Difficulty Classes

As the Game Master, it’s up to you to set the difficulty classes (DCs) for checks that don’t use a predefined DC. The following sections offer advice on how to set appropriate DCs and tweak them as needed to feel natural for your story. Picking a simple DC and using a level-based DC each work well in certain circumstances, and you can adjust both types of DC using the advice on adjusting difficulty.

Simple DCs

Sometimes you need to quickly set a Difficulty Class. The easiest method is to select a simple DC by estimating which proficiency rank best matches the task (that rank is usually not required to succeed at the task). If it’s something pretty much anyone would have a decent chance at, use the untrained DC. If it would require a degree of training, use the DC listed for trained, expert, master, or legendary proficiency, as appropriate to the complexity of the task.

Simple DCs work well when you need a DC on the fly and there’s no level associated with the task. They’re most useful for skill checks. Because there aren’t many gradations between the simple DCs, they don’t work as well for hazards or combatants, where the PCs’ lives are on the line; you’re better off using level-based DCs for such challenges.

Simple DCs

Proficiency Rank	DC
Untrained	10
Trained	15
Expert	20
Master	30
Legendary	40

Level-Based DCs

When you’re determining a skill DC based on something that has a level, use table below to set the DC. Find the level of the subject, and assign the corresponding DC. Since spells use a 1–10 scale, use the Spell Level column for them.

Use these DCs when a PC needs to Identify a Spell or Recall Knowledge about a creature, attempts to Earn Income by performing a task of a certain level, and so on. 

Note that PCs who invest in a skill become more likely to succeed at a DC of their level as they increase in level, and the listed DCs eventually become very easy for them.

DCs by Level

Level	DC	Spell Level	DC
0	14	1st	15
1	15	2nd	18
2	16	3rd	20
3	18	4th	23
4	19	5th	26
5	20	6th	28
6	22	7th	31
7	23	8th	34
9	26	9th	36
10	27	10th	39
11	28
12	30
13	31
14	32
15	34
16	35
17	36
18	38
19	39
20	40
21	42
22	44
23	46
24	48
25	50

Adjusting Difficulty

You might decide a DC should differ from the baseline, whether to account for PCs’ areas of expertise or to represent the rarity of spells or items. A DC adjustment represents an essential difference in the difficulty of a task and applies to anyone attempting a specific check for it. Adjustments happen most often with tasks whose DCs are based on their level. Adjustments use a scale of –10 to +10, from incredibly easy checks to incredibly hard ones, and are broken into increments of 2, 5, and 10. You’ll often apply the adjustments for uncommon, rare, or unique subjects.

DC Adjustments

Difficulty	Adj	Rarity
Incredibly easy	-10	-
Very easy	-5	-
Easy	-2	-
Hard	+2	Uncommon
Very hard	+5	Rare
Incredibly hard	+10	Unique

The adjustments’ names don’t translate to how hard a task actually is for a PC or group of PCs, and adjustments aren’t meant to balance out or replace PCs’ bonuses and penalties. PCs who invest in a skill will become better and better at that skill as they increase in level. At higher levels, many groups will find that the very hard DC is more like standard for them; keep that in mind if you need a check that presents a true challenge to a high level group.

You might use different DCs for a task based on the particular skill or statistic used for the check. Let’s say your PCs encounter a magical tome about aberrant creatures. The tome is 4th-level and has the occult trait, so you set the DC of an Occultism check to Identify the Magic to 19. As noted in Identify Magic, other magic-related skills can typically be used at a higher DC, so you might decide the check is very hard for a character using Arcana and set the DC at 24 for characters using that skill. If a character in your group had Aberration Lore, you might determine that it would be easy or very easy to use that skill and adjust the DC to 17 or 14. These adjustments aren’t taking the place of characters’ bonuses, modifiers, and penalties—they are due to the applicability of the skills being used.

Minimum Proficiency

Sometimes succeeding at a particular task requires a character to have a specific proficiency rank in addition to a success on the check. Locks and traps often require a certain proficiency rank to successfully use the Pick a Lock or Disable a Device actions of Thievery. A character whose proficiency rank is lower than what’s listed can attempt the check, but they can’t succeed. You can apply similar minimum proficiencies to other tasks. You might decide, for example, that a particular arcane theorem requires training in Arcana to understand. An untrained barbarian can’t succeed at the check, but she can still attempt it if she wants—after all, she needs to have a chance to critically fail and get erroneous information!

For checks that require a minimum proficiency, keep the following guidelines in mind. A 2nd-level or lower task should almost never require expert proficiency, a 6th-level or lower task should almost never require master proficiency, and a 14th-level or lower task should almost never require legendary proficiency. If they did, no character of the appropriate level could succeed.

