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I loved the 1-31 practice of having variable DCs based on the size and level of the party, as well as building scaling success into the checks.Do people agree with this sentinment? I've had a lot of feedback in PMs/messages/conventions that points me to believe that GMs prefer all their DCs listed inline in a scenario.
So, I'm curious as to what the prevailing majority would like to see...
I think the scaling DC info boxes work great as long as the inline text has a clear reference.
On a related note, I really like it when there is a single page “GM aid” in the appendixes that consolidates all the information the GMs need. What the DCs are, timelines for in-scenario events, how areas connect, checklists of possible success conditions, etc. People sometimes make these and post them on pfsprep.com, but there has been some experimentation with putting them directly in the scenarios (such as PFS 10-01).
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Obviously I favor it, as Space Dad quoted me in the first place, but I would also like to expand that by saying that it took slightly longer the first few times I had to check the DC, but after that I simply remembered the needed number for my table with every check.
If I had been TRULY prepared, I would have just photocopied and cut out the table and pinned it to my GM screen. That would have been aces.
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So... what precisely are we talking about?
Here's the issue I have with the Convention Special Block DCs (and scenarios that overrule the rule on task DCs):
The skills, in particular, have all sorts of modifiers to the check and to the DC based on circumstances and conditions. Race/Theme/Class abilities affect the checks and DCs. I may have built my character--based on the rules--to take advantage of those modifiers and the synergy between them as well as implementing tactics--based on the rules--to gain an advantage.
Few things get my goat more than the GM saying, "Nope, sorry, the scenario says the DC is..."
"...25 to climb a space station wall."
"But I'm a large sized humanoid and am bracing against two walls 10 ft apart, that should lower the DC by 10."
"Nope. Scenario says DC is 25."
The GM says, "There is a 1 foot wide catwalk crossing the upper level of the auditorium, it has been covered in a slick substance."
"1 foot wide? OK. Worst case, it's severely slippery, so that will make it a DC 10. I 'Take 10' for 12."
"Sorry. Scenario says the DC is 18. You fall 20 ft into the crowd and disrupt the performance."
The GM says, "There is a rope bridge across this chasm. It appears old."
"OK. A rope bridge is pretty simple, but the enemy might have sabotaged it. So that's around a DC 15-5+10=20. I'll have to roll. I got a 22!"
"You believe that it is sound. Halfway across it collapses and you fall 80 ft to the river below. Sorry, scenario said the DC was 30 to notice the sabotage."
Etc.
EDIT: It could get even worse with Computers and hacking.
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So... what precisely are we talking about?
Do GM’s prefer the DCs inline throughout the scenario text or once in a single box with adjustments for all tiers and number of players in one table?
..
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BT, seems like you have some problems with GMs who don’t understand how modifiers work along with a personal dislike for scenario writers making the DC for a task harder than what the CRB says it “should” be. As Thursty would say, someone should start another thread for that :)
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On a related note, I really like it when there is a single page “GM aid” in the appendixes that consolidates all the information the GMs need. What the DCs are, timelines for in-scenario events, how areas connect, checklists of possible success conditions, etc. People sometimes make these and post them on pfsprep.com, but there has been some experimentation with putting them directly in the scenarios (such as PFS 10-01).
Yes, please! Put it at the end of the scenario!
I have a time limit when using the library's computer to print stuff out. Having it all accessible at one time is much more simpler, too.
Edit: Quick thought! Maybe this final page of info could also list anything that got missed in editing before being published. Like, a few times when I've seen in the product discussion or GM thread where someone has posted "The mook in area 2A should have 27 hp, not 72. Please update your scenario." Might be simpler to access this one page for editors or higher-ups rather than revising the whole scenario.
Starfinder Society Developer
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The idea of doing a "GM Aid" document in every scenario is something I really don't think we'll have the bandwidth for anytime soon. There's a distinct difference between developing a scenario and preparing it to run, as odd as that sounds. In a lot of cases we don't have the time to be prepping scenarios and compile all the information within a scenario into a cheat sheet. It's why tools like X-FSprep exist. Similarly, this is a big pit of "things we obviously could do to improve GMing, but ultimately could result in delayed scenarios / less releases" which I'm sure nobody wants to see!
That being said, something like the scaling DC chart makes a lot of sense and is something we can incorporate more, as long as a lot of people are onboard with its use.
