IconicCatparent's page

IconicCatparent wrote:

I think it's reasonable to let a shy person have their rolls do the talking, but when I'm really impressed with someone's cleverness, to quietly set the DC a little lower. I don't think that's actually a houserule either, but a legitimate use of GM discretion.

Thoughts? Me bad GM?

There is a potential when using that kind of DC adjustment that your players no longer feel they are playing the game so much as they are playing the GM - because if they guess the approach you'll favor, they get better odds of success.

Some people think that's a problem. I don't, even though I don't like that play-style myself because I always felt like I was playing favorites when I used to play that way.

You'd only be a "bad GM" for it if you weren't aware you were doing it, or the divide between 'impressed me' and 'didn't impress me' were such that players felt that had unreasonably low chances of success unless they happen to impress you.

Right, they are playing the GM. I'm responsible for what's happening in the minds of the NPCs, so there's no clean line between where I end and the game begins. I can't think of any other way to play a game where soft skills have value.

If a GM is unwilling to be influenced by anything outside of hard mechanics, then the game's math is the only thing that matters and other forms of intelligence are not useful. That's not "bad" either, but it wouldn't appeal to me.

It's a complicated issue, because I have shy players with excellent optimization skills and other players with great social intuition whose brains hurt when they have to do simple math. I don't want to punish either of them, but I do want to value what each is bringing to the table.

I think it's reasonable to let a shy person have their rolls do the talking, but when I'm really impressed with someone's cleverness, to quietly set the DC a little lower. I don't think that's actually a houserule either, but a legitimate use of GM discretion.

Thoughts? Me bad GM?

I once played in a 5e game where I tried to knock-out an enemy non-lethally, and the GM told me that I had killed them because my character had rolled max strength at creation and didn't know how to handle it!

I won at rolling stats but lost at finding a campaign to play in.

In my perfect PF2, alignment and anathema would be suggestions and examples, not mandates. It's so much more fun for me to come up role-play restrictions for my own character than to be saddled with ones that someone else thought would be fun.

Buuut... I can play around them easily enough, so I'll live.

You can see this the most in 5e actual play shows like Critical Role, where low level is hope you roll high and high level is more hope you don’t roll low. In my experience, Pathfinder’s APs generally assume the party is looking for approximately the same actual result in the dice at every level, meaning it doesn’t have quite the same dichotomy between low level and high level characters as in 5e. The growth in Pathfinder doesn’t mean much when you need to roll a 10 to hit when fighting goblins at level 1 and you need to roll a 10 to hit when fighting devils at level 20. As opposed to 5e, where the pit fiend has an AC of 19, so your +11 to Attack feels like substantial growth compared to where you started. But that does mean advancement in PF doesn’t feel as good due to the treadmill effect; it is hard to feel like you are improving.

I basically agree, but the dark side of 5e's limited skill progression is that your mid and high level characters suffer humiliating fails relatively often. Non-bard, non-rogues will never progress to the point where they're able to scale a building reliably, or any other task that's hard enough to reasonably earn a DC 15.

I think it's a great system for a sandbox, for the reasons you outline, but also for a campaign with a goofier tone. The heroes will often seem slightly incompetent, even when they reach the stage where they're beating up giants.

IconicCatparent wrote:

I am asking you! It seems like your proposed solution and the actual 4e rules aren't too far apart, and I'm genuinely curious about what went so wrong in 4e's skill DC system.

The argument that absolutely everything in 4e was bad just isn't enough for me. I need to know what about it was bad.

Skill Challenges.

Once your skill roll was part of a skill challenge, the DC always ended up being the ”level appropriate” one no matter what you tried to do narratically.

We never got the narration to fit the mechanic either. Either we got trapped in a Schrödinger’s Cat situation: ”Ok, I rolled 39 on my stealth. Do I manage to sneak up on him?” - ”I’ll tell you after we’ve all rolled 13 more rolls.” or out-of-sync between mechanic and narration: ”What to you mean ’we’ failed to cross the gorge? Two of us managed all our climb rolls, and you said we succeeded in our climbs. Do we have a split party now?” - ”Um....” (Examples intended as quick few-sentence illustrations only)

Finally the GM wrote his own skill challenge system to fix mechanical issues, but we never got rid of the threadmill level appropriate skill DCs or the Schrödinger’s Cat problem.

