4th edition, The fantastic game that everyone hated.

[Derren]

Your repeated comments along these lines would benefit from a bit of context as to what RPGs you are familiar with.

Many RPGs that are innovative story games (HeroQuest revised, Maelstrom Storytelling) use scaling DCs - it is a device for deemphasising operational play and emphasising the thematic and story significance of choices.

Mostly DSA but also Shadowrun or Traveller.
You have a situation and the PCs are let lose to solve (or ignore it). If they encounter a point where skill checks are needed then they are appropriate for the task and not scaled for levels (4E) or story significance.
And combat is just another option which could happen but doesn't have to. 4E made it quite clear that combat is the core of the game and that if you didn't want combat you should gtfo. It even goes so far that they stopped even trying to simulate a world to make combat "better".
And as I said, this combat focus is imo the wrong direction for RPGs as video games do them a lot better (or simple board games if you want to stay offline).

Yes there were skill challenges, but they were broken, as was the skill system in general and lead to mindless dice rolling depending on what skills the DM uses for the challenge.

 

[Siberys]

[MENTION=2518]Derren[/MENTION]; Skill DCs /aren't/ scaled per PC level in 4e, though. There is a chart that shows what constitutes an easy, medium, hard, or very hard skill check, but that's primarily to help the GM gauge the DCs he's presenting to the players.

In my games, a wooden door (for example) would likely take a moderate level 1 Athletics check to bust in - a DC of 12. It will /always/ be moderate level 1, and therefore /always/ be a DC 12 to knock in, no matter the level of the PCs. It won't stay a moderate difficulty as the PC's level increases, of course - what's moderate at level one is easy at level 8 and trivial much higher than that. What's scaling is what the PCs are facing. By 8th, the PCs are knocking down reinforced doors with moderate checks, then metal at a higher level, and so on and so forth - but the DCs remain consistent.

 

[Libramarian]

Personally I think that the "traditional core" of D&D is simply outdated. Lets be hones, D&D began as hack and slash dungeon crawler and a lot of its traditional core values tie into that. But I think PnP players don't look for hack & slash games any more. Video games can do them a lot better. What PnP rpgs still can do is character and world interaction and an adapting story. Sadly 4E made it quite clear that those things take the backdrop by not even trying to present a believable world. Instead the world was just there to give the combat context (The magic item costs for example or the scaling environmental challenges by character level)

D&D began as a dungeoncrawler, no doubt, but it's incorrect to equate dungeoncrawling with hack & slash. I see traditional D&D dungeoncrawling as involving a level of world and PC-NPC interaction that videogames can't do as yet. AD&D emphasizes NPC interaction quite a bit and has many, many rules for adjudicating encounter/loyalty/morale reactions and for fleshing out NPC personalities. The OSR considers a hallmark of good dungeon design to be not only the presence of non-hostile NPCs, but entire factions of NPCs roaming around with incompatible goals, that the PCs visit and negotiate with and play off each other. Videogames definitely do not do this better.

 

[Libramarian]

[MENTION=30619]Siberys[/MENTION] 4e DMG pg 42 is clear that the idea is that the DCs scale with character level. It says "A quick rule-of-thumb is to start with a DC of 10 (easy), 15 (medium), or 20 (hard) and add one-half the character's level."

It does not say, for example "A quick rule-of-thumb is to imagine what level of the obstacle would be if it were a character, and then add one-half this number to a DC of 10 (easy), 15 (medium), or 20 (hard)."

 

[Siberys]

I think it's implicit that what the PCs are facing is assumed to be dramatically appropriate for their level. Besides which, doesn't the fact that it's called out as a "rule of thumb" count for anything?

We're talking a trivial connection of concept A (how difficult is this thing the PCs are facing) to concept B (how powerful are the PCs). It's not rocket surgery here, whether it's directly called out or not. And it's no accident the in-game word for both the difficulty of an obstacle and the power of a PC is "Level".

 

[Siberys]

[[Double post, sorry. I keep getting timeout errors.]]

 

[FireLance]

[MENTION=30619]Siberys[/MENTION] 4e DMG pg 42 is clear that the idea is that the DCs scale with character level. It says "A quick rule-of-thumb is to start with a DC of 10 (easy), 15 (medium), or 20 (hard) and add one-half the character's level."

It does not say, for example "A quick rule-of-thumb is to imagine what level of the obstacle would be if it were a character, and then add one-half this number to a DC of 10 (easy), 15 (medium), or 20 (hard)."

The way I see it, page 42 is simply providing challenge-setting advice. However, for whatever reasons (brevity, clarity, or the assumption that the readers would be able to connect the dots themselves) it does not give sufficient nods to the world-building or simulation perspective.

