#Crucible Beta Feedback - Skills

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bronze anvil
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We arrived in Helkas recently and while trying to enjoy the festival, me and my players where again a bit frustrated about the skill system and the difficulty of the rolls.

Ember feels often a bit to hard for players of lower levels, because they fail so much skill rolls. I don't know if this is intended for level 1 or 2 player characters. But I had the feeling as gm, that they are at a point where they don't believe they can succeed the roll before they have rolled and they are frustrated and surprised if they roll high enough.

Another thing which came up what's the progression in the skills. Why does the first talent in the skill change the modifier from - 4 to 0 and all of the next talent give a +1 bonus. This also feels like it is better to get the first point in every talent before you invest into higher talents.

dry trench
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@bronze anvil I’m curious on your perspective - are these skill checks where you feel the player characters should have a high chance of success? Areas they are trained in? Areas that make sense for their character backstory?

How much of this is being used to the D&D paradigm where any character regardless of their build can roll high on a d20 and succeed?

I’m asking because I’m considering whether it’s possible to do something differently, but there are different facets to this:

  1. the extent of penalty applied to untrained characters
  2. The rate of skill bonus progression
  3. Are written skill checks DCs too high in places the task should be easier

Trying to get to grips with which is which

twilit thunder
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I'll chime in, and this is pretty anecdotal, but I've noticed in Ember a lot of times for my party the passive checks as written have skills just meeting the DC (which in Crucible is a fail) in chapter 1. Obviously this may be coincidental, since ability scores are considered here, but that part has supported at least a little bit of (3). That's also perhaps appropriate, since a passive win on a check should represent a greater level of skill than a rolled win (and for trained skills, when rolling using the passive enrichers above it feels like an appropriate amount of successes)

untold osprey
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so, I went over some of the passive checks in the first chapter of Ember, and saw one DC 12, a bunch of DC 13, a bunch of DC 14, some DC 15 and even a couple DC 16
now, what do those numbers actually mean?
an untrained character can't succeed on any of those, as at most their passive check will be 11 if they maxed out the appropriate stats
for a trained character, the range is 13 to 15 for the first few levels, so

  • DC 12 means "any trained"
  • DC 13 means "trained and decent stats"
  • DC 14 means "trained and perfect stats"
  • DC 15 and DC 16 just mean "impossible"
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my party actually has exactly one skill on one character with a passive of 15, and that skill is stealth which is basically never passive with a fixed DC anyway, so my party will never succeed on a single one of those DC 14 passive checks either

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this isn't particularly surprising, since getting a 15 requires you to align your choices of the ancestry, the skills, and the stats perfectly

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the margine for error is 1 attribute point

bronze anvil
bronze anvil
# dry trench <@551690462520410112> I’m curious on your perspective - are these skill checks w...

Okay, my players gave me the following feedback:

  • it's the beginning of the campaign, so there will be tasks which are too hard.
  • but it feels like 3). Often are the simple tasks to hard to succeed.
  • and it also feels odd that you have to decide between the cool combat talents and the necessary skill talents.
  • I know I don't make myself friends here, but the system where the skills where leveled outside the talent tree, felt somehow more rewarding and fair.
  • and sometimes in the game it feld like there are missing some skills. But there I habe to capture some further feedback.
dry trench
bronze anvil
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One thing one of my players added is the distribution of the abilitys: STR 1, TOU 2, DEX 3, PRE 6, INT 6, WIS 6
So a STR, TOU, DEX character will always have the feeling to be weak at some points in the game. Because he will not invest so much in the talents on the other side of the tree and has also weaker ailitys.

twin onyx
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GM here that has been getting feedback from players about the difficulty of skill checks. i just wanted to second pretty much everything @bronze anvil has mentioned here. it’s been a very similar experience for me and my players

lime marsh
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I'm a player in the Game @twin onyx runs. I can confirm as a player the high frequency of skill checks with the near equal high frequency skill check failures is pretty demoralizing. I will add that the boon system only minimally addresses this because while it does increase the potential of your roll it does not affect the minimum roll and as often as not we see low rolls on the larger dice.
Granted the entirety of my experience was in chapter 1 so this was at levels 1 and 2. We just completed chapter 1 last night and finally advanced to level 3. (Advancement feels very off as well but that's another issue). This does however touch on another issue raised. The skills sharing the same advancement points and tree as talents. I spent all of my advancement points for level 3 to get skills because they seem to play such a huge role in the game and basically got no new shiny talents. It was a practical choice but not a fun one.

clear cairn
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I've only had one session of Ember (with Crucible), but I noticed the same things the others have mentioned so far in regards to the skill DCs. They are very difficult most of the time. I found myself giving them the info as if they had succeeded even if they rolled and failed by a couple points. I totally understand the design behind it. Level 1 Crucible PCs being less powerful/well-rounded as level 1 5e PCs is one of the things I like about it. And having a -4 to skills you're not trained in is also something I totally agree with. If I never learned how to survive in the woods, I should have a penalty to trying to do anything in the woods instead of just lacking a bonus. But bc skills are going to be so limited (2 chosen by character creation options, any more using up talent points that will then not be going to combat (I've already mentioned the weapon training tax previously and how it's not something I love)), I feel like the bonus for being trained should be a bit higher.

I love so much about Crucible, and my players have been intrigued by a lot of what they're seeing, but the skill training keeps coming up as our biggest issue so far. I don't envy y'all trying to find the right balance here

dry trench
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Thanks for the feedback, please note that this isnt a closed topic and I strongly think some change to early game skill success rate will happen. It’s just not ready yet because I haven’t decided yet whether the change is to alter the system rules and keep DCs the same, or to keep the system rules and lower DCs

clear cairn
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For sure! I'm excited to keep testing things out

past flame
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Oops no i'm wrong, i didn't realize about the bonuses and values were different

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edgy spire
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Someone will correct me if I'm misremembering (I'm new to the system) but I think the ability bonus is half the ability value

past flame
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maybe i didn't read thouroughly enough... i'll check on that!