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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6937088" data-attributes="member: 996">Or the default assumption might be closer to pragmatic spell-casting treasure-hunters.....or murder hobos.  ;PAny that are members of a serious adventuring party, expecting to be treated equally, should probably strive to be close. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Class can be problematic, that way.  A fighter can focus on being a great diplomat, but he will give up more of his effectiveness to achieve less capability as a diplomat than, say, a Rogue, Sorcerer, or Paladin.Effing pentagrams...A DM is entirely within his rights to do that, of course, in any system.  And, in 5e, particularly, is Empowered to do so, and backed up/encouraged by a system that refers back to him for the method of resolution of every action...True enough in theory, but going that way hardly leverages the class features of the fighter, now does it?   It might be very true to concept, and even kinda philosophically deep, ("The greatest warrior is the one who does not need to fight at all"), but the system punishes you for going there with dis-synergy. Encounter design and encounter/day guidelines are just that, guidelines, and the DM is entirely free to color far outside them.  The only way to be sure to challenge the party is to challenge the /party/, not the typical of their level, because there's just too much variability in what a party of a given level might be able to do in 5e, among considerations like player skill, DM style, class composition, optional rules in play and/or presence of magic items.  Similarly, the only way to ensure balance among the members of that party it to tailor challenges to highlight each of them at various times.It's not just fights, either....Meh, the DM decides what the gameworld is like, so there is no 'if the game world is a certain way,' the game world is the certain way the DM decided upon, and he can make - or amend - that decision, at any point before revealing it to the players (and quite possibly, after, with a bit of hand-waving and plausible deniability).Those are not subjective DCs, but challenge-by-level guidelines.  5e, though, leaves the DM freedom to make success/failure or DCs as subjective as suits his style.  In fact, doing so can be a good idea, as it lets you compensate for the lack of substantial numeric advancement that can be a source of consternation to players.  The DM is free to narrate success when the 18 STR fighter kicks a door in, call for a DC 15 roll from the 14 STR cleric, and rule the 8 STR wizard automatically fails.  If the DC were simply 15 for all of them, the fighter would (inappropriately) fail half the time, and the wizard might as well take a quick shot at it before breaking out a Knock, because he might roll high.</blockquote>

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