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<blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 8857493" data-attributes="member: 93670">Having areas that the players don't feel guaranteed to win/succeed without cost or risk is a pretty important factor in providing challenges &amp; creating stories that don't make the players feel like the gm is abusing their power though.&nbsp; Take the dc neg10 to 43 chart in the 3.x DMG as an example... the fact that the DCs went up to such an extreme laser focused situation that came with notable opportunity costs along the way to&nbsp; reaching such peak was both pretty unlikely outside of a level20 oneshot is pretty dramatic.&nbsp;Now today it goes up to 30 &amp; it's possible to hit that with a much lower cost at a much lower level with much better odds&nbsp; making a level 9 who rolls a 23 on a10 or 12&nbsp; feel like they were cheated rather than just not ready to ace that very hard/nearly impossible with ease.&nbsp; It's the difference between &quot;I thought about putting a few more ranks in basketweaving but I'm glad to have them in x&amp;y&quot; vrs&nbsp; &quot;deciding they've been cheated &amp; losing trust or thinking to drag a rules debate towards a complete session derail&quot;... The GM can't say &quot;well it's raining &amp; the surface was mossy &amp; the hailstones are crunching under your feet and the guards are already on alert because of xyz plus this is the high lord lich's first commander's inner sanctum crawling with $dangerousMonsters&quot; or whatever because advantage &amp; disadvantage don't stack + simply cancel with no monsters being dangerous.I'm all for being champion for my players to be awesome &amp; love to do it, but awesome just burns out if it's the only setting possible without becoming adversarial &amp; losing trust like you phrased it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="tetrasodium, post: 8857493, member: 93670"] Having areas that the players don't feel guaranteed to win/succeed without cost or risk is a pretty important factor in providing challenges & creating stories that don't make the players feel like the gm is abusing their power though. Take the dc neg10 to 43 chart in the 3.x DMG as an example... the fact that the DCs went up to such an extreme laser focused situation that came with notable opportunity costs along the way to reaching such peak was both pretty unlikely outside of a level20 oneshot is pretty dramatic. Now today it goes up to 30 & it's possible to hit that with a much lower cost at a much lower level with much better odds making a level 9 who rolls a 23 on a10 or 12 feel like they were cheated rather than just not ready to ace that very hard/nearly impossible with ease. It's the difference between "I thought about putting a few more ranks in basketweaving but I'm glad to have them in x&y" vrs "deciding they've been cheated & losing trust or thinking to drag a rules debate towards a complete session derail"... The GM can't say "well it's raining & the surface was mossy & the hailstones are crunching under your feet and the guards are already on alert because of xyz plus this [I]is [/I]the high lord lich's first commander's inner sanctum crawling with $dangerousMonsters" or whatever because advantage & disadvantage don't stack + simply cancel with no monsters being dangerous. I'm all for being champion for my players to be awesome & love to do it, but awesome just burns out if it's the only setting possible without becoming adversarial & losing trust like you phrased it. [/QUOTE]

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