Difficulty Numbers: Scaling, or Static?

[Pedantic]

Scaling DCs are design malpractice. They can serve no purpose other than rank illusionism; if you don't want the PC's chances of success to change, then don't lie to them with scaling abilities. The pretense of scaling challenges to those new DCs is equally ridiculous; that's just palette swapping the same set of actions instead of actually giving the PCs new and more powerful things to do. There is nothing they do that isn't more honestly achieved by simply not having character progression in your game.

Generic DCs (what 5e does) are nearly as bad, but at least leave the door open for GMs to invent new actions to reflect PC scaling over time. Designers should be opinionated; write down what the scaling numbers on the character sheets mean. The GM will still change the numbers if they want to, and the more information about the game's intended vision they have, the more confidently than can make those changes.

More significantly, both scaling and generic DCs encourage poor GMing practice. The very identification of a "Hard" or "Easy" skill check encourage the GM to mistake calling for a roll/placing an obstacle defeated by a roll, with presenting a gameable situation to the players. Rolling a die and trying for a higher result cannot be a "challenge" and cannot have a difficulty. There is no player decision making involved in trying to roll high, there is no gameplay, just gambling.

Dragging skills down to objective, well-specified actions and difficulties derived from concrete situations requires the GM to present actual scenarios for players to interact with. That allows for emergent strategy and tactics and unexpected, novel board states to emerge from the interactions of those specific situations and player decision making. Taking my own advice to designers from earlier, it's my opinionated stance that this is better than gambling.

 

[Aldarc]

That's the sort of thing that I loathe. I don't want to think about "well for this character it's a DC13, but that one wait what was your background again? ok so maybe that's a DC11 but hm, it's dark so maybe it's a 13 again." Judging if a given obstacle is "moderate" or "requires expert knowledge" or whatever is just annoying in a game system that isn't set up to scaffold that in a consistent way.

In something like Blades where the probabilities are immutable based on dice pool and the only question is "how risky is this?" Very different; I never have to provide a quantified amount.

As someone who now comes from more narrative systems involving conversations of the fictional positioning - where players aren't shooting for a TN (e.g., PbtA, FitD, etc.) - OR games where players have PC-based TNs they are rolling under (or over) - e.g., Dragonbane, The One Ring - I feel that my situation is a bit outside of this conversation.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Scenario 1: Two characters walk up to a cliff together. One character is level 1, the other is level 10. The cliff is described as being 'difficult' to climb. Both characters must climb it. What is the DC?

Scenario 2: A character climbs the cliff at level 1. The DC is 15. He returns to the same cliff when he is level 10. The cliff has not changed. The circumstances and conditions are identical to when he last climbed it. What is the DC?

Scenario 3: A level 1 character has high Strength modifier, focus in Climbing skill, and has the Mountaineering background. Your character is a level 10 something with no Strength modifier, zero skill points in Climbing, and has the Bookworm background. Which character should find it easier to climb the cliff?

Spoiler: Solution

It doesn't matter. I'm playing a bird man. I'll carry my halfling partner over the cliff, and ignore the cave where there may or may not be goblins and/or ogres. Did we win yet?

 

[payn]

Scenario 1: Two characters walk up to a cliff together. One character is level 1, the other is level 10. The cliff is described as being 'difficult' to climb. Both characters must climb it. What is the DC?

Scenario 2: A character climbs the cliff at level 1. The DC is 15. He returns to the same cliff when he is level 10. The cliff has not changed. The circumstances and conditions are identical to when he last climbed it. What is