Difficulty Numbers: Scaling, or Static?

[Pedantic]

The way 4e did this is to build a robust Skill Challenge system that allowed experts to be better at a wider array of problem solving approaches, ways to ensure that all players could participate throughout a challenge in an instrumental way, and guidance to the GM to ensure that the SCs themselves represented the characters growing in ability.

PCs are cooler because they do cooler stuff, face off against more impressive threats, and affect a wider swath of the world (and beyond). Not because they can consistently hit a DC15 on a 5+ roll.

It did no such thing, skill challenges are the antithesis of representing character growth. There's nothing aside from vague advice about how to describe things preventing a GM from representing the same obstacle at level 1 and level 15 and level 25. More importantly, there's no change in player decision making; you can't do anything in a level 15 SC that you can't also do in a level 1 SC. It's just roll a skill and try to get high, the exact same game action.

Hitting a DC 15 on 5+ is admittedly also meaningless, unless you specify what impact that has, and going from a 60% to an 80% chance to do that thing matters. Generic DCs are an even worse way of trying to cheat the same repeated gameplay loop in, because instead of hiding behind scaling math, they hide behind the GM's subjective (and often pressured) judgement of whether something is "hard" in the moment.

4e's skill challenges are entirely an attempt to have your cake and eat it, by giving players scaling numbers while resolving challenges as static checks on the backend. Mostly, they're a narrative pacing mechanism moderated by iterated gambling. At best, they're a design prompt for a GM to build a single use minigame out of.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

One problem with just rolling skill checks is - when do you stop? How often do you need to roll stealth to sneak through a town or into bandit camp or whatever? Once all together? Every few seconds (rounds, minutes, hours?).

Skill challenges create a framework to adjudicate that, and more than that, they also provide a framework to allow different approaches and represent shifts in the approach due to the story-telling of the challenge.

But I agree that if it's just a series of rolls, it might be too simplistic.
I remember vague Stalker0 had an "Obsidian Skill Challenge" system that I think added some more interesting game options, something like last-ditch effort checks.

I think maybe a more elaborate skill challenge system should have such features by default, and maybe different classes/races might add additional options as you grow in level, so you actually get a feeling that a high level skill challenge is a bit different than a low level one.

 

[Pedantic]

One problem with just rolling skill checks is - when do you stop? How often do you need to roll stealth to sneak through a town or into bandit camp or whatever? Once all together? Every few seconds (rounds, minutes, hours?).

The solution to that problem should be a design prompt, not a GM adjudication call. We don't need to build these generic system scaffolds to hang future at the table design on if we actually fully design skill systems to begin with.

 

[JohnSnow]

Scenario 1: Two characters walk up to a cliff together. One character is level 1, the other is level 10. The cliff is described as being 'difficult' to climb. Both characters must climb it. What is the DC?

Nothing else mentioned, I’d say DC 15 is a good number for “Difficult.”

Scenario 2: A character climbs the cliff at level 1. The DC is 15. He returns to the same cliff when he is level 10. The cliff has not changed. The circumstances and conditions are identical to when he last climbed it. What is the DC?

Given those parameters, it’s still 15.

Scenario 3: A level 1 character has high Strength modifier, focus in Climbing skill, and has the Mountaineering background. Your character is a level 10 something with no Strength modifier, zero skill points in Climbing, and has the Bookworm background. Which character should find it easier to climb the cliff?

This is the problem with not tracking skill at all, or worse, tying it entirely to level.

A skilled climber should be better at climbing than someone who’s unskilled, even if that “someone” is a high-level Archmage. Who would just circumvent the whole thing by casting fly, levitate, spider climb, or transforming himself into a mountain goat.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I haven't read beyond the first page, but I'd prefer a system that presents both. IMO, they're two perspectives that regard the same information, both of which are useful for a GM.

A scaling DC simply says that X is an appropriate DC for a character of level Y. It doesn't mean that if you pick a lock of DC X at level 1, that the exact same lock would be DC+10 at level 11. At the very least, I've never found a system that worked that way.

A static DC tells you that a particular type of challenge should be DC X. It doesn't tell you anything about how challenging that will be for a character of any given level.

