Sometimes it is important to change the difficulty based on the level of the character because there are things that Dungeons and Dragons, or other games, might not do a very good job of modeling.

Take a party of 10th level characters that have been adventuring in the game world for 7 years. This party might have climbed deep down into the underdark a dozen times, seen the highest mountain peaks, hoofed it barefoot across the desert, and all this time the wizard, right along with the fighter, has been getting physically challenged more than any normal human being.

Unfortunately, the wizard isn't allowed to take an appropriate bonus to his Constitution or Strength because he only gets 2 attribute points that have to go into Intelligence, and a hand full of skills that would evaporate if he put any ranks into cross class skills like Climb.

A 10th level character of any class should be an expert climber and spelunker, and if they have been traveling the world mostly on foot carrying their own equipment or on horseback and sleeping on the ground, they are probably tough as nails and in pretty good shape. It isn't fair and it breaks immersion, in my opinion, to act like a wizard that's been living through that only has a 40% chance to get up an easy wall. If you said, "ok, the rogue is over it in 3 seconds, but the wizard takes 6," it would seem a little more realistic.

Quote from: jaIt's pretty much the exact opposite of "say yes or roll the dice". It's a mechanic which specifically operates well in an environment where the game world has a tangible reality which is independent of the PCs. And it becomes meaningless if the DM is (for example) setting the DCs based on the skill bonuses the PCs have.

I find that skill based systems, since the whole system rests on the use of skills.  Skills run the world, so having the DC's change screws up the internal stting logic even worse, especially for a GM that knows how to write a good adventure.  
Saying yes too often in a world where the characters are defined by their skills reduces the finely tuned interface a good GM can create between the players and their 'characters as they are in the setting'.  

Quote from: Originally Posted by RandallSI don't see any of those climbs difficulties as relevant to the level of the characters attempting the climb. They might be relevant to the level (and/or wealth) of the being that owns the wall, but I don't see why the level of those attempting to climb it has any bearing on the difficulty of climbing it.

If first level characters stumble upon Orcus' Fortress, it's simply going to be too hard for them to climb. They'll either have to think of some other way to get in, come back when they are better at climbing, or the like. Being "too hard" top climb would even be a big hint that what's inside might be way too powerful for them and they really need to find something more suited to their current abilities to raid.

This consistency is also critical for the whole 'World in Motion' ideal, that the setting exists, lives and breathes without the interference of the PCs.  If the players feels that immutable facts of the world (like how hard a cliff is to scale) are changing because their characters came along, that reduces the internal logic of the setting.

Quote from: Cranewings;388420Sometimes it is important to change the difficulty based on the level of the character because there are things that Dungeons and Dragons, or other games, might not do a very good job of modeling.

Take a party of 10th level characters that have been adventuring in the game world for 7 years. This party might have climbed deep down into the underdark a dozen times, seen the highest mountain peaks, hoofed it barefoot across the desert, and all this time the wizard, right along with the fighter, has been getting physically challenged more than any normal human being.

Unfortunately, the wizard isn't allowed to take an appropriate bonus to his Constitution or Strength because he only gets 2 attribute points that have to go into Intelligence, and a hand full of skills that would evaporate if he put any ranks into cross class skills like Climb.

A 10th level character of any class should be an expert climber and spelunker, and if they have been traveling the world mostly on foot carrying their own equipment or on horseback and sleeping on the ground, they are probably tough as nails and in pretty good shape. It isn't fair and it breaks immersion, in my opinion, to act like a wizard that's been living through that only has a 40% chance to get up an easy wall. If you said, "ok, the rogue is over it in 3 seconds, but the wizard takes 6," it would seem a little more realistic.

Arg, No.
This is one of the things I hate most about a lot of games, assuming that skills get better as a character gains levels.  It breaks immersion for me when the bowman and the wizard who have never been hit gain hit points, or when a thief gets better at a skill they have never used because the group killed something.
Better to assign a few skill levels if you feel like the group should have learned the basics of something, like climbing and spelunking, than to assume that every 10th level character should be able to.

