D&D General The Resurrection of Mike Mearls Games.

[UngeheuerLich]

Actually, crunching the numbers on the skills thing, aiming for about a two-thirds success rate means you want the kind of character that's supposed to find the skill check a decent challenge means you want success on an 8 on the die.

With the proposed modifiers for a first-level character, that looks like:
DC 4 - Very Easy, it's almost impossible to get a lower modifier than -4 so pretty much everyone succeeds 65% or better of the time
DC 8 - Easy, a character with no particular aptitude or skill can do it most of the time
DC 12 - Medium, a character with a reasonable level of aptitude and skill can do it
DC 16 - Hard, a characracter needs both aptitude and expertise to reliably do it

Thereafter, it does seem reasonable to carry on using the 4-point increment, rather than the 5-point increment, to judge the difficulty of a task.

In the D&D next playtest it was 3 points increments first. Which seemed actually great. Was sad when they reverted it back to 5 point increments.

 

[SteveC]

Thereafter, it does seem reasonable to carry on using the 4-point increment, rather than the 5-point increment, to judge the difficulty of a task.

I think this is a reasonable thing to do but we also seem to be stuck with the symmetry of the 5 point bump for each difficulty increase.

 

[mearls]

I think this is a reasonable thing to do but we also seem to be stuck with the symmetry of the 5 point bump for each difficulty increase.

This is definitely a factor. I think tradition - 3e used five point increments - plus the ease with which people handle multiples of 5 makes this the most popular way to do it.

And by popular I mean - playtesters just liked multiples of 5 better than everything else.

 

[mearls]

Actually, crunching the numbers on the skills thing, aiming for about a two-thirds success rate means you want the kind of character that's supposed to find the skill check a decent challenge means you want success on an 8 on the die.

I think this is an area where player expectation and mathematical reality collide. I've run games - specifically Shadowdark - using DC 8 as the baseline. My experience was that anything less than a 10 is seen as some sort of failure. There's a weird pattern where people, even those who aren't rules experts, seem to latch on to multiples of 5.

 

[S'mon]

I think this is an area where player expectation and mathematical reality collide. I've run games - specifically Shadowdark - using DC 8 as the baseline. My experience was that anything less than a 10 is seen as some sort of failure. There's a weird pattern where people, even those who aren't rules experts, seem to latch on to multiples of 5.

Yes. I think given the psychology of it the numbers are best as-is, 10-15-20 just works well as being very easy to remember. It's more the terminology that needs to be treated with caution. A 15 is 'moderate' specifically for Tier 2 PCs, and the terminology seems balanced around that Tier. Which seems very sensible to me, but GMs should be aware that in Tier 1 their typical check should be more a 12. In Tier 3 I'd say a 17 is a Moderate challenge, and at Tier 4 an 18 or 19. But the GM should keep in mind the 10-15-20 spread when world building - a "hard" lock is always a 20, an "easy" lock is a 10, etc. And let the Rogue with Reliable Talent and +14 to Thieves' Tools pick that 'hard' lock!

 

[el-remmen]

My experience was that anything less than a 10 is seen as some sort of failure.

Yeah. I find this so weird but not uncommon. I have a current player who, whenever he rolls under 10 assumes he fails to the degree that he has screwed himself out of a success more than once because he doesn’t even bother to add his bonus to the roll out of disappointment!

I basically remind him to do the math at least once per session.

 

[Zaukrie]

Yeah. I find this so weird but not uncommon. I have a current player who, whenever he rolls under 10 assumes he fails to the degree that he has screwed himself out of a success more than once because he doesn’t even bother to add his bonus to the roll out of disappointment!

I basically remind him to do the math at least once per session.

Same

 

[EthanSental]

Alright, I’m really enjoying the psyker posts and the back and forth with members on the patreon page…the only draw back for me is…I keep thinking how it would be fun to have Mike DM a session like some of the early 5e things online for the dnd channel

Not that the patreon was set up for that but man it would be cool for a special occasion backer thing or viewing it!

 

[darjr]

Alright, I’m really enjoying the psyker posts and the back and forth with members on the patreon page…the only draw back for me is…I keep thinking how it would be fun to have Mike DM a session like some of the early 5e things online for the dnd channel

Not that the patreon was set up for that but man it would be cool for a special occasion backer thing or viewing it!

He runs games at conventions, maybe yiu could catch a seat at one, but I think they fill super fast.

 

[MerricB]

I think this is an area where player expectation and mathematical reality collide. I've run games - specifically Shadowdark - using DC 8 as the baseline. My experience was that anything less than a 10 is seen as some sort of failure. There's a weird pattern where people, even those who aren't rules experts, seem to latch on to multiples of 5.

I blame... Star Wars (WEG).

(It likely came in before that, but it was the first really popular system that used the target numbers with multiples of 5s).

Cheers,
Merric