-Thursty
(Acting as Expectations Manager)
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Print or write it out on a 3x5 card at the beginning of the game. Its 3 numbers for easy, medium, hard. Simple. Much more simple than what most GMs do for prep in pulling out different stats onto encounter sheets/etc.
I think the #1 reason people are against the table is it isn't seen often enough for it to be part of their process.
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Print or write it out on a 3x5 card at the beginning of the game. Its 3 numbers for easy, medium, hard. Simple. Much more simple than what most GMs do for prep in pulling out different stats onto encounter sheets/etc.
I think the #1 reason people are against the table is it isn't seen often enough for it to be part of their process.
Yeah, see, that's what I suspected people were talking about: Special-style standardized DCs, not a table collating the DCs in a scenario.
My big reason to not do that is that it's not the rules.
For Specials where you're doing many, macro-level things, like ushering a team of Muckrakers across a battlefield being covered by enemy archers or performing an arcane ritual to seal a dark portal, it works well.
If you use it in every scenario, you've pretty much thrown out the entire Skills section of the rules as well as several rules on items and environment.
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Print or write it out on a 3x5 card at the beginning of the game. Its 3 numbers for easy, medium, hard. Simple. Much more simple than what most GMs do for prep in pulling out different stats onto encounter sheets/etc.
3 by 5 card vanishes in the shuffle of a gaming table or my desk. Is found 2 weeks later next to a left sock from the dryer, jimmy hoffa and the alien from area 51.
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To frame my feelings in a positive way: I enjoy the tactical granularity that the rules provide.
I would enjoy having the table because it'd allow for more granular DCs; eg 4, 5, and maybe even 7 player adjustments for both tiers.
If someone can't keep a 3x5 card or similar with three DC numbers written on it specific to the current game they're running, I'm not sure they're organized enough to be running games.
Many of us already have to make break-out encounter sheets to avoid having to skip back and forth in the scenario for the stats during combat, this is far far simpler;
"A PC succeeding a Hard Perception check or Average Survival check"
vs
"Perception check with a DC of 26 in Subtier 3–4 (DC 29 in Subtier 5-6) or a Survival check with a DC of 21 in Subtier 3–4 (DC 24 in Subtier 5-6)" plus sidebar "In encounter 1, reduce all DCs by 2 for 4 players"
There's no contest here. Its not only more readable, but its less than half as long and removes the need for the 4 player adjustment sidebar which not only takes up a lot of space but missing it is one of the most common mistakes for GMs.
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So... why are there only 3 DCs?
Why does the Athletics check DC to Swim in Still Water increase to 12 at subtier 1-2 instead of 10, and continue to increase as your characters gain in level to DC 18 at subtier 7-8?
Why is the Survival check to Endure Severe Weather not 15? Or maybe it is 15 at subtier 1-2 but magically jumps to 17 at subtier 3-4. Or for some reason becomes 19 at subtier 3-4 because you have 6 players.
Why is the Survival check to Follow Tracks across snow not DC 5 but DC 12 at subtier 1-2?
Why is the DC to notice an invisible imp following you at subtier 7-8 only 28 instead of, let's say, 34 ('Take 10' + 4 + 20)?
Less space devoted to DCs per check means more space for block text and ADVENTURE.
Are you sure?
"DC XX" takes 5 characters, "easy" and "hard" save 1, "average" loses 2. (DC XX in subtier Y-Z) is 22 characters.
Replacing SFS 1-08, which has a lot of skill checks, would net you 233 characters (and I assigned the numerous DC 20s "hard" rather than "average" because that's what it is at subtier 3-4 so you almost always gained, not to mention the scenario has at least 7 different base DCs listed 12, 14, 15, 16, 20, 30 for various things... mostly 20).
I bolded the first 233 characters in the statement above. That doesn't seem like that much more "adventure."
For me, the tactical rules are as much the adventure as the setting descriptions.
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Its not just "DC XX". Its "DC XX (DC YY in subtier Z-Z)" plus a sidebar box (which given margins and formatting takes the place of at least 2000 characters) for 4 player adjustment.
That space can be far better used for narrative, more detailed descriptions, dialog, etc. Speaking purely for myself, when I write I commonly blow through any word count or space constraints the first day, then spend the next week (or longer) making hard choices what to cut or rewrite to be smaller.
Also this sort of verbose embedded mechanical text also makes editing harder. It'd be really nice if encounters could be kept to a page, and the next area or event start on a fresh page.
