Skill DCs: a moving target?

[nnms]

On top of that, you have a wide range of proficiencies among different characters. At level 1, you can range from a negative (8 in the stat and armour check penalties) to what? 16? (racial bonus, background, feat bonus, +5 in the stat, training)

The skill DCs just need to be ball parks that the DM can then interpret. Only specific things need hard DCs, the rest can float.

 

[Neonchameleon]

On top of that, you have a wide range of proficiencies among different characters. At level 1, you can range from a negative (8 in the stat and armour check penalties) to what? 16? (racial bonus, background, feat bonus, +5 in the stat, training)

The skill DCs just need to be ball parks that the DM can then interpret. Only specific things need hard DCs, the rest can float.

+5 (Charisma) + 5 (Training) + 3 (Skill Focus) + 2 (Race) + 2 (Background) +5 (Words of Friendship 1st level Encounter Power) -> +22 diplomacy check.

Any advance on +22? (Elven perception bonus stacking? Goliaths rolling two dice on Athletics?)

 

[Quickleaf]

Things change. Things get more or less powerful over time. Lessons are learned. And you can either accept it and allow your game to be open to these changes and adjust as needed as you go along... or you can stick your head in the sand and refuse to accept that things change and that you were 100% correct the first time for ALL time. But if you want to be that way about your game... don't be surprised if people stop playing it.

"Get with the times" is not just a clever little epitaph. It holds a grain of truth.

Hold on. You're making a bunch of assumptions about me that are just unnecessary and, frankly, false. We both probably run great games that our players enjoy. I give you that benefit of the doubt and expect the same in return.

 

[Quickleaf]

Every additional book printed by WotC gives us the possibility of crunch that raises our skills. What our skills levels are now at a particular level is not that same as what they would have been following just the printing of the first Player's Handbook.

Backgrounds didn't exist at the time of PH1. So that's a potential additional +2 to player skills that might now skew DCs. Adventurer's Vault didn't exist at the time of PH1. So there are quite a number of magic items that grant bonuses to skills that might now skew DCs. Skill Powers exist that lessen the penalties associated with using certain skills certain ways that might now skew with DCs.

The current skill DCs at low level (and easy DCs thru all levels) are actually lower than the DCs in the original PHB. If what you're saying were true then we should have seen the DCs go up. Afterall, not everyone takes the skill bonus option for backgrounds or invests in skill enhancing powers or magic items. Or are you making an argument for why the new moderate and hard DCs get proportionately greater at paragon/epic? As in, at those levels players are now *expected* to invest in skill boosters?