A reason why 4E is not as popular as it could have been

[Nagol]

The confusion about scaling dc (e.g. mundane locks and picking them at various levels) as not been helped by two things:

1. Persistent poorly worded explanations in the rules text, including the otherwise mostly excellent DMG 2, which tend to focus highly at times on the "scaling by level" and give short thrift to the corresponding DM responsibility to vary the flavor/color to account for the increasing difficulty. The information is there, but it is easy to miss on a casual reading. It is the kind of thing that needed to be reinforced forcefully every time it was mentioned, and they failed to do that. It needed that reinforcement, especially in the DMG 2, because ...

2. Despite the above, the facts have been explained every time this has been brought up. This has not stopped some people from continuing to insist that it is other than it is. I have not been reading present company long enough to say, but I know of at least a few people on another board who are clearly obfuscating this point in an effort to stir up trouble. One of them is on my ignore list here for that very reason.

Doesn't this end up limiting what can be used to accomplish skill challenges in areas that have understood colour though?

Here's a hypothetical example:
Party is involved in a skill challenge at 3rd level. Part of the challenge involves breaking into the mayor's desk to search for secret papers. The challenge succeeds and the DC for the mayor's desk is set to the equivalent of easy. The challenge was so successful, it was ruled the scheme wasn't noticed.

Fast forward 5 levels. The party is about to embark on a misinformation / slur campaign against the same mayor. Part of the challenge described by the players involves breaking into the desk to plant false evidence. Can that part still count towards the successes needed and how hard is the desk to open for the 8th level rogue?

 

[Hussar]

Doesn't this end up limiting what can be used to accomplish skill challenges in areas that have understood colour though?

Here's a hypothetical example:
Party is involved in a skill challenge at 3rd level. Part of the challenge involves breaking into the mayor's desk to search for secret papers. The challenge succeeds and the DC for the mayor's desk is set to the equivalent of easy. The challenge was so successful, it was ruled the scheme wasn't noticed.

Fast forward 5 levels. The party is about to embark on a misinformation / slur campaign against the same mayor. Part of the challenge described by the players involves breaking into the desk to plant false evidence. Can that part still count towards the successes needed and how hard is the desk to open for the 8th level rogue?

Well, how I would handle this is not that the desk is necessarily harder to get into, but, getting into the office might be more difficult because of any number of reasons. I probably wouldn't even bother with trying to open the desk as part of that skill challenge, because, as you say, the desk has already been opened once before.

I would argue though, that this situation is extremely contrived. For one, 5 levels doesn't actually mean that much in 4e. It's only +2 on the appropriate skill. You have to remember that 4e has a much smoother progression throughout the levels. So, actually, in this specific example, you could probably reuse the same lock. A +2 isn't likely going to change the difficulty all that much.

Now, by the time that the players have advanced to the point where their skills make opening the lock a sure thing, say, ten or fifteen levels, one has to wonder why in heck a mid-paragon level campaign is still messing about in the same podunk town they started in, dealing with the same NPC's.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Doesn't this end up limiting what can be used to accomplish skill challenges in areas that have understood colour though?

Here's a hypothetical example:
Party is involved in a skill challenge at 3rd level. Part of the challenge involves breaking into the mayor's desk to search for secret papers. The challenge succeeds and the DC for the mayor's desk is set to the equivalent of easy. The challenge was so successful, it was ruled the scheme wasn't noticed.

Fast forward 5 levels. The party is about to embark on a misinformation / slur campaign against the same mayor. Part of the challenge described by the players involves breaking into the desk to plant false evidence. Can that part still count towards the successes needed and how hard is the desk to open for the 8th level rogue?

Sure, it does end up limiting what can be done with skill challenges, but I think worrying about it is getting the cart before the horse. (And this that follows is taken everything you said with the spirit intended. With only five levels difference, there would easily be flavor ways around anything I'm about to say.)

Ask yourself, why are we playing out the scene 5 levels later, where the PCs conduct the misinformation campaign, and break in to the mayors' office.

1. You think it's a neat scene, and a good way to expand upon what has come before. OK, then either it is mere color, or perhaps also a chance to show how much more capable the PCs are (that is, mere color with a veneer of mechanical activity to show just how easy that is). Not that there is anything wrong with color, but you'd like to be clear about what you are trying to accomplish.

