Rameth |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Okay when I first looked at the new DC table I was like okay whatever as they were relatively the same. But then I started looking at the new skill checks for Mirrored Moon and I was like dude c'mon.
Every Hex has a DC 30 Perception or DC 27 Survival base?? Why??
Only 3 classes have master perception at that level and none of them (Fighter, Ranger, and Rogue) have any reason to have more then +2 MAYBE +3 Wis. So even with a +2 Item bonus that means they would generally have a +15 or so Perception. That's only a 25% chance to find anything after 2 DAYS of searching?? Now Granted the Survival check is a little more doable but 27? Why are these checks so high?
There's not a single important check that's lower than 25. That's just not okay.
I mean yeah someone could roll a 20 but these just seem way to high for no reason. Was this intended?
swordchucks |
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This looks like it's meant to be a level 9 Hard (perception) or Medium (survival) check with the +4 for being a group roll. Which... is really not great? The PCs I have in this scenario were definitely making the rolls too much at DC 25/23, but this is just too high. The best bonus the group I am running this for has is +12, and no one seems very excited to roll when they need a 18+ to get anything.
Uchuujin |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Agreed. I started running this last night. Three PCs had +11 perception or survival, one had +8. They failed the skill checks around 2/3rds of the time, taking a lot of extra time.
By dumb luck they found the Moonmere as their first location. The DC to scout it is 31? Yeah, that would be natural 20s only for them. It didn't happen.
On top of all this they have the gall to have rules for a critical success on these rolls? Even with the original DCs critical successes would have been impossible, they simply can't hit 10 over those DCs. It's impossible even with a character specialized towards perception.
Skill check DCs definitely did not need to go up, even if the whole party can make the check.
Snickersnax |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Okay when I first looked at the new DC table I was like okay whatever as they were relatively the same. But then I started looking at the new skill checks for Mirrored Moon and I was like dude c'mon.
Every Hex has a DC 30 Perception or DC 27 Survival base?? Why??
Only 3 classes have master perception at that level and none of them (Fighter, Ranger, and Rogue) have any reason to have more then +2 MAYBE +3 Wis. So even with a +2 Item bonus that means they would generally have a +15 or so Perception. That's only a 25% chance to find anything after 2 DAYS of searching?? Now Granted the Survival check is a little more doable but 27? Why are these checks so high?
There's not a single important check that's lower than 25. That's just not okay.
I mean yeah someone could roll a 20 but these just seem way to high for no reason. Was this intended?
To be fair a Success means they find what's in the hex in 1 day, if they fail they find what's in the hex in 2 days. So they always have 100% chance to find what's in the hex with 2 days of searching.
On top of all this they have the gall to have rules for a critical success on these rolls? Even with the original DCs critical successes would have been impossible, they simply can't hit 10 over those DCs. It's impossible even with a character specialized towards perception.
SO natural 20's and a high perception (+11 or higher) will still grant a critical success vs a DC31, they don't have to be 10 over. But you're right no one is ever going to critically succeed with a roll of 19.
Snickersnax |
The end result of this change is that players will be more likely to engage in combat with encounters, so it will help to test what this particular playtest is trying to test. Also the final encounter is likely to be more similar across most playtest groups: 4+ ally points, 0 research points or maybe 2 research points (if the GM rules that negative research points don't apply).
thenobledrake |
Maybe I'm doing this wrong, but... isn't this a situation where the party can all be trying and only 1 needs to succeed?
Even if your whole party needs to roll a natural 20 in order to succeed, that doesn't make the chance that someone hits the DC 5% - it's actually an 18.55% chance that the party succeeds. If you have a party that each member has a 20% chance of passing the DC, the chance of one of them getting it is 59.04%.
Also, isn't this a valid place to use the Aid rules? It shouldn't be too hard for someone in the party to get a critical success on their Aid for the character with the highest modifier, providing a +4 bonus. Using my party as an example, there is a 45% chance of a +2 bonus, and a 51% chance of a +4 bonus from Aid. That puts the other character at a +17 on their roll, for a 59% chance of success, 5% chance of critical success.
But if my party in particular goes for the Survival check, which they will because their Druid is awesome at it, it's 65% chance of +2, 19% chance of +4, and with just the +2 is 74.75% chance of success, 5% chance of critical success.
