AbdulAlhazred
Legend
I'm curious if anyone, [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], or anyone else can point me to where in 4e it talks about the fiction relationship to scaling DC's... Or is this something, like the switching out of different monster variations, that has become a forum rule but is not explicitely called out in the books?
It really isn't all that explicit, though I suspect if you read through the adventure construction section of the DMG it definitely talks about constructing adventures that are thematically appropriate. DMG64 says "... set a DC that's appropriate to the character's level." and then discusses doors, stating "Don't put an iron door in a dungeon designed for 10th-level characters unless you intend it to be difficult for them to break through."
Later there are fantastical terrains. In DMG1 they are listed in a single group with stats, and it is explained that at each tier some aspects of the terrain may scale:
Terrain scales in order to keep it relevant as PCs
and monsters gain higher attack bonuses and hit
points. It is an element of game balance and a reflec-
tion of the greater magical power present in paragon
or epic locations.
Those terrain elements which do scale, only a small subset of the total, note that fact.
Remember, the entire assumption of the encounter design section of the DMG is that you are building 'level appropriate encounters'. Here and there, as in the door quote above, they link this back to the concept that fiction is linked to level in a thematically appropriate way. Also note that this section is talking about combat encounters, not all encounters in general. 4e DMG1 breaks encounters down into 3 types, combat, skill challenge, and puzzle. Combat and skill challenge both work on the basis of level-appropriate fiction and DCs, but note that never is it assumed that ALL DCs in the world are level appropriate!
The rules repeatedly talk about narrative sense. This is particularly true in the SC rules where it is stated that a proposed skill use must be accompanied by an explanation of the action and it must be relevant to the fiction. Thus for instance if a level 1 PC stated he was going to use an Athletics check to tunnel through solid stone with his bare hands, you wouldn't expect that suddenly all stone is 'level appropriate stone' with a tunneling DC of 12! No, the stone might have such a DC, in theory, but it certainly won't be within reach of this character. Not without powerful magic (IE something that grants a burrowing speed) that isn't normally available to level 1 PCs.
Other books often talk about uses for high level NPCs. For instance Draconomicon (both of them) often talks about encounters with high level dragons which are clearly intended to serve plot purposes (dragons as quest givers, patrons, puzzles, etc). Obviously fighting such a creature at lower levels isn't part of the envisaged course, but the book does mention that dragons might use attacks to cow or toy with PCs, or simply to gauge their ability. Clearly the implication is that the dragon's stats are high level dragon stats, not some sort of 'level scaled dragon' which is never discussed.
It would be quite feasible, though it isn't really discussed, to have adventures featuring high level hazards, creatures, etc that you're not intended to overcome by making checks. At least not THOSE checks. Presumably collapsing the tower on the ancient dragon as a mid-heroic adventure is going to involve finding some sort of way to pull that off that has accessible DCs. I don't see that this is outside the realm of what 4e envisages. I don't recall that earlier editions really discussed this kind of thing explicitly either.