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Message: <blockquote data-quote="billd91" data-source="post: 6512394" data-attributes="member: 3400">You are not blind. The difference is more in the smoke and mirrors than anything else. The difference between an "objective" and "subjective" difficulty is in what the obstacle means to the PCs. Objective, in this case, means that the door is the same regardless of the level of the PCs encountering it. It's a DC 20 task for them all, whether they're 1st level or 20th level. A steel bound oak door is a steel bound oak door. It may be a hard task for a low level character, easy task for high level character. The difficulty is based on the object of the task - the door.Subjective, in this case, means the door is a hard task regardless of the PC's level. It may be oak at 1st level, adamantine at 20th level but the challenge represented is the same. It changes based on the subjects of the task - the PCs.So what does mean about the differences between the games? Realistically, not much. Truth is, if people wanted challenges to keep up with the advancement of the PCs in any edition, they did so and will continue to do so. That's why the Tomb of Horrors has traps that are a lot more devious than The Village of Hommlet. The main difference is 4e offers a short cut way to achieve the level-appropriate difficulties by putting setting the DC first and doing a post hoc description of the challenge rather than constructing the challenge out of selected components. None of the editions are truly entirely objective nor subjective in their tasks. 3e may have had plenty of skill tasks given objective DCs, but combat tasks tended to be subjective since encounter design guidelines suggested having about 50% of encounters have an equal EL for the party, yielding encounters that should be a subjectively similar level of challenge regardless of the PCs. 4e, while emphasizing the end result of the challenge selection process from a PC-subjective viewpoint, still has plenty of objective skill DCs sprinkled about.</blockquote>

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