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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nellisir" data-source="post: 4962366" data-attributes="member: 70">Don't use the cleric as your baseline. Use the two characters with the highest skill points in the relevant skills as your baseline. Most groups have multiple characters; you usually want to aim challenges towards the characters that have invested skill points in the relevant skill.  It's a reward.He's asking how to determine DCs.  This way creates a challenge to the characters regardless of their level.  If you want something to be impossible, or impossibly easy, then you don't need a number.Again, you only need a DC if something is possible.  If it's impossible, you don't need a DC.  And that's where being a DM comes in.Lets say the cleric has the highest Diplomacy check, a +2, and wants to see the king.  You decided its a DC 23 check to see the king.  That's perfectly legitimate.  It's functionally impossible for the cleric to see the king.  Since a roll of 20 isn't an automatic success, there's no way he can roll high enough. He can, however, search for an advantage - bribe an official, or bring a gift, or capture a wanted brigand - any of which might add a +2 bonus to his roll.  Now he's got a 10% chance of being able to see the king (19-20 +4).While capturing the bandit, however, the cleric needs to ride a horse.  He's got a +2 in ride, and you want the ride to be difficult, but not so impossible that he gives up and lets the bandit get away.  It's not a bad idea to make it a 4e skill challenge sort of thing and require multiple checks, but we'll pretend it only takes one or two right now.  A 60% chance of succeeding on a check sounds about right, so you set the DC at 10.  The cleric has a good chance of catching the bandit, or at least following him, but also a decent chance of falling behind, or even off - creating tension for the player, not a sense of impossibility.basically, it's two different approachs. Neither is wrong or right all the time.  That is what is done with AC, just abstracted out to a generic character rather than a specific one.  There's a reason why CR 1 creatures don't have ACs of 32.  The AC of a creature of a certain CR has an approximate relationship to the to-hit bonus of a character (fighter default) of a level equal to the CR...or in other words, creatures with higher CRs have higher ACs and fight higher-level opponents.  Expeditious Retreat Press has a whole book out analyzing monster stats, including AC vs to-hit, and what WotC recommends vs what they actually do.</blockquote>

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