These are both relevant and useful to a GM for adjudicating the game. Therefore, I think the best approach would be to provide both tools, and let the GM apply them as they see fit.

 

[pemerton]

I said "the party has goals", not "the GM gives the players goals"

<snip>

A skilled GM can set up a game world such that this naturally occurs. The party initially investigates a string of murders which are actually committed by an assassins ring, which is actually being controlled by a noble family, who are actually trying to summon an ancient demon. Bog standard fantasy setup. Each time the party chooses to follow another clue, they will naturally encounter more competant foes and security. If they choose to follow other leads, they find similarly shaped threats.

Your example seems to me like the GM is giving the players goals.

 

[pemerton]

MOST of the time, it would be silly to make your Osiris Cleric roll Arcana on knowledge about Osiris; especially if the barbarian can roll a nat 20 right afterwards and know more about the god than the god's own cleric. One exception would be high level secret knowledge. Let's say you had a religion where the lay folk and the low level clergy had one truth about what was going on and the high level clergy knew what was REALLY going on. Then arcana would make sense to see if your person came across some secret knowledge one day while they were in the temple.

That seems like it should be some sort of "luck roll", or maybe a flashback mechanic.

Or are you saying that that's actually what Arcana skill is - that rather than a representation/model of your character's knowledge, it's a tool for working out what they had the opportunity to learn in the past?

 

[pemerton]

Static, because I have played a few systems now where, RAW, characters actively got worse at basic things as they leveled up. Unless they spent their limited supply of increases on something, the target number would scale faster than their ability to do it. So, a level 20 wizards would actually be WORSE at climbing the same wall than they were as a level 1 wizard.

Which systems are these? I've not encountered a system like this.

Scaling DC is dumb. As others have pointed out, it completely defeats the point in gaining levels. Also, levels are dumb, but that's a whole different thing.

At least in 4e D&D, the point of both scaling DCs and levels is to structure the way the game progresses through the fiction. So scaling DCs don't defeat the point in gaining levels. They're part of the methods the game uses to correlate levels to fiction while maintaining interesting game play.

This is exactly what I was thinking. For me it 100% makes sense to have a table what a hard DC by level is, but not the same things should be hard for a level 1 and a level 11.

Having a clear numerical table helps GMs to set challenges as hard as they want, but of course also having a table of what is hard for different (key-)levels (like level 1, 11, 21 or maybe also 6/16/26) helps a GM to not create the feeling of walls becoming harder to climb as you level.

If world consistency is important I think scaling becomes an issue for world building. If you do t want world levels with PCs then you gotta make places for all levels at the start so it is consistent.

In your terms, always static. Otherwise, you're looking at a skill/DC increase treadmill. What's the point of increasing your skill if it doesn't give you any actual improvement?

However, I will say that even in systems or editions with a DC-by-level chart, like 4E's advice for what is a "Hard DC" for a level 13 character or something, the implication is that these DCs translate to more impressive challenges. Those paragon characters are climbing much gnarlier walls than their lower level brethren just like they're fighting giants rather than orcs.

That's why I tend to favor concrete examples in my DC charts. What is a DC15 wall anyway? A natural rock face with ample handholds or a classic brickwall with the barest of fingerholds? It helps both players and DMs understand what the PCs are and aren't capable of.

D&D has been traditionally horrible at properly explaining Tiers of Play and this is one facet of that.

I've played a fair bit of 4e D&D. There is no issue with "world consistency": the game has very clear descriptions of the "tiers of play" (both in the PHB (pp 28-9) and the DMG (pp 146-7)). This is reinforced by PC build elements, like Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies; and by GM-side elements, like the levels assigned to various creatures and NPCs, the levels at which various monsters are presented as minions rather than standard, etc.

There are some places where the 4e DMG gives advice on mapping DCs to fiction (for instance, the DMG pp 64-5). There is also similar advice addressing other aspects of play where it makes sense to have regard to PC level - eg the table on p 44 suggesting level-appropriate "precipitous terrain".

