Level Easy Check DC Средний Check DC Hard Check DC

1 12 17 22

2 14 19 23

3 15 21 26

4 16 22 28

5 17 23 29

6 18 24 30

7 19 25 31

8 20 26 33

9 21 27 34

10 22 28 39

11 23 29 41

12 24 30 43

13 25 31 44

14 26 32 45

15 27 33 47

16 28 34 48

17 29 35 50

18 30 36 51

19 31 37 52

20 32 38 54

 

The low values on the table above are designed as target DCs for checks that are relatively easy for PCs to complete at the listed levels. They are also typically appropriate when multiple party members might have to all succeed at the check to constitute a success, or when a character who isn’t an умелец at something is forced to f ill in for a particular role. The DC generally provides a 50% chance of success for a character trained in the skill but otherwise ill-suited to the task and possessing no other advantages (such as tools, spells, or magic), or vЛьда versa (someone barely trained with plenty of other advantages). Средний values represent Бросить Вызовs that a single, relatively Опытный adventurer should be able to overcome without assistance, but not without some risk. Hard values are appropriate for masters at particular skills, for those who possess numerous advantages with certain skills, or for checks where a Крупный number of characters are all able to assist a less Опытный character.

If the PCs typically rely on inexpensive spells and Магия items to apply bonuses on certain skill checks, the DCs on Table 4–1 might be too low for your campaign. You may want to make changes to the listed DCs to account for this (in a campaign where characters on both sides of a social Conflict rely strongly on such spells and Магия items, the opposition воля be using them, too).

Keep in mind that when PCs have invested in maximizing their success with certain Навыки or roles, they should feel Добро about those choices. Rather than simply increasing the DCs when selecting advantageous options should have otherwise made them easier—thus effectively punishing the PCs—when you create tasks with those higher DCs, create greater rewards for them as well. Thus, the players’ choices grant access to new and exciting possibilities that the characters never could have obtained otherwise (and of course, if the players are apprehensive about attempting the difficult DC, they can безрассудства this extra prize without experiencing a loss).

 

Finessing Event Consequences While most of this section offers tools and suggestions to help GMs create their own social conflict events, the PCs might be able to take an event in a completely unexpected direction, unlike in combat encounters where the actions and consequences are more rigorously determined. Interesting uses of skills, feats, spells, and magic items, not to mention inspired roleplaying, can often create circumstances you never imagined. When this happens, it’s better to reward players for their ingenuity instead of discouraging it.

GAUGING SUCCESS

While designing the Бросить Вызовs and goals of a social Conflict, you’ll need to decide the means by which you’ll measure the PCs’ success. Listed below are three different ways to gauge success in social Conflict events. Regardless of which means you Использование to gauge success, you воля also need to determine how many successes the PCs must accumulate to achieve their overall goals.

Contest Against Competitors: Perhaps a rival fДействие opposes the PCs’ agenda in the social Conflict. In this type of event, the PCs work to best these other factions. The PCs must either damage the reputations of their rivals in Орден to take them out of the Running, or they must find some other way to keep those adversaries from being obstacles to their goals, such as by forming a coalition against an even more dangerous opposing faction. Contests against competitors can be highly satisfying because of the human element of the opposition, but they can also make the social Conflict significantly more difficult to Бегун, particularly if there are numerous factions. In such contests, you may need to determine the stakes and tenacity of multiple factions, and how many successes воля drive each fДействие out of the Running. These numbers should match the scope and pacing you chose for the social Conflict. A fast- paced serialized Conflict or one expected to last over a longer term calls for higher target numbers, as there are more opportunities to gain successes, while the reverse is true for Замедлениеer, episodic pacing or shorter-term story arcs.

Goal Collection: In this type of event, overall success is assured as long as the PCs can achieve a benchmark number of goals. However, before that occurs, the characters must deal with adverse conditions that can be removed only by succeeding at the social Conflict.

Race Against Time: In this type of event, the PCs must race to achieve as many goals as possible before a certain amount of Время elapses. A Время limit makes an event more exciting for the players. Make the reason for the Время limit something interesting to the PCs and the developing story. The in-game reason for the Время limit could be anything from an upcoming election, to an impending invasion, to the public’s waning interest in the issue at the heart of the PCs’ goals. When determining overall goals in a time- sensitive Conflict, you may Желание to set multiple thresholds of victory, ordering possible outcomes from best to worst and liЖало a minimum number of successes for each successively better outcome.

 

FAILING FORWARD

When designing any type of social Conflict event, it’s always best to allow the PCs to advance the plot even in the face of a critical failure. Of course, there should be consequences for failure, but that should never be the end the story. In other words, a success moves the PCs toward victory and a failure moves their adversaries toward victory, but you shouldn’t plan a result that creates a мертвlock and stalls the f low of the action. So long as a deчерта doesn’t lead to the entire party’s death, it likely brings with it a variety of exciting ramifications—sometimes more so than a success might. Feel free to Использование the PCs’ defits as springboards into new plots and more rewarding future victories.