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[Nellisir]

Originally Posted by Sylrae

What if you want the DC to be based on the difficulty of the situation, not based on the power of the PCs? So if they come back and face the same challenge in another situation, the DC didn't raise itself to compensate for their power.

There's nothing wrong with doing that. Quite the opposite; that's the default answer. But some people aren't comfortable making up a number, or just want to whip out a number, or want to create a target number that will challenge the PCs. There are quite a few skills that become fairly easily pretty quickly; if you identify a target (this wall should have a Climb DC of 27 or so) you can add conditions that add up to that number (it's made of crumbly ice glass, or something -- I don't recall the climb modifiers right now).

I've never had a situation repeat itself so often that shifting DCs were an issue; usually a few things are true: 1- I remember the old DC, 2- details have change (not all cliffs are identical), 3 - the new DC is close enough to the old DC that no one notices. I generally wouldn't repeat the same challenge over and over anyways - that just gets boring. It's a good idea to challenge a character's -skill-, but try to mix it up.

I had to quote this since it's a nice thing to remember. And if they characters become more powerful, people should take notice of them more due ot their reputations, how they carry themselves, their appearance, the glowing magic gear, etc. so the DC shouldnt keep raising itself beyond their reach.

Or, as they become more powerful, the king (or hsi court) becomes more jealous and refuses to see them/makes it harder for them to gain an audience.

That works, but then it becomes irrelevent whether the players gains levels. Against another Character this is often accurate though, because the opposing character will give their own bonuses to the other side of the opposed roll.

If he has a higher skill check, then the DM might decide that rolling is unnecessary. If he is of higher level but still has a +2 Ride, nothing has changed regarding his riding ability, so the difficulty shouldn't change.

If a character takes skill focus in a skill, he's not going to want to be penalized by having all of his DCs for that skill raise by 2. Then he just wasted the feat. and the skill points he put in the skill.

The DC applies to the party, not each individual character, so a character that's better in a skill is going to be the best choice to succeed. I'm not advocating you use handcraft all the DCs in the game all the time - a high skill check is going to be just as useful as it is now. But in situations where you have to determine a DC, this is one way of doing it.

In this scenario described, you dont get better at skills, and be able to do better things, you getting points in them makes everyone else worse in them.

Edit: I realized where I'm going wrong explaining this (part of the danger in writing this when I'm not paying attention). I don't decide on the obstacle and then make up a DC; I decided on a skill, choose a DC, and then make an obstacle to suit. So characters get better, but the obstacles get harder. That's no different than the regular game.

If the players realize this is how you set DCs, the smart thing would be for them all to coordinate so they all have almost the same value in ALL the skills. Otherwise theyre being punished.

If the fighter and the rogue can figure out how to have the same value in all the same skills, more power to them. The rogue will suck, of course, since lock DC are in the book (and on the DM sheet, I think) and I don't see any reason to vary them just because he has a +3 Open Locks at 9th level.

As for that Expeditious Press book, what's it called? I'm thinking I should pick it up, because it would likely show itself to be useful.

A Magical Society: Beast Builder
A Magical Society: Beast Builder [XRP1004] - $15.00 : Your Games Now, Publisher Co-Op

Extracted from that book (I forget what exactly is in this, but it's free) A Magical Society: Guide to Monster Statistics [XRPFree3] - It's Free! : Your Games Now, Publisher Co-Op