Specific Actions

Several parts of this book, most notably Chapter 4: Skills, state that you as the GM set the DCs for certain checks or determine other parameters. Here are guidelines for the most common tasks. Remember that all of these are guidelines, and you can adjust them as necessary to suit the situation.

Craft

When a character Crafts an item, use the item’s level to determine the DC, applying the adjustments for the item’s rarity if it’s not common. You might also apply the easy DC adjustment for an item the crafter has made before. Repairing an item usually uses the DC of the item’s level with no adjustments, though you might adjust the DC to be more difficult for an item of a higher level than the character can Craft.

Recall Knowledge

On most topics, you can use simple DCs for checks to Recall Knowledge. For a check about a specific creature, trap, or other subject with a level, use a level-based DC (adjusting for rarity as needed). You might adjust the difficulty down, maybe even drastically, if the subject is especially notorious or famed. Knowing simple tales about an infamous dragon’s exploits, for example, might be incredibly easy for the dragon’s level, or even just a simple trained DC.

Determining the Scope of Lore

Lore skills are one of the most specialized aspects of Pathfinder, but they require GM oversight, particularly in determining which Lore subcategories are acceptable for characters to select. A Lore subcategory represents a narrow focus, and thus it shouldn’t replace all or even most of an entire skill, nor should it convey vast swaths of information. For example, a single Lore subcategory doesn’t cover all religions—that’s covered by the Religion skill—but a character could have a Lore subcategory that covers a single deity. One Lore subcategory won’t cover an entire country or all of history, but it could cover a city, an ancient civilization, or one aspect of a modern country, like Taldan History Lore. A single Lore subcategory couldn’t cover the entire multiverse, but it could cover a whole plane other than the Material Plane.

Additional Knowledge

Sometimes a character might want to follow up on a check to Recall Knowledge, rolling another check to discover more information. After a success, further uses of Recall Knowledge can yield more information, but you should adjust the difficulty to be higher for each attempt. Once a character has attempted an incredibly hard check or failed a check, further attempts are fruitless—the character has recalled everything they know about the subject.

Creature Identification

A character who successfully identifies a creature learns one of its best-known attributes—such as a troll’s regeneration (and the fact that it can be stopped by acid or fire) or a manticore’s tail spikes. On a critical success, the character also learns something subtler, like a demon’s weakness or the trigger for one of the creature’s reactions.

The skill used to identify a creature usually depends on that creature’s trait, but you have leeway on which skills apply. For instance, hags are humanoids but have a strong connection to occult spells and live outside society, so you might allow a character to use Occultism to identify them without any DC adjustment, while Society is harder. Lore skills can also be used to identify their specific creature. Using the applicable Lore usually has an easy or very easy DC (before adjusting for rarity).

Creature Identification Skills

Creature Trait	Skills
Aberration	Occultism
Animal	Nature
Astral	Occultism
Beast	Arcana, Nature
Celestial	Religion
Construct	Religion
Dragon	Arcana
Elemental	Arcana, Nature
Ethereal	Occultism
Fey	Nature
Fiend	Religion
Fungus	Nature
Humanoid	Society
Monitor	Religion
Ooze	Occultism
Plant	Nature
Spirit	Occultism
Undead	Religion

Sense Direction

Pick the most appropriate simple DC when someone uses Survival to Sense Direction. This is usually the trained DC in normal wilderness, expert in deep forest or underground, master in featureless or tricky locations, or legendary in weird or surreal environments on other planes.

Social Skills

When a character uses Deception, Diplomacy, Intimidation, or Performance to influence or impress someone whose level or Will DC you don’t know, estimate the level of the creature and use that DC. A commoner is usually level 0 or 1. Don’t worry about being exact. It often makes sense to adjust the DC based on the target’s attitude for Deception, Diplomacy, or Performance, making the DC easy for a friendly creature, very easy for a helpful one, hard for an unfriendly one, or very hard for a hostile one. You might adjust the DC further or differently based on the PC’s goal; for instance, the DC to Request something an indifferent NPC is fundamentally opposed to might be incredibly hard or impossible, and it might be easy to convince an unfriendly creature to do something it already wants to do.

Subsist

A simple DC is usually sufficient for the Subsist action, with a trained DC for a typical situation. Use the disposition of the environment or city as a guide; an environment with scarce resources or a city with little tolerance for transience might require an expert or higher DC.

Track

Often when a PC uses Survival to Track, you can pick a simple DC and adjust it based on the circumstances. For example, an army is usually easy to track, so you could use the untrained DC of 10. If the army marched through mud, you could even adjust this down to DC 5. On the other hand, if the party pursues a cunning survivalist using Cover Tracks, you might use their Survival DC as the DC to Track.

Train an Animal

Train Animal allows PCs to teach animals tricks. Use the level of the animal as the baseline; you can adjust the DC up if the trick is especially difficult, or down if the animal is especially domesticated, like a dog