Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7001893" data-attributes="member: 6787650">There's a lot of things I don't follow in the above. I can say that I ask for checks based on what I want the probability distribution to look like. If I want it to be hard for an average joe but easy for an expert, I'll ask for lots of easy checks, e.g. five DC 5 Strength (Athletics) checks to climb this here cliff. If I want it to be hard for an average joe and still pretty hard for an expert, I'll ask for one difficult check, e.g. a DC 18 Constitution (Athletics) check to hold your breath the whole time you're swimming underwater across this here river.I pay zero attention to the PHB textual descriptors like "Easy" and "Hard" because they are vaguely-defined and don't mean anything. Only the numbers have a clear meaning.I think of that as a half-hearted attempt to describe probability curves, not a normative direction that you're supposed to somehow alter the DC based on the PC's level. A 10th level character often will have a way to pass that DC 18 Athletics check, via Bardic Inspiration or Enhance Ability or Bend Luck or Dark One's Own Luck or some combination of all of these. But you don't/shouldn't raise the DC to account for his level. The task is what it is.RE: Ogre tree-pushing, I wouldn't resolve that with a pure ability check. I'd use an ability check to let you momentarily exceed the normal limits of your musculature--e.g. Strength check DC 10 to shove twice as hard as you can lift. The tree-pushing then would be a function both of the creature's raw Strength/encumbrance and an ability check. For the tree as described (12" thick five feet off the ground) I'd make it maybe DC 15 for an Ogre or Str 19 Large-sized PC (e.g. Enlarged), DC 18 for a Str 19 Medium-sized PC, and DC (18 + (19 - Strength)) for anyone else. E.g. for a Str 10 PC it would be DC 27, nigh-impossible, but maybe theoretically achievable under extreme circumstances. Obviously I didn't compute any physical quantities when coming up with those numbers, I just eyeballed them based on my experience and intuition, but it serves to illustrate how I approach these things.</blockquote>

Verification