Celebrim
Legend
Ok, but that is a really tedious counter-example.
Look at it this way. Suppose the sun is 491,040,000,000 feet away giving it by the stock rules a DC to spot it of +49,104,000,000 feet away. Now suppose that because of its size and radiance, this is a trivial spot check of DC -5 so that anyone can see it all the time. Under the stock rules if we move the sun an additional 300' away, the sun now becomes invisible to most observers.
So, yes, changing from a DC of 100 to 101 is a really trivial change, but the point is that it is not nearly as trivial as the change of distance involved. Based on the change in distance involved (1% further out), the change in difficulty is like an order or magnitude or more too high. And for the case of the sun, changing the DC of spotting it by 1 for each 10' further away it becomes is ridiculously out scale with the change in actual difficulty.
Hopefully I've managed to make that obvious now. I agree that it is much less obvious that the same is true at shorter distances, but a few moments thought should confirm in your mind that this is really independent of scale. The difficulty of scale mainly comes down to the limitations of applying integer modifiers to a linear die roll (with only 20 equally likely possibilities), not from the geometry of the situation. The difficulty of scale imposed by using linear modifiers to DC is an artificial one.
Sure. And if you'd do the math, you'd realize that this perfectly reasonable situation is easily explained under the rules I've outlined. If you are distracted, the DC of spotting something that is moving is 0. The penalty imposed to Spot for being 100' away under my rules is +5, so the DC is 5. Assuming an average person with 10-11 Wisdom, they fail this check 20% of the time. Because they are only 100' away, basiclly they have only one shot at making the roll. If either (or both) moves toward the other using a normal double move, they person failing the spot check will be 'surprised' to find someone suddenly quite close to them. If both move toward the other, then they could concievably bump into each other before the one failing the spot check noticed them.
Now, if you aren't distracted and are actively looking about (as adventurers probably would), then the DC 0. You aren't going to fail to notice something moving 100' away if no other factors apply. You might however STILL fail to notice it if your view is obstructed (raising the DC) by cover or concealment, if you have poor vision, or if the person is not moving (because human vision prioritizes moving objects).
So, once again, my spot rules pass a sanity test. They aren't perfectly realistic, but they don't produce nonsense results nearly as easily as the stock rules do.
Yes, that's what I said. I explained why they were nonsensical and uncomfortable and proposed a mathimatically sound solution. We can't avoid some unrealism involved with rolling a D20, but at least we can avoid the problem of trying to treat the DC of spotting something as linearly increasing with distance.
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