The success rate seems low for a complexity 1 skill challenge equivalent to fighting one monster. Surely those basic challenges should be passed overwhelmingly?
A 75% success rate seems more appropriate for a full blown complexity 4 or 5 challenge.
New DC Table, based on level 1 DCs and DM Screen
- Thread starter Aoirorentsu
- Start date
The success rate seems low for a complexity 1 skill challenge equivalent to fighting one monster. Surely those basic challenges should be passed overwhelmingly?
A 75% success rate seems more appropriate for a full blown complexity 4 or 5 challenge.
Camelot
Adventurer
Skill challenges should be harder to succeed at than combat encounters, because they usually don't carry such deadly repercussions. It depends on how your group plays, though; if a DM wants skill challenges to be deadly, he or she should be making them easier.
Doesn't quite feel right to me, but, whatever, I make my own DC's anyway.
For skill challenges where I'm tracking success and for group checks, my hard DC's are likely to be lower than these. But for other various skill use for knowledge checks and the like, I might use the higher hard DC's when the consequences of failure aren't so bad, or when I'm not tracking successes, but simply running a gauntlet.
Tangent: The other day we were discussing in our group what would be the DC for swinging yourself onto a running horse as it runs by you Legolas style. We had some very different opinions on this. One person said DC 25 or 30 because it's not something low level characters should be able to do, but high level characters can. This is not the 4e way though, you're supposed to just assign a difficulty to the stunt, and anyone can do it. I was saying in my game the DC would be between easy and medium difficulty, if I required a check for it at all. The way D&D combat works, a running horse double moves 20 squares, then stands around while everyone takes their turns, and then double moves another 20 squares. During that time it's "stopped".
Back on topic, setting skill DC's is more art than science. You pretty much can manipulate the math to get the end result you want, especially when you know your party. It's just one of many knobs and dials in the system to design what you need, set a pace or difficulty, or challenge one or all members of a party.
For skill challenges where I'm tracking success and for group checks, my hard DC's are likely to be lower than these. But for other various skill use for knowledge checks and the like, I might use the higher hard DC's when the consequences of failure aren't so bad, or when I'm not tracking successes, but simply running a gauntlet.
Tangent: The other day we were discussing in our group what would be the DC for swinging yourself onto a running horse as it runs by you Legolas style. We had some very different opinions on this. One person said DC 25 or 30 because it's not something low level characters should be able to do, but high level characters can. This is not the 4e way though, you're supposed to just assign a difficulty to the stunt, and anyone can do it. I was saying in my game the DC would be between easy and medium difficulty, if I required a check for it at all. The way D&D combat works, a running horse double moves 20 squares, then stands around while everyone takes their turns, and then double moves another 20 squares. During that time it's "stopped".
Back on topic, setting skill DC's is more art than science. You pretty much can manipulate the math to get the end result you want, especially when you know your party. It's just one of many knobs and dials in the system to design what you need, set a pace or difficulty, or challenge one or all members of a party.
UngeheuerLich
Legend
Actually there seems to fit one category in between medium and high now!
keterys
First Post
In general, they don't want you to even use complexity 4 or 5 challenges at all... so you really need to focus on 1s and 2s to get the real nuts and bolts of the system.
End of the day, do you want the group to _always_ sneak into the fortress without running into guards and setting off an alarm?
Always chase after the bad guy and catch him before he hooks up with his reinforcements?
Etc. Complications are actually a very good thing and spice up the game, and those come about by actually failing some skill challenges.
You may also want to consider altered odds where someone has a racial or background bonus, or a stat higher than a 16. Or item or feat, for that matter.
I didn't know that. Is that guideline in the DMG2?
If the system really only uses 1 and 2 complexity challenges, then the numbers are probably pretty good.
Of course not. Chance of failure is important, especially for events like you describe.
For an event like sneaking into a fortress, I currently use a higher complexity challenge depending on how many steps there are to reach the goal.
I use complexity 1 challenges for less central events, that should involve only a roll or two per PC.
Joshua Randall
Legend
I'm comfortable with a ~75% success rate on skill challenges.
What would really be helpful is if Wizards would explicitly call out how the skill check DCs work with skill challenges, and how to modify that, in the new rulebooks.
Example (totally made up numbers):
"If you use the DCs in the table, expect about a 75% success rate in Complexity 1 or 2 skill challenges. Every +1/-1 you add/subtract to a DC decreases the overall success rate by +10%/-10%.
So if you want the PCs to succeed only 50% of the time, then +2 to the DCs. If you want the PCs to succeed close to 100% of the time, then -2 from the DCs."
That is the kind of info that takes a long time (and math) to figure out, and that I want to pay someone else (i.e., Wizards) to do for me.
What would really be helpful is if Wizards would explicitly call out how the skill check DCs work with skill challenges, and how to modify that, in the new rulebooks.
Example (totally made up numbers):
"If you use the DCs in the table, expect about a 75% success rate in Complexity 1 or 2 skill challenges. Every +1/-1 you add/subtract to a DC decreases the overall success rate by +10%/-10%.
So if you want the PCs to succeed only 50% of the time, then +2 to the DCs. If you want the PCs to succeed close to 100% of the time, then -2 from the DCs."
That is the kind of info that takes a long time (and math) to figure out, and that I want to pay someone else (i.e., Wizards) to do for me.
AbdulAlhazred
Legend
Well, regardless of whether or not you consider this to be true the SYSTEM should be designed to provide the DM with a full range of difficulty from almost trivially easy and practically assured success to highly difficult. You may choose to only use part of that range if wish, but it shouldn't be excluded by design.
Well, I disagree about the difficulty of stunts. I think the DCs are intended to be set to values that reflect the likelihood of success. PCs of different levels will simply operate in environments they are well equipped to handle. Of course if the players are deciding to do something way off the wall that is probably practically impossible and they're low level they should expect it to be quite risky. So I think your example of mounting a running horse certainly deserves a fixed DC. It is going to have some level of difficulty at 1st level and be much easier for a high level character, maybe even trivial.
As for your comment on mechanics of movement, really come on man. The GAME divides time into turns, they don't exist in the narrative reality of the game world. The horse thunders by and the character attempts to swing up. There's no "turn" in the game world where the horse stops moving and the character hops on.
Personally I'd consider the speed of the horse as the main variable. Assuming it has a saddle and bridle then mounting on the run should be FEASIBLE but I'd imagine it to be a trick requiring a good bit of expertise. A low level PC with Mounted Combat and a good Acrobatics mounting a horse moving at a modest clip is probably not too bad, maybe it deserves at least a 50/50 chance of success, so it might well be a DC20. Moving at full tilt? I'd think that would be pretty tough even with said training. A high level PC might well pull that off without a huge amount of trouble but at DC20 it may well still not be a sure thing even at epic for some characters. Seems like the DC20 should work for that. I mean it isn't possible to say with total certainty what will work best in your game, but the DC20 guess doesn't seem bad.
Interestingly, the new table shows that what is hard for low level PCs (Hard DC is 19-21 at levels 1 to 4)
is easy for high level PCs (Easy DC is 19-21 at levels 21 to 25).
So the system as (will soon be) printed works as you describe.
Yes, that would be very useful. As Stalker0 has shown, WoTC skill challenge match is very sensitive to DCs and challenge complexity.
For instance, while the numbers in the table give 75% success rate for medium DC complexity 1 challenges,
they give a 55% success rate for medium DC complexity 2 challenges.
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