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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 7935677" data-attributes="member: 6779196">I think your greater prior GM experience relative to mine is definitely a big part of it. As a first-time DM, I found 4e overwhelming. I would assume if I DMed 4e today, I would not have the same problem, and I might appreciate the greater depth of advice. But 5e was certainly much more approachable to me as a DM, and I felt it taught me the DMing fundamentals in a way I didn’t feel 4e did.It’s also possible that being along for the ride during the open playtest for 5e played a part too. Watching the sausage get made is a pretty effective way to learn to make sausage.Yeah, that was mostly 3e parody. 4e’s DC-by-level chart is far easier to use than 3e’s mess. That said, I still needed to have the chart in front of me to adjudicate skill checks in 4e, and preferred to have a DC predetermined. With 5e I can easily set DCs on the fly, and in fact greatly prefer doing so.I think we’re describing the same thing here. At my table, it might go something like this:Player: I try to unlock the door with my thieves’ tools.Me: Ok, that will take 10 minutes and a successful DC 20 Dexterity check - plus proficiency for your Thieves’ tools, of course.Rarely, it might continue;Player: DC20? Yikes, I didn’t realize it was such a complex lock. On second thought, maybe we should just try to break the door down?Other player: Sounds good to me! I’ll use my crowbar to try to force it open.Me: That’ll be noisy, but you can do it with a DC 15 Strength check. With advantage for the crowbar, of course.etc. I do that so that the players can make informed decisions about their actions. They should know the potential consequences (10 minutes of time bringing them closer to the next complication roll in the case of picking the lock, noise attracting the attention of nearby enemies in the case of forcing the door) and their likelihood of success. That insures they are succeeding and failing based on their choices rather than random chance.Yeah, this is a problem I have with 5e as well. Personally, the way I would prefer to go about fixing this is to make magic more freeform like skills are, and to give non-magic characters more codified maneuvers they can perform, like 4e powers.See, I would prefer to reduce the contrast between in-combat adjudication and out of combat adjudication. It’s awkward that the game changes so drastically as soon as the DM says to roll initiative. PbtA games handle this much better in my opinion, where violent conflict is resolved just like any other part of the game instead of being its own siloed-off minigame.</blockquote>

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