Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8917947" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Like bloody hell it isn't. [USER=93670]@tetrasodium[/USER] even quotes (at least one of) the relevant section(s) of the DMG about it. There is no world where the 5e skill system can be remotely considered to &quot;work&quot; and where you don't take into consideration whether a task is hard for the person doing it or not. Walking across an empty room should be easy for most people. But someone drunk and with a peg leg, maybe that's not trivial anymore! Or maybe the character is being tested, or some other consideration comes into play. Perhaps this tankard of ale is kobold-brew, not normally fit for human consumption because of its intensely, vomit-inducing bitter flavor or beyond-the-impossible alcohol concentration (e.g. &quot;it's 300-proof alcohol&quot; &quot;...that's not possible, 300 proof would be 150%&quot; &quot;yeah, dwarven alchemists are still trying to figure out how the kobolds do it. It ain't pretty, whatever it is. Pity their livers when they crack that rock.&quot;)Triviality and impossibility are degrees of ease/hardness. Factoring in elements like whether the room is empty or cluttered is a contextual modifier to difficulty which, again, considers the abilities and nature of the person in question. &quot;Hard for whom?&quot; is a question the DMG actually needs answered.Then that is where I think you are wrong. Well, I'll certainly grant that the existing skill system won't work very well quite often (50% breakdown rate might be a bit higher than I would say though.) But I emphatically reject the idea that all possible alternatives are equally ineffective. That's patently ridiculous--testing and iterating should allow SOME improvement. We may not all think alike (as I argued above), but there are commonalities that can be leveraged. And if we can hit, say, only a 10% breakdown rate, that would be a HUGE improvement.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8917947, member: 6790260"] Like bloody hell it isn't. [USER=93670]@tetrasodium[/USER] even quotes (at least one of) the relevant section(s) of the DMG about it. There is no world where the 5e skill system can be remotely considered to "work" and where you don't take into consideration whether a task is hard for the person doing it or not. Walking across an empty room should be easy [I]for most people.[/I] But someone drunk and with a peg leg, maybe that's not trivial anymore! Or maybe the character is being tested, or some other consideration comes into play. Perhaps this tankard of ale is kobold-brew, not normally fit for human consumption because of its intensely, vomit-inducing bitter flavor or beyond-the-impossible alcohol concentration (e.g. "it's 300-proof alcohol" "...that's not possible, 300 proof would be 150%" "yeah, dwarven alchemists are still trying to figure out how the kobolds do it. It ain't pretty, whatever it is. Pity their livers when they crack that rock.") Triviality and impossibility are degrees of ease/hardness. Factoring in elements like whether the room is empty or cluttered is a contextual modifier to difficulty which, again, considers the abilities and nature of the person in question. "Hard [I]for whom?[/I]" is a question the DMG actually needs answered. Then that is where I think you are wrong. Well, I'll certainly grant that the existing skill system won't work very well quite often (50% breakdown rate might be a bit higher than I would say though.) But I emphatically reject the idea that all possible alternatives are equally ineffective. That's patently ridiculous--testing and iterating should allow SOME improvement. We may not all think alike (as I argued above), but there [I]are[/I] commonalities that can be leveraged. And if we can hit, say, only a 10% breakdown rate, that would be a HUGE improvement. [/QUOTE]

Verification