D&D 5E Why does 5E SUCK?

[AbdulAlhazred]

I was talking about 4E, and it's definitely not true in 5E, since 5E restored the attrition model which can cause your eighth fight to end in failure due to over-expenditure of resources in an earlier fight. If you just really botch the first encounter of the day, even if there's no chance that anyone is going to die from that, you might not be in optimal condition for the last fight, which could tip the balance.

Or an "easy" wandering monster could show up after the Big Boss fight, and clean up while everyone is tapped.

How is 4e not an 'attrition model'? HS are certainly the resource that gets managed, much more than hit points, and you also have daily powers, your AP(s), and consumable items. The 4th encounter of the day in any of these systems is vastly likely to be more deadly than the first three.

There are other possible models too. I like the idea of running fights, alternate sorts of goals besides killing things, etc. Really any of these factors can come up in any game. I don't see there being a vast difference in that respect at an abstract level between editions.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I have a good example of what I'm talking about. In our 4e Darksun game, we spent several levels on survival. It's Darksun so that makes sense. Travel is difficult and dangerous. Cool.

Then we got the Phantom Steed ritual. On its own not a big deal. But one of the pc's had a ridiculously high Arcana check. Suddenly we could reliably get flying mounts every day. We went from traveling miles per day to over a hundred miles per day and we could avoid nearly all encounters and hazards.

It totally changed the feel of the campaign. One single ritual and a very large part of the campaign was lost.

That's what I don't want to see. Campaign changing magic.

Totes.

I think our Lost Mine game gives a good insight into the other side of the coin - I recall a certain druid using Speak with Animals and an offering of horseflesh to overcome a room of hostile wolves. You still made Persuasion checks - your Charisma modifier still mattered, and accomplishing your goal was still a matter of non-magical skill checks. Magic just allowed you to apply it in a new situation.

That's kind of where I like magic to me - useful, but not so useful it does the job for you.

Invisibility is still awesome and you would definitely want to cast it on an infiltrating rogue. It lets them hide in any unexpected place, approach from directions that are considered safe, and cannot help but make it harder to be spotted and very definitely makes it hard to be targeted. This is how it was interpreted in our AD&D games to start with, and we've always used it pretty often to decent effect.

It's a waste of a slot in any situation where there's things to hide behind. It's not doing anything that can't be achieved with a low hedge, a large rock, a column, a hill, or a corner. It doesn't make it any easier to Stealth - it doesn't actually improve your Stealth score in any way, and if you step on a twig while you're invisible, you'll still be found out (even if they take a penalty to hit you - a penalty they'd also take if you stepped on a twig while behind cover). Invisible in 5e doesn't mean you can't be targeted or spotted, it just means you always have something to hide behind.

If you're interpreting it differently, you're ramping up its power and nerfing the power of skills, so I don't know why you wold interpret it that way if that is something you don't want.

Charm Person, this can be a quite amazingly useful spell,

Advantage on Cha checks is useful, but it's not going to make the mage suddenly the best diplomancer in the group. It doesn't make your Cha checks for you. It's, at best, going to make him able to share the moment with a Cha-focused character, and at the significant downside of your enemy being aware that you screwed with their head when the spell ends.

I'd rather let the Bard/Paladin/Warlock/Sorcerer just use the Perusade skill, thanks.

Sleep (when employed to say knock out a sentry, its not so good in actual combat), etc.

Sleep ain't bad if the sentry is some piddly little 3-HD guard or something, but 5d8 ain't really a lot of monster hit points. It's more useful as a finisher.

Alter Self has gotten me a LOT of mileage.

Again, only useful if you've got the skills to back it up (it doesn't automatically make Deception or Athletics checks for you).

I haven't really used Levitate, but if you need to get someone up to a spot where there's no real way to climb, its gold.

Again, only useful if you've got the skills to back it up (it doesn't automatically make Athletics checks for you).

I got the spider staff from Phandelver, so I have thoroughly explored Spider Climb (I can cast it at least 4x per day every day) and its a pretty good spell too.

Magic items and casters are apples and oranges.

I agree, none of these spells are ridiculously powerful, but they constantly form the basis of our reckoning of how the party will overcome serious obstacles. My wizard put paid to the Phandelver dragon with a clever use of the Alarm spell for instance, very nice.

What is wrong with a caster contributing to the overcoming of obstacles if that's what they want to spend resources on? If they're not ridiculously powerful, they aren't dominating the exploration sphere, and if they're spending all their slots making your party climb and float around, they aren't going to have magic missiles and fireballs and acid arrows, which is making them weaker in other areas.

All of this makes me wonder if your group might just be prone to letting magic solve your problems for no reason. If your Altered Self isn't making Deception checks to pass as a drow and your Charmer isn't making Persuasion checks to get the goblin to talk and your Invisible rogue doesn't have to make Stealth checks to sneak, your playstyle is nerfing those skills and enhancing those spells, and it's worth looking into why your group perhaps-unknowingly lets spells substitute for skills and the effects that has on play.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That seems right to me.

The main thing I notice is that Ryan Dancey, some time ago now, said or wrote (and it was quoted here) that, if the "core brand" strategy for D&D (that 4e was spearheading) failed, then the D&D staff would be reduced to a rump who would keep the game alive but not much more. It seems to me, based on casual external observation, that something like this is roughly what has come to pass. With the licensing ambitions hopefully serving as a non-RPG led pathway to larger success. (But perhaps one that still won't involve the D&D team itself growing very much, or if it does grow doing so on the licensing/commercial side rather than the designer/author side.)

Yeah, they made a huge gamble. Hasbro decreed that product lines below some specific yearly revenue figure would henceforth either continue 'organically' (IE purely supported by their own revenue) or they would be rolled up entirely. D&D product management saw the handwriting on the wall, that they needed to have 200-300% more sales to warrant corporate funding, and that the alternative was a small press D&D that would simply eek out the tail end of the 3.x market and bump along with almost no staff or resources to do much about it. So they pitched one final huge wave of investment in the game, with the promise of meeting the required sales levels, which were effectively twice what even TSR ever did at its peak. The theory was that a 'digital revolution' could be inaugurated. This is where the super spiffy vaporware DDI concept came from, with the 3D VTT and etc. It was all concept that was pitched to corporate to get funding. They did a de-novo game design with elements that could be cataloged digitally, and tried to execute a digital platform to go with it.

Its not at all that 4e failed as a game, particularly. It has been said it had very high initial core book sales, and plenty of people played it (Encounters was a great success for instance, hardly a sign of a hated game on the whole). It was just that they utterly failed to execute the DDI vision. The result was a much less ambitious DDI that was probably reasonably successful (they're still running it, albeit on auto-pilot, so it clearly made a reasonable amount of money at some level) but fell vastly short of putting the D&D group's revenue into the 'core strategic product' category. So D&D was told to go back and pay its own way, which is how you got the downsizing and presumably Essentials was sort of a "hey, we better take the money we can still spend and make sure we have some good selling SKUs that will be out there for the next 3-4 years" kind of thing.

5e is just basically the alternative strategy. Small Press D&D. 5 full-time developers and whatever outside help they can budget from revenue, release what you can. Don't take any big risks, release a very conservative game that has the most chance to keep selling reasonably well for a LONG time because there isn't going to be another round of investment. Anything from here on out is going to be slow and small. I'd imagine they're kind of bunkered in on the RPG front, just keeping the lights on until they hope digital games, movies, etc (which are a completely different division of Hasbro) get themselves up to speed enough to perhaps encourage a bit of funding for some new game content.

Of course none of that really impacts the game, as a game. In some sense it may be for the best. I don't get the impression that for all the money thrown at 4e there was a very clear vision in the team as to what exactly they were creating. 5e certainly doesn't suffer from that problem. Overall it is, IMHO, the most coherent of D&D offerings, certainly since Red Box Basic and the rest of early B/E/C.

 

[Bluenose]

And Greyhawk where wizards like Bigby, Tenser, and Leomund were amongst the most powerful in the world? Or Raistlin in Dragonlance? Forgotten Realms merely took it up another notch, but the paradigm was already in place in D&D.

Casters that were more powerful than martials certainly was a part of D&D from the earliest edition because magic has been and should always be more powerful than mundane capabilities. Magic is power. That is the motivation for its study in fiction. Why would D&D not seek to mirror that part of fantasy fiction?

As @Abdul pointed out, Robilar was probably the most successful in actualy play of the early characters. Shame he doesn't fit your theory. Also, congratulations on advocating for a purely gamist approach to game design. A bunch of wargamers playing to win thought they recognised balance flaws in the experimental game they were playing and flocked to what seemed the most effective class, their numbers then leading to an abundance of high-level casters, and this justifies casters being more powerful forever.