2. You really wanted a skill challenge (to provide XP, pacing reasons, whatever). This an option that popped into your head due to prior play and player choices. Well, ok, you can still have a skill challenge. It's merely that picking the desk lock won't be a major part of it. You'll need to complicate the scene somehow, to still have a decent skill challenge. Or maybe if you want the scene and a skill challenge, you will be better off doing them separately. Nothing says you can't have your mainly color scene at the office and then have a skill challenge.

3. You wanted this to all be a bit tighter story line, perhaps with the party breaking in with some difficulty, and then easier later, but not this extreme. Maybe you had a preset idea. Leaving aside the hornets nest of whether that desire is a good idea or not, then if that was the goal, perhaps 5 levels should not have separated the scenes? Or maybe the lock should have been tougher all along, with some kind of one-time work-around the first time (e.g. temporary access to a key). That is, ultimately, if you want challenges to be the same over a long-period of game play, then you need to not level so fast. This is true of any edition.

4. You don't care about any of the above. The players were just doing their thing and you were rolling with it. In that case, you merely need to identify when something is challenging. If it is, it might be part of a skill challenge. If not, it is roleplayed with no substantial crunch, glossed over, or back to #1--depending on the groups' preferences at the time.

Or it could be another reason. Tell me the purpose of the scene, and I can tell you whether or not a skill challenge is a useful tool for that scene. Otherwise, asking if skill challenges are limited is like asking if garlic is useful in cooking. It depends upon what you are cooking.

 

[Nagol]

Sure, it does end up limiting what can be done with skill challenges, but I think worrying about it is getting the cart before the horse. (And this that follows is taken everything you said with the spirit intended. With only five levels difference, there would easily be flavor ways around anything I'm about to say.)

Ask yourself, why are we playing out the scene 5 levels later, where the PCs conduct the misinformation campaign, and break in to the mayors' office.

1. You think it's a neat scene, and a good way to expand upon what has come before. OK, then either it is mere color, or perhaps also a chance to show how much more capable the PCs are (that is, mere color with a veneer of mechanical activity to show just how easy that is). Not that there is anything wrong with color, but you'd like to be clear about what you are trying to accomplish.

2. You really wanted a skill challenge (to provide XP, pacing reasons, whatever). This an option that popped into your head due to prior play and player choices. Well, ok, you can still have a skill challenge. It's merely that picking the desk lock won't be a major part of it. You'll need to complicate the scene somehow, to still have a decent skill challenge. Or maybe if you want the scene and a skill challenge, you will be better off doing them separately. Nothing says you can't have your mainly color scene at the office and then have a skill challenge.

3. You wanted this to all be a bit tighter story line, perhaps with the party breaking in with some difficulty, and then easier later, but not this extreme. Maybe you had a preset idea. Leaving aside the hornets nest of whether that desire is a good idea or not, then if that was the goal, perhaps 5 levels should not have separated the scenes? Or maybe the lock should have been tougher all along, with some kind of one-time work-around the first time (e.g. temporary access to a key). That is, ultimately, if you want challenges to be the same over a long-period of game play, then you need to not level so fast. This is true of any edition.

4. You don't care about any of the above. The players were just doing their thing and you were rolling with it. In that case, you merely need to identify when something is challenging. If it is, it might be part of a skill challenge. If not, it is roleplayed with no substantial crunch, glossed over, or back to #1--depending on the groups' preferences at the time.

Or it could be another reason. Tell me the purpose of the scene, and I can tell you whether or not a skill challenge is a useful tool for that scene. Otherwise, asking if skill challenges are limited is like asking if garlic is useful in cooking. It depends upon what you are cooking.

I guess part of what has me confused/frustrated with the skill challenge system as I've (barely) experienced it goes back to one of the original times I encoutered it. It was a skill challenge delivered at an event near the release of 4e.

The PCs had to escape from a city and the players were given the option of assert narrative control as part of the challenge. IIRC, one of PCs had extensive historical knowledge and used that knowedge (via a skill check) to find and use abandoned sewers beneath the city as part of his escape.

So in my example above, if the PCs decide to launch the smear campaign and come up with a plan

Group: We'll will make some forged papers linking the mayor to the slavery ring! Bob what will you need (paper with mayor's signature, letterhead, and some human blood)?.

