweet spot where the players have to be clever and there is some risk to keep the game exciting. So as a DM you go from simple latch locks at level 1, to padlocks, to combination locks, to magical locks, or whatever suits the narrative, but the level of challenge remains more or less the same. You still want to push the characters.

So right now my home campaign is level 9. I'm not going to bother with situations where they have to worry about a trap that does 2d6 fire damage or something - what would be the point?

The point of levelling is to allow characters to face different challenges, but not for players to feel less challenged.

Or you could let characters be awesome at the thing they're awesome at. Again, I point to Leverage. If you get Parker to a lock, she can pick it. If there's a laser grid, she can navigate through it or disable it. And that's just fine. If you want to challenge a character, challenge their weaker areas. Parker's not so good with the grifting bit, though she can do fine with some coaching from Sophie. That's where you challenge Parker. The security system is not there to challenge her, it's there to let her show how ridiculously good she is at what she does.

 

[Remathilis]

Not my experience. With very few exceptions, when you got better at a task through character advancement, it actually got easier. A true joy (one of many) of the pre-WotC editions.

Didn't play a lot of thieves, eh?

Thief skills advanced rather slowly and started abysmally low. And nearly every roll was modified by some condition. Some were mentioned in the skill itself, some in the equipment section, and some hidden in the DMG. But if the DM wanted to, there was always a way to penalize thief skills.

In theory, a high level thief was great at thievery. In practice, any challenge worthy of your level was most likely penalized. So it was great if you liked picking on low power, low value targets. But to be honest, I'd much rather have expertise and reliable talent to show off my mastery of thief skills.

 

[pukunui]

Hey, so all of you who have read Shattered Obelisk and don't like it are taking the time to scan the QR code in the book and fill out the survey to let WotC know what it is you don't like about it, right? Might be a good way to get them to not make the same mistakes in the future.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Didn't play a lot of thieves, eh?

Thief skills advanced rather slowly and started abysmally low. And nearly every roll was modified by some condition. Some were mentioned in the skill itself, some in the equipment section, and some hidden in the DMG. But if the DM wanted to, there was always a way to penalize thief skills.

In theory, a high level thief was great at thievery. In practice, any challenge worthy of your level was most likely penalized. So it was great if you liked picking on low power, low value targets. But to be honest, I'd much rather have expertise and reliable talent to show off my mastery of thief skills.

Other OSR games have gone a long way towards improving thieves.

 

[SteveC]

Or you could let characters be awesome at the thing they're awesome at. Again, I point to Leverage. If you get Parker to a lock, she can pick it. If there's a laser grid, she can navigate through it or disable it. And that's just fine. If you want to challenge a character, challenge their weaker areas. Parker's not so good with the grifting bit, though she can do fine with some coaching from Sophie. That's where you challenge Parker. The security system is not there to challenge her, it's there to let her show how ridiculously good she is at what she does.

I know that this is another aside, but if you want an idea of how to challenge very capable characters, you should watch Leverage, especially because the writer is a gamer. You can get a great idea how to have a tense exciting game session with people who are very skilled. You let them do things they are good at to show how skilled they are, and then you hit them with something they aren't skilled at as a challenge. This is such a good show and I think of it as a clinic for how to challenge powerful characters.

 

[MerricB]

Didn't play a lot of thieves, eh?

Thief skills advanced rather slowly and started abysmally low. And nearly every roll was modified by some condition. Some were mentioned in the skill itself, some in the equipment section, and some hidden in the DMG. But if the DM wanted to, there was always a way to penalize thief skills.

In theory, a high level thief was great at thievery. In practice, any challenge worthy of your level was most likely penalized. So it was great if you liked picking on low power, low value targets. But to be honest, I'd much rather have expertise and reliable talent to show off my mastery of thief skills.

The incompetence of low-level thieves was legendary in AD&D.

The use of modifiers to thieves checks became more common as the years went on; I don't remember that much of it in early adventures.

 

[Thomas Shey]

And the funny thing being that in practice there is virtually no difference. A check will always be about a 66% chance of success for most characters. Some might drop down to 25% and some might auto succeed but that 2/3rds will cover most characters.

Functionally, bounded accuracy and 4e’s skills by level are very close.

I’ve run a lot of modules for 5e. I’m struggling to remember a single dc over 20 at any level. I’m sure there are some, but they’re pretty rare.

Well, the idea that most games are going to just have the same challenges at high-experience play as low doesn't seem supported in much of any game, in or out of the D&D sphere. The only reason it wasn't much of an issue prior to 3e is that there wasn't a full blown skill system, but it wasn't like saves and AC didn't tend to go up on opposition, so...

 

[MerricB]

I’ve run a lot of modules for 5e. I’m struggling to remember a single dc over 20 at any level. I’m sure there are some, but they’re pretty rare.

There are a couple of types of skill checks.

There are the type that everyone should be able to do.
There are the type that only skilled people should be able to do.

People setting DCs don't always realise this!

There's a DC 26 Charisma (Persuasion) check in Dungeon of the Mad Mage (level 21: Terminus level).
There's a DC 25 Charisma (Persuasion) check in Chapter 5 of Descent into Avernus. (Chapter 4 has a few DC 20 checks).

I think these DCs are appropriate: the task is basically impossible, but a character of legendary skill might have a chance.

Cheers,
Merric

 

[Hussar]

Well, the idea that most games are going to just have the same challenges at high-experience play as low doesn't seem supported in much of any game, in or out of the D&D sphere. The only reason it wasn't much of an issue prior to 3e is that there wasn't a full blown skill system, but it wasn't like saves and AC didn't tend to go up on opposition, so...

AC? As in that thing that was flat out limited to -10 for monsters and, with a couple of notable exceptions, was virtually never negative? Skills in 2e had a single DC - roll under your stat. Whether that was a NWP or a thieves' skill - didn't matter. Roll under and you succeed. At least in 2e, you could become a fairly competent thief at reasonably low levels - after all, did you really need to pump up your climb walls? Naw. You just dumped your 60 points into Move Silently, Hide in Shaddows, Find/Remove Traps and Open Locks and then continued to dump points into those four skills for the first few levels. Make sure you had a decent Dex (every 2e thief started with an 18 Dex right? ) and maybe play a demi-human for the bonuses and you could have a reasonable chance of success for most skills by about third or fourth level. At least the ones that mattered anyway.

And, you simply bypassed monster saves by using spells that didn't have saving throws. That was easy. Plus the fact that the monsters had so few HP, things like fireball or whatnot often either killed or seriously hurt baddies, even if they saved. These were editions where your ogre only had 16 or 17 HP. The math in AD&D is REALLY flat.