In other places, the game leaves it open to the play group to do this sort of "mapping" themselves. LostSoul had a great post about this, years ago now:

How the imagined content in the game changes in 4E as the characters gain levels isn't quite the same as it is in 3E. I am not going to pretend to have a good grasp of how this works in either system, but my gut says: in 4E the group defines the colour of their campaign as they play it; in 3E it's established when the campaign begins.

That's kind of confusing... let me see if I can clarify as I work this idea out for myself.

In 3E, climbing a hewn rock wall is DC 25. That doesn't change as the game is played (that is, as fiction is created, the game world is explored, and characters grow). Just because it's DC 120 to balance on a cloud doesn't mean that characters can't attempt it at 1st level; they'll just always fail. The relationship between colour and the reward system doesn't change over time: you know that, if you can score a DC 120 balance check, you can balance on clouds; a +1 to your Balance check brings you that much closer to success.

In 4E, I think the relationship between colour and the reward system changes: you don't know what it will mean, when you first start playing, to make a Hard Level 30 Acrobatics check. Which means that gaining levels doesn't have a defined relationship with what your PC can do in the fiction - just because your Acrobatics check has increased by 1, it doesn't mean you're that much closer to balancing on a cloud. I think the group needs to define that for themselves; as far as I can tell, this is supposed to arise organically through play, and go through major shifts as Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies enter the game.

LostSoul is absolutely correct, in my view. What he says fits perfectly with my own experience of 4e play. And there's a corollary: if the table is frustrated by the fiction that is being created - eg if they are playing a game in which the DCs/obstacle are scaling but the fiction is the same, such as the GM presenting 10th level PCs with Goblin opponents scaled to Level 10 Standard; or with fences and barn walls scaled to 10th level DCs - that's a table problem. The table is ignoring the stuff about tiers of play, and all of the fiction implied by the Tiers of Play and Paragon Paths and the like.

skill challenges are the antithesis of representing character growth. There's nothing aside from vague advice about how to describe things preventing a GM from representing the same obstacle at level 1 and level 15 and level 25. More importantly, there's no change in player decision making; you can't do anything in a level 15 SC that you can't also do in a level 1 SC. It's just roll a skill and try to get high, the exact same game action.

<snip>

4e's skill challenges are entirely an attempt to have your cake and eat it, by giving players scaling numbers while resolving challenges as static checks on the backend. Mostly, they're a narrative pacing mechanism moderated by iterated gambling. At best, they're a design prompt for a GM to build a single use minigame out of.

The advice isn't "vague" in any way that matters. It provides clear guidance on the correlation of level/tier and fiction, and that guidance is provided in multiple ways. Here are just some examples:

*The Monster Manual has Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, Gnolls and the like as low-to-mid Heroic tier opponents; has Drow as low-to-mid Paragon tier opponents; and has Orcus as an upper Epitc tier opponent. Of course the rules make it easy to scale up and down: but the MM is presenting a clear picture of what fiction maps (by default) to what tier.

*The DMG guidelines on Fall Severity by Character Level (p 44):

Level	Painful	Perilous	Deadly
1st–5th	20 ft.	30 ft.	40 ft.
6th–10th	30 ft.	50 ft.	70 ft.
11th–15th	40 ft.	70 ft.	110 ft.
16th–20th	60 ft.	90 ft.	140 ft.
21st–25th	80 ft.	110 ft.	170 ft.
26th–30th	90 ft.	130 ft.	200 ft.

*The PHB and DMG discussions of the "tiers of play". This is from the PHB, but the DMG text is very similar:

In the heroic tier . . . you might make mighty leaps or incredible climbs, but you’re still basically earthbound. The fate of a village might hang on the success or failure of your adventures, to say nothing of the risk to your own life. You navigate dangerous terrain and explore haunted crypts, where you can expect to fight sneaky goblins, savage orcs, ferocious wolves, giant spiders, evil cultists, and bloodthirsty ghouls. . . .

