New Legends and Lore:Difficulty Class Warfare

[mmadsen]

The core of the system, from the original article:

If your skill rank is greater than the task’s DC rank, you automatically succeed. You are so skilled that you can complete the task without any special effort. Think of a tightrope walker at the circus. She has enough training and experience that performing her act is an automatic success. It would take some outside factor, like a sudden injury, an equipment failure, and so on, to cause her to fall. On the other hand, as a sedentary game designer I wouldn’t even imagine trying to walk across a tightrope myself. I’d fall after a step or two.

If your skill rank equals the task’s DC rank, you need to make a check with a result of 15 or higher to succeed. You’re skilled enough that you might succeed. In this world, skill checks use an ability score modifier (chosen to fit the task by the DM; a skill uses whatever ability is the best match for the actual action) with perhaps a small modifier based on feats or a skill bonus.

Going back to our tightrope walker, perhaps an earthquake strikes in the middle of her act. As the rope sways, the DC shifts one category up. Now she has to make a check, perhaps with her 18 Dexterity for a +4 bonus as well as a +4 bonus from a feat or other benefit she took. That gives her a 65% chance to remain on the rope.

If your skill rank is below the task’s DC rank, you automatically fail. Your training and experience are not enough to complete the task. Going back to the tightrope walker, let’s say that as the earth shakes she also steps on a length of the rope that her rival covered in grease. The difficulty shifts one more category up, causing her to fall to the net below.​

(First, I failed my save against pedantry and must point out that needing a 15 or higher on 1d20 is a 30-percent chance of success. With a +8 bonus, it becomes a 70-percent chance, not 65 percent.)

So, we divvy skill-levels and difficulties into a few named classes, compare them, and any task is either auto-success, roughly one-in-four chance of success, or auto-failure. So each difficulty class is the equivalent +15 DC in 3E? But characters can gain that much skill more easily? And bonuses that help them on challenging tasks -- like those +8 bonuses above -- don't help at all on too-tough tasks?

I'm not sure what problem this solves.

 

[Gryph]

And yet there is no mention of level in the system Mike describes here. Possibly the skill system is going to be divorced from level.

In fact, there was a clear implication that it would be.

What left me curious about the article was the character build mechanism to determine the rank a character has in a skill. Where does it start? Can it progress? How does it progress?

If the skill system resolution mechanic is divorced from level (a good idea I think) will it make sense for the skill progression system to be tied to level. If it isn't what will it be tied to?

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'm not sure what problem this solves.

It is not the main thrust of the design, but one of the minor problems it solves is on the "realism" front. Mearls called this out. Now, it isn't like this system is hyper-realistic, but it does address one of those things in the typical gaming skill model that chafes a little: It distinguishes natural talent and other such minor abilities as separate from serious training.

They aren't the same thing. Most games treat them as if they were, or so close that they might as well. If you get a +5 to the skill, it doesn't matter how you got it--only that you have it. This system says it does matter, sometimes. Or rather, sometimes you get the bonus and sometimes you get to a new plateau.

Take a gifted, natural athlete. He is strong, fast, smart. He can catch all kinds of balls. He can throw. He can run. He can jump, hit, swing a stick, has "touch". He has played all kinds of things backyard, but never organized.

You put him on an (American) football team. Get the pads on him, tell him to run past his guy and catch the ball. He might do it pretty well. Throw him into right field on the company softball team. Show him how to hold a tennis racket. Put him in the church basketball league. He will do pretty well--even against people with modest training but lesser natural gifts.

Tell him to run a precise route and arrive at the pylon of the end zone at the proper moment, turn, and catch the ball that is already in the air. He can't do it. This is a complex activity that requires a certain mastery and synergy of multiple skill sets. It ain't brain surgery, but it will do for illustration purposes.