And ot your second point, well, if you're advocating that D&D is only meant to cover that exceptionally narrow range of fantasy where magic is inherently more powerful than mundane ability please don't be shy about making it widely known. I'm sure the people who criticised 4e for only supporting one style of game will be along to come down hard on you very soon. Of course it's possible that the powerful casters you wish to evoke are simply higher level than the non-casters they're more powerful than. but obviously level shouldn't be a measure of power.

You're assuming that character advocacy is the driving factor behind system criticisms: as if the only reason anyone would ever want magic to be special is for the sake of particular PCs that they're playing. Some people just find aesthetically offensive the idea that magic is just a cosmetic label on a free-standing effect.

Some people actually care about the logic of the game world, and not just "who has the most powerful character." Some of those people also like and enjoy fighters and are happy that 5E fighter is fun and effective.

The logic of the game world is whatever the designers choose it to be. Nothing more. If they choose to make magic more significant than anything else, that's fine; there are games I enjoy playing in settings like that. When they choose to make make more significant than anything else and then pretend that characters without it aren't disadvantaged by that; not playing that again.

I always pictured 4E minions like balloons popping. That's what I felt like I was doing as a 4E wizard with my at will AoE...popping balloons. One of those strange little rules that ruined verisimilitude for me. I know many loved the minion rules. I just couldn't get into using them.

Presumably you feel the same way when an AoE spell "pops" a large group of low-level creatures in 5e.

No, it really, really isn't. Magic being that powerful was largely a 3e artefact. Basic through 2e, wizards were so limited on the number of spells per day, learning new spells was not automatic, and there just weren't that many spells to be had. Basic/Expert has exactly 12 wizard spells of each level. That's it. Twelve spells. No one ever bitches about wizards or clerics stealing the show. Even AD&D 1e only had a handful of spells.

It was 2e, which combined all arcane spells into one list and all divine spells into another list, that greatly increased caster power, never minding the bajillion splats which just added to the problem. Then you have 3e, where wizards automatically learn spells, scrolls are very cheap, and an even longer spell list made thing much worse. At least 5e has reined in the number of spells on the list, thankfully. And removed a lot of the more problematic spells as well.

I think 2e managed, remarkably, to have a longer spell list than 3e. Three volumes of priest spells, four of mage spells (and the Encyclopedia Magica, four volumes of magic items) suggests it managed it,

To your first point, what you find there is the caster players complaining that they need more stuff and D&D isn't meant to be played like this with such horrible limits on them. And casting high-level spells when the enemy saves half the time is mean because they've wasted something powerful and not succeeded with it. You may want to show how much sympathy you have for people who fail when they're well aware that they should succeed nearly all the time.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Okay...

For one, I suggested support for a sliding scale of magic levels, not shunting D&D into low magic only.

For two, I played in a campaign for perhaps close to a decade that was low magic in 3e, so yeah, people do it. Which, by extension, means that at least some people would probably appreciate low magic support.

For three, are you the spokesperson for all D&D caster players? Alternatively, are you perhaps speaking from personal experience and maybe some people have different tastes?

For four, I don't understand why you got so upset/defensive over my comments in the first place. Did I say "D&D needs to be low level magic"? Did I say "magic higher than low level is bad"? How would what I mused about remotely impact anyone from playing the way you want?

No kidding, [MENTION=2093]Gilladian[/MENTION] (yes, sis you are invoked) ran E6 3.5 for YEARS, though I wasn't logistically able to play much in those games. The whole E6 thing was largely about limiting the influence of game-bending magic. I participated in some low magic AD&D as well (which frankly didn't work that well, but it wasn't for lack of trying).

Truthfully, what I want to see is a game that works well where lower levels can be reasonably limited magic, its there but not center stage more than other stuff, and a high level where the heroes can do amazing stuff, magical or not, caster or not. Its fun to be able to move on up and strive for that power level, without requiring either an Eberron-like world, or a lot of hand waving.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Totes.

I think our Lost Mine game gives a good insight into the other side of the coin - I recall a certain druid using Speak with Animals and an offering of horseflesh to overcome a room of hostile wolves. You still made Persuasion checks - your Charisma modifier still mattered, and accomplishing your goal was still a matter of non-magical skill checks. Magic just allowed you to apply it in a new situation.

