WHAT IS EASY, MEDIUM AND HARD

[JAMUMU]

You've conflated two ideas in an interesting way there.

Obviously not all skill rolls are going to be about the final confrontation, and minion monsters would have increased chances of success versus boss monsters in the earlier parts of a scenario. But I think for a monster-hunting game I'd start with the chances of surviving/completing the final scenario and work backwards from there.

 

[Fenris-77]

So, to expand on that idea in an interesting way I'd probably look to BitD's notion of position and effect. Mooks are controlled/great; normal bads are standard/risky, and Big bads are desperate/great. I can dig it.

 

[JAMUMU]

So, to expand on that idea in an interesting way I'd probably look to BitD's notion of position and effect. Mooks are controlled/great; normal bads are standard/risky, and Big bads are desperate/great. I can dig it.

I'm a big fan of BitD and yeah, that's totally what I just re-invented! Just like classic CoC and the end of Dracula, the players have to heavily stack the odds in their favour (crates of dynamite, NPC SWAT team cannon fodder, industrial smelter, pouring concrete, a meteor strike) to get the good ending, and one or more of them is still probably facing death.

 

[Fenris-77]

Look at us go.

 

[Bedrockgames]

From what I'm reading here, it sort of looks like (when I squint):

Easy: 90% chance to run away from the monster
Moderate: 60% chance to escape after inflicting some damage/complication to the monster
Difficult: 36% chance to destroy/imprison the monster

In this particular game a skill roll is usually a particular action, so there wouldn't be a roll like this where you are folding a running away roll in with a hurting the monster roll.

 

[Fenris-77]

In this particular game a skill roll is usually a particular action, so there wouldn't be a roll like this where you are folding a running away roll in with a hurting the monster roll.

As a design item, BitD's position and effect is useful though.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I can't see you writing a game where you roll to drive every time you turn the key.

Those numbers work for me. It's more a feel thing than a numbers thing of course, as much as we all like to run the numbers when we're scribbling in our design notebook (IMO anyway)

I think feel is very important. I like to check myself with probabilities though (you can run ten playtests back to back against the same monsters and get somewhat anomalous results, which could create the illusion of a different set of probabilities). Also I find it is good on the monster design side to know these things

 

[CleverNickName]

The typical Challenge Ratings and DC charts in the DMG don't really work, in my experience. Maybe we're doing it wrong, but it seems like the battles that are supposed to be Hard end up being either Easy or Deadly, and I can't figure out why. And the skill DC charts never seem to account for highly-optimized characters loaded to the teeth with feats and multiclass options, either: past 8th level, my players are never challenged by a DC 18 ability check.

So I've cooked up my own chart for DCs, depending on the players and their characters. For skills:

"Easy" would be about a 90% chance of success. So if the rogue has a +7 to Thieves' Tools, and assuming he makes the check at Advantage (through the Help action, or the Guidance cantrip), a trap with a disarm DC of 14 or less would be "Easy." (14 - 11 = 3, so the player would only fail with a roll of 1 or 2 on 1d20---a 90% chance of success.) The players make certain that the rogue is the only one who will ever be making that Thieves' Tools check, and will always be doing so at Advantage...so I make certain that all Easy traps in my dungeon have a disarm DC of 14 or lower.

"Medium" would be a 60% chance of success. Same as above, but the DC would be 20. (20 - 11 = 9, the player would fail on a roll of 8 or less.)

"Hard" would be a 30% chance of success. Same as above, but the DC would be 26.

"Deadly" (or "Impossible") would be about a 5% chance of success. Same as above, but the DC would be 31. The player would need to roll a natural 20 in order to succeed, which would only happen about 5% of the time.

Combat is harder to pin down mathematically, though. I'm still working on a system that better estimates how to model it, but I figure an Easy encounter should use up about 10-25% of the party's daily resources. A Medium one should consume about 30-50%, a Hard one should consume 60-75%, and a Deadly one should consume 90-100%. ("Daily Resources" means hit points, spell slots, magic item charges, and special abilities, basically everything that recharges in 24 hours.) If anyone has a system that can easily track these resources in this manner, I'd love to see it...because Challenge Rating just isn't working for me.

 

[Bedrockgames]

As a design item, BitD's position and effect is useful though.

There may be. I have to admit I tried reading blades in the dark and concepts like this were not ones I really understood that well (and looking it up again it isn't something I am really grasping). It seemed to be describing something that happens somewhat organically at a table I might play at, but in a very codified way? I found this term in particular difficult to understand (like just when I thought I got what it was saying, it seemed I actually misunderstood it if that makes sense).

 

[Fenris-77]

In your defense, position and effect in Blades were the thing I bounced off of the hardest until I had some session under my belt. I'll elaborate if you're interested.