Nevertheless, on simple enough tasks, there are trained people he can beat. Of course, Mearls pointed out that there was a problem with opposed rolls in this article, which he would touch on later. If the problem is the one I think, I'm not sure it is a problem. My experience is that when you are up against someone better trained than you, the way to win is to maneuver the problem down to one that you can handle. That they can also handle it is true, but now at least I have a shot. And who knows, maybe they get by mainly by keeping things complicated, or I catch them unaware?

That is, if you play a chess player significantly but not overwhelmingly better than you, you might seek to evenly trade pieces. The less pieces, the less complicated the board. You'll probably still lose. But I guarantee you've got a better shot than if the board is cluttered. He likes it that way. (This of course is not true if you are so untrained that you can't work with limited pieces. But in that case, you are doomed anyway.)

And not that the article is entirely addressing this part, but if you really wanted to remove the rough edges off the model, you wouldn't let training stack with natural ability much or even at all. Training is often an impediment to success in the early going, because your brain is so cluttered with unlearning bad habits (those things that sort of worked for you before)--and the more natural gifts you have, the more this will be true. It is one of the reasons that people hit walls.

That's it. This is trying to model that their humps in the learning curve, and when you get to a new one, you usually hit a wall before you find the way over.

 

[mmadsen]

It is not the main thrust of the design, but one of the minor problems it solves is on the "realism" front.

I'm not sure it solves a realism problem. I agree that skill from training is not the same as natural ability, but in real life skill doesn't always trump ability. Yes, old age and treachery can overcome youthful vigor, but it doesn't always, and the relationship differs across tasks. Some tasks are primarily about power-to-weight ratio; others involve subtle cues.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'm not sure it solves a realism problem. I agree that skill from training is not the same as natural ability, but in real life skill doesn't always trump ability. Yes, old age and treachery can overcome youthful vigor, but it doesn't always, and the relationship differs across tasks. Some tasks are primarily about power-to-weight ratio; others involve subtle cues.

I don't disagree with that. Part of my point is that when youthful vigor trumps old age and treachery, it is because the young guy was smart enough to move the dispute onto grounds where he can win. Or the old guy was dumb enough (or dramatically and foolishly proud enough) to let the contest get so moved.

Young Strong-As-Ox the farrier apprentice gets into a crafting duel with Old Eats-Nails-For-Breakfast, a master smith. On any kind of contest where Nails can brings to bear his vastly superior skill--he wins--end of story. So Ox manipulates the situation by appealing to Nails pride and vanity, such that the contest is to make the most quality horse shoes over a week. Nails is sure his superior skill will triump, but doesn't reckon with the strength of Ox.

Try to do that with each guy having a single skill modifier, and Nails having his "master" skill represented by +X more. Ox's strength always applies the same little bit, instead of being maginally useful most of the time and immensely useful occasionally.

Not that the Mearls idea totally solves that problem, of course, but it is taking the first necessary step of getting away from the single number.

 

[Stalker0]

I've tried to come up with a few alternate skill ideas myself the last few months, and my ideas have floated around the same concept Mearls describes.

Ultimately, I think its a better way to go than the current numerical based approach.

A few points:

1) People mention the binary nature of it, but the reality of dnd is once you get past 6th level or so this already starts to happen frequently. The skill gap creates the binary nature of the game already by forcing DCs that are too low to be failed by some players, or too high to be passed by others.

2) It greatly encourages imagination over mechanics. As Mearls said, players are going to work to think of various ways to lower that DC by one category, because it makes such a huge difference in there ability to succeed.

3) It may greatly reduce rolling, especially in areas like social situations. I find that a lot of rolls tend to hinder social situations...but they often call for a fair share of diplomacy/bluff and sense motive checks.

With auto DCs, players can determine if an npc is lieing without a roll, or will smiply believe the NPC. This gives the DM some consistency with his plot, and allows him to implement plot points using social situations that he could not have relied on before.


4) I do think one aspect this system will need to overcome is the lack of initial fiddling a character can do with it. It will need feats and other things to round out the system, allowing players to do cool tricks, specialize a bit, etc.