EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
1. But 5e creatures include this quarter-level scaling too. Average defenses go up with CR at about the rate of proficiency. 5e DOES scale, just somewhat more slowly--and yes, ability scores and items (though not feats) are factored into it as well, despite some statements to the contrary. 5e has roughly 4e's math cut in half, and only rising to level 20 rather than going to 30. E.g. max ability score mod is +5 rather than +10, max magic bonus from items is +3 rather than +6, yet these happen 33% faster because you get them over 20 levels rather than 30, so the dropped feat bonuses (roughly) return the math to scaling at half 4e's rate. It still scales. This, for example, is why the non-improvement in saving throws without proficiency is A Problem for 5e fans: save DCs DO scale and you have no real means to fix that besides blowing feats on Resilient.
2. Wouldn't this be even worse than the "feat tax"/"power creep" problem 4e already had? Now you secretly HAVE to blow precious feats and ability score picks just to stay good, OR people who do do the ultra-boring "just get stronger" options are now miles ahead of the people who don't. Either you punish casual players who fail to keep up, or you massively reward players who ignore fluff and just juice themselves up every time. THAT is the reason for the so-called "treadmill": it means no player is particularly punished for losing a Red Queen's race, nor is there nearly as much incentive to forego fun and flavor in order to secure victory more reliably. It preserves the notion that a higher level enemy should be stronger than a lower-level one, but in a way that is more player-experience-friendly.
This notion that "nothing changes" with these kinds of scaling is frankly one of the most successful misdirection campaigns I've ever seen and I gotta give props to who ever articulated it first. It's got legs, it really gets into people's heads and makes them fired up to oppose it...while making it seem like all the really sound reasons that it gets used for don't exist.
Having innate level scaling does mean the DM needs to present things a little differently to properly make use of it...exactly the same way that having minions, Skill Challenges, and Page 42 means certain common DM approaches will welcome revision and adjustment. You have to SHOW your players that the world doesn't just level up with them. If anything, it's just a more systematic way of doing what really classic D&D did: "high-level" hexes exist and should be avoided unless you've got a plan or a trick to pull off, and the DM is equipped with tools to make actually interesting (as opposed to mere curbstomp) interactions with those hexes.
E.g. you encounter a Red Dragon or Ringwraiths at level 2, that's a skill challenge just to avoid dying, but there are reasonable skill DCs to do that. You encounter a first-level cranium rat warren at level 20, that's a skill challenge to clean it up without expending so much effort that it takes the whole day--while still ensuring that it DOES stay down for good, something mere skill alone could not reasonably achieve at 1st level. You keep having locked wooden doors, even though eventually the party Wizard will become halfway okay at picking them, unless the situation calls for a door that SHOULD be an obstacle to characters of the party's level. And maybe you throw in a few doors early on that are just beyond the rogue's skills, but might not be later--plot hooks and inspiration to grow.
Just as reaction rolls and random encounters shouldn't be applied in a perfectly mechanistic way such that a computer could do it, having high level equate to increased stats shouldn't be used in a brainless-computer way either. 4e IS NOT Skyrim, where you levelling up makes every part of the world level up with you. In fact, the text repeatedly rejects that approach to using its system as boring and undesirable. Instead, it gives you a framework which reliably lets you know what is "about the right level of challenge to be uncertain but not unlikely" for all levels of play, and trusts you as DM to judiciously use it to shape player experience by providing a spectrum of encounters and situations. If you DON'T sometimes throw over-level AND under-level fights/doors/climbs/SCs/persuasions/etc. at your players, you are in fact doing what the text explicitly tells you NOT to do. If someone avoided using reaction rolls except when the PCs explicitly tried to get a reaction out of a third party, would you say reaction rolls were thus bad, or that that DM was using them badly? If a DM wrote their own random encounter tables that had no variety in level whatsoever, would you call that proof that random encounters are bad, or evidence that this DM didn't know how to use them correctly?
Last edited:
