New Skill DC Table from Essentials DM's Kit

[the Jester]

I definitely like the looks of those DCs- they're pretty close to how I tend to run DCs. Nice! Yet another example of "We're listening, really!"

 

[MrMyth]

Excellent, these look pretty close to the numbers I've been using. I've been using a house rule were each DC (for skill challenges) has two levels of success - if you hit the lower DC, you still succeed, but usually take some damage or have some other downside. It ended up working out quite well in actual practice.

At level 30, my DCs were:
Easy: 22/27
Average: 30/35
Hard: 40/45

The new table DCs fall almost perfectly in the middle of the ones I was using. That's rather cool.

 

[Jhaelen]

Too fiddly. I agree the DCs generally needed adjustment to be more level appropriate. But I can keep ~10 lines in my head, not 30.

I have a similar criticism of the "rules updated" damage tables.

Does that much about PCs really change from level 2 to level 3 that they both need their own line in each table?

Well, the old tables/values had their problems, too:

- Leveling monsters up/down by a level would sometimes result in a change in their damage and sometimes not. It wasn't a smooth or even just a linear progression.

- You basically couldn't create skill challenges for every level. Skill challenges of level 1 to 3 granted different xp, but were equally hard.

Myself, I dislike tables in my rpgs. Or rather, I dislike tables that do not follow some kind of mathematical progression that is easily derived or memorized (I really _hated_ the xp progression tables in 1e/2e!).

Hence, I really liked the change to the damage expressions. All you need to memorize is this:
- average standard damage equals level +8; substract/add 25% as required

And that's why I've been trying to derive a similarly easy formula for the skill check DCs.
The new DCs can be approximated quite well with the following formulas:
- easy DC: Level*0.5 + 8
- moderate DC: Level*0.75 + 10
- hard DC: Level*0.8 + 18

I'm better at memorizing formulas than tables, so this works for me.
It works even better for me if I understand how they arrived at a given formula.

My idea of deriving the DCs from monster ability scores is close, but unfortunately not as accurate:
- easy DC: Level*0.5 + 8
- moderate DC: Level*0.75 + 11.5
- hard DC: Level*0.75 + 18

But then, maybe they also changed the design guidelines for monster ability scores...

Anyway, lookup tables are imho just a convenience, so you don't have to do the math every time.

 

[TikkchikFenTikktikk]

I run a lot of one- or two-session games with a variety of people. I rarely use monster stat-blocks, instead relying on knowing the system and the math.

It's easier to run this way with the old table, or formulas as Jhaelen mentioned, than a 30 line table.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

I use Stalker0's Obsideon skill challenge system, and the first levels of this chart's Hard column match very closely to his DCs.
I think I will use the Hard DC's here instead of his, more at the higher levels were I am finding PC's skills are very high.

I find it easy to have the skill challenges level written on my notes, along with the easy/mod/hard DCs.. usually in the top margin of the paper/page... so thanks very much for this chart!