(Played a full campaign in 4E, level 1-26, using a conversion of Rise of the Runelords)

Thank you, this is informative!

Brock Landers wrote:

Malk_Content wrote:

Yeah if every lock is like that. If your PCs never seek out greater challenges though (like breaking into ancient vaults made by the fabled Undermountain Twins, finest dwarven craftsman of the second age) then I'm curious why you'd play to the level where those sorts of challenges are appropriate. There is nothing wrong in saying "this is a grounded campaign so we are playing at slow progression speed and expect to cap out at level 5."

Malk's got it; I am not saying higher level characters should not encounter higher level threats/DCs, or be in locales/situations that they couldn't handle at lower levels. 4th Ed does not present it that way, it makes the contrived assumption that at X level you will be on the outer planes or something, fighting gods and trying to bash down adamantine doors at all times.

Just to verify that your criticism could also be leveled against PF1, I skimmed through the sixth volume of several of the AP's in my collection. None of them have DCs that aren't in the 20s and 30s and the lowest CR encounter I saw was CR 13.

Take City of Locusts, volume 6 of Wrath of the Righteous. Using search, I discovered that the lowest DC in the book is DC 25 (not counting the save DCs for some of the low-level spells of the weaker creatures), with most DCs far far higher than that (it looks like DC 40 is the number that occurs the most and appears to be the average for traps and hazards). The lowest rated challenge in the book is the challenge rating 17 trap on page 18. Most of the challenges are CR 20+ (imagine that, since the AP makes the contrived assumption that you are in the Worldwound or something, fighting demon lords and trying to bash down adamantine doors at all times).

You can't point to a Paizo Adventure Path that doesn't use the same treadmill paradigm recommended by 4e. 5e on the other hand... well I've seen a couple of people criticize it doesn't follow this advice enough. For example, numerous low level...

Yeah, the math treadmill's inherent to all RPGs where characters gain levels and easier to notice in games where the characters power up dramatically. I can't imagine a rule system that would change that.

GMs and adventure writers have the challenge of creating a real-feeling world that allows the players to forget that they're on a treadmill. The rules can offer advice, but ultimately it's more art than science, it's difficult as heck, and it varies by taste.

IconicCatparent wrote:

Y'all have convinced me that PF2 and 4e are handling skill DCs in a relatively similar way, but I'm having trouble understanding why it's bad.

You're saying that new/bad GMs ran the game in direct contradiction to them and that the rules were further distorted in the memories of people who had an intensely negative emotional reaction to 4e. Is that correct?

If the rules say "don't do X, for these three reasons..." why would any GM who was making an effort to run the game well, do the exact thing that the rules were telling them not to do? How could any rule system protect against GMs who aren't even willing to read it?

Dunno. Why don't you ask all the 4e detractors who fled 4e and turned to Paizo and Pathfinder? There were plenty of them.

The rules won't protect against terrible GMs. But it can help force mediocre and poor GMs to go that extra step and increase a step in their GMing proficiency to put it in PF2e terms.

CrystalSeas wrote:

Or they could just quit trying to figure it out. "Forcing" people to GM a certain way doesn't always make them behave the way you expect.

No. But the tools you give them will help determine how they GM. The DC by level table has a history of demonstrating that GMs misuse it to results that impact the enjoyment of the game for those who play with them. After all, this was one of the issues that was cited by many who ran away from 4e and embraced PF. Getting them to make one extra step will help make many of them slightly better GMs.

Lady Wrath wrote:

Very true and besides with or without a chart a DM like that will likely just make up their own DC's anyway just because the feel like it

While still GMs will do this, it is demonstrated that not all GMs will. And this table is of no use for GMs who will just make up numbers so it has no value to those GMs.

I also love how when I initially made the thread that commented on this exact issue no-one rose any meaningful disagreements (and unfortunately I...

I am asking you! It seems like your proposed solution and the actual 4e rules aren't too far apart, and I'm genuinely curious about what went so wrong in 4e's skill DC system.

The argument that absolutely everything in 4e was bad just isn't enough for me. I need to know what about it was bad.