OK I'll break into the office to get the supplies, John will get some alchemical stuff to remove the original writing, Bob will forge the replacement text, and then we'll put everything back!

As a DM, should I say "OK you need 6 successes before 3 failures, the alchemy and lockpicking are too easy, so it'll be sneak, hide, and forgery"?

 

[Crazy Jerome]

...
As a DM, should I say "OK you need 6 successes before 3 failures, the alchemy and lockpicking are too easy, so it'll be sneak, hide, and forgery"?

That sounds like mainly #4 (rolling with the players) with perhaps a dash of #2 (wanting to have a skill challenge).

If it is all #4, then you'd do whatever seem useful, fun, etc. at the time. If that means that you can have a good skill challenge with the approrpriate skills (maybe sneak, thievery, and history as a base, with a few more added on for flavor), then you do that. If OTOH, there is not enough there for a compelling skill challenge, you go with a skill check or two and call that sufficient. If you don't even have a single difficult skill check, it's all color. In all three, you'll roleplay approproriately, but the mechanics will differ.

If it is partly #2, then you either have enough there for a good skill challenge or you don't. If you don't, you'll have to complicate the scene in some way to make it challenging enough to justify a skill challenge and the corresponding chance for failure and ability to gain XP.

 

[Nagol]

That sounds like mainly #4 (rolling with the players) with perhaps a dash of #2 (wanting to have a skill challenge).

If it is all #4, then you'd do whatever seem useful, fun, etc. at the time. If that means that you can have a good skill challenge with the approrpriate skills (maybe sneak, thievery, and history as a base, with a few more added on for flavor), then you do that. If OTOH, there is not enough there for a compelling skill challenge, you go with a skill check or two and call that sufficient. If you don't even have a single difficult skill check, it's all color. In all three, you'll roleplay approproriately, but the mechanics will differ.

If it is partly #2, then you either have enough there for a good skill challenge or you don't. If you don't, you'll have to complicate the scene in some way to make it challenging enough to justify a skill challenge and the corresponding chance for failure and ability to gain XP.

A final question, if I may.

Let's say I've been setting up the mayor as a Bad Man and expect the group to work to remove him from office. I figure a good skill challenge is difficult (6 successes, 3 failures) working the town council members to convince them that the mayor should be removed using the standard array of interpersonal skills and such.

The players decide to go the smear campaign instead of the typical interpersonal route. The political situation is such that anyone cooperating with the slavers becomes a pariah in town and removal from office is probably the least of the mayor's woes if he is caught.

How would I replace/incorporate that tactic into the challenge?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Your example is a strawman.

No, it isn't. You said that in 3rd Edition combat, you know with a high-degree of confidence your own [combat] capabilities, with reference only to your own character sheet.

So, tell me - what are your odds to beat the orc I'm about to set in front of you? If, instead, you're arguing that no, you don't know with a high degree of confidence what your chances are to beat the orc, referencing only your own character sheet, and that you need more information about the orc, then, well ... Yay, you agree with my original point?

My original point is that, while there is some understood scaling of difficulty in the task DCs in 4Ed (modified, of course, by what others have said, in that a lock is a lock is a lock, and at some point picking the lock of the mayor's mansion is eventually not worth the resolution time of the 15th-level lockpicker), this is no different from the way combat works in 3.XE. So why is one lauded, while the other is denigrated?

 

[Neonchameleon]

So in my example above, if the PCs decide to launch the smear campaign and come up with a plan

Group: We'll will make some forged papers linking the mayor to the slavery ring! Bob what will you need (paper with mayor's signature, letterhead, and some human blood)?.

OK I'll break into the office to get the supplies, John will get some alchemical stuff to remove the original writing, Bob will forge the replacement text, and then we'll put everything back!

As a DM, should I say "OK you need 6 successes before 3 failures, the alchemy and lockpicking are too easy, so it'll be sneak, hide, and forgery"?

As a DM, IMO you should never say that out loud. Ask the players what they are doing, ask for skill rolls, and keep the successes/failures as a tally chart behind the screen. And I can think of way more skills to use than that - any and all of stealth, bluff, streetwise, diplomacy, insight, perception, and thievery spring to mind. But the question is what pacing do you want? Is planting the papers in the desk drawer a scene in its own right, or is it just a 30 second diversion with the smear campaign being the skill check and that being just one part of the smear and so resolved with a couple of rolls out of a large skill challenge? I could go either way depending.