When the GM chances a DC in response to the character leveling, he isn't saying that the thing actually became easier or harder. He is saying that the characters are more or less competent than their character sheet allows.

For example, a 10th level wizard with an 11 strength and no ranks in climb (total +1 bonus) approaches a wall that is "easy" and has a DC of 12. If he tries to climb it, especially if it is tall enough to force more than one skill check, he is probably going to fall.

Because the GM thinks that the wizard, who has been adventuring in the wilderness for years, should be able to get over the wall in a hurry, he drops the difficulty to 5. This isn't the same as saying the wall has more holes in it to grab onto.

Its saying, "your character has adventured in the wilderness long enough. He gains a +7 bonus because he has developed the instincts of an outdoors man, and quickly gauges the best way to defeat it."

This is a bonus that the GM might think the character deserves but isn't a part of the rules. Personally, nothing breaks immersion for me faster than a GM that acts like mid level characters that have been living outside for years can't negotiate the environment.

Quote from: LordVreeg;388424Arg, No.
This is one of the things I hate most about a lot of games, assuming that skills get better as a character gains levels.  It breaks immersion for me when the bowman and the wizard who have never been hit gain hit points, or when a thief gets better at a skill they have never used because the group killed something.
Better to assign a few skill levels if you feel like the group should have learned the basics of something, like climbing and spelunking, than to assume that every 10th level character should be able to.

I'm not saying every character should. A wizard that got all of his levels researching spells in an ivory tower shouldn't. Characters should be able to competently move around in their environment and the GM should be fluid with it because the rules can't be.

Quote from: Cranewings;388426I'm not saying every character should. A wizard that got all of his levels researching spells in an ivory tower shouldn't. Characters should be able to competently move around in their environment and the GM should be fluid with it because the rules can't be.

So what do you think about assigning a few levels of competency in something they have used and done?  
The rules are obviously the problme if they aren't modelling the game world properly.

Quote from: LordVreeg;388428So what do you think about assigning a few levels of competency in something they have used and done?  
The rules are obviously the problme if they aren't modelling the game world properly.

To me, its the same thing. Dropping the difficulty, granting a bonus, or giving a bunch of skill ranks all mean the same thing. Its just a matter of taste, which way you hash it out.

I guess I'd prefer a combination. If the GM thinks you do something well enough to warrant an instant bonus to do something, it would be fair to write it down so that you know you get it later.

And 4e's "half-level" bonus is a way of simulating that.

Like the argument I had with a GM over wether my 17th-level character with no ranks in Spellcraft, could recognize "Continual Flame". He argued that, if I wanted that, I should put points in spellcraft. I argued I didn't have any points to spare (3.5 ed) and furthermore, he had a lot of exposure to magic, so he should have a layman's knowledge.

In 4e, this would be resolved by a theoretical conversion of my character having a +7 Spellcraft bonus, simply because he's assumed to have been around, been exposed to, seen and listened to the spellcasters talk about, magic.

If he hasn't had the necessary exposure, well, GM > Rules.

That's actually a 3.5 house rule I use. Your 6th level wizard is going to get a +3 bonus to climb if he's been living outside.

Quote from: Narf the Mouse;388486And 4e's "half-level" bonus is a way of simulating that.

Like the argument I had with a GM over wether my 17th-level character with no ranks in Spellcraft, could recognize "Continual Flame". He argued that, if I wanted that, I should put points in spellcraft. I argued I didn't have any points to spare (3.5 ed) and furthermore, he had a lot of exposure to magic, so he should have a layman's knowledge.

In 4e, this would be resolved by a theoretical conversion of my character having a +7 Spellcraft bonus, simply because he's assumed to have been around, been exposed to, seen and listened to the spellcasters talk about, magic.

If he hasn't had the necessary exposure, well, GM > Rules.