In the paragon tier . . . [y]ou are able to travel more quickly from place to place, perhaps on a hippogriff mount or using a spell to grant your party flight. In combat, you might fly or even teleport short distances. Death becomes a surmountable obstacle, and the fate of a nation or even the world might hang in the balance as you undertake momentous quests. You navigate uncharted regions and explore long-forgotten dungeons, where you can expect to fight sneaky drow, savage giants, ferocious hydras, fearless golems, rampaging barbarian hordes, bloodthirsty vampires, and crafty mind flayers. . . .

In the epic tier . . . y]ou travel across nations in the blink of an eye, and your whole party might take to the air in combat. The success or failure of your adventures has far-reaching consequences, possibly determining the fate of millions in this world and even planes beyond. You navigate otherworldly realms and explore never-before-seen caverns of wonder, where you can expect to battle savage pit fiends, the ferocious tarrasque, sinister sorrowsworn deathlords, bloodthirsty lich archmages, and even demon princes.​

Players also have access to relevant character abilities, like their powers and rituals.

As per the post I quoted from LostSoul, each table will cash all of this out in different ways, creating different fictions and different possibilities. Which - to me, at least - is a virtue in a game based on establishing and collectively exploring a shared imagining.

Here's an example from actual play:

One example - the dwarf PC in my game has the following backstory, which the player wrote up:

In Derrik's Dwarfholme, every young dwarf joins the military, but is not considered a non-probationer until s/he kills his/her first goblin. Unfortunately for Derik, in 10 years of service he never even saw a goblin - every time there was an attack on the Dwarfholme, or a retaliatory raid by the dwarf army, he was somewhere else - running errands, cleaning latrines, etc.

Eventually, it became too embarrassing and Derrik's mother packed him a bundle of supplies and sent him out into the world to make his fortune outside the Dwarfholme. Thus, he found himself drinking in the Hammer and Anvil, a dwarven pub in the old Nerathi city of Kelven.​

(The instructions to players that generated this backstory were (i) your PC must have some sort of relationship to something s/he values, and (ii) your PC must have a reason to be ready to fight goblins.)

In a recent session, after the PC had reached paragon tier and become a Warpriest of Moradin, I wanted to introduce some dwarf NPCs into the ingame situation, for two reasons: (i) to deliver a holy symbol to the Warpriest PC (he didn't have one yet); (ii) to help with the tactical setup of the likely next encounter (hobgoblins and bugbears raiding a village). I decided that the dwarf NPCs would be a dwarf war party retreating from a skirmish with hobgoblins, who had been told by an angel of Moradin that they could get help from a warpriest if they headed south through the hills. And the angel left a holy symbol for them to give to the warpriest as a token of sincerity.

When it actually came time to run the dwarf thing, I decided that the leader of the dwarf warparty would be someone who had known Derrik when he was a runner of errands and cleaner of latrines. So he comes to where the PCs are staying, sees Derrik, and asks "Derrik! What are you doing here? And where's the Warpriest?- An angel said that we would find one here." The ensuing skill challenge, in which Derrik and his fellow PCs tried to explain that Derrik was the Warpriest, culminated in Derrik driving his point home by knocking all the dwarves flat with a single sweep of his halberd (mechanically, he expended one of his close burst encounter powers and made a successful Intimidate check).

The doubting dwarves were then very apologetic, and saw Derrik in a new light.

The fictional actions available to a paragon tier fighter/cleric are different from those available to a 1st level character.

Here's a bit more from the same post, about the methodology of framing and resolution, and how that relates to the established fiction:

The example above of the dwarf encounter shows the sort of thing I have in mind. I beleiev that it also shows that it is not true that all a GM has to go on is the mores and social norms and laws that have been laid down in the game. Even in the real world, there is no predictive social science comparable to physics or chemistry despite the richness of data available, and there is also no general agreement on the mores, social norms and laws that govern various societies. Contemporary anthropologists and historians disagree over the mores, social norms and laws that governed the Aztecs. And even members of the same society often can't agree on the mores, social norms and laws that govern them - hence political, legal and other cultural disputes break out.

In an imaginary world the amount of data is far less, and the scope for imaginative projections, retrofittings and ad hoc fudgings is even greater. So the idea that the imaginary mores, social norms and laws must settle the matter is one I reject. Given what had been established, to date, about the situation of dwarves and Warpriests of Moradin in my game, any number of ways of setting up and running a dwarf encounter were possible. I chose the one that I thought would amuse my player, and bring back into play some stuff that had been sitting in the background for the past four or five levels.

