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The title says it.

I had a question about making appropriate DCs and was surprised to see that there isn't a or tag. Is there something more appropriate to tag this type of question with, or should this be added? I was going to add it, but I don't have enough rep.

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3 Answers 3

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There's no tag because it hasn't been needed yet, but it could be made

There's no or tag because nobody has made one. There's no reason other than that for them to not exist. If someone wanted to make it, it would exist. A new tag can easily be made when a question is asked just by adding it to the question, provided that the user has 300 reputation.

300 reputation is not very much, so the level of trust in a user that the community needs for tag-creation is quite low. That says a lot about how much of a non-issue it is to create new tags. Our tag system is a folksonomy—the tags that exist reflect what people use, not some idealised categorization system that sprang from the forehead of Athena.

There are perhaps other tags that might fit, yes. If one of the existing tags covers the question's contents well, then perhaps a tag like wouldn't be needed. Its hard to tell without seeing your question.

But there's also no reason to shoehorn an almost-right tag into a question when a more appropriate tag could be created. If your hypothetical question was very much about DCs in general and naturally covered more than just skills¹ (e.g., spell save DCs have nothing to do with skills), then a tag like wouldn't naturally describe the question and a tag more like would make sense to create.

Most importantly, this is entirely hypothetical right now: a tag doesn't exist until at least one question uses it. Every tag was created after someone asked a question that looked like it needed a new tag to cover it properly. So ask your question, and if someone with ≥300 rep thinks a tag like is called for, it will get created!


  1. Assuming it's broader than just the topic of skills because it is naturally so, not just because it's multiple questions posted together.
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    \$\begingroup\$ Yeah, I have trouble conceiving of a time that I want to look at "all questions about difficulty classes!" \$\endgroup\$
    – mxyzplk Mod
    Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 19:33
  • \$\begingroup\$ @mxyzplk I can see the case for questions about setting DCs (in D&D 3.5, frex), since there could be a variety of those and reading them all could be a very useful learning exercise. I can't see it being many questions, but small scope hasn't stopped other tags from appearing and being modestly useful (e.g. the recent [system-for-setting] meta). But all questions about DC-like things in all systems that use something like DCs, that I can't really see being useful to group together. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 19:42
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A tag would be highly specific to D&D, and the more broad version of it is the tag, which we already have. I would recommend tagging questions about DCs with the tag.

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    \$\begingroup\$ just to be devils advocate - there are plenty of other system specific tags, especially to do with dnd4e, so why shouldn't this one be created? \$\endgroup\$
    – Wibbs
    Commented Nov 2, 2014 at 23:41
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Phil Assuming you're talking about tags like encounters or powers, the key thing there is that those are tags which aren't really covered by an existing analogue. DCs, on the other hand, are an essential component of the skills system. \$\endgroup\$
    – Miniman
    Commented Nov 3, 2014 at 0:36
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    \$\begingroup\$ DCs aren't limited to the skill system in D&Ds that have DCs. Spell saves are one example of non-skill DCs. Besides, we have lots of other tags that are system-specific. There has never been a rule that system-specific tags are verboten. The only rule is "is it useful?" \$\endgroup\$ Commented Nov 3, 2014 at 16:48
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    \$\begingroup\$ For a concrete example, we have stress, aspects and fate-points which are all very useful and currently specific to Fate. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 2:12
  • \$\begingroup\$ ...And Fate skills have DCs too. In fact, nearly every system ever has some kind of magic target number for at least some subset of rules, and even if they aren't called 'DCs' that's what they are. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 9:43
  • \$\begingroup\$ In fact, picking good DC's for FATE is a problem I've been having recently. Tag created. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 9:44
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I've just seen the tag that has been created, and am a little concerned. Although the description makes it clear that the tag can and should apply to a wide variety of systems, the tag name is DnD specific. Would it not make more sense to choose a term that is a little more generic and means something to people who have never played DnD before? You could synonym DC to it for clarity.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Absolutely agreed: tags should be easy to find, and as an abbreviation of a system-specific term, [dc] is not that. \$\endgroup\$
    – BESW
    Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 12:07
  • \$\begingroup\$ The only even possibly good generic terms I can come up with are [difficulty] and [target-numbers], neither of which is clear. However, even written out as [difficulty-class] that's a super-narrow term for the wideness of the intended use. \$\endgroup\$
    – BESW
    Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 13:45
  • \$\begingroup\$ @BESW of the ones you mentioned I like [target-number] (albeit singular) the most, but even that not too much. I also highly recommend against a system-specific DC tag, because it will fail horribly. Case in Point: "Difficulty Class" is never used in FATE (as far as CRTL-F tells me), but is currently used on a FATE question. \$\endgroup\$
    – MrLemon
    Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 14:19
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    \$\begingroup\$ This site has a lot of DnD questions, and a quick search for "DC" reveals that many (1 2 3) of them have to do with setting appropriate DCs. I think being able to quickly reference questions that are about DCs could be handy. \$\endgroup\$
    – aebabis
    Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 15:23
  • \$\begingroup\$ @acbabis which is where the synonym would come in \$\endgroup\$
    – Wibbs
    Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 15:26
  • \$\begingroup\$ The idea behind having a more generic tag would be that people who aren't familiar with DnD would be more likely to relate to, understand and use it. Synonyming 'dc' to it would mean that you could use that tag as well and they would be show up when searched \$\endgroup\$
    – Wibbs
    Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 15:30
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    \$\begingroup\$ This tag seems destined to be burninated in the future, since there is no way I can see to use it well. At best, it has to be paired up with other tags to make any kind of sense. At worst, for D&D it's almost always just a subset of [skills]. \$\endgroup\$
    – Tridus
    Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 15:30
  • \$\begingroup\$ My point was that there enough DnD questions, and enough of those are about DCs specifically, that using the tag would be a good way to categorize them. It isn't redundant because there are multiple editions of DnD. The tag would draw the kind of answerers who are good at remembering/understanding numbers. EDIT: If there is a good synonym that people would recognize, I would agree that's preferable; I just don't think it exists. \$\endgroup\$
    – aebabis
    Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 16:20
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    \$\begingroup\$ How about 'Target Number' \$\endgroup\$
    – Wibbs
    Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 17:13
  • \$\begingroup\$ check-difficulty would be my suggestion \$\endgroup\$ Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 18:00
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    \$\begingroup\$ Folks: tagging is a folksonomy. We don't make up new terms just because we want to jiggle the way our tags look. "Difficulty Class (DC)" is the term. A tag was made with that name, because it's the name that gets used by real people outside our site. The creation of [dc] is our tagging system working as intended. Maybe at some point we'll see a need to pull a bunch of questions together under one concept and we'll use synonyming to accomplish that, but that's a conversation for a different day as that need emerges naturally. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 18:53
  • \$\begingroup\$ At the moment, I don't see [target-number] or [check-difficulty] used anywhere, meaning... we haven't felt a need for them previously and they haven't entered our tag folksonomy. Therefore, they're not available for synonyming (because you can't synonym a non-existent tag without mod intervention). So as for a need for synonyms: clearly, there isn't one yet. In the same way, we have [aspects] for a Fate-specific concept, but we don't have [descriptive-attributes] to make it more generic. \$\endgroup\$ Commented Nov 4, 2014 at 19:00

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