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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5464413" data-attributes="member: 42582">I agree with your last sentence. The GM, in my view, is obliged to explain what is going on in the gameworld to make the difference. (Like all such obligations, there may be individual occasions where it gets glossed over - I mean an "in principle" obligation, should the issue become salient to anyone at the table).The 4e DMG, p 67, addresses this issue in relation to terrain (and this can be applied mutatis mutandis to locks):Terrain scales in order to keep it relevant as PCs and monsters gain higher attack bonuses and hit points. It is an element of game balance and a reflection of the greater magical power present in paragon or epic locations.The Rules Compendium, p 306, is similar:Terrain effects are scaled in this way so that terrain stays challenging as adventurers and monsters gain higher skill modifiers and more hit points. For instance, the cave slime found in the deeper reaches of the Underdark is thicker and more slippery that the thin sheen found in higher dungeon levels, so the Acrobatics DC to avoid falling prone is higher.So the DMG gives three reasons for scaling: a metagame reason (relevance), a gloss on the metagame reason (balance), and then an ingame rationale (increased magical power in certain locations). The RC compresses these into two reasons: metagame (challenge), and ingame rationale (thicker cave slime, et al).I'll cheerfully agree with Crazy Jerome that this isn't the best rules text or guidance ever. But I think the intent is clear - the gameworld is to be presented in such a way as to make sense of the scaling difficulty. It also has a clear presupposition - higher level PCs will be spending their time in the Underdark, and not in higher dungeon levels - and hence the issue of "What is the DC for a mundane lock, or mundane slime, when the party is Epic tier?" simply won't arise.This is one of the reasons why I say that 4e is about the unfolding game reflecting "the story of D&D". If you want to play a different sort of game - say, one in which Paragon PCs are still mucking around with rusty old locks on warehouses - then I don't think 4e is so well suited (I mean, you could do it, but bits of the game - like scaling DCs - would stick out a bit more than they probably should).Robin Laws tackles this one in HQ 2nd edition. If for scaling/pacing reasons you want to change the DC, you just add extra features to the situation - a divine boon, reduced stress, or even just good luck, if you want to drop the DC - and horrible weather, the stress of approaching monsters, or something similar, if you want to raise the DC.So we could add - when the Epic tier PCs reenter the 1st level dungeon, the reason they still find the cave slime challenging is because they are also having to force their way through the Abyssal winds that are blowing out of the portal to Pazunia that has suddenly opened up.Again, if you want a different sort of game 4e won't work as smoothly.Well, I've already cross-promoted my "Actual play - balance between mechanics and fiction" thread. On that thread I have two actual play examples of skill challenges from my game on Sunday, and try to analyse the interaction between fiction and mechanics. My view, in summary, is that the fiction plays an important role, but that (i) the mechanical structure of a skill challenge plays a role in establishing pacing and the arising of complications as the challenge unfolds, and (ii) the players, when thinking about how to engage the fiction, play plenty of attention to their mechanical options.Of these two points, I think (i) is very different from my previous Rolemaster game, but (ii) not so much - it's just that the mechanical options on a 4e character sheet are in some ways quite different from those on a RM sheet.I think (ii) would be quite different from an AD&D game, if only because the AD&D character sheet is, in comparative terms, so sparse.</blockquote>

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