That's kind of where I like magic to me - useful, but not so useful it does the job for you.

Yup, that's about what I think.

All of this makes me wonder if your group might just be prone to letting magic solve your problems for no reason. If your Altered Self isn't making Deception checks to pass as a drow and your Charmer isn't making Persuasion checks to get the goblin to talk and your Invisible rogue doesn't have to make Stealth checks to sneak, your playstyle is nerfing those skills and enhancing those spells, and it's worth looking into why your group perhaps-unknowingly lets spells substitute for skills and the effects that has on play.

Not at all, but just exactly how often do you think ordinary drow get grilled? Sure, you MIGHT have to make a check, but for many plans you wouldn't. Sure the invisible thief MIGHT step on a twig, but when the guard can't find anything in that area you're still not found out, and its a LOT more likely that a broken twig is some animal than it is some invisible assassin. If I Charm the gate guard he may say "Hey, wait a minute!" to himself a minute later, but that doesn't mean he automatically raises the alarm (and this kind of plan obviously works best if its too late by then). Levitate is awesome if you need to get to a spot inaccessible by climbing, or get above the trees to see where you're going, etc etc etc. No Athletics check is required for any of that.

My wizard has Alter Self, Invisibility, and often Charm Person memorized, and sometimes Sleep. He WOULD memorize Spider Climb, if he didn't get it from the staff. I mean really it doesn't take a lot of slots for reasonable combat casting, Fire Bolt, T-Wave, Chromatic Orb, Cloud of Daggers, and Fireball, that's all I need. Fire Bolt for picking things off, the orb amped up to level 2 or 3 for harder single targets, CoD for stopping up holes or constant cheap damage if an enemy is unable to maneuver or can be tossed around. T-Wave for pushing and some area damage, and Fireball for that "Hey, guess what, your death is near" opening surprise attack.

So, I really have plenty of room for a decent mix of spells. Rituals insure that I don't really need to memorize things like Detect Magic. Give me a day to plan my spell use for a specific situation and I can take care of a LOT of situations. Non-magic is fine, its certainly useful, but even at level 6 I get the feeling we'd PROBABLY be better off with all casters. Its not like casters have any kind of dearth of good skill bonuses.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yup, that's about what I think.

So [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] 's first example was a 4e game where a ritual wound up borking some campaign flavor.

My example was a 5e game where a ritual was used to make a skill check, and it worked better.

There's a lot of other variables to go into, but at the very least, that would suggest that 5e magic is meeting your goals in ways that 4e magic at least sometimes does not.

Not at all, but just exactly how often do you think ordinary drow get grilled? Sure, you MIGHT have to make a check, but for many plans you wouldn't.

Charm Person doesn't make checks for you, so in any situation where you wouldn't have to make a check, Charm Person is redundant with just talking to the NPC - if you don't have to make checks anyway, why are you bothering to go about getting Advantage on them? The spell is doing NOTHING for you at that point.

Sure the invisible thief MIGHT step on a twig, but when the guard can't find anything in that area you're still not found out, and its a LOT more likely that a broken twig is some animal than it is some invisible assassin.

Invisibility isn't perfect stealth (and it wasn't in 4e, either) - you can target and attack an invisible creature, you know where they are and can tell that they're there. They breathe, they smell, they leave footprints, they aren't hidden (unless they also make a check to be hidden). If a twig snaps, and a guard looks up, they see a small distortion in the air or hear the padding of feet as you move, and they can target you and attack you (and more importantly sound the alert). You still failed your Stealth check, so they know you're there just as much as they'd know it if you failed that check while hiding behind a rock.

If I Charm the gate guard he may say "Hey, wait a minute!" to himself a minute later, but that doesn't mean he automatically raises the alarm (and this kind of plan obviously works best if its too late by then).

What, he's just going to let the mind-twisting soceress just walk away? That is a huge Sword of Damocles.

Levitate is awesome if you need to get to a spot inaccessible by climbing, or get above the trees to see where you're going, etc etc etc. No Athletics check is required for any of that.

Getting above the trees for scouting is still going to require a Perception check (or if the trial is obvious, its a waste of a slot). And a spot "inaccessible by climbing" (not sure exactly where that would be) would only be explored straight up unless they wanted to make some Athletics checks.

