When I recently reinvestigated the monster creation guidelines in the DMG, I noticed that there are also guidelines regarding how high the various ability scores for monsters should be.
Quite a while ago I had this idea that appropriate skill check DCs should really be identical to the DCs you get when you have to make an opposed skill check against a monster/npc of your level.
Now it 'clicked': According to the guidelines an average ability score for a monster should be 13 + 1/2 level and 16 + 1/2 level for its attack stat (i.e. usually the highest ability score).
Now, to derive a hard DC all you need to do is use the high ability score, add the +5 bonus for being trained in the skill and add 1/2 level + 10 (for a passive check).
For the moderate DC, use the average ability score and add 1/2 level +10.
Only the easy DC is a bit fuzzy, since there's no guideline how high a low ability score for a monster should be. Comparing with the ability score variance for player characters you get a range of 8 to 20 at level 1 vs. a range of 10 to 30 at level 30. So I decided to use an 8 as the lowest score for monsters, too and not have it increase per level.
Using these numbers I arrived at the following skill DC tables:
I'm liking these numbers quite a bit, actually. What do you think? Good idea, bad idea? Totally stupid?
Quite a while ago I had this idea that appropriate skill check DCs should really be identical to the DCs you get when you have to make an opposed skill check against a monster/npc of your level.
Now it 'clicked': According to the guidelines an average ability score for a monster should be 13 + 1/2 level and 16 + 1/2 level for its attack stat (i.e. usually the highest ability score).
Now, to derive a hard DC all you need to do is use the high ability score, add the +5 bonus for being trained in the skill and add 1/2 level + 10 (for a passive check).
For the moderate DC, use the average ability score and add 1/2 level +10.
Only the easy DC is a bit fuzzy, since there's no guideline how high a low ability score for a monster should be. Comparing with the ability score variance for player characters you get a range of 8 to 20 at level 1 vs. a range of 10 to 30 at level 30. So I decided to use an 8 as the lowest score for monsters, too and not have it increase per level.
Using these numbers I arrived at the following skill DC tables:
I'm liking these numbers quite a bit, actually. What do you think? Good idea, bad idea? Totally stupid?
