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New Legends and Lore:Difficulty Class Warfare

With Mearls' system I come to the ravine and that's it. I absolutely can't make it across.

But wait! There's a way down into the ravine! Quickly scanning the rocky surface, you realize only a Master could climb down with a princess in tow.

Good thing you're a Master Climber!

Or, maybe just climb down a little and hide! Maybe they won't see you? Let's see a Journeyman check for Stealth.

Or, better yet, you know these bounty hunters are swayed mostly by the coin, a Master Diplomat could probably convince them to report back that you were gone by the time they reached the ravine if you threw that gold you filched from the keep.

What do you want to do?
 

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It encourages smart play and engagement. A player with a clever idea can shift the DC one level and turn a check into an automatic success, or an impossible challenge into one with a chance of success. I personally like this because it gives the DM a lot of leeway to use the system to shape his or her game.​

I think that is a better goal for a D&D skill system. You'll still get surprising results, but they will come from the player's ingenuity, not a lucky die roll.
I like this, too!
However, we already play 4e just like that:
When I'm the DM I already grant auto-successes for exceptional ideas and/or roleplaying.

My current 4e DM did something very similar in our last session:
We were confronted with a very difficult skill challenge (well difficult for my character at least who didn't appear to be trained in any relevant skill) when I came up with an intriguing idea by thinking outside the box.
All I had really hoped for was that I would be allowed to use an unusual skill in the challenge but instead the DM decided that my approach resulted in lowering all of the DCs for the skill challenge by one category.

So, we're apparently already ahead of the game ;)
 

One issue I see is that it sounds like Mearls' solution will exacerbate the unskilled guy who he saw as the problem. Where before the unskilled guy had little chance of succeeding at the skill check, now he'll have an absolute failure at the skill check.
Some sort of automated skill improvement ("learn by doing") should be built into the system. Say... everyone becomes a Novice in every skill (he is not already trained in) at 10th level and a Journeyman at 20th level.

And I don't like nixing a die roll because it doesn't allow for go-for-the-gold heroics. When my hero comes to the broken bridge over the ravine I can put myself in danger and try for a nigh-impossible die roll to leap across and save the princess. With Mearls' system I come to the ravine and that's it. I absolutely can't make it across.
Spend one or more action points to improve your ranking for one task.

The more I think about this system, the more it makes sense. Just ditch the unnecessary DC 15 check.

And adding more detailed math is easy, as I presented upthread.
 

If anyone can succeed at anything they care to attempt with a good enough die roll it devalues having skills so much that choosing them becomes unimportant.

Surely there's still significant value in shifting from "nigh-impossibility" to "near-certainty"?

I'm not a doctor so it makes perfect sense that I couldn't perform heart surgury even if I rolled a natural 20.

Heart surgery should probably be an extreme difficulty Skill Challenge - say 8 successes before 2 failures. That very quickly shifts the "if I roll a 20" to "if I roll a long sequence of 20s". And, yeah, I'd still much rather the PCs have the chance to roll.

You do what all DMs did before there was a pre-set DC range menu, decide on the difficulty of a given action based on how hard it actually is to accomplish.

I'm talking about guidelines for adventure writers. What difficulty of challenge should I be putting in as the baseline when I'm writing for 10th level characters? It doesn't matter whether "Hard" means "climbing a slightly slippery wall" or "climbing an ice wall covered in grease"; what matters is whether an adventure for level X should include "Hard" challenges at all, or should they be "Easy", "Very Hard", or what?

Getting rewarded for clever actions in actual play as opposed to optimizing build is a good thing.

For "clever actions in play" read "being better able to manipulate the DM", whether by whining more, being related to the DM, or bringing beer. Yay!

I'm not a fan of the 3E implementation but I like the concept of trained only for certain things, especially knowledge. The main thing is that every character have access to the same skills so no one gets an advantage merely by choice of class.

The problem with "Trained Only" skills was that there was no consistency in tasks. Perform and Craft can be used untrained, but Profession cannot? Track requires a specialised feat for the purpose? Finding traps requires a class feature (and so is only available to Rogues)?

The corner cases were always absurd. Worse, because the designers can't be experts in everything (and even moreso experts in fantasy skills), there will always be absurd cases. Far better to just let everyone try everything unskilled, and assign appropriately hard DCs.
 
