D&D 5th Edition: Thread #7

[Draz74]

I'd say another part of the problem is WotC assumes "Situations the party wants to resolve with a single roll" means "Any situation where one thing isn't trying to kill another thing."

That is an assumption they tend to make, yes. And it deserves more scrutiny, yes. But in some situations, it will stand up to such scrutiny. To repeat my earlier example -- I have never met a group that would prefer a series of 5+ die rolls to determine the outcome of an in-character chess game, even though that would be more realistic than a single roll.

Note the difference here between a Strength check and a Strength contest. In both if your examples you're referring to opposed rolls, but the contest part isn't the problem; two fighters with max Str, max ranks/training, and identical miscellaneous bonuses rolling against each other will have a 50/50 shot regardless of the skill system being used. The check part is the problem, because that's the part that has the bad objective benchmarks and that's the part where comparing static DCs vs. the width of the RNG causes problems.

I think what I wrote is actually still just as applicable. In that I was agreeing with you that, for single-roll-resolution tasks, the RNG's width is currently much too big compared to the available modifiers. Hence why I asked how much it would help if 1d10 were used instead of 1d20 in such cases.

Flip it around and use normal skill checks: even if you need just one success on a DC 25 Int check in one case and multiple successes on multiple DC 25 Str checks in another case, if a 1st level character can succeed at a DC 25 check and accomplish "godlike" results, it doesn't matter how many checks they need to or can make because the fact that they can make it at all is the problem in and of itself.

Obviously in any case, whether my fix or another fix or no fix is implemented, the Static DCs in the playtest packet are only a rough draft and will need to be adjusted. Dice, I think you're conflating this issue with the modifier-vs.-RNG-width problem, which is making other people have a hard time following some of your arguments. Let's keep the two issues separate.

But although this will need adjustment, my main point is still valid: in the current 5e system, DC 25 is indeed "godlike" IF you have to roll it consistently to get the desired results. For example, if the door being beaten down by a Strength check requires hitting DC 25 for 5 Strength checks (and a single failure ends the attempt), that is indeed a godlike door. More evidence that WotC's mindset, when they wrote the packet, was on resolving tasks through a series of rolls.

It's not an in-combat vs. out-of-combat divide, though. If you want a dragon to be noticeably better than a goblin, you need a wide enough gap for that to be the case whether it's the dragon attacking the goblin or vice versa, the dragon rolling Hide vs. the goblin's Spot or vice versa, or both of them rolling either against a third party. Again, it's the bonus spread relative to the width of the RNG, the bonus spread between opponents, and the DC benchmarks that matter, not the importance of individual rolls.

He's referring to a simple math trick: Rolling multiple times and summing the result lowers the variance, which means it's less swingy.

To be completely arbitrary, let's say the Dragon's Spot is +7 and the Goblin's Hide is +0.

If we do this as a simple contest, the chance of the dragon spotting the goblin is 77%. But if we do it skill challenge style and keep rolling until one side gets 3 successes before 2 failures, the chance of the dragon spotting the goblin rises to 92%. 5 successes before 4 failures brings it up to 99%.

Yeah, basically Craft is aiming at the same thing I'm aiming at here, although I tend to think of it less in terms of "summing" or "x successes before z failures."

To adopt you guys' Hide vs. Spot example ... If there is an important plot-clue that requires passing a Spot check, then the current skill system is borked, because there is simply too much of a chance that the Spot-skilled character will get unlucky and miss the clue, or that Belkar will get lucky and Spot the clue. The RNG is too wide compared to the modifiers.

However, in combat (or other situations resolved by rolling many times), since each skill check's outcome only lasts 6 seconds, this isn't such a problem. I don't mind if the Goblin has a 20% chance of being able to Hide from the Dragon when it only lasts one Round before he has to try Hiding again. That keeps combat interesting, and can be chalked up to the general chaos and unpredictability of combat as far as in-game sense goes. So in these situations, I'm not sure the RNG width vs. the characters' modifiers is actually a problem.

Skill challenges sucked because they basically weren't interactive and had no real choices. Doesn't mean that, say, an in-depth and detailed Diplomacy subsystem would be impossible.

Yeah, ideally I'd like to see skill challenges come back in a much-improved form, for exploratory challenges, but ESPECIALLY for social challenges. But I'm having a hard time imagining a system for them that I'd really approve of. It would have to be something truly innovative.