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Hi guys,
I just want to propose the following mechanic for designing skill DCs in scenarios, so that challenges are appropriate to the characters in question. It's a simple system:
1) Easy - DC 5 + tier
2) Medium - DC 10 + tier
3) Hard - DC 15 + tier
4) OMG - DC 20 + tierThe value for tier is the lower of the numbers that describe its tier. For instance: Tier 1-2 adds 1 to the DC. Tier 7-8 adds 7 to the DC. You could adjust this "up by one" by choosing the latter number, if that is necessary to distinguish between Tier 1 and Tier 1-2.
A simple way understand the difficulty is that the hard-coded DC value represents the number that must be rolled on the d20 for a person using a cross-class skill with full ranks. For people with class skills and maximum ranks, you can see that this matches the general intuition of how difficult skills ought to be.
If someone focuses on a skill (using feats or traits), it works out better for them. This is good.
Rubia
Those numbers are way too low. A medium check, performed by someone with a single rank in the skill, with no stat to back it up, will have about a 75% chance of getting it right. Adjust all of them upwards by +5 and we are getting close to good. Why? Because a +8 at first level is not that hard, and 40% of nailing an OMG check unassisted is just madness.
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Those numbers are way too low. A medium check, performed by someone with a single rank in the skill, with no stat to back it up, will have about a 75% chance of getting it right. Adjust all of them upwards by +5 and we are getting close to good. Why? Because a +8 at first level is not that hard, and 40% of nailing an OMG check unassisted is just madness.Hi guys,
I just want to propose the following mechanic for designing skill DCs in scenarios, so that challenges are appropriate to the characters in question. It's a simple system:
1) Easy - DC 5 + tier
2) Medium - DC 10 + tier
3) Hard - DC 15 + tier
4) OMG - DC 20 + tierThe value for tier is the lower of the numbers that describe its tier. For instance: Tier 1-2 adds 1 to the DC. Tier 7-8 adds 7 to the DC. You could adjust this "up by one" by choosing the latter number, if that is necessary to distinguish between Tier 1 and Tier 1-2.
A simple way understand the difficulty is that the hard-coded DC value represents the number that must be rolled on the d20 for a person using a cross-class skill with full ranks. For people with class skills and maximum ranks, you can see that this matches the general intuition of how difficult skills ought to be.
If someone focuses on a skill (using feats or traits), it works out better for them. This is good.
Rubia
Name them what you like, and add a fifth difficulty level if you like. Is the basic idea sound? So call them. . .
Trivial 5
Easy 10
Medium 15
Hard 20
OMG 25. . . or whatever. I erred on the side of easy, since that seems to be the trend in PFS.
Well, if all you want is standardized DC's for challenges....they are pretty much listed out in the CRB, under the GM section.
Director of Brand Strategy
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This is something I've experimented with in the past and it's largely gone unnoticed or at least uncommented on. The problem with trying to do this consistently is that some skill DCs are hard-coded into the system, making scaling them harder, in that it requires the actual circumstances change in each subtier (thus eating more words from an already limited wordcount given two sets of statblocks). That said, I'm open to suggestions on how to make this work better or at least more smoothly.
PS - When looking at a subtier, we always assume the higher of the two numbers as the APL when determining DCs and CRs of enemies and such.
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We did it similarly in Living Dragonstar. As the editor and sometimes author of the modules, I would sometimes tier the DC’s by feel without any hard baseline to use. Most of the time this worked out pretty well.
I think, though, it’s better to use the RAW with any of the hard coded DC’s. The problem isn’t this, but rather how the authors are writing the encounters in their scenarios.
The tiering seems to be an afterthought, rather than a congruous thought during encounter creation. So in other words, you have a wall that has to be overcome somehow. And of course it is a rough stone wall with a standard base DC of 15 or a well made wall with standard DC of 20. The wall may or may not actually matter in the scenario, but it’s a cool-ism to have it there. How do you deal with this?
A level 1-2 party might be absolutely devastated by the wall, as one or two members get over and have to face the monsters on the other side alone as the rest struggle, while a level 4-5 party easily scales the wall and dominates the combat.
How do you fix this?
Well you can change the environment. But as Mark says, this can get quite complex sometimes, if the environment is scaled by Tier. I even mentioned in a different thread, where this could even potentially impact the encounter map, which wouldn’t be a good idea either.
But ways to scale the environment that are both efficient in word count and easy for the GM to use exist. Using the example above, of a wall, perhaps the creatures on the other side have greased it and placed some sort of razor wire above it to the ceiling for the higher tiers.
My suggestion is for the developers and editors of the scenarios to either put out a mandate to their authors to consider tiering when creating obstacles or “cool-isms” in their encounters. Basically to build the encounters comprehensively including consideration for tier, rather than tossing in the tiering after the fact. Either that, or spend the extra time during editing to make sure the encounters don’t create a huge disparity in tiering based on static DC’s in the core rule book.
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The following is what I posted in the other thread, but this seems an appropriate place to have this dialogue.
I agree with both James (really?!) and Bob on this one, to varying degrees.
How do you come to terms with the conflicting ideals of verisimilitude and appropriate challenge?
Some modules handle this by creating more powerful versions of the same monster. Some introduce a different, more powerful monster at the higher tiers. Very rarely (I haven’t seen one in PFS yet) is the environment used to make a challenge more difficult.
The challenge in using the environment, is that in many cases this would require a change in the map. And for encounters that require a map, this would require a separate map for each tier. This is probably not doable under the current budget structure given to writers and developers for PFS scenarios. Many environmental changes, like lighting conditions, speed of a river, slickness of the ground, possibly difficulty of terrain, etc. can be done without impacting the map.
I believe adding these environmental factors into a scenario to increase difficulty, is one of the things to which James is referring. I agree with him. Rather than artificially inflating the DC, add an environmental factor that increases the challenge. This should be fairly easy to do in an economical (word-wise) fashion, and shouldn’t affect the total page count of the scenario.
However, doing this for every scenario would soon make it silly. This is tier 1-2, so no difficult terrain, we will always get bridges over rivers, trees to climb, and won’t have to jump more than 10 feet. Or. Wow, this is Tier 3-4, all terrain will be moderately difficult, no bridges, but a slow moving river, rough walls to climb, and at least 20’ jumps. Tier 10-11 would include nearly impassable terrain, raging rivers in a 200 foot deep, 50 foot wide gorge, and ice slick/smooth walls.
The same argument could be held for always adding monsters or changing to a more difficult monster.
The author’s of scenarios need to be allowed to be creative in how they develop their story, their challenges, and the whole thing. The above options are tools that don’t get used very often, however, and that is unfortunate.
For social DC’s, if it is a bad guy with a stat block, then the stat block should dictate the DC. If the author wants the bad guy to be better at one thing or another, have the stat block reflect it. Whether it is by adding ranks to a skill (within the RAW for said stat block), adding a feat, magic item, spell, etc. Additionally, it is perfectly acceptable to include motivations for the NPC (including dictates about whether they will or will not give up certain information, and why).
For generic DC’s, like gather information, sneaking about town, or what have you, that is pertinent to the scenario, it is perfectly acceptable and probably necessary to have a tiered DC.
What I think authors need to be careful with though, is creating encounters that are “cool” either in environmental conditions, visually, what have you, that create a map that cannot be easily tiered by adding or subtracting environmental challenges.
With that, you can easily use lightning bolt lines to indicate a chasm with a variable width on your map.
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I didn't know that. Also, I'm more irritated that DCs aren't tiered in certain ways in the modules, and this creates weird anomalies (such as trivial or impossible checks) that don't seem intentional.
Paizo has been scaling skill checks btw.
Used properly, scaling skill checks aren't bad. For example, the skill checks made in Frostfur Captives in Act 2.
However, most of the time scaled skill checks are annoying. Often it feels like I'm playing the video game Diablo (where everything feels the same regardless of your level). I think as you gain levels and powers, most (not all) skill checks SHOULD be easier.
The biggest problem with scaling skill checks is that it makes spellcasters even more powerful than martial characters (as if they weren't powerful enough already!). Spells are nearly always better than skills by mid-level.
Consider the following. Why should I bother with:
- Acrobatics/Climb/Swim: When I can cast fly?
- Diplomacy/Intimidate: When I can cast Charm Person? Besides Diplomacy is static.
- Disable Device: When I can cast Knock?
- Escape Artist: When I can cast Dimension Door and Teleport?
- Heal: When I can cure everything with spells?
- Linguisitics: When I can cast Comprehend Languages and Tongues?
- Sense Motive: When I can cast Detect Thoughts?
- Stealth: When I can cast Invisibility?
- Survival: When I can cast Endure Elements?
etc.
My point is, you don't want to make skills any weaker than they already are.
Also, if we're talking about faction missions, keep in mind that you want martial classes that can only dabble in skills to have a chance at success.
In summary, I'm pleased with the limited scaling that Paizo is currently doing in their scenarios.