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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KidSnide" data-source="post: 6201201" data-attributes="member: 54710">I think Klaus and Repsesper are both correct in spirit, and this highlights the inconsistencies with the current skill rules.  The DM guidelines clearly suggest that a roll on a given challenge could be appropriate for some characters and yet not for others.  At the same time, the DM guidelines don't explicitly suggest putting different DCs on the same roll.  What this suggests is a concept where skill rolls are only used when there is doubt as to the outcome for particular characters.  For example, a DM might decide that the meaning of magical glyph would be obvious to any arcane casters with an Int of 16 or higher and impossible for characters with an Int below 12 or with zero experience with magic (e.g. barbarians, low-level fighters, etc).  For anyone else, they roll the dice.  I don't have a problem with using a lot of DM judgment in skill checks (others might call it "DM fiat").  But it suggests a method of handling skills that is really different from how they are usually written - i.e. with fixed DCs that any PC can attempt.  I think the idea is that different groups are supposed to look at the rules and get different results.  Groups that hate DM judgment calls just use the DCs at written.  They get predictable results (i.e. the DCs mean what they say), but get abysmal "reality simulation" because the results are vastly more random than realistic.  Folks who care more about probabilistic verisimilitude need to use a lot of DM judgment to push the results closer to plausible.  D&DN basically takes the attitude that "reality simulation" isn't really a goal and is more of about subjective DM/group preference than it is something that a rules system can plausible get good enough with an acceptable level of complexity.The other thing to keep in mind is that these skill rules are written to support adventures played by different groups of PCs.  One of the 3.x complaints that D&DN is trying to address (as did 4e) is the issue that - in most parties - specialists automatically succeed and non-specialists had no chance of success.  Personally, I think that is highly realistic.  Most interesting tasks (a long jump, an appendectomy) are the types of things that specialists will almost always succeed at and non-specialists will almost always fail.  Or, to be a little more accurate, there are very few tasks that both specialists and non-specialists have both a significant chance of success and failure.  If the tasks is of a level of difficulty that it is uncertain for one, it will be guaranteed success or failure for the other.  If a gap is small enough that I may or may not jump over it, a brilliant athlete is sure to succeed.  If a surgery is hard enough that a professional surgeon might fail, I have no chance of success.That's life, but it's not super interesting for a game.  So, once you decide that "skill realism is a problem", you're going to get a system that produces very unrealistic results.-KS</blockquote>

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