Assist mechanic questions

I have a couple of questions in regards to the assist mechanics...

1) The handbook states you must first roll a "fitting" skill check and beat a DC in order to grant a bonus. But it doesn't say what or how this DC is determined. Is it the same as the DC of the attempted skill? Or is it a "per-case" DC for the method you attempt to help in?

If it's the same as the attempted skill, the mechanic kinda becomes pointless: Hard DCs (30+), the ones that would be expected to require the assist bonus, would be impossible to roll and you'd end up with players failing to assist when they really need to. And if they happen to roll higher than the actual skill check doer, you end up "wasting" a roll that could have helped a lot more.

2) How are critical failures or critical successes on the assist roll taken into account? Do they only negatively/positively affect the player attempting to assist, or would it also penalize/boost the skill check that is being assisted, and/or anyone involved with it?

Let's say you have a player attempting a mechanics check. 5 other players attempt to assist with, say, arcana. 4 of them succeed in assisting and would normally allow the player to beat the DC, HOWEVER, the 5th player, rolls a critical failure for his assist. Would the entire skill check and everyone involved with it end up being botched completely (In other words, the 5th player, through no fault of his own, needlessly makes the situation worse due to bad luck)?

Alternately, a player assists and rolls a critical success/cutie mark critical success on the assist roll. Do they auto-succeed the skill check in place of the person attempting it, or just get a bigger bonus?

3) What happens when an assist roll of similar DC/skills ends up vastly out-rolling the original attempt (through luck or utilities)? For example, a 14 mechanics check is assisted by mechanics, and a 26 is rolled. Does 26 become the new default value for the roll? Does the skill check succeed automatically?

1.) I personally put the Assist DC at around 10 under the true dc, that way the assist can still help even if the DC is massive.
2.) Critical successes and Critical fails still count, at least to me. a nat20 assist kind of makes it an auto success in my book because of how AWESOME the person help, and the crit fail makes the thing a, well, fail.
3.) There's a racial or a utility for doing that, I believe.

In response to Logan.

1) I like that solution.

2) I dislike an single unlucky player aut-botching a group effort. It might make their attempts at helping grant a penalty equal to how much their aid check would have given as a bonus and I think that'd be more fair/less aggravating.

3) Where? I don't recall any such thing.

Assuming there isn't, I think the highest roll should replace the initial roll (Logan and I agree here on the case of the nat20's technically) and the initial roll should then be treated as an aid check.

4) To mitigate abusiveness I would limit the number of players who can aid on a single roll sometimes, as sense dictates. There's only so much space around the engine that needs repairing but, everypony cheering your aerial stunts would probably be fine.

My thing with the crit fail, is that "If you botch helping, there's going to be consiquences especially if you REALLY botch helping."
Like twilight nat 1-ing her persuasion to help Fluttershy in Dragonshy

Yes but, I point out that didn't botch her Stare roll. (And if we're saying Twilight was making an aid roll, that's what it would have had to been to.)

Edit: Although it probably was more like everyone failed, Twilight botched, and Fluttershy had a good roll but, the DC was high so she used the Stare to be able to pass.

The thing with 2), Logan, is that a critical failure would punish the one attempting the skill check more than the one attempting to assist. With 5 people assisting at once, you have five chances of having your roll negated and outright made worse by your friends trying to help, in exchange for up to a +10 bonus, *if* they pass the DC. The player attempting the skill check has no say in the matter either (he can't really stop his fellow players from assisting him, or refuse something that was already rolled), and even skills like "failsafe" or "this is whining" can't help, since the critical failure isn't his own. This gets worse if one of the players has derp, as well.

On the other hand, the rules state that a nat20/cutie mark crits are NOT a 100% guarantee of success on everything, so an assist has no reason to "auto-succeed" something that's highly difficult or nigh impossible, if the DM so decides.

Hm, that's another thing... If natural 20 rolls aren't a guarantee of success for really difficult situations, wouldn't a natural 1, then not be guaranteed to automatically fail, if the roll is high/epic enough (e.g. a roll of 80+ from assists and bonuses, being completely negated by a unlucky nat1)?

Nat20's not being "guaranteed success" is a caveat so that players will not constantly be rolling to do things like "walk to the moon" or "build mecha-godzilla out of a coat hanger". In circumstances where they should expect to have any, even a nigh-impossible, chance of success, it should succeed.

Nat 1's don't have to be auto-failure but, they should mean something bad happens. Thus my idea about what nat 1's should do on an aid roll.

I just say that Crits don't count, past auto success or auto failure. There are plenty of other rolls in the game where rolling a 20 does nothing special, and assists are special cases. If the assist roll fails, it won't hinder the other player's attempt.

MAYBE, though, if the players are detailed enough, or creative enough about how they assist, then I'll allow an extra bonus, and the less detailed means a harder check or a penalty. For example, basic ituation, someone needs to pick a lock. They roll mechanics, someone else rolls an assist. They can either just roll, either no real explanation, and they'll pass/fail the assist by way of DC. If MULTIPLE other players all "stand around and cheer them on" then each player might have a successively higher DC to beat for the assist. Nothing like 20, then 25, then 30, but like 15, 17 19. Just to encourage better ideas. Now, if an assisting player spells out how he wants to assist (bracing the door to keep it from moving, allowing the flier to get a running start and jump off his back, etc.) then I'll consider either bringing the DC down, or, in the case of a crit, allowing something extra to happen (or on a crit fail, maybe even consider rerolling).

I don't swap the rolls though. If one player rolls a 19, and the assist roll is a 25, the skill check roll is that 19. BUT, if the assist roll outplays the check roll, then I'll usually give the assist bonus, regardless of DC- so in this case the player will have rolled a 19+2, instantly.