Here's another couple of actual play examples involving the same character:

My 4e campaign is in a bit of a rest and recuperation period after a big campaign arc (starting at 1st level) came to an end with the PCs at 16th level.

In the downtime, the players have been planning their next move(s), tying up loose ends, buying and making new equipment, planning the renovation of the temple of Erathis that they are re-founding, etc.

<snip>

Another thing that had been planned for some time, by the player of the dwarf fighter-cleric, was to have his dwarven smiths reforge Whelm - a dwarven thrower warhammer artefact (originally from White Plume Mountain) - into Overwhelm, the same thing but as a mordenkrad (the character is a two-hander specialist). And with this break from adventure he finally had he chance.

Again I adjudicated it as a complexity 1 (4 before 3) skill challenge. The fighter-cleric had succeeded at Dungeoneering (the closest in 4e to an engineering skill) and Diplomacy (to keep his dwarven artificers at the forge as the temperature and magical energies rise to unprecedented heights). The wizard had succeeded at Arcana (to keep the magical forces in check). But the fighter-cleric failed his Religion check - he was praying to Moradin to help with the process, but it wasn't enough. So he shoved his hands into the forge and held down the hammer with brute strength! (Successful Endurance against a Hard DC.) His hands were burned and scarred, but the dwarven smiths were finally able to grab the hammer head with their tongs, and then beat and pull it into its new shape.

The wizard then healed the dwarf PC with a Remove Affliction (using Fundamental Ice as the material component), and over the course of a few weeks the burns healed. (Had the Endurance check failed, things would have played out much the same, but I'd decided that the character would feel the pang of the burns again whenever he picked up Overwhelm.)

In running this particular challenge, I was the one who called for the Dungeoneering and Diplomacy checks. It was the players who initiated the other checks. In particular, the player of the dwarf PC realised that while his character is not an artificer, he is the toughtest dwarf around. This is what led him to say "I want to stick my hands into the forge and grab Whelm. Can I make an Endurance check for that?" An unexpected manoeuvre!

The current focus of my 4e game - which is now at 30th level, the top end of Epic tier - is the fate of the multiverse: will it be engulfed in an imminent Dusk War, or is there some way of averting such a thing?

<snip>

The PCs erected a magic circle around the Mausoleum of the Raven Queen, in order to prevent anyone from entering it and potentially learning her true name (backstory here); then rested; then scried on the tarrasque, which they knew to have recently begun marauding in the mortal world, identifying its location and noting that it was being observed by maruts. They decided that, to return to the mortal world to confront the tarrasque they would first teleport to their abandoned Thundercloud Tower, and then take that with them through another conjured portal and fly it to where the tarrasque is.

<snip>

When the PCs step through the portal from their resting place to the top of the tower, they find that it is not where they left it - on the disintegrating 66th layer of the Abyss - but rather in the palace of Yan-C-Bin on the Elemental Chaos. This brought the PCs, and especially the chaos sorcerer, into discussion with the djinni who had retaken possession of the tower and were repurposing it for the coming Dusk War. Mechanically, this situation was resolved as a skill challenge.

Sirrajadt, the leader of the djinni, explained that the djinni were finally breaking free of the imprisonment they had suffered after fighting for their freedom the last time (ie with the primordials against the gods in the Dawn War), and were not going to be re-imprisoned or bound within the Lattice of Heaven, and hence were gearing up to fight again in the Dusk War. He further explained that only Yan-C-Bin (Prince of Evil Air Elementals) and the Elder Elemental Eye could lead them to victory in the Dusk War.

The PCs both asserted their power (eg the paladin pointed out that the reason the djinni have been released from their prisons is because the PCs killed Torog, the god of imprisonment), and denied the necessity for a coming Dusk War, denouncing warmongers on both sides (especially the Elder Elemental Eye, whom Sirrajadt was stating was the only being who could guarantee the Djinni their freedom) and announcing themselves as a "third way", committed to balancing the chaos against the heavens and ensuring the endurance of the mortal world.