 

[Remathilis]

As someone who genuinely wanted to like 4e, it just felt... incomplete. The 4e marketing was pretty bad, but the books themselves felt rushed. There was scaling problems with the math (fixed later in other Monster Manuals and by the expertise/defense feats), the books themselves had 1/2 the material of previous editions (the Core Line 1 missing metallic dragons, druids, bards, frost giants, and other staples felt very much like a "want the rest? buy book 2!" money grab). Top it off with the distinct lack of magic items (filled by yet another book, Adventurer's Vault) and some of the worst modules ever released for D&D, 4e felt like it was sent off to prom without a corset for its date, wearing a tux too small, and with only a quarter tank of gas in the car.

Essentials should have been 4.5: a redone PHB/DMG/MM which upgraded the core; fixed the math, gave non-ADEU versions of classes, and been the cornerstone of the game going forward. I really did like where Essentials was going design-wise, but it almost felt like WotC was either schizophrenic in its desire to cater to older players in Essentials but also keep to 4e's original system, or they got cold feat about making it a 4.5 and tried to backtrack. Either way, what could have been a brilliant chance to re-introduce 4e to players like me put off my the mess the game originally was, it instead felt like it was one of many ideas tossed out to keep the ship from sinking.

 

[JustinAlexander]

@Derren ; Skill DCs /aren't/ scaled per PC level in 4e, though. There is a chart that shows what constitutes an easy, medium, hard, or very hard skill check, but that's primarily to help the GM gauge the DCs he's presenting to the players.

In my games, a wooden door (for example) would likely take a moderate level 1 Athletics check to bust in - a DC of 12. It will /always/ be moderate level 1, and therefore /always/ be a DC 12 to knock in, no matter the level of the PCs. It won't stay a moderate difficulty as the PC's level increases, of course - what's moderate at level one is easy at level 8 and trivial much higher than that. What's scaling is what the PCs are facing. By 8th, the PCs are knocking down reinforced doors with moderate checks, then metal at a higher level, and so on and so forth - but the DCs remain consistent.

This is, in fact, the way it should be done. But you simply have to acknowledge that this is not what the original DMG told the DM to do. And the Essentials rulebook was even more explicit: "When choosing a DC from the table, the Dungeon Master should use the level of the creature performing the check..."

I think page 42 provides the raw material necessary to make a really great tool. But it's like a screwdriver without a handle that the manufacturer tells you should be used to pound in nails: Incomplete and broken for its intended application. Add a handle and use it in a completely different way than the designers tell you to, though, and you've got something that's useful.

This is a problem that consistently plagued 4E products. As another random example, Dungeon Delve was a good sourcebook for small, mini-adventures. But WotC/Slavicsek said that the intended function of the book was to deliver a megadungeon that could support play as a shared universe for a large pool of players. And in terms of achieving that goal, Dungeon Delve is a giant WTF.

Skill challenges are another great example of WotC failing to execute.

 

[JustinAlexander]

@Derren ; Skill DCs /aren't/ scaled per PC level in 4e, though. There is a chart that shows what constitutes an easy, medium, hard, or very hard skill check, but that's primarily to help the GM gauge the DCs he's presenting to the players.

In my games, a wooden door (for example) would likely take a moderate level 1 Athletics check to bust in - a DC of 12. It will /always/ be moderate level 1, and therefore /always/ be a DC 12 to knock in, no matter the level of the PCs. It won't stay a moderate difficulty as the PC's level increases, of course - what's moderate at level one is easy at level 8 and trivial much higher than that. What's scaling is what the PCs are facing. By 8th, the PCs are knocking down reinforced doors with moderate checks, then metal at a higher level, and so on and so forth - but the DCs remain consistent.

This is, in fact, the way it should be done. But you simply have to acknowledge that this is not what the original DMG told the DM to do. And the Essentials rulebook was even more explicit: "When choosing a DC from the table, the Dungeon Master should use the level of the creature performing the check..."

I think page 42 provides the raw material necessary to make a really great tool. But it's like a screwdriver without a handle that the manufacturer tells you should be used to pound in nails: Incomplete and broken for its intended application. Add a handle and use it in a completely different way than the designers tell you to, though, and you've got something that's useful.

This is a problem that consistently plagued 4E products. As another random example, Dungeon Delve was a good sourcebook for small, mini-adventures. But WotC/Slavicsek said that the intended function of the book was to deliver a megadungeon that could support play as a shared universe for a large pool of players. And in terms of achieving that goal, Dungeon Delve is a giant WTF.

Skill challenges are another great example of WotC failing to execute.