My wizard has Alter Self, Invisibility, and often Charm Person memorized, and sometimes Sleep. He WOULD memorize Spider Climb, if he didn't get it from the staff. I mean really it doesn't take a lot of slots for reasonable combat casting, Fire Bolt, T-Wave, Chromatic Orb, Cloud of Daggers, and Fireball, that's all I need. Fire Bolt for picking things off, the orb amped up to level 2 or 3 for harder single targets, CoD for stopping up holes or constant cheap damage if an enemy is unable to maneuver or can be tossed around. T-Wave for pushing and some area damage, and Fireball for that "Hey, guess what, your death is near" opening surprise attack.

So, I really have plenty of room for a decent mix of spells. Rituals insure that I don't really need to memorize things like Detect Magic. Give me a day to plan my spell use for a specific situation and I can take care of a LOT of situations. Non-magic is fine, its certainly useful, but even at level 6 I get the feeling we'd PROBABLY be better off with all casters. Its not like casters have any kind of dearth of good skill bonuses.

Sounds like a pretty effective level 6+ load-out, but I still think your DM might be letting magic automatically solve problems that it shouldn't be automatically solving.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

So @Hussar 's first example was a 4e game where a ritual wound up borking some campaign flavor.

My example was a 5e game where a ritual was used to make a skill check, and it worked better.

There's a lot of other variables to go into, but at the very least, that would suggest that 5e magic is meeting your goals in ways that 4e magic at least sometimes does not.

Well, I'd like to note that it was [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] that had a problem with Phantom Steeds, not me. Secondly, I have never said that I thought 4e made magic just be on par with skills. It just spread it around more and made the really most revolutionary capabilities more limited and more high level.

Charm Person doesn't make checks for you, so in any situation where you wouldn't have to make a check, Charm Person is redundant with just talking to the NPC - if you don't have to make checks anyway, why are you bothering to go about getting Advantage on them? The spell is doing NOTHING for you at that point.

Your interpretation seems to make the spell useless. If not then its still useful, right? In fact it changes the attitude of the NPC to you. That has implications beyond skill checks.

Invisibility isn't perfect stealth (and it wasn't in 4e, either) - you can target and attack an invisible creature, you know where they are and can tell that they're there. They breathe, they smell, they leave footprints, they aren't hidden (unless they also make a check to be hidden). If a twig snaps, and a guard looks up, they see a small distortion in the air or hear the padding of feet as you move, and they can target you and attack you (and more importantly sound the alert). You still failed your Stealth check, so they know you're there just as much as they'd know it if you failed that check while hiding behind a rock.

Outside of combat the rules are not nearly so rigid. Unless an enemy is looking for you, or you blow your stealth check by some really significant amount, there's no reason to suppose that an enemy is automatically aware of anything more than that there was a sound/smell/stirring dust/whatever from 'over there'. They might or might not investigate and if they do you could certainly still make another check to try to slip away. This is exactly as it worked in 4e, where outside combat it was largely up to the GM to weigh different factors such as the surroundings, the degree of alertness of the enemy, what sorts of senses they rely on, etc. While invisibility is no guarantee, it is a huge benefit when trying to sneak, and not just because it counts as a form of 'concealment'.

Blow your stealth against the ancient red dragon in his lair who constantly looks for thieves and you're probably in big trouble, invisible or not, blow it against some orcs that you're shadowing, not so critical.

What, he's just going to let the mind-twisting soceress just walk away? That is a huge Sword of Damocles.

Only if I'm planning to stick around and care whether people know I bamboozled a guard with magic. If I'm exiting the castle with the Baron's funds its not such a bad idea.

Getting above the trees for scouting is still going to require a Perception check (or if the trial is obvious, its a waste of a slot). And a spot "inaccessible by climbing" (not sure exactly where that would be) would only be explored straight up unless they wanted to make some Athletics checks.

I'd think in almost any case where you're lost in a woods this would be quite handy, or are scouting for a fixed location, etc. Beyond that I see no reason why you would need a check if you were say being levitated up to a balcony, or anything like that. Honestly, I haven't used the spell, but I can think of times when I would memorize it and a few situations where if I had it that it would have been handy.

Sounds like a pretty effective level 6+ load-out, but I still think your DM might be letting magic automatically solve problems that it shouldn't be automatically solving.