 

[Neonchameleon]

A final question, if I may.

Let's say I've been setting up the mayor as a Bad Man and expect the group to work to remove him from office. I figure a good skill challenge is difficult (6 successes, 3 failures) working the town council members to convince them that the mayor should be removed using the standard array of interpersonal skills and such.

The players decide to go the smear campaign instead of the typical interpersonal route. The political situation is such that anyone cooperating with the slavers becomes a pariah in town and removal from office is probably the least of the mayor's woes if he is caught.

How would I replace/incorporate that tactic into the challenge?

The skill challenge is 6 successes, 3 failures to remove the mayor. The PCs pick the skills. That they have gone this route allows them to play to different strengths (i.e. use different skills - for instance thievery is not terribly likely to be useful in the straight interpersonal route (stealth will at most be a supporting skill) and they'd have to work hard to get me to ask them to roll history) and means that the mayor will be removed in a different manner at the end of the skill challenge. But when you are setting the skill challenge, you are setting the goal and the difficulty. Setting the how is not necessary and I wouldn't have told the PCs they had to or even were expected to take the interpersonal route.

 

[MrMyth]

You have to understand that some of us find this extremely unsatisfying. It's putting the description of the game world secondary to the metagame mechanics. The setting conforms to the rules, not the rules conforming to the setting.

I can somewhat understand it, but I think a good part of the problem may be an issue with how 4E presents it.

When 4E talks about 'scaling to level', it makes it sound like it is saying, "Here are the DCs to scale to the levels of the PCs."

What it is actually saying is, "Here are the DCs to scale to the level of the challenge."

Now, most times, those will be around the same thing, assuming PCs are facing level-appropriate obstacles. But it means that if you want the 5th level party to run into a level 15 lock, you know the DC for it. Or if the epic level rogue runs into a level 5 lock, you can confirm that, yes, he can open it up without even needing to roll.

At its heart, that really isn't any different then what we had before. In 3rd Edition, it tells us we have four types of locks: Simple, Average, Good, and Superior, with scaling DCs from the easiest to the hardest. In 4E, we have a broader scale of DCs, abstracted a bit to represent not just the lock itself but also the circumstances around it, thus justifying the broader range of DCs.

Now, all that said, yeah, we are still deciding elements of the game based on how challenging we want the lock to be, rather than other elements. But aren't those other elements arbitrary anyway?

I mean, why is a Superior lock DC 40 while a Simple lock is DC 20? Is there an actual in-game explanation for it, other than, "One lock is better than the other". An in the end, the DM is the one who chooses to place the lock in a scene - isn't he going to be doing so based on what is appropriate to the scene? The PCs try to break into a commoner's house, he'll probably have a Simple lock. They try and break into the house of a powerful noble manipulating the kingdm, and he has a Superior lock. Try and break into the ancient wizard's tower, and he has a Superior lock reinforced by an Arcane Lock and other wards.

Is that any different from declaring that the commoner has a level 1 lock, the noble has a level 10 lock, and the wizard has a level 20 lock? Or whatever else the DM feels is appropriate for that figure?

Honestly, I find that more robust way of being able to determine details. Because if we actually look at the 3rd Edition locks, probably the biggest "in game mechanic" to them is their price. And the best lock is, what, 150gp? That's... relatively cheap, in terms of the money these games throw around. Which means that past the first few levels, shouldn't most every lock the PCs run into be a Superior lock?

It would me the most logical conclusion supported by the description of the game world, perhaps. But most DMs probably wouldn't do that, and be more likely to use them sparingly, even though the price difference between the Simple lock and the Superior lock is so trivial. Again, they will be making decisions based on what is appropriate for whomever owns the lock and based on its purpose in the game - an obstacle for the PCs to overcome, a bit of flavor-dressing, a barrier to something out of reach.

And for that purpose, I find having scaling DCs available at hand to be a very good tool to have.

Now, all that said, I find they are most useful when presented alongside some more set in stone DCs. I want to know both what DC would represent a challenging jump at level 20, but I also want to know what DC lets a PC jump over a 10' pit.

But I don't think that the abstraction of the scaling DCs, itself, artificially puts the description of the game world second. It remains a tool used by the DM to capture the description he has already come up with, just like any other method he might use to arrive at those DCs.