The Player's Crucible: Skills

The Following are the skills outlined in D&D as they are written in the Rules Compendium. When you want to use a skill to complete a task, you must role a skill check. This is a 1d20, plus any modifiers you have, campared to the skill’s Difficulty Class, DC for short. Here are the following DC’s that are most commonly used.

Easy:

The action involved isn’t trivial but is still pretty simple. These are the simplest checks and should represent a reasonable challenge for characters that have no training in the skill (an untrained character). An untrained character is typically adding half his level to the skill and probably doesn’t have an ability score that helps him out. He might get another +1 by Epic tier, since all his ability modifiers have increased by 21st level. Trained characters have little risk of failure, and expert characters are nearly guaranteed success. These are the DCs that we suggest DMs should use when every character in the party is expec

ted to make the check or for group checks (where half the PCs must succeed on the roll to earn a success for the group).

Moderate:

A moderate check requires a bit of training or innate ability, or a bit of luck. These checks are aimed at skilled characters who have training in the skill, though there are other options for getting a similar skill modifier, such as having a high ability score (18+) in the skill’s key ability or combining a r

acial bonus and a moderate (14+) ability score. These DCs scale a little faster than easy DCs, which accounts for ability score increases or adding a feat or path feature if the key ability isn’t your primary or secondary class stat. These DCs are the standard difficulty for a skill check in a skill challenge.

Hard:

These checks are designed to test characters who are even more focused on the particular skill, though there might still be some chance of failure even for these expert characters. Without additional assistance (such as a power bonus or another character’s aid), the expert PC will succeed against these DCs around two out of three times. The expert PC typically has training in the skill, and his or her primary ability score is the skill’s key ability (or secondary ability score along with a skill focus feat or racial bonus). As the character increases in level, we expect feat and item selection to provide an extra boost along the way, as well as ability score increases. This DC is a good choice to really challenge a focused PC, though it’s also a good DC to use for repeated successes with a single skill in a skill challenge (once the first, moderate attempt is successful).

Skill List Links