Sirrajadt was insisting that the PCs accompany him to meet Yan-C-Bin, declaring that mercy would be shown to all but the sorcerer. (The reason for this is that the chaos sorcerer - who is a Primordial Adept and Resurgent Primordial - has long been a servant of Chan, the Queen of Good Air Elementals, who sided with the gods during the Dawn War and is resolutely opposed to the Prince of Evil Air Elementals; hence the sorcerer is a sworn enemy of Yan-C-Bin.) As the PCs continued to debate the point and explain their "third way" reasoning (mechanically, getting closer to success in the skill challenge), Sirrajadt - sufficiently unsettled by their claims - invited them all to resolve the matter in conversation with Yan-C-Bin, who moreso than him would be able to explain the situation. The PCs therefore went to meet Yan-C-Bin himself, as guests and not as prisoners - not even the sorcerer.

Yan-C-Bin greeted them, but mocked the sorcerer and his service to Chan. There was some back and forth, and some of the same points were made. Then the PC fighter/cleric Eternal Defender, who has recently taken up the divine portfolio of imprisonment (which position became vacant after the PCs killed Torog), spoke. Both in the fiction and at the table this was the pivotal moment. The player gave an impassioned and quite eloquent speech, which went for several minutes with his eyes locked on mine. (We tend to be quite a causal table as far as performance, in-character vs third person description of one's PC vs out-of-character goes.) He explained (in character) that he would personally see to it that no djinni would be unjustly imprisoned, if they now refrained from launching the Dusk War; but that if they acted rashly and unjustly they could look forward to imprisonment or enslavement forever.

The player rolled his Intimidate check (with a +2 bonus granted by me because of his speech, far more impassioned and "in character" than is typical for our pretty laid-back table) and succeeded. It didn't persuade Yan-C-Bin - his allegiance to the Elder Elemental Eye is not going to be swayed by a mere godling - but the players' goal wasn't to persaude Yan-C-Bin of the merits of their third way, but rather to avoid being imprisoned by him and to sway the djinni. Which is exacty what happened: this speech sufficiently impressed the djinni audience that Yan-C-Bin could not just ignore it, and hence he grudgingly acquiesced to the PCs' request, agreeing to let the PCs take the Thundercloud Tower and go and confront the tarrasque - but expressing doubt that they would realise their "third way", and with a final mocking remark that they would see for whom the maruts with the tarrasque were acting.

The player of the eternal defender had already noted that, when I read out the description of maruts and their contracts earlier in the sessin, the only being actually mentioned by name was the Raven Queen. So he predicted (more-or-less in line with what I had in mind), that the maruts observing the tarrasque would be there at the behest of the Raven Queen (who is served by three of the five PCs), to stop it being interfered with.

When the PCs then took their Tower to confront the tarrasque, that was indeed what they found. Upon arriving at the tarrasque's location they found the tarrasque being warded by a group of maruts who explained that, in accordance with a contract made with the Raven Queen millenia ago, they were there to ensure the realisation of the end times, and to stop anyone interfering with the tarrasque as an engine of this destruction and a herald of the beginning of the end times and the arrival of the Dusk War.

<snip>

I wasn't sure exactly what the players would do here. They could try and fight the maruts, obviously, but I thought the Raven Queen devotees might be hesitant to do so. I had envisaged that the PCs might try to persuade them that the contract was invalid in some way - and this idea was mentioned at the table, together with the related idea of the various exarchs of the Raven Queen in the party trying to lay down the law. In particular I had thought that the paladin of the Raven Queen, who is a Marshall of Letherna (in effect, one of the Raven Queen's most powerful servants), might try to exercise his authority to annual or vary the contract in some fashion.

But instead the argument developed along different lines. What the players did was to persuade the maruts that the time for fulfillment of their contract had not yet arisen, because this visitation of the tarrasque was not yet a sign of the Dusk War. (Mechanically, these were social skill checks, history and religions checks, etc, in a skill challenge to persuade the maruts.)

