D&D General Level Independent Challenges

[Lanefan]

This is not quite true. The DC for a skill check inside challenge is calculated from reference to the level of the challenge, which is set entirely by the DM. Different DMs may set the same hostage negotiation as a level 8 or level 16 change. If a level 7 party is handing the level 8 version, and a level 15 party is handing the level 16 challenge, their resulting chances of success will be (very nearly, there's some variance in scaling) the same, despite the difference in their listed skill bonuses.

You don't get it - it's level dependent when all other things are equal. So, we're comparing a level 8 challenge to a level 8 challenge here and seeing if that challenge is level-agnostic to the party; and clearly it's not.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

In pure white-room theorizing this is correct. However, if you don't apply the skill challenge to a game, what's the point?

Having a stable of interesting challenges? Thinking through the logic of non-combat challenges to improve your improv skills? When you're tired or stressed or just completely forgot, you can pull out such a thing? When you're writing adventures for others to use, they can slot in smoothly whenever you're in need of a particular idea? Helping out someone else, who has gone looking for advice? (Admittedly, that thread was long dead before I even saw it, let alone posted, but the principle is still valid.)

The difficulty is not fixed, though: the odds of each roll being a success or failure vary based on the character's level, due to its level advancing its skills.

Then there is literally no such thing as a "level-independent challenge" that can be described mechanically. Nothing like that exists. The only things you can possibly have are non-mechanical, and thus cannot be applied, not any more than what I've said above; they are pure concepts, like "stop a ritual" or "negotiate with the ruler, which can only achieve application by giving them mechanics. By your own standard, the conversation is pointless.

I prefer to have a more productive conversation, where we can speak of things that lack explicit application to a specific game, but which can still be fleshed out to a significant degree without any reference to target numbers, modifiers, or whatever else.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You don't get it - it's level dependent when all other things are equal. So, we're comparing a level 8 challenge to a level 8 challenge here and seeing if that challenge is level-agnostic to the party; and clearly it's not.

But the fundamental challenge does not have a level. It is just...what it is. Because the "score X successes before Y failures" or "...before Z rounds" or whatever doesn't care about those things. You can then decide what level it should be, based on the context in which it occurs. Chasing a level 8 opponent as level 5 characters under rain-slick conditions, at night, in an unfamiliar city, where you're trying not to attract too much attention to yourselves? I could easily see that being a level 9 skill challenge (and thus knowingly very difficult for a party of level 5 characters.) Chasing a level 7 opponent as level 9 characters when it's bone-dry, daytime, in your childhood home city, where the authorities tacitly support you? I wouldn't bat an eye about making that level 6 or even lower, if conditions seem especially favorable. Yet the fundamental structure--sensible skills, smart tactics the players can use, complications that can arise, a spectrum of success/fail states rather than a simple binary, possible benefits for superlative success--remains unchanged regardless of whether it's level 5, 15, 25, or what-have-you.

 

[Pedantic]

You don't get it - it's level dependent when all other things are equal. So, we're comparing a level 8 challenge to a level 8 challenge here and seeing if that challenge is level-agnostic to the party; and clearly it's not.

I do. My primary complaint about skill challenges is that the levels are arbitrary. There is no such thing as a specifically level 8 challenge in the framework; nothing inherent to the challenge itself can make it specifically level 8 and not level 9 or level 15. That's entirely up to the DM, thus, any challenge can be scaled to any level and remain as difficult (or more accurately, have the same chance of success for any given skill roll).

You can take the same "level 8" challenge, slide your finger down the table of DCs slightly, and now it's a level 12 challenge.

 

[Lanefan]

Then there is literally no such thing as a "level-independent challenge" that can be described mechanically. Nothing like that exists. The only things you can possibly have are non-mechanical, and thus cannot be applied, not any more than what I've said above; they are pure concepts, like "stop a ritual" or "negotiate with the ruler, which can only achieve application by giving them mechanics. By your own standard, the conversation is pointless.

I prefer to have a more productive conversation, where we can speak of things that lack explicit application to a specific game, but which can still be fleshed out to a significant degree without any reference to target numbers, modifiers, or whatever else.

Except, as I already noted upthread, past editions of the game have had the means for truly level-independent mechanical challenges built right in to the system; that being roll-under-stat mechanics in editions where base stats didn't automatically improve with level.

Not my fault if the WotC editions can't figure this out.

 

[Lanefan]

I do. My primary complaint about skill challenges is that the levels are arbitrary. There is no such thing as a specifically level 8 challenge in the framework; nothing inherent to the challenge itself can make it specifically level 8 and not level 9 or level 15. That's entirely up to the DM, thus, any challenge can be scaled to any level and remain as difficult (or more accurately, have the same chance of success for any given skill roll).

You can take the same "level 8" challenge, slide your finger down the table of DCs slightly, and now it's a level 12 challenge.

But if you don't slide your finger down the scale, the level of the character(s) directly affects the outcome chances. Thus, by definition this mechanic isn't level-agnostic.

A truly level-agnostic challenge does not require any DM-side tweaking to suit or match character level.

 

[Pedantic]

But if you don't slide your finger down the scale, the level of the character(s) directly affects the outcome chances. Thus, by definition this mechanic isn't level-agnostic.

A truly level-agnostic challenge does not require any DM-side tweaking to suit or match character level.

This isn't a question of tweaking. Skill challenges don't exist a priori before a DM starts using one. There isn't a list of "level 5 skill challenges" somewhere that the DM is adjusting, instead the DM decides to resolve whatever is happening as a skill challenge and then decides the level of the challenge. Thus, any event that is being resolved can be scaled to any level.

I feel fairly qualified to say that this is in fact what skill challenges allow you to do, because I do not like them for precisely this reason and have spent plenty of time railing against their design. It is (among other things) precisely because they allow you to scale skill checks independently of player level that I feel quite strongly should not be scalable that I do not like them as a design.

 

[LordEntrails]

Thus, any event that is being resolved can be scaled to any level.

Which by definition makes this a level based challenge. Just because the framework of the challenge can be scaled to any level, does not make it independent. As soon as the DM has to adjust, tweak, or select DCs, it means it is level dependent.

 

[overgeeked]

If you're willing to write a scaling DC system, then literally any challenge resolved with skills. You can just pick your preferred chance of success and throw away the character sheets

As much as some people hate this idea, it does work.

For 5E that scale would be easy to make. Take the AC column of the chart on DMG p274 as your baseline. Change level 9 to 17, because it's a math error on the writers' part. That's your DC for PCs with max stat and proficiency. Use +prof bonus for expertise checks and you're done.

Alternately, you can add in a column for -prof for non-proficient checks and another where you drop 2-3 points to account for PCs without max stats trying things. But at that point you have so many variables that you're better off just using 10, 15, 20, 25, 30.

 

[Salmakia]

But can't you do the same thing with combat that you can do with ability checks? Instead of fighting a Phoenix you're fighting a Fire Elemental and suddenly it's a tier 2 challenge instead of tier 3. Anything that requires in-game statistics to resolve is inherently level-related.