New DCs for skills

[deleteme123456]

From the 7/15 update of the core books: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/updates

A level 1 "Hard" DC is now 15 and with the footnotes removed, that means a skill check is the same DC. In my play session through Kobold Hall, a halfling rogue wanted to "wall-jump" between the wall of a dungeon and the wall of a ledge, in the corner to get up without having to use athletics, a bad skill for him. I said OK, hard DC for Acrobatics at level 1 is 20 + 5 for skill check (DMG 42). He actually passed his check by rolling very high.

In the new model, he only needs to roll a 4 (4 DEX 5 TRAINED 2 RACIAL). That means only a 15% chance of a failure. That seems... wrong. Very wrong. Something that's really hard to do should be... oh, I don't know.... HARD to do? I suppose the argument is that a halfling rogue is just REALLY good at acrobatics? At level 2 he'll only need at 3. At level 4 it goes up to 4 and back to 3 at level 6. At level 7 it's 5 and then 3 at level 8 assuming he's increased Dex twice by now. This probably holds through the rest of the levels... if the rogue took a skill focus in Acrobatics, he's almost guaranteed sucess except on a 1 (and sometimes not even then) for a lot of the levels. On moderate or easy he might as well not roll (unless DM rules 1 = autofail).

Even a character without a racial is at 6+, a character with a 14 instead of an 18 is 8+, and an untrained character at 14 actually only needs a 13, which is quite within the realm of possibilities.

Anyone else think this is just wrong?

 

[Stalker0]

In the new model, he only needs to roll a 4 (4 DEX 5 TRAINED 2 RACIAL). That means only a 15% chance of a failure.

Anyone else think this is just wrong?

I don't mind that someone highly skilled in a skill has a near automatic success. If we take someone who is not optimized (2 dex, no training, no racial) they need a 13 or better, so they have a 40% chance of success, which is pretty hard.

I do think the DCs might have dropped a bit too much, but its definately better than how it was before.

 

[Kordeth]

You're looking at a character very close to maxed out for that skill at his level. The only way he could improve is to have a slightly higher Dex and burn a feat on Skill Focus. I don't really have much of a problem with a character built to be an acrobat routinely succeeding at challenging acrobatic actions.

 

[scholz]

By contrast I had a party fighting some monsters on the coast on some slippery rocks. I called it an easy acrobatics check.
DC10 + 5 (skill). 15
The Halflinf rogue did fine with his +11 (though he did fall once).
The guy in Plate didn't even try to move.
The guy in chain stopped trying to get up because he inevitably fell when attacked.
The others were virtually hobbled. They didn't really have time to retreat to a safer place. It was okay, but I was already having to houserule it so make it even possible for the party to do anything but crawl out.

So a change was definitely called for.

 

[Stalker0]

Let's do a full comparison, I'll use the 1st level DCs.

Poor: +0 ability mod, no training, no racial bonuses.

Easy: 80% chance of success
Medium: 55% chance
Hard: 30% chance

Medium: +2 mod, +5 training
Easy: 100% chance of success
Medium: 90% chance
Hard: 65% chance

Great: +4 mod, +5 training, +2 racial
Easy: 100%
Medium: 100%
Hard: 85%

Best: +5 mod, +5 training, +2 racial, + 3 skill focus
Easy: 100%
Medium: 100%
Hard: 100%

I think the easy and medium DCs are fine, but the hard Dc may be a bit low. The problem is the DC is low enough that skill focus loses a bit of its meaning if you already have a racial bonus.

 

[Zsig]

Not to mention stuff like power and item bonuses.

I think it's nice for someone to say that he wants to become an expert at something, and go for it. But when you can (easily) get to the point where further improvements becomes obsolete/trivial/redundant, then I think there's something wrong going on.

I guess they shouldn't have removed the footnotes.

 

[Lurker37]

It IS Hard - for most people. Your PC with the 18 Dex, Acrobatics training and +2 racial is damn near superhuman! They're the olympic gymnast, the circus performer, the freak of nature who's among the best on the planet, and they still fail one time in five!

If you want that uber-acrobat PC failing half the time (i.e. needs to roll 11 or more), then Joe Blow with 10 Dex and no training or racial bonuses needs to roll 22 on a d20. That's not 'Hard' - it's f***ing impossible!

 

[JGulick]

I guess they shouldn't have removed the footnotes.

Yes, I worry we may be back in what was one of 3.5's bigger problems, and already haunts the edges of 4E, what I call the "double-patch". That is, two groups/individuals develop fixes for a flaw, and rather than an editor selecting between them to use whichever is best, they apply BOTH.

It's (I believe) what led us to have Astral Diamonds and Residuum. They're both fixes for the high-end-treasure-weight problem, and they're both (if examined a bit) actually the SAME fix with different names (except that Residuum actually has additional uses, making it the clearly superior partner of the two).

Here, we have two fixes, one a re-working of the table so the numbers actually match their purpose, the other a more simplistic removal of the footnotes. But the footnotes served a purpose... they divided attribute rolls from attacks with weapons from skill checks, each of which have unique needs in their DC/Defense setting due to their unique sets of available modifiers. That is, attribute checks have very few available modifiers, attacks with weapons have essentially one (proficiency bonus), and skills have several (training, focus, and racial bonuses). All can get item bonuses and power bonuses, of course.

What we ended up with is what you get when you double-patch, a swing too far in the direction of movement. Before, all checks based on the old table with footnotes were somewhat too hard. Now, individual skill checks are vastly too easy (except that traps, monster entries, diseases, etc. remain unchanged and still old-style), attacks will be slightly too easy, and attribute checks (which include attacks without weapons) are probably about right.

Which suggests to me a need to restore the footnotes.

 

[Bayuer]

I looked for an official Skill Chalange fo KoTS. It's 6 lvl chalange with primary DCs at 22 (in old). With the errata it should be 12. Let's make some calculations. +4 INT +5 Trainded +3 lvl and you already have 12! Not mentioning the focus and racial. So I think that the footnotes shouldn't be erased. With DC 17 for that challange havaing +12 isn't so bad and you still can win this easily. Racial and focus still make it automatic win but that's the price of loosing feat and taking special race. Hard DC will still be with all modifiers 5 higher than total modifiers so it's quite fair I think.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Restoring "the footnotes" blindly makes no sense as one of them is completely unaffected by these changes (the AC-related one). Why would you reinstate a change that isn't a double-change? Restoring the +5 just makes it a bad idea to use skills for a check if you don't have that skill trained. Try to convince the DM that it's a Dex roll, not an Acrobatics roll, etc. That's not very sensible. In a sensible world you should always be trying to convince the DM that your skills DO apply. Changing the +5 to a +3 might make sense, as then being trained would at least be a genuine advantage.

The skill DCs seem much more right to me now than they were. Before the odds were just plain stupid. Even easy things were unlikely to occur, and hard things weren't "hard" they, were usually "only succeed on a 19 or 20".