The player of the Eternal Defender PC made only one action in this skill challenge - explaining that it was not the end times, because he was there to defeat the tarrasque (and got another successful intimidate check, after spending an action point to reroll his initial fail) - before launching himself from the flying tower onto the tarrasque and proceeding to whittle away around 600 of its hit points over two rounds. (There were also two successful out-of-turn attacks from the ranger and the paladin, who were spending their on-turn actions in negotiating with the maruts.)

The invoker/wizard was able to point to this PC's successful solo-ing of the tarrasque as evidence that the tarrasque, at least on this occasion, could not be the harbinger of the end times whom the maruts were contracted to protect, because it clearly lacked the capacity to ravage the world. The maruts agreed with this point - clearly they had misunderstood the timing of celestial events - and the PCs therefore had carte blanche to finish of the tarrasque. (Mechanically, this was the final success in the skill challenge: the player rolled Insight to see what final argument would sway the maruts, knowing that only one success was needed. He succeeded. I invited him to then state the relevant argument.)

A 1st level Dwarf, no matter how tough for their level, can't shove their hands into a forge and hold down Whelm as it is reforged into Overwhelm. Even a paragon-tier character can't try and threaten the Djinn in front of their lord Yan-C-Bin; nor persuade maruts of their error of timing by solo-ing the Tarrasque.

These example show that skill challenges are not just a pacing mechanism. They're also a mechanism for establishing shared fiction about what the PCs do, and what follows from that.

 

[pemerton]

Given my growing preferences for the DCs to be PC-centric (roll under/over PC stats) and not external, I suppose my answer is "static."

The only game I've played recently that is like this is Mythic Bastionland.

I guess it's literally static. But if changes/developments in the PCs' fictional position open up new possibilities for what they can achieve, then the fictional consequences that flow from those rolls change over time, and so in that sense there is not a "static" correlation between mathematical obstacle and what it is possible for the PC to accomplish.

Anyway, I think you're probably right when you say that:

As someone who now comes from more narrative systems involving conversations of the fictional positioning - where players aren't shooting for a TN (e.g., PbtA, FitD, etc.) - OR games where players have PC-based TNs they are rolling under (or over) - e.g., Dragonbane, The One Ring - I feel that my situation is a bit outside of this conversation.

To me, this conversation seems to be contrasting "objective" DCs - where the mathematical obstacle closely correlates to the fictional circumstance - with DCs that "scale" without any consideration of the fiction.

There are a plenty of RPGs I can think of that use these sorts of "objective" DCs - eg Classic Traveller, Rolemaster, 3E D&D, Burning Wheel and Torchbearer - but many that don't, or at least don't consistently (eg classic D&D uses them intermittently at best; RuneQuest mostly uses roll under your skill rating; MHRP uses opposed checks vs either an opposing character or the Doom Pool; etc). And as per the second of your posts that I've quoted, the RPGs that use non-objective difficulties (whether these be "scaled" like 4e D&D and HeroQuest Revised, or "static" like Mythic Bastionland, or neither like MHRP) don't involve scaling without consideration of the fiction. In fact, I can't think of any RPG that uses DCs that scale without any consideration of the fiction (in the way that some computer/video games do, as per your posts upthread).

 

[payn]

Which systems are these? I've not encountered a system like this.

At least in 4e D&D, the point of both scaling DCs and levels is to structure the way the game progresses through the fiction. So scaling DCs don't defeat the point in gaining levels. They're part of the methods the game uses to correlate levels to fiction while maintaining interesting game play.




I've played a fair bit of 4e D&D. There is no issue with "world consistency": the game has very clear descriptions of the "tiers of play" (both in the PHB (pp 28-9) and the DMG (pp 146-7)). This is reinforced by PC build elements, like Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies; and by GM-side elements, like the levels assigned to various creatures and NPCs, the levels at which various monsters are presented as minions rather than standard, etc.

There are some places where the 4e DMG gives advice on mapping DCs to fiction (for instance, the DMG pp 64-5). There is also similar advice addressing other aspects of play where it makes sense to have regard to PC level - eg the table on p 44 suggesting level-appropriate "precipitous terrain".