So unless I am doing this all wrong, that seems like it's not actually that difficult of a check to succeed at in practice despite that the DC can give a bit of a shock at first glance.
Mark Seifter Designer |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Maybe I'm doing this wrong, but... isn't this a situation where the party can all be trying and only 1 needs to succeed?
Even if your whole party needs to roll a natural 20 in order to succeed, that doesn't make the chance that someone hits the DC 5% - it's actually an 18.55% chance that the party succeeds. If you have a party that each member has a 20% chance of passing the DC, the chance of one of them getting it is 59.04%.
Also, isn't this a valid place to use the Aid rules? It shouldn't be too hard for someone in the party to get a critical success on their Aid for the character with the highest modifier, providing a +4 bonus. Using my party as an example, there is a 45% chance of a +2 bonus, and a 51% chance of a +4 bonus from Aid. That puts the other character at a +17 on their roll, for a 59% chance of success, 5% chance of critical success.
But if my party in particular goes for the Survival check, which they will because their Druid is awesome at it, it's 65% chance of +2, 19% chance of +4, and with just the +2 is 74.75% chance of success, 5% chance of critical success.
So unless I am doing this all wrong, that seems like it's not actually that difficult of a check to succeed at in practice despite that the DC can give a bit of a shock at first glance.
The math of getting to roll with everybody is indeed surprising at first. Imagine a level 9 party with a fighter, a rogue, a wizard, and a cleric. The cleric never raises Perception and has +13, the wizard raises Wisdom as a 4th stat and winds up with +11, the fighter also has a 4th stat Wisdom and has +13, and the rogue also has 4th stat Wisdom and has +13.
Now suppose only one of these characters gets to roll (party's choice) against DC 26. The chance of success is only 40%. But what if all of them can roll against DC 30 with no penalty for failures? Each individual character has a lower chance of making it, but the chance of overall success has gone up to 54% (+5 here would have preserved the probability at a roughly 42%, but +4 is a pretty good rule-of-thumb that is likely to err in the PCs' favor).
Uchuujin |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |
May be true, but I also know that player outrage speaks far louder at the table than math and statistics. I may be that only one PC has to pass the check, but no one likes to feel like they keep failing. We dropped it back to the originally published DCs pretty quickly when failures were far out stripped successes.
Snickersnax |
Also, isn't this a valid place to use the Aid rules? It shouldn't be too hard for someone in the party to get a critical success on their Aid for the character with the highest modifier, providing a +4 bonus. Using my party as an example, there is a 45% chance of a +2 bonus, and a 51% chance of a +4 bonus from Aid. That puts the other character at a +17 on their roll, for a 59% chance of success, 5% chance of critical success.
I was wondering about this too, but I thought that maybe it wasn't a valid place for Aid rules. Aid is used as an action and doesn't seem to be available in exploration mode. In this situation the characters are getting a perception roll for searching for 1-2days. The rules seem unclear here.
DM_aka_Dudemeister |
2 people marked this as a favorite. |
thenobledrake wrote:Maybe I'm doing this wrong, but... isn't this a situation where the party can all be trying and only 1 needs to succeed?
Even if your whole party needs to roll a natural 20 in order to succeed, that doesn't make the chance that someone hits the DC 5% - it's actually an 18.55% chance that the party succeeds. If you have a party that each member has a 20% chance of passing the DC, the chance of one of them getting it is 59.04%.
Also, isn't this a valid place to use the Aid rules? It shouldn't be too hard for someone in the party to get a critical success on their Aid for the character with the highest modifier, providing a +4 bonus. Using my party as an example, there is a 45% chance of a +2 bonus, and a 51% chance of a +4 bonus from Aid. That puts the other character at a +17 on their roll, for a 59% chance of success, 5% chance of critical success.
But if my party in particular goes for the Survival check, which they will because their Druid is awesome at it, it's 65% chance of +2, 19% chance of +4, and with just the +2 is 74.75% chance of success, 5% chance of critical success.
So unless I am doing this all wrong, that seems like it's not actually that difficult of a check to succeed at in practice despite that the DC can give a bit of a shock at first glance.
