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<blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7295923" data-attributes="member: 6775031"><p>I could have used a better example, I suppose. If you're facing a DC 40 lock, which is an item in the PHB that costs less than half the price of a masterwork dagger, then the incredibly skilled and/or talented fighter with +17 to the check can still not succeed; you need a minimum of +20 before you have the smallest chance of success. And since you need like +30 in order to have a reasonable chance, nobody even bothers to build a character who only has +17 on the check. If you look at a handful of character sheets for level 15 characters in 3E, you'd spot a lot of skills with 18 ranks and a lot of skills with zero ranks and not a lot in between.</p><p></p><p>I'm not sure which edition you're talking about here. Monsters in 3E certainly didn't get better just with level or hit dice, because they used the same rules that PCs used, which meant they quickly fell behind the curve in anything they didn't actually invest points into at every opportunity. And I can't speak for what your DM decided the walls were made of in whatever dungeons they ran, but I can say that I played in a Pathfinder adventure path which eventually got to the point of using DC 42 locks, because my level 14 rogue had to try like six times in order to succeed, even though she was highly specialized at picking locks.</p><p></p><p>My intuition is that this wouldn't work as well as you think it might. The 3.5 skill scale measures skill modifiers between -5 and +35 or so, with example DCs between 0 and 40. And generally speaking, magic and gimmicks aside, that system only works (to the extent that it does) <em>because</em> the dungeon design assumes specialists of a certain level; without that assumption, you would have a <em>ton</em> of checks that fall outside the scope of the d20, one way or the other.</p><p></p><p>I guess it really depends on how you stat up the PCs, though. If PCs also had skill bonuses that were entirely independent of their combat level, then low-level specialists would already succeed at high-difficulty checks, and you would never really get to see them progress at all; it may also mean that there's no point in having +20 to a check, even if there are plenty of DC 20 challenges in the dungeon, because you need someone with +35 in order to bypass the DC 40 checks and they might as well handle all of the easier checks since they're already here. But if PCs advanced their skills at the standard 3.5 rate, and skill DCs within the dungeon were entirely independent of the level of the party, then low-level parties would often come across high-DC checks that they have zero chance of making, and high-level parties would often come across low-DC checks that they have zero chance of failing (which isn't the worst thing in the world, but it can be frustrating to specialize heavily in something and still have no chance of succeeding).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="The Crimson Binome, post: 7295923, member: 6775031"] I could have used a better example, I suppose. If you're facing a DC 40 lock, which is an item in the PHB that costs less than half the price of a masterwork dagger, then the incredibly skilled and/or talented fighter with +17 to the check can still not succeed; you need a minimum of +20 before you have the smallest chance of success. And since you need like +30 in order to have a reasonable chance, nobody even bothers to build a character who only has +17 on the check. If you look at a handful of character sheets for level 15 characters in 3E, you'd spot a lot of skills with 18 ranks and a lot of skills with zero ranks and not a lot in between. I'm not sure which edition you're talking about here. Monsters in 3E certainly didn't get better just with level or hit dice, because they used the same rules that PCs used, which meant they quickly fell behind the curve in anything they didn't actually invest points into at every opportunity. And I can't speak for what your DM decided the walls were made of in whatever dungeons they ran, but I can say that I played in a Pathfinder adventure path which eventually got to the point of using DC 42 locks, because my level 14 rogue had to try like six times in order to succeed, even though she was highly specialized at picking locks. My intuition is that this wouldn't work as well as you think it might. The 3.5 skill scale measures skill modifiers between -5 and +35 or so, with example DCs between 0 and 40. And generally speaking, magic and gimmicks aside, that system only works (to the extent that it does) [I]because[/I] the dungeon design assumes specialists of a certain level; without that assumption, you would have a [I]ton[/I] of checks that fall outside the scope of the d20, one way or the other. I guess it really depends on how you stat up the PCs, though. If PCs also had skill bonuses that were entirely independent of their combat level, then low-level specialists would already succeed at high-difficulty checks, and you would never really get to see them progress at all; it may also mean that there's no point in having +20 to a check, even if there are plenty of DC 20 challenges in the dungeon, because you need someone with +35 in order to bypass the DC 40 checks and they might as well handle all of the easier checks since they're already here. But if PCs advanced their skills at the standard 3.5 rate, and skill DCs within the dungeon were entirely independent of the level of the party, then low-level parties would often come across high-DC checks that they have zero chance of making, and high-level parties would often come across low-DC checks that they have zero chance of failing (which isn't the worst thing in the world, but it can be frustrating to specialize heavily in something and still have no chance of succeeding). [/QUOTE]
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