Materials, and the DC to break them

[Electric]

I know the core rules give some examples of DCs to break or burst items-in fact I'm looking at those examples as I type this-but I find that they unfortunately don't help much unless the specific example I need is included in the book.

For example, at the moment I'm wondering what DC to use if my players attempt to break through the rotting wood walls of the brig in a ghost ship they've been trapped in.

According to the table in the core rulebook, breaking a simple door is DC13, breaking a good door is DC18, and breaking a strong door is DC23. That would all be very helpful if I had even actually tried to break down any doors, but unfortunately I never have, so I really have no experience to give me an idea of how much of a difference those gaps of 5 DC represent. I would assume that breaking rotting wood would naturally be easier than breaking a simple door, but on the other hand breaking through a wall would be harder than breaking through a door. I assume it averages out somewhere around the DC13 of a simple door because of that, but I don't know which side of that 13 it comes out on. Maybe it's a bit more difficult, but how much more? And breaking the walls leading from one cabin to another is probably easier than breaking through the ship's hull to get outside right? I don't know much of ships, but I assume the hull would be thicker and stronger.

Apparently the lesson to be learned is that to make GMing easier I should attempt to break various things to give myself a feel for how easy or difficult it is. But I digress... I'd appreciate some help in picking out appropriate DCs.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

An alternative way to look at it is think in terms of how difficult the task ought to be in terms of party (or character) level, and just use the provided DCs as a baseline. Something I've found very helpful is this nice table of generic DCs (see the bottom half; top half is for traps) broken down for for easy/medium/hard at lots of levels, rather than for specific situations.

You can look at your known DCs in the core rules and see where they fall on the table to get an idea of what level they correspond to, then adjust to fit into your target difficulty range ("It's rickety, so lower it a bit." or "It's well-built, so raise it a bit", etc).

Or you can even just aim for DCs appropriate to your party's level, raising or lowering depending upon whther or not you want them using the corridors or simply smashing own walls.

And of course, the table is nice for on-the-fly rulings for smashing things, as well as poisons, hazards of all sorts, dealing with NPCs, and so on.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

For what it's worth, doors tend to be waaaaay easier to break through than walls of similar material, because doors are really only held closed by a small piece of wood (and sometimes a thin metal plate) where the latch sets into the wall.

Otherwise, doors are made to open, so breaking that one small pieces tends to turn a closed door into an open one.