Has anyone here ever run 5e using a standard, static DC for most rolls?
Let me provide a bit of background. I’m currently running a sandbox *crawl in Pathfinder 2e. It does the exploration stuff reasonably well, but I am not a fan of the way it does skills. Even using Proficiency Without Level, the scaling is just too steep. If you use the suggested simple DCs, they’re too high. I’m also not a fan of skill actions.
For that and some other reasons, I’m currently prepping an OSE one-shot for my group. Frankly, my style hews much more closely towards old-school than modern games. I already crib a lot from OSE for exploration anyway, so why not try the actual thing? However, if my players don’t take to OSE, I want a backup plan. That backup is probably 5e.
Something I like about OSE is its static skill progression. You just roll against your skill, and you obviously get better over time. This is in contrast to games with progression treadmills where if you are always tackling appropriate challenges, you end up with a static (or slightly increasing) success rate over the level range.
Bounded accuracy helps a bit with this because the scaling is less severe, but I was wondering if anyone had tried just using a fixed DC for everything with the rare modifier (or even just using advantage or disadvantage) for exceptional situations.
For example, I could just use e.g., DC 16 as the universal DC. If the PCs wanted to sneak past something or scale a cliff or open a lock, they would just make an appropriate check against DC 16. If both success and failure don’t have interesting outcomes, I can just assume they succeed and not waste time having them roll the check.
