I don't dispute that, I just note that just because a low-level party comes up against a high DC in 5e doesn't mean that something's broken, so thus having the assumption that the DC is not tailored to the party isn't inherently flawed (as AA was indicating).
No, what is 'flawed' if you wish to use such language, is the PRESENTATION of the information. You present it as 'hard', but that's not really what it is, except in some context that never enters into the actual game.
It's totally in-fantasy-genre to always succeed, but not it's not typically a very good gameplay element. Games are interactive, and part of that interactivity is shown by the ability to fail, to have the bad guy win, to decide to take those eagles to Mount Doom, etc. If there's no real failure state, there's no real game to play, it's just shared dynamic fiction (which can be fun in its own right!). No edition of D&D gets it that bad, but 4e at its most "fail forward-y" can produce that feeling of impotence in the face of success.
I don't think this is at all unique to 4e. In fact the 5e game I'm playing in right now is rife with this. IME it has nothing to do with 4e. There's not even the slightest barrier in place of a hard-edged 4e game where you can brutally slaughter characters for whatever reasons float your boat. The worst you can say is that ALL modern forms of D&D require significant work in chargen, which can deter this sort of thing. CB was actually a pretty good answer to that, I can make a 4e PC in under 2 minutes if I'm willing to take recommended feats and not angst too much over which power to select.
So I don't thikn 5e's CR guidelines are "less than dependable." They're perfectly dependable - "hard" and "very hard" and "easy" have meanings in the world, independent of PC level. A hard DC is hard compared with all the challenges in D&D, not just at the level you encounter it. If you beat it at a low level, you've exhibited skill and ability, like a low-level run.
And you can not do it that way, if you want.
I think when he was talking about CR he was talking about monster challenge rating, its not at all reliable. In fact 5e's CR system is a hot mess. Still, 4e aside, its no worse than every other D&D and so it certainly can be lived with, as all 5e's quirks can be.
And again, with the DCs it is presentation. We all know what you can do with them, but its a more obtuse system because the labels aren't meaningful relative to the only thing that matters in the game, the PCs. Nobody cares about 'compared with all the challenges in D&D'. That comparison is of no value to the DM at the table. IMHO the key, central, and most important thing that 4e ever did was to take a step back and re-examine the tenets and goals of the game, and then reshape the mechanics to serve those goals and tenets. The failure of 5e, such as it is, is in failing to do likewise. I could always trust the principles of the 4e designers when they created material. It would always be useful and usable because they would design it in light of actual game play. I don't know how to trust the 5e designers in the same way. Sometimes they do the most ridiculous things for reasons I can't even fathom.
Right - gameplay is the process for doing that. Specifically, in D&D, using resources and exploring the world and asking questions of the DM in a back-and-forth matter. It's hard to build a character to trump DC's in 5e (at least without being high level to begin with). Much better to ask the DM: "What's the lock made of? Is it acid-resistant?"
Its also hard to build a character to PASS DCs in 5e! So the problem is everyone has the same difficulty passing them. Sure, at very high levels the game just barely starts to really differentiate, but the fact that people constantly bring up level 20 Expertise characters and such is exactly a sign of the issue.
As for 'asking is it acid-resistant' how is 4e's system not amenable to that? In fact, again, you ignore the solution, running an SC, which is exactly focused on those sorts of questions. You use narrative to explore and approach the problem and some checks to introduce some variability into the process without making long-shot DCs the primary focus. Still, you can always set a huge DC for atmospheric or other reasons if you wish.
"Make this Athletics check to catch yourself" is a world apart from "Make this Strength save or fall," psychologically speaking. The former is empowering the character, showing how heroic and strong they are that they are able to actively turn a disaster into something not so bad. The latter empowers the effect, showing how dangerous and menacing the threat is, that it can force you to fall unless you do something to stop it.
No it isn't, they're utterly the same. The bad guy blasts you with a 'push' effect. In 4e you go over the edge, now you can make a check, can you grab the dangling rope? 5e, you go over the edge, well you have a save DC, presumably saving means SOMETHING fictional, does it not? Or are you maintaining that the difference is purely in the fiction? If so that's not psychological at its root, its mechanical. There's no difference here though, since each thing should be rooted in fiction the character 'heroically saves himself' or 'heroically resists' etc. In both cases its an active participation in the game.
Nah. Especially when you know that "oops splat you're a mark down below" isn't an option. When that isn't on the table, dangling from a rope 500' above the ground is almost dull. Because, really, you're not going to let me splat. If I say "I let go," there's going to be some flying bird that swoops around at the last minute and breaks my fall. If I then stab that bird, well, I landed safely in the treetops, maybe took some damage. I've got no real agency, I'm just here to roll dice and advance the plot.
This is silly. If you really want to play that way, yes of course you can. That's not what we're talking about here. Characters died quite frequently in my 4e campaigns for instance. They just died for REASONS, not usually "oops I missed a check." You're dangling from the rope, now, what can happen that is interesting. Oh, you can see the bad guy climbing up the back side of the platform to backstab the wizard who's performing the ritual, oh oh! You can swing down to a lower level or try to climb the rope and save the wizard, while some demonic rats are gnawing on it. Take the big risk, or survive until tomorrow to fight again? Going splat is what is boring. I mean maybe at some point going splat is fine, you gambled, you lost, you've played your last card, the character's number is finally up. Its all a matter of context. Dramatic play is not about endless last-second saves, that's a mere pastiche of the technique.
Yeah, it does, by saying that the DC of the lock shouldn't necessarily depend on the level the party encounters it at. 4e's "DC is dynamic with your level" philosophy would mean that the party doesn't encounter locks that they don't have a fair chance to pick, but 5e's "DC is static with regards to your level and varies with the world" philosophy means that the party will encounter locks that are easy, locks that are difficult, and a range in between, depending on what their goals are and how they approach the adventure.
No, not true. You can still set DCs to any value, they just get adjusted by 1 point up or down per level of the PC. Again, this is not the way 4e envisages DC working, you simply asked the question "how would you emulate 5e's static DC system in 4e" and I answered, you'd null out the bonus progression by scaling. I have no idea why you would ever do this BTW, its not something I'm suggesting, but it does illustrate that 4e's DC system can flex quite a lot.
In 5e, there is no such thing as a check out of your league. Just a check of varying difficulty for your league.
And that's an issue! 4e allows the possibility of DCs that you simply cannot pass, yet at least. Now, to some extent so does 5e, but its not the same clear-cut thing.
It - correctly - disputes that what you say is reality. For a lot of tables, it really isn't. For a lot of tables, what the DC is will be a property of that thing (that lock, that chasm, that challenge), and it is up to the party to figure out how to beat that DC or go around it, not up to the DM to only give them challenges they can beat within expected margins.
Every GM largely tailors their adventures such that the challenges are beatable in some way. Lets not even kid ourselves about that. Every published module features a byline "adventure for characters of level X to Y". To pretend otherwise is to again go into this unfathomable mumbo jumbo land where you pretend that you're playing some other game than you're really playing. Again, I most admire 4e for in general stabbing that monstrosity in the heart. When it produces a mechanic it is producing it such that it fits the game at the table.
Obviously some subset of people will just play in a way that is so idiosyncratic that a given set of rules won't match up with their needs, but 4e was the practical edition. It always took the road that the game was first and foremost a game played at the table by people. Sometimes it might not actually achieve some of what it attempted, but it was all engineered in the service of good play, not some theoretical aesthetic judgement of how D&D should be that has to be worked around in practice. 5e very definitely backed off from that.