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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5462803" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think you're right that 4e in certain ways makes non-combat encounters more like combat ones. Again, opinions differ on whether this is a plus or a minus.As to difficulty - a 4e player can know the % success against a level-appropriate DC (roughly, untrained and average stat is 65% against an Easy DC, tained OR good stat is 65% against a Moderate DC, trained AND good stat is 65% against a Hard DC). The scaling issue is complicated by lingering simulationist features of the ruleset.Roughly, where the challenge is the sort of thing that might appear on a battlemap - so if it involves distance of a jump or a climb, for example - then there is no scaling - DC is set by the width of the chasm, for example - but the GM would be expected to place wider chasms in higher level encounters.Where the challenge is not the sort of thing that might appear on a battlemap - like the complexity of the lock - then the general expectation is that the difficulty will be level dependent, and for higher level PCs the GM will describe the lock as being more complex.Then there are some intermediate aspects - for doors that might need to be forced open, some climbing surfaces, and some weather events, the rules give the GM fairly detailed advice on what sort of description to associate with what sorts of DCs (eg a Moderate low level door is wooden, a Moderate low-epic-tier door is an iron portcullis). But there is nothing like this for locks - so the GM just has to come up with his/her own description of the features of an epic lock that make it so hard to pick.(HeroWars, in its first edition, took something like this last approach - DCs are to be set based on narrative/pacing considerations, but the GM was given a list of descriptions to associate with various DCs. HeroQuest 2nd edition has dropped the list, and just encourages the GM to describe things as appropriate - like 4e does with locks.)</blockquote>

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