... and just because you have the table doesn't mean you can't specify the DC otherwise. If its a DC5, then it can be DC5 regardless of tier or number of players.
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SFS is not the same as standard table play, and is perfectly within its purvue to designate DCs based on party size and level in order to make the adventure challenging for specific groups.
There's a bit in an early adventure where the PCs have to surgicially extract a malfunctioning adaptive biochains augmentation from an NPC. In my regular game, I'd classify that as a PRETTY HIGH DC for complete success, but in the scenario it has a DC that is high, but not out of range for a level 1-4 character... in fact in my game a Jack of All Trades Operative with no medical training managed it (not without some sweating of bullets, though).
It made the action fun and possible, as a Society game should be.
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I took that (DC YY in Subtier Z-Z) into account, if you had bothered to read my post--it's right after the DC XX sentence--so the example number is accurate.
You don't get rid of the sidebar because those cover the combat encounter adjustments.
So you're back to saving 233 characters in a skill heavy SFS 1-08 as an example.
But since you mentioned the sidebar box, that's how the table is going to go in--so you've saved 233 characters in order to spend 2,000 characters (your estimate) to insert a graphic box to hold the table.
Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I loved the 1-31 practice of having variable DCs based on the size and level of the party, as well as building scaling success into the checks.Do people agree with this sentinment? I've had a lot of feedback in PMs/messages/conventions that points me to believe that GMs prefer all their DCs listed inline in a scenario.
So, I'm curious as to what the prevailing majority would like to see...
I think for a GM having just three easy/medium/hard DCs for the entire scenario is pretty convenient, but that doesn't make it a good idea. Because from the players' side, it's not always as much fun.
The RAW game builds skill DCs up from roughly:
* Base task DC
* Circumstance modifiers
Some base task DCs are low, because they're just simple unambitious things. Jump across a 5ft pit. It gets harder if it's slippery or you can't get a good running start. But these are objective DCs, they have nothing to do with player level. If you have to jump across the same pit at high tier, it will usually be just as big and therefore just as hard. (Because we definitely won't do separate high tier maps.)
You can certainly write aggravating circumstances into the higher tier. "The bad guy rigged the balancing act by putting soap on the bar, raising the acrobatics DC by 2. At high tier, he used organic superlubricant, raising the DC by 5 instead." It's not entirely objective because the circumstances depend on the players' tier now, but it's still an in-world explanation for the difficulty. Players can interact with it. They can try to clean up the bar and undo the raised difficulty.
Put baldly, objective, "justified" DCs promote player agency because they give them something to interact with and influence. Purely tier-based DCs don't.
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The best of both worlds? The tables with scaling DCs are useful for a writer trying to determine how hard tasks need to be to challenge PCs of a given level. But instead of just setting the DC to that magic number, the writer can use it to select challenges and circumstances to organically get to the desired number. If a writer sees that he needs an acrobatics DC of 15 to challenge PCs, but the base task has only a DC of 10, then he needs to come up with some circumstance worth a +5 DC hike.
The result of this is that players are properly challenged, but they can interact with their environment. Also, because the writer was challenged to come up with circumstances sufficiently bad to justify the higher DC, he has to write more extreme stunts into the adventure. Which results in more epic adventures!
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I loved the 1-31 practice of having variable DCs based on the size and level of the party, as well as building scaling success into the checks.Do people agree with this sentinment? I've had a lot of feedback in PMs/messages/conventions that points me to believe that GMs prefer all their DCs listed inline in a scenario.
So, I'm curious as to what the prevailing majority would like to see...
So a different take on this: what Dracomicron seems to be saying is that he likes difficulty of challenges scaling well to size and level of the party. That's NOT necessarily the same as using one chart with easy/medium/hard DCs for the whole adventure.
For example, there's a party and 6 PCs get 4 rounds to talk to people (24 checks), or in the four player adjustment 4 PCs get 6 rounds to talk to people (24 checks). 5 PCs get only 5x4 = 20 checks. Smoother scaling would be to give them five rounds. I like smoother scaling, and since SFS doesn't have "5-6P between subtiers playing up to 4P" weirdness to deal with, I think it should be clearer how it can be done.
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PFS2 (edit: playtest) has a "per person" scaling of encounters. Base assumption is 4 players, add 'this' for each player above 4 (to a max of +2 'these').
Now that's more for combat, but the same has been used for the number of checks to collect sufficient clues to get the jump on the bad guys and could be used in the influence gathering encounters, too.
(...and it doesn't change the DC).