I don't think our DM is particularly giving away anything. I just think the game we are playing is one where the action is pretty grounded. If you were wandering around in the real world with 5e invisibility on you, nobody would notice you, and likewise in our game. Now, obviously invisibility is something that is known to exist in the game world, so there will be SOME people keeping it in mind, but its still a huge boon.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

I don't understand why you didn't have to worry about being in the right spot. Healing Word is a close burst 5 at heroic tier. At least in my experience, many 4e combats involve the PCs becoming separated by more than 5 squares.

Probably because we only played for six months, and 90% of that was within the heroic tier. We just didn't get around to having any big, spread-out combats during that period. (There were a few times when the healer had to move to get in range for Healing Word, and in those cases it did feel a little bit more like actually doing something, but still not quite like maneuvering around opportunity attacks to get within touch range.)

How is 4e not an 'attrition model'? HS are certainly the resource that gets managed, much more than hit points, and you also have daily powers, your AP(s), and consumable items. The 4th encounter of the day in any of these systems is vastly likely to be more deadly than the first three.

Maybe we just never got that far into it, but we were never really in danger of running out of Surges. Maybe too much experience with older editions led us to being overly cautious about taking damage. In any case, the deadliness of the last encounter was usually mitigated significantly by everyone using their Daily powers in rapid succession.

 

[bert1000]

I'm going to take a crack at this if you don't mind. There are a few things at work here:

1) 4d Skill Challenges do have a sort of analogue to MHRP's Doom Pool and Plot Points. Respectively, they are:

a) the Hard DCs in a Skill Challenge that the GM can deploy to escalate the conflict and up the stakes

and

b) the Advantages the PCs can deploy to either proactively dictate the fiction (eg step down a medium DC to an easy DC) or to mitigate the GM "move" of using a hard DC (and step that down to a medium DC).

The feedback isn't dynamic (there is no interchange/economy of doom dice and plot points) but the premise is the same. It is just sort of a "steady state" meta currency.

2) Healing Surges and Gold are meta currency as well. You can expend them for Skill Challenge boons/successes or you can expend them on Martial Practices/Rituals for boons or to outright transition scenes.

Isn't the Hard DC based on the fiction though, not on when the DM things is dramatic? I haven't looked at my 4e books in a while so maybe what you say is true. I also don't recall being able to spend HS proactively as a resource (only as a penalty after the fact) but again I haven't looked /played in a while.

Those would be good examples of "subjectiveness". Thanks.

3) 4e gives more than just tools to calibrate threats. The fundamental ethos of 4e is "skip the gate guards and get to the fun." This is an obfuscating, D&Difying of Vincent Baker's indie principle of "at every moment, drive play towards conflict." 4e is all about the conflict-charged scene (in D&D terms, the "encounter"). Whether it be a combat action scene or a noncombat action scene, something must be on the line, the stakes must be high, and the action must be full throttle. Play should naturally snowball from this formula and feel like Indiana Jones meets Die Hard meets mythic fantasy. High stakes, intense action, fast-paced, climax city.

If the stakes are low and there is no conflict, you skip it outright or transition to the next conflict-charged scene with a montage or expository dialogue. The reason why 4e's subjective DCs, and of-level challenges, are relevant to this ethos is because they fuel the resolution mechanics machinery in achieving the sense of always being in a high stakes, conflict-charged scene.

The predicate of objective DCs and below appropriate challenge level encounters is to confirm the existence of the conflict-neutral/benign components of the world to the PCs. The ethos here being "you're exploring a living, breathing world" so look at all of this "stuff" that should exist right along beside this other conflict-charged stuff. We have to give these mundane moments their due of on-screen time to suspend your disbelief and maximize your versimilitude. Therefore we need to talk to these gate guards. We need to haggle these merchants. We need to potentially involve ourselves with caravan guarding and bandit routing even though it is well below "level-appropriate" because that stuff wouldn't just cease to exist. Hence, we need an objective, world-centered DC spread to reflect so you can engage with that stuff.

4e doesn't engage with that stuff. It still exists, but it is all off-screen, zoomed-out, or transitioned via synopsis/montage. The only thing we spend on-screen time on that conflict-charged (hence level-appropriate) stuff.

Hopefully that helps.

This looks like playstyle to me more than the mechanics of DCs. 4e certainly advocated this play style (one I like) but I also played many games of 3e and earlier this way too.

The bandit routing doesn't cease to exist in "scene framing" style either, the DM and Players just decide they don't want to engage with that stuff or 'play it out'.

More and more, I think "subjective DC" seems to be a code for "dramatic scene framing" playstyle and "objective DC" for "exploration play style".