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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 7034818" data-attributes="member: 87792">What's a common sense call? Whose common sense?My textbook example here is tightrope walking as it's a litmus test I frequently use for skill systems. In 3.5 tightrope walking is DC 20 (<a href="http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/balance.htm" target="_blank">it's balancing on something less than 2" wide</a>) and walking on a slackrope is DC22. Clearly someone thought this was common sense for difficulty.In the real world commoners without a big skill investment or a high DEX practice <a href="http://www.yogaslackers.com/about/slackline-yoga" target="_blank">slackline yoga</a>. And if someone thought DC 22 to just walk a tightrope was "common sense" I hate to think what they'd think that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_iOWRsw-jA" target="_blank">some of the Cirque du Soleil's stunts were</a>. For that matter I don't know what I'd consider the common sense DC for stunts that are utterly divorced from common sense. And there's a reason that ENWorld came up with the "<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?295928-The-quot-That-s-Unrealistic!-quot-Retort-Compendium" target="_blank">That's unrealistic retort compendium</a>".But that's not why I find 4e vastly easier to improvise with than most other RPGs. I've told this story before - but why I do goes back to my second or third ever sesssion DMing 4e and I'd not run anything else since I was a teenager in the 90s. I was running War of the Burning Sky - and due to a string of natural 20s on diplomacy checks at exactly the right time the PCs had managed to turn a dragonrider riding a wyrmling. So I did what any good DM would do - gave them another problem. Asked them how they were going to get this dragon rider to a safehouse when it was across the city that was being bombed by a flight of dragons. And got a response along the lines of "We're going to disguise the dragon as a plague cart. Steal a cart, throw a horse blanket over it and put its two back legs in the cart, light lanterns, and tell everyone to stay back using the darkness to disguise it."This was my third time DMing as an adult. (Or possibly my second.) This scene is nowhere near the adventure path (I'd already rewritten the encounter). And how the hell? I took a swallow from my drink and hoped the players wouldn't notice I didn't have a clue what to do next.And by the time I put my drink down I realised what skill challenges were for. For giving me the tools to handle complex tasks like that - a pacing tool and a tool to know when to make things more complex and what sort of overall difficulty an off the wall screwball plan like that should have. And it's something 4e handed me on a platter that literally no other RPG I'm aware of does.4e has also come to my rescue when I've completely forgotten my rulebooks. The 4e <a href="http://blogofholding.com/?p=512" target="_blank">MM3 on a business card</a> gives me everything I need to create monsters on the fly. I certainly don't have to look up a monster statblock -and then look up half its abilities in the MM.</blockquote>

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