Voss wrote:

I'm honestly not following you. They did it the right way (and not the 4e way) by having static DCs that don't advance. Yes, there is a table for reference... that isn't a bad thing.

Actually, I strongly disagree. Not every GM is a great GM. Some range from mediocre to bad. This table will encourage those GMs (and new GMs) to refer to the "appropriate DC" table and use that without any significant thought as to what challenge is facing the party. Forcing GMs to jump through a couple more hoops would force them to think about what's happening in their world.

Also the "not 4e way"? Pretty sure 4e did have text surrounding the DC table explaining what those DCs should mean. Didn't stop everyone (including you) for criticising WotC and 4e for the table's existence and for misunderstanding what the table represented.

Mark Seifter wrote:

That's not the case; the Gamemastering section takes effort to tell GMs not to do it that way.

It wont' be enough for many GMs. As I outlined quite a while ago there is an alternative way to give GMs the same information which would force them to actually decide what is happening in the universe before getting the DC.

Y'all have convinced me that PF2 and 4e are handling skill DCs in a relatively similar way, but I'm having trouble understanding why it's bad.

You're saying that new/bad GMs ran the game in direct contradiction to them and that the rules were further distorted in the memories of people who had an intensely negative emotional reaction to 4e. Is that correct?

If the rules say "don't do X, for these three reasons..." why would any GM who was making an effort to run the game well, do the exact thing that the rules were telling them not to do? How could any rule system protect against GMs who aren't even willing to read it?

Elleth wrote:

Mark the Wise and Powerful wrote:

Grey Star wrote:

Mark the Wise and Powerful wrote:

Also, I think there are two types of players in this market: 3.5e and 5e players.

You have a very reductive conception of the market. The past decade has seen the hobby evolve. Try to take a look at all the games Powered by the Apocalypse edited recently, it will be a good start.

I've only been blogging about Pathfinder and D&D. So, everything I say is in that context. I have on rare occassion played others, like Middle Earth.

I don't really have time for anything else. I'm perfectly happy with the experience I've had with Pathfinder.

PF2 is looking waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more like my kind of game than either PF1 or 5e. 5e I've been running because it's easy but I'm really happy to have a game coming out that, at least from what we know, apparently satisfies a large part of the hole I've had when looking at games.

What hole? It would be useful for everyone to know that. What exactly makes PF2 better than PF1 or 5e?

I feel very much the same as Elleth. I'm also DMing 5e over PF1 right now, but neither game's offering me exactly what I'm looking for. With PF1, the DMs burden is too high for me, and while it has a kind of depth, it's depth seems to be more in at-home build choices than at-the-table tactical choices, and it bothers me that the combat is so stationary. (I'll admit I'm not fully immersed in the system, so you can correct me if I'm wrong.)

For me, the big hole in 5e is that most combats come down to martial characters just walking up and attacking and casters always casting the same good spells, to the point where I have to bring narrative elements into every combat to keep it from being boring.

I once tried to run a old-school dungeon crawl in 5e and it began to feel like a grind almost immediately. Pretty soon the party ditched the dungeon just to hang out in town and get into shenanigans which, I think, is what 5e is genuinely good for.

PF2 has me optimistic right now because the pregens at 1st level are already offering up some interesting opportunities for turn-by-turn valuation, and that's something I'm starved for.

5e's feat system works that way because its designers wanted it to be as accessible as possible to people who mostly want to role play and have simple combats and who get intimidated by having to make complex build choices.

The feat system is opt-in so people who don't want customization don't feel like they're falling too far behind their optimizer party members.There aren't many folks like that in these forums, but I know lots of them in real life.

But don't get me wrong, I'm a nerd who loves making complex build decisions, I wouldn't be here if I weren't. I think it's clever to have a system with opt-in complexity, but I wish you could opt in to a lot more of it.

Super happy to see the favored enemy mechanic replaced with something that's more flexible, and I find Hunt Target to be a better fit in terms of flavor too.

It's really difficult to express hunter skills in TTRPG mechanics and have them feel different from generic martial skills. This might be the best take on it that I know of.

Also Happy to see that spell-casting is non-mandatory, though It'd be nice to have as an option.