The math of getting to roll with everybody is indeed surprising at first. Imagine a level 9 party with a fighter, a rogue, a wizard, and a cleric. The cleric never raises Perception and has +13, the wizard raises Wisdom as a 4th stat and winds up with +11, the fighter also has a 4th stat Wisdom and has +13, and the rogue also has 4th stat Wisdom and has +13.
Now suppose only one of these characters gets to roll (party's choice) against DC 26. The chance of success is only 40%. But what if all of them can roll against DC 30 with no penalty for failures? Each individual character has a lower chance of making it, but the chance of overall success has gone up to 54% (+5 here would have preserved the...
If there is a check wherein there is no penalty for failure, there shouldn't be a roll required at all. Because the game options become:
"Something happens or nothing happens" and "nothing happens" is poison at the table.This is where the lack of Take 20 and Take 10 rules are really bothering me in the game.
thenobledrake |
If there is a check wherein there is no penalty for failure, there shouldn't be a roll required at all. Because the game options become:
"Something happens or nothing happens" and "nothing happens" is poison at the table.This is where the lack of Take 20 and Take 10 rules are really bothering me in the game.
This isn't a case of their being no penalty for failure.
It's there being no additional penalty if multiple characters try and also fail. An issue that has nothing at all to do with the things that Take 20 (the system insisting that a check must be used when the reality in practice is you are either assured to succeed are assured to fail), and Take 10 (the system having DCs of typical actions too high to actually reliably hit with an actually rolled die) existed to deal with.
swordchucks |
3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I fully get the logic behind the +4. I largely agree with the +4. What seems to be skewed is the base DC for the checks. I can attest that the five people playing this game under me have been quite vocal about how much they dislike skill checks they are supposed to fail a lot. As game design, it just doesn't feel good.
This is also a really weird one to be using leveled checks for. Why is this check a level 9 check? This feels like exactly the sort of thing that should have a "static" DC. If the group were doing this in the same area at level 10, would it make sense for the DC to be higher?
Rameth |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I fully get the logic behind the +4. I largely agree with the +4. What seems to be skewed is the base DC for the checks. I can attest that the five people playing this game under me have been quite vocal about how much they dislike skill checks they are supposed to fail a lot. As game design, it just doesn't feel good.
This is also a really weird one to be using leveled checks for. Why is this check a level 9 check? This feels like exactly the sort of thing that should have a "static" DC. If the group were doing this in the same area at level 10, would it make sense for the DC to be higher?
That is also a very good point. Like it they were level 5 would the check be 24? 20+4 for group rolling? I don't really care about static DCs as much as the next guy but this was one of the exact things they said they weren't going to do. Like one of the hardest survival checks listed is level 4. So it makes sense that it could maybe be a level 5 or 6 which means the max it could be is 24 or 25.
As I've mentioned before in another thread it seems every check in the book is a leveled check. I think someone screwed up lol.
Aramar |
thenobledrake wrote:Maybe I'm doing this wrong, but... isn't this a situation where the party can all be trying and only 1 needs to succeed?
Even if your whole party needs to roll a natural 20 in order to succeed, that doesn't make the chance that someone hits the DC 5% - it's actually an 18.55% chance that the party succeeds. If you have a party that each member has a 20% chance of passing the DC, the chance of one of them getting it is 59.04%.
So unless I am doing this all wrong, that seems like it's not actually that difficult of a check to succeed at in practice despite that the DC can give a bit of a shock at first glance.
The math of getting to roll with everybody is indeed surprising at first. Imagine a level 9 party with a fighter, a rogue, a wizard, and a cleric. The cleric never raises Perception and has +13, the wizard raises Wisdom as a 4th stat and winds up with +11, the fighter also has a 4th stat Wisdom and has +13, and the rogue also has 4th stat Wisdom and has +13.
Now suppose only one of these characters gets to roll (party's choice) against DC 26. The chance of success is only 40%. But what if all of them can roll against DC 30 with no penalty for failures? Each individual character has a lower chance of making it, but the chance of overall success has gone up to 54% (+5 here would have preserved the probability at a roughly 42%, but +4 is a pretty good rule-of-thumb that is likely to err in the PCs' favor).
I had wondered where the +4 came from. I'd rather see it as something to consider when setting a DC (as in choosing level and difficulty) rather than as an arbitrary modifier just to keep success odds similar.