I moderately like the 4E approach in this instance - one of a very few improvements IMHO. It does cause some issues elsewhere though: the 15th level (but otherwise mentally challenged) fighter can be employed by the local Adventurer's Guild to teach trap finding, lockpicking, spellcraft, basketweaving, fungus identification, potato farming and local history to the up-and-coming 1st levellers.
Then there's strength checks. The high level wizard arm-wrestles the beefy low-level fighter and rips his arm off, thanks to the +1/2 level bonus.


In our 3.5 campaigns, we certainly let characters recognize magic they're familiar with, Spellcraft or no. (The fighter recognizes a fireball after he's been roasted once). A 1st level fighter can probably afford a continual flame item - they cost about 90 GP - and I think they may be in the PHB equipment list. As a common item a GM really shouldn't make a character roll, and even allowing an untrained Appraise check wouldn't be out of line.
This mostly just highlights that lots of classes get too few skill points, and that cross-class skills are annoying. Without those, characters can buy skills that represent what they're doing - if the GM makes you climb mountains all the time, it makes sense to put ranks in Climb.

Quote from: two_fishes;388098So again, why not ditch take-20 and take-10 and replace them with "say yes"? What gets lost by doing that? Perhaps this is the reason the rule gets forgotten or pushed aside.

Say "yes" when? At what point do I actually then engage the skill system. The Take 10/Take 20 rule is "say yes", you're just either missing that or willfully ignoring it. It says, "Say yes until these certain conditions occur, then use the skill system." Honestly, this shit ain't rocket science. I think it might get overlooked because we are conditioned to roll the damn dice for everything all the time. On the flip side, I don't wanna just "say yes". I don't run/play wish fulfillment power-trip shit or bullshit amateur psychotherapy, I run games. I'm not trying to collaborate on a novel, or looking to create some kind of lame ass narrative (even though that might happen anyway sometimes), I'm playing a game. I want a skill system, one that requires rolling sometimes even, just not all the time, or even so often it gets in the way of the other aspects of the game, hence my support for the Take 10/20 rule, and similar rules/guidelines in other games. It's simple, clear, and effective.

Quote from: Benoist;388129Maybe you, but that's not the case of every DM, is it? Some other DM might just write down DCs in a note book, or directly on the map of a dungeon. I don't see how that possibility is more theoretical than yours? So the scenario under which you just assigned fixed DCs for stuff that don't change over the course of a campaign isn't more theoretical than you assigning a DC according to the PCs levels on the fly. I just don't see it.

The difference to me is philosophical: in one case (fixed DCs) the universe is what it is and the PCs deal with it in different ways at different levels, whereas in the other case (DCs determined according to the PCs level) the world revolves around the PCs, and somehow matches their capabilities all the time, even retroactively (the wall I climbed two levels ago is suddenly harder for me to climb).

To be fair here, I've never seen the 4e system that way anyway. The scaling DCs to me represent keeping the difficulty static with characters that scale, not making things more difficult for higher levels than for lower ones. Not having extensive experience with 4e, I'm not sure how well it succeeds at this, but to me the system is saying that despite the DC being 12 for a low level character, and higher for the higher level one, the actual chance of the character climbing the wall (in other words, the statistical probability) stays relatively the same.

Quote from: Sigmund;388526Not having extensive experience with 4e, I'm not sure how well it succeeds at this, but to me the system is saying that despite the DC being 12 for a low level character, and higher for the higher level one, the actual chance of the character climbing the wall (in other words, the statistical probability) stays relatively the same.

There's a table for climbing difficulties on page 182 of the PHB. Uneven surfaces (cave wall) are DC 15; rough surfaces (brick wall) are DC 20. +5 DC for a slippery surface, +5 DC for an unusually smooth surface. No signs of scaling based on level.

Quote from: Thanlis;388531There's a table for climbing difficulties on page 182 of the PHB. Uneven surfaces (cave wall) are DC 15; rough surfaces (brick wall) are DC 20. +5 DC for a slippery surface, +5 DC for an unusually smooth surface. No signs of scaling based on level.

Ok, there ya go. Honestly, while it's not my favorite genre, I have to admit that the way CoC handles skills is still my all-time favorite. It has always made sense to me.

CoC does very many things right.