I specifically said "it can quickly get silly to have a "particularly well built door" in every burnt out shack because the party level calls for it."
Right. That's
you saying that the door of the burned out shack has to be level appropriate. I also assume you're fastening on burned out shacks because you think they should form a significant element of events for a high level party. If in fact you think they would be trivial for a high level party, then you would agree with me that they don't have "level appropriate" DCs for "particularly well built doors".
to which you replied " There have been on "burned out shacks" in my 4e game since mid-heroic, because I follow the advice on the tiers of play that the default fiction of the game (eg power descriptions, allocation of monsters to levels, etc). " That is *you* insisting that the door must be level appropriate.
No. That's
me saying that I haven't used any burned out shacks, because I don't think they are well-suited to paragon and epic-tier play.
As best I can recall, I've only used one door in my campaign since heroic tier, and that is the gate to Carceri. (Maybe there are one or two other instances I'm forgetting - maybe the PCs also had to force the door to the Raven Queen's mausoleum?)
My reasoning is this: doors dont' make for interesting scenery (despite D&D traditionally having a bit of a door fetish); I'm only interested in dealing with doors that are more than scenery; doors of burned out shacks - and indeed burned out shacks per se - are not going to be more than scenery for high level parties; therefore I don't use burned out shack, nor do I use doors thereof, in my high level 4e play.
Nothing there entails that the doors of burned out shacks, if high level PCs should interact with them, have level-appropriate DCs. What it does entail is that if I use a burned out shack and its door in a high level scenario, then I'm resiling from my premise about doors being uninteresting scenery.
YOU said that the burned out shacks must have level approriate doors because you obey the rulebook.
No. I said I don't use burned out shacks. That's not a statement about how hard their doors are to open. It does imply a view about how interestng they are for higher level scenarios (ie not very).
Just like you said 'There have been on "burned out shacks" in my 4e game since mid-heroic, because I follow the advice on the tiers of play that the default fiction of the game (eg power descriptions, allocation of monsters to levels, etc).'
Notice that this says
absolutely nothing about the DC of doors of burned out shacks. It is a statement about the fiction appropriate to paragon and epic tier play. I don't really see how you can miss this.
As has been demonstrated, page 42 of the DMG states this clearly.
Page 42 neither states nor implies that burned out shacks encountered by high level PCs have well made doors.
It does imply that DCs should be set in a level appropriate fashion. [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and [MENTION=22362]MoutonRustique[/MENTION] regard that as a special case of the more general proposition that
encounters are to be built in a level appropriate fashion. That's probably true but for present purposes a side issue.
The key point for present purposes is that p 42 presents a heroic tier example - swinging on a chandelier to knock an ogre into a brazier - and explains how to stat it out. You are, without warrant, inferring that if, contrary to the book's advice, a GM used heroic-tier fiction for an epic-tier encounter, the DC would scale up even though the fiction hasn't. But the book doesn't state or imply that.
It doesn't give advice on how hard it is for a demigod to swing on a chandelier and knock an ogre into a brazier because
that is not the sort of fiction the game contemplates for demigods.
More generally, you are saying
but 4e breaks down if the meaningful fiction is held constant across levels. But the game doesn't assume the
meaningful fiction is held constant across levels. Fiction that was meaningful at mid-heroic becomes mere scenery for a demigod. (I emphasise
meaningful because p 42 is not about scenery. There are many scenery-interactions the rules don't cover, but p 42 is not giving advice on how to adjudicate them. The advice there is to "say yes and get to the action" - as with the notorious gate guards.)
I've been playing 3X/PF for nearly 20 years. It sucks at machine guns. But for anything I want to do that is within the "heroic high fantasy" realm, the D20 core system is quite adaptable. I don't know of anything that is comparable to your statement that the locations are presumed to change.
When I think about my recent Prince Valiant games, 3E has no good mechanics for jousting, for wooing, for social competition between PCs, for resolving a skirmish led by a PC and/or a PC's participation in that skirmish, for mocking a court into calling an animal as a witness in a sorcery trial, or for saying a prayer to receive a vision or a blessing. Nor, as a general rule, does not factor a character's determination, virtue or trepidation into action reolution. (Unless a particular spell or class ability is used to grant a morale bonus or impose a debuff.)
Just to fasetn on the last of those: the only rules for saying a prayer to receive a vision or a blessing involve the rules for casting by the cleric class. So there are no rules for prayer short of an entire PC build. I would call that an instance of "funnelling".
And all those examples are before we even get to the actual play experience that might be delivered. Dice pool games where you roll for successes produce a very differen experience from roll + add system, because no matter how many dice in the pool there is always a chance of failure even against the lowest possible DC. Which feeds into a completely different approach to framing and to outcomes from 3E.
