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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6577838" data-attributes="member: 82106">Sorry, I don't mean this to be confrontational, but you're looking at 3.5 through rose-colored glasses. There is NOTHING AT ALL WHATSOEVER in that system that sets a DC for building a boat. There is a generalized 'Craft' skill, in which you select a subcategory, but the subcategories are largely undefined. There is thus no SPECIFIC skill in 3.5 that equates to 'boatbuilding'. It could be its own thing, or it could fall under carpentry or maybe even something else. Beyond that there is NO DC for building a boat. All there is is a list which says 'very simple', 'typical', 'high quality', and 'complex or superior' and gives a DC for each (which BTW all fall within a fairly narrow range of 15 points that the game blows right past for typical skill bonuses within a few levels). I don't know if a boat is a 'typical' item, a 'high quality' item, or a 'complex' item. What if I decide to build a superior boat, is that harder? Because the time required is based on cost and complexity I can't judge that either! 3.5's Craft skill is nothing BUT DM judgement! 4e makes it much simpler. Narratively you build a boat. If doing so even requires any sort of mechanical adjudication (because presumably some sort of conflict is involved) then all or part of the conflict can be resolved using a skill challenge. While the skills and DCs involved are 'arbitrary' in some sense, they are no more so than the arbitrary Craft DCs in 3.5, which themselves are likely to need to be supplemented by other, also arbitrary, skill checks to obtain supplies, etc in any case where the whole thing is important enough to warrant mechanics. The end result is that in 3.5 there's an ill-defined sequence of checks to be passed at ill-defined DCs with overall success arbitrarily determined by the DM when 'enough' checks have passed or failed. Meanwhile in 4e there's a defined process for structuring this sequence of checks as an SC and the actual DCs aren't any MORE arbitrary than in 3.5. In either case the DM could simply assign them based on judgment alone to begin with "Gosh, a trained boatsmith is a 0-level guy, maybe with 5 ranks in craft. A boat costs N gp, so its logical it takes him X days to build it, lets see... DC 12!" A giant chart could exist for DCs like this, and boats might well be a common enough theme that they would get a mention (even though 3.5 doesn't mention them in its craft skill), but in general MANY things will NOT be listed, and that only covers the actual check for the boat, not anything else surrounding that or leading up to it. I don't strongly object to the equipment rules maybe having something like that in them, but its not a real high priority in my view because such a list simply cannot answer all questions and cannot possibly be more than a couple 100 items long at best, out of 1000's of items that PCs may build in the course of a game. And that's different in 3.x or AD&D? I don't think the monster rules of 4e guarantee transparency anyway. They assure playability though, to a greater degree than in past editions. Given that role doesn't matter IN COMBAT I don't think putting it on each creature would change transparency. I can tell you 'this guy is a brute' and you won't learn much if you can't say what level he is. Its vital that DMs give players clues about what is what. They need to describe the characteristics of monsters such that the players can gauge what sort of beast it is. Does it have a high AC, a weak reflex, etc. Note that Monster Knowledge checks, a very thoroughly described 4e system, codifies how the characters can learn this information pretty nicely. They may well not get exact (or any) answers, but they can observe and learn something about each creature. Overall you have the same thing you had in every edition, the table convention that if the players follow the breadcrumbs or at least look for the clues they will be able to match themselves against appropriate opponents. In 4e that means the monster's level will be in a certain range, and thus its stats will be in a certain (wider) range. Coupled with knowledge checks and just logic based on description the PCs should get what they need. Its not the epitome of transparency, you could have the party handed the XP budget of the encounter and told every detail, but there are other considerations.</blockquote>

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