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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7664938" data-attributes="member: 42582">if that's what I did, it wasn't on purpose - I'm just trying to compare the play of the two systems!That's true, but I don't think that's what 4e defaults to (certainly not the tediously playing through - maybe the handwaving is truer to its spirit).Your example works for me, but I still want to say it tells us more about story than mechanics.Because the default approach in 4e is that, when you've gained those 20 levels that turn a DC 21 lock from Hard to Easy, you won't be confronting the same lock anymore, at least not in the context of resolving any sort of meaningful challenge or crisis. Because you'll have progressed from the Heroic to the Epic tier, the things you confront are expected to be different. Even if you find yourself back in the same geographic location, the expectation is that something about that location will have changed to make it pose Epic rather than merely Heroic challenges.Whereas I don't see the same expectation in 5e. It seems to me that in 5e characters grow in capability very dramatically, but the default assumption is that the world with which they engage doesn't change very much at all. Hence characters of double-digit levels still trouble themselves with orcs counted out on an individual basis (as opposed to as part of a horde or swarm, 4e-style).It seems to me that when people say that bounded accuracy is different from 4e, it is this story feature that they are pointing to.Now 4e could do that too, if you reskinned all the monsters as orcs and kobolds. Then the treadmill really would be a treadmill, and the level-based DCs would just look silly.I also know that some people stripped the +0.5 per level off everything in 4e and ran it that way. I imagine that that provided an experience not too dissimilar to 5e (with stats and items picking up the slack of 5e's proficiency bonuses).But stripping +0.5/level from everything isn't a mechanical change of any depth - the relevant maths (eg % chances of success) all remains the same. What it changes is the story, because now some of the things that are challenging you in combat are kobolds rather than (say) trolls and giants.Am I making any sense?</blockquote>

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