In other places, the game leaves it open to the play group to do this sort of "mapping" themselves. LostSoul had a great post about this, years ago now:

​

LostSoul is absolutely correct, in my view. What he says fits perfectly with my own experience of 4e play. And there's a corollary: if the table is frustrated by the fiction that is being created - eg if they are playing a game in which the DCs/obstacle are scaling but the fiction is the same, such as the GM presenting 10th level PCs with Goblin opponents scaled to Level 10 Standard; or with fences and barn walls scaled to 10th level DCs - that's a table problem. The table is ignoring the stuff about tiers of play, and all of the fiction implied by the Tiers of Play and Paragon Paths and the like.


The advice isn't "vague" in any way that matters. It provides clear guidance on the correlation of level/tier and fiction, and that guidance is provided in multiple ways. Here are just some examples:

*The Monster Manual has Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, Gnolls and the like as low-to-mid Heroic tier opponents; has Drow as low-to-mid Paragon tier opponents; and has Orcus as an upper Epitc tier opponent. Of course the rules make it easy to scale up and down: but the MM is presenting a clear picture of what fiction maps (by default) to what tier.​

​

*The DMG guidelines on Fall Severity by Character Level (p 44):​

​

Level	Painful	Perilous	Deadly
1st–5th	20 ft.	30 ft.	40 ft.
6th–10th	30 ft.	50 ft.	70 ft.
11th–15th	40 ft.	70 ft.	110 ft.
16th–20th	60 ft.	90 ft.	140 ft.
21st–25th	80 ft.	110 ft.	170 ft.
26th–30th	90 ft.	130 ft.	200 ft.

​

*The PHB and DMG discussions of the "tiers of play". This is from the PHB, but the DMG text is very similar:​

​

In the heroic tier . . . you might make mighty leaps or incredible climbs, but you’re still basically earthbound. The fate of a village might hang on the success or failure of your adventures, to say nothing of the risk to your own life. You navigate dangerous terrain and explore haunted crypts, where you can expect to fight sneaky goblins, savage orcs, ferocious wolves, giant spiders, evil cultists, and bloodthirsty ghouls. . . .​

​

In the paragon tier . . . [y]ou are able to travel more quickly from place to place, perhaps on a hippogriff mount or using a spell to grant your party flight. In combat, you might fly or even teleport short distances. Death becomes a surmountable obstacle, and the fate of a nation or even the world might hang in the balance as you undertake momentous quests. You navigate uncharted regions and explore long-forgotten dungeons, where you can expect to fight sneaky drow, savage giants, ferocious hydras, fearless golems, rampaging barbarian hordes, bloodthirsty vampires, and crafty mind flayers. . . .​

​

In the epic tier . . . y]ou travel across nations in the blink of an eye, and your whole party might take to the air in combat. The success or failure of your adventures has far-reaching consequences, possibly determining the fate of millions in this world and even planes beyond. You navigate otherworldly realms and explore never-before-seen caverns of wonder, where you can expect to battle savage pit fiends, the ferocious tarrasque, sinister sorrowsworn deathlords, bloodthirsty lich archmages, and even demon princes.​

Players also have access to relevant character abilities, like their powers and rituals.

As per the post I quoted from LostSoul, each table will cash all of this out in different ways, creating different fictions and different possibilities. Which - to me, at least - is a virtue in a game based on establishing and collectively exploring a shared imagining.

Here's an example from actual play:
The fictional actions available to a paragon tier fighter/cleric are different from those available to a 1st level character.

Here's a bit more from the same post, about the methodology of framing and resolution, and how that relates to the established fiction:

Here's another couple of actual play examples involving the same character:

A 1st level Dwarf, no matter how tough for their level, can't shove their hands into a forge and hold down Whelm as it is reforged into Overwhelm. Even a paragon-tier character can't try and threaten the Djinn in front of their lord Yan-C-Bin; nor persuade maruts of their error of timing by solo-ing the Tarrasque.

These example show that skill challenges are not just a pacing mechanism. They're also a mechanism for establishing shared fiction about what the PCs do, and what follows from that.

The game world in 4E having a meta explanation doesn’t really work for me. I’ll take BA of 5E to avoid it.