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It's really not my bag. Then we're back to entirely "Mother May I" gameplay, checking with the DM to see if your idea is "clever enough" to warrant a reduction in skill. The alternative is to use player's ingenuity to optionally generate some ad hoc bonuses, if you'd like, but not to make the use of the skill depend on having a clever player...which this system, with its harsh divisions between "You can" and "You can't," doesn't well support.

Can you clear this up for me? To my eye, it seems that a harsh division between "can" and "can't" will force players who want to succeed to come up with a clever plan.

One issue I see is that it sounds like Mearls' solution will exacerbate the unskilled guy who he saw as the problem. Where before the unskilled guy had little chance of succeeding at the skill check, now he'll have an absolute failure at the skill check.

And I don't like nixing a die roll because it doesn't allow for go-for-the-gold heroics. When my hero comes to the broken bridge over the ravine I can put myself in danger and try for a nigh-impossible die roll to leap across and save the princess. With Mearls' system I come to the ravine and that's it. I absolutely can't make it across.

The vibe I get from the article is that, yeah, you come to the ravine and that's it. If you want to get across, you're going to have to think up some clever way to bridge the gap. Maybe it's as simple as getting out your grappling hook. Maybe you can pole-vault with your trusty 10-foot-pole.

But maybe magic will be common enough that you can drink a potion of Jump, rely on your Boots of Striding and Springing, or a handy spell of Haste or Bless from an ally.

Or maybe you can call on your Love for the Princess to boost your skill. Who can say at this point?
 

I was thinking of the posts in this thread that assume there will be things like "elven cloaks" that shift the difficulty of a stealth task by one level, or "Cat's Grace" spells that shift the difficulty of a balance task by one level. In other words, system artifacts (not Artifacts ;) ) that modify difficulty, in addition to the "player ingenuity" modifications. In effect, this amounts to a (+15) die modifier, but it's stated as "shifting the difficulty level" in the coversation.

Please note that when I brought up elven cloaks shifting the level of the task, that was in the context of an example of how modular rules could be applied to the system--or not--and it was part of an example with lots of fiddly bits where the cloak was limited by situation.

But having thought about it overnight, I'd think that you could go either way--"great elven cloaks" or "cloaks of invisibility" or such that shift the rating, versus the basic elven cloaks that give you a +2 to your roll, at whatever rating you currently knew.

And I think from some of the replies, that I'm reading this differently than others. I see this as a lot like D&D spell levels in some ways. That is, the "difficulty ratings" are tiers, like spells levels. Until you can cast third level arcane spells, you can't cast fireball. Until you can do master level stealth, you can't do (list of tasks limited to master or greater). Those difficulty ratings can be highly dependent on level or not. That is part of the point. If the only way to get third level arcane spells is to be a 5th level or greater wizard (in a simple version), then that would be similar to being a 9th level thief to get master level stealth. But you might have a bard that gets both things later. And you might have a more complex modular option that lets characters use skill ranks or feats or whatever to get the abilities.

Besides all that, you also have things that let you tweak your chances slightly within the tier you already have. If you are a 5th level 3E Wizard with spell penetration, then you've got a bit better chance of making your fireball count. If you are a 5E rogue with the some sneaky feat, you have a better shot at making that DC 15 for the things appropriate to your current tier.

So no, I don't see these labels as simply semantics for increasing DCs. Even if you manage to power optimize your rogue to have +15 to your sneak chances, you don't move up a tier by virtue of that bonus alone. This is the key reason to have the system, as indicated by the early discussion in the article about people cracking the expected DCs by such power gaming. And if well designed, no one would go after such a bonus. They would be better served geting some bonuses and then spending the rest of their efforts improving tiers in that skill or others.

I do think that having one rank where you roll at DC 15 (with situational and other adjustments), with one rank easier being automatic and one rank harder being fail, is not so hot--except in the simplest versions that could be done using those rules--i.e. something analogous to Basic D&D using attributes for skills. As a rough and ready way to guide DM fiat, while still allowing some key rolls, that works well enough. But for the more complex options, I would think you would want a more gradual curve. Something like: 2 easier, auto success. 1 easier, set DC at "easy". Current rating, set DC at "medium". 1 harder, set DC at "hard". 2 harder, auto fail. Since the easy/medium/hard part are flat DCs, you don't need the 4E skill chart to scale by level, and remembering 10/15/20 or whatever they are is no big deal.
 
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I'm talking about guidelines for adventure writers. What difficulty of challenge should I be putting in as the baseline when I'm writing for 10th level characters? It doesn't matter whether "Hard" means "climbing a slightly slippery wall" or "climbing an ice wall covered in grease"; what matters is whether an adventure for level X should include "Hard" challenges at all, or should they be "Easy", "Very Hard", or what?

Why does every challenge need to be tailored to a specific level? Some things are harder to do than others regardless of level. Difficulties that make sense for what they are is a good way to go.



For "clever actions in play" read "being better able to manipulate the DM", whether by whining more, being related to the DM, or bringing beer. Yay!

It is sad that this is all you can see of human input into the game having any meaning. Some of us like games that do not limit whats possible by what is on the character sheet.


The problem with "Trained Only" skills was that there was no consistency in tasks. Perform and Craft can be used untrained, but Profession cannot? Track requires a specialised feat for the purpose? Finding traps requires a class feature (and so is only available to Rogues)?

The corner cases were always absurd. Worse, because the designers can't be experts in everything (and even moreso experts in fantasy skills), there will always be absurd cases. Far better to just let everyone try everything unskilled, and assign appropriately hard DCs.

Well, I did say that I liked the concept, not the implementation.
 

It's really not my bag. Then we're back to entirely "Mother May I" gameplay, checking with the DM to see if your idea is "clever enough" to warrant a reduction in skill. The alternative is to use player's ingenuity to optionally generate some ad hoc bonuses, if you'd like, but not to make the use of the skill depend on having a clever player...which this system, with its harsh divisions between "You can" and "You can't," doesn't well support.

What's a DM for?

Looking at wikipedia I get both:
The DM serves as the arbiter of the rules, both in teaching the rules to the players and in enforcing them
and
The DM is responsible for narrative flow, creating the scenario and setting in which the game takes place, maintaining the pace and providing dynamic feedback.

The first is a very old school definition with an absolutist assumption about "the rules", the second is the result of actually observing gameplay.[1]

I read a good blog on this recently (can't remember where... can anyone else?) but saying the same thing. Really the interation with a GM is always an ongoing set of small negotiations about what may work, what's actually in the room, what might happen if I do this? Does the walkway look stable? Ok, is the handrail sound?

I fully understand the "Mother may I" problem that comes with bad GMing but it's a problem with the GM not the game - unless you want to play a boardgame by "the rules".

[1]: Tychsen, Anders; Hitchens, Michael; Brolund, Thea; Kavakli, Manolya (2005). "The Game Master". Proceedings of the second Australasian conference on Interactive entertainment. Sydney, Australia: ACM. pp. 215–222. http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1109180.1109214. Retrieved 2008-11-25.
 

But wait! There's a way down into the ravine! Quickly scanning the rocky surface, you realize only a Master could climb down with a princess in tow.

Good thing you're a Master Climber!

Or, maybe just climb down a little and hide! Maybe they won't see you? Let's see a Journeyman check for Stealth.

Or, better yet, you know these bounty hunters are swayed mostly by the coin, a Master Diplomat could probably convince them to report back that you were gone by the time they reached the ravine if you threw that gold you filched from the keep.

What do you want to do?

I think that's a great way to frame an open challenge that you want the players to overcome. But it doesn't match the "put yourself at risk to be heroic snap decisions to a scenario that isn't meant as a challenge to be overcome" that I had in mind.

Spend one or more action points to improve your ranking for one task.

That's not a bad suggestion but it requires that you have an action point available and still doesn't give you a throw caution to the wind and hope for the best option.

Who can say at this point?

That's exactly right. I'm looking at just one aspect of a spitballed idea and there's plenty of room to deal with my concerns if it was a fully developed system.
 

I think that's a great way to frame an open challenge that you want the players to overcome. But it doesn't match the "put yourself at risk to be heroic snap decisions to a scenario that isn't meant as a challenge to be overcome" that I had in mind.

Right on. I was just showing you that an impossible task is not necessarily a roadblock, but a fork in the road.
 

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