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Hello All,
I'm trying to determine a good formula for an easy, medium, and hard skill check DC is at each level. I would love to hear some suggestions.
My current, rough, thoughts:
Easy skill check: Average Party Level + 5
Medium Skill Check: (APLx1.25) + 10
Difficult SKill Check: (APLx1.5) + 15
Looking at a few select levels, this yields the following skill checks.
Level 1: 6,12,17
Level 5: 10, 16, 21
Level 10: 15, 23, 30
Level 15: 20, 29, 38
Level 20: 25, 35, 45
The idea here is that somebody who specializes in a skill should have about APLx1.25+5
What do you guys think?
I guess it depends if they are 'skill encounters' or not. If it's meant to get the party XP, scaling with level is appropriate. If not, EvilMinion is right, easy should always be the same DC regardless of your level. Higher level characters get to do very hard and near impossible skill checks beyond what a 1st level character could dream about.
Shouldn't an easy skill check be an easy check, regardless of your level?
It should not be based on APL. Scaling the skill checks so they are always just as difficult to make, kind of defeats the purpose of getting better at skills doesn't it?Perhaps its just the terminology you're using.
I think it's just the terminology.
What he's doing is very useful for encounter design.
Shouldn't an easy skill check be an easy check, regardless of your level?
It should not be based on APL. Scaling the skill checks so they are always just as difficult to make, kind of defeats the purpose of getting better at skills doesn't it?Perhaps its just the terminology you're using.
I think it's just the terminology.
What he's doing is very useful for encounter design.
Yes, it permits to tailor the difficulty of the challenge to overcome to the level of the PCs.
With that method, it would be possible too to guess at which level an information would become intelligible to the PCs.
For example, in campaign play, 2nd level PCs could hear about a race called Boglins (DC 23 to know the characteristics of the race - they don't have much chance to beat that DC at their current level), and reasonably guess the characteristics of that race much later in the campaign, say, at 10th level (where they would have an average chance to beat the DC, according to Broken Z's proposed formula).
Quiche Lisp: Why would 2nd level PCs be needing to hear about CR8 (or CR13) creatures except perhaps to know they are dangerous and run away?
DC23 = CR8 (if they are rare) or CR13 (if not rare) or CR18 (if common).
- Gauss
It can be useful for introducing elements in a campaign, which will be used later on, or for foreshadowing.
If you want to make the Boglins some truly frightening and interesting monsters, it's interesting to make mention of them at the beginning of the campaign - the players will then try to determine what kind of race tehy are, and fail... because they will fail their DC 23 knowledge check.
This builds up mistery an tension about the Boglins. And then, at a later time, the PCs realize what exactly the Boglins are, when they finally make this Dc 23 knowledge check.
Making that check will serve to make the PCs feel how much more learned and experienced they have become since the beginning of the campaign.
And you could do that with any kind of check, really (Disable Device to open a mysterious treeasure chest which the Pcs stumbled upon at the beginning of the campaign, Acrobatics DC to climb the abandoned wizard's tower, etc.)
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Thanks for the input guys. Here are my new calculations:
A person who specializes in a skill should have an 8 in it at level 1, and a 35 in it at level 20.
A person who dabbles in a skill should have a 4 in it at level 1, and a 24 in it at level 20.
Someone who just puts a point in every so often should have a 0 at level 1, and a 10 at level 20.
A difficult check should be a check that a specialist can make about 75% of the time.
Thus: APLx1.35 + 13
Difficult at level 1: 13.
Difficult at level 10: 26
Difficult at level 20: 40.
A medium check should be a skill that a dabbler can make about 75% of the time.
Thus: APLx1 +9
Medium at level 1: 10
Medium at level 10: 19
Medium at level 20: 29
An Easy check should be a skill that even a novice can make 75% of the time.
Thus: APLx.5 + 5
Easy at level 1: 5
Easy at level 10: 10
Easy at level 20: 15
Thoughts?
new calculations
I think these are reasonable, as long as they're used as a baseline. Some skills are flat-out weak, though, and others are very strong - meaning few characters will even dabble in the former (e.g. swim), while the whole party might be almost specialized in the latter (e.g. perception).
An important factoid to keep in mind is that a lot of folks drop one (and only one) skill rank in all their class skills just to take advantage of the free +3. So for a fringe skill like swim, while it's realistic to expect a smaller range (like +4 to +8) at low levels and a slightly larger range (like +4 to +14) at high levels due to variable PC investment in the linked ability score, the low end of the range won't really change from 1-20.
Also, consider the effect of armor check penalty on Dex/Str skills, which also doesn't meaningfully change as levels increase.