New Design & Development -- Skill DCs

[jelmore]

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Skill DCs)

They print the Difficulty Class By Level chart from the Rules Compendium and the DM's screen, and talk about the changes they've made.

 

[The Human Target]

No one seems to think DCs are sexy.

I think its insane that more than 2 years into the game's life things as simple as DCs are still being changed.

That said, I like math changes well enough but like the added info on when to use what DC and stuff a lot.

 

[Baumi]

I welcome our new DC Overlords!

The DC's certainly look interesting, the original ones were to hard (you were forced to use only your best skills which was awkward at times) the revised ones allowed the use of all your skills but was at time too easy when you could constantly use your best skills.

The new ones have a bigger difference between easy-moderate-hard and the moderate ones are bit bit higher than the revised DC's so at least in theory they should work quite well

I only wish that all skills would just use this table for regular checks instead of having their own difficulty table (like Monster Knowledge or Detect Magic).

 

[Nahat Anoj]

I only wish that all skills would just use this table for regular checks instead of having their own difficulty table (like Monster Knowledge or Detect Magic).

I think they might be going that direction, based on this quote:

These new DCs form the backbone for our skill challenges and for other skill-related rolls throughout the game. For example, escape DCs for monsters or traps can be set based on the sorts of characters we expect should have a chance.

 

[Baumi]

Yeah!

I hope they revise Detect Magic (Arcana-Skill) also, the DC are nearly impossible to roll...

 

[Joshua Randall]

The note about all-in characters is a nice touch, also. I hope that's in the books!

 

[Scribble]

I'm not so goods with the maths to know if this is good or not... But looking at it for some reason I can deal with say an 8 as the easy DC as opposed to a 5.

 

[KidSnide]

I think the "missing" information from the skill DC guidance is a discussion of what level is appropriate. Obviously, party level is the right level for "appropriate" challenges but good adventure design also includes the options of going after challenges that are easier or more difficult than appropriate.

For example, if getting information about a prisoner in the local lord's gaol is of medium difficulty at level 5, it doesn't become harder to pump those guards for information just because the party reached level 8. Instead, they should get the benefit of their improved capabilities.

Similarly, you could have a skill challenge (say - getting the prisoner freed by arguing successfully at trial) that might be beyond a typical party of the PC's level. For example, that might be a level 10 or 11 skill challenge for the level 8 party (maybe because the GM thinks breaking the prisoner out is more fun). However, if a party is particularly diplomacy/bluff focused, they could have a decent chance of succeeding.

This was a bit irrelevant on the old charts, since pushing the DCs from medium to hard was the equivalent of making the DCs a few levels higher. Because the new charts don't increase at the same rate, it becomes relevant to know when to move up/down in level instead of left/right in difficulty.

-KS

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think the "missing" information from the skill DC guidance is a discussion of what level is appropriate. Obviously, party level is the right level for "appropriate" challenges but good adventure design also includes the options of going after challenges that are easier or more difficult than appropriate.

For example, if getting information about a prisoner in the local lord's gaol is of medium difficulty at level 5, it doesn't become harder to pump those guards for information just because the party reached level 8. Instead, they should get the benefit of their improved capabilities.

Similarly, you could have a skill challenge (say - getting the prisoner freed by arguing successfully at trial) that might be beyond a typical party of the PC's level. For example, that might be a level 10 or 11 skill challenge for the level 8 party (maybe because the GM thinks breaking the prisoner out is more fun). However, if a party is particularly diplomacy/bluff focused, they could have a decent chance of succeeding.

This was a bit irrelevant on the old charts, since pushing the DCs from medium to hard was the equivalent of making the DCs a few levels higher. Because the new charts don't increase at the same rate, it becomes relevant to know when to move up/down in level instead of left/right in difficulty.

-KS

True. I think as far as the scaling of DCs to the level of the party USUALLY you're dealing with specific actions the PCs take and then the DCs can easily be fixed and the challenges can simply get more challenging as the characters interact with more and more difficult environments. Social situations admittedly do have a bit different cast to them. I'd just say that the same concept often applies, the PCs may be trying to convince peasants that a person is innocent at level 1 and may be trying to convince Efreet at level 20, which could well be considered more difficult. Of course that isn't as absolutely true as that a 500' cliff is harder to climb than the town wall.

As far as levels go I have often wondered if difficulty is really needed. The problem is the range from easy to difficult is rather large and translating that (roughly) into a level increase would mean a large increase. There is also the issue of the greater divergence of skill bonuses at high level, so really the difficulty factors have a purpose. It can be a bit hard to justify the logic though that a hard level 1 DC is similar to an easy level 10 one. Especially when XP awards in SCs etc are not tied to difficulty. It's workable though.

 

[Mengu]

I'm liking the new numbers, though looking at our characters in various games, I see very few who are in the highly specialized range. It does indeed look like even the best of us will need 7's and 8's for hard DC's. Comes down to a 5 or 6 with one assist, which is rather reasonable. The Shaman can auto succeed on some hard DC's, and the Bard can do it for Diplomacy. For the commonly used skills, I think a party will do well to have at least one auto-assist person. And with the hard DC's higher, some of the skill based utility powers such as (rerolls and bonuses) may perhaps become more common.

I like the explanation for the low DC's. This makes stealth parties much more viable. Even someone without a dex bonus could pick up the skill, and be successful with easy DC's. An untrained Bard with Bard of All Trades should be able to pass most easy checks fairly reliably with a small chance of failure.

I like the explanations for setting the DC's, and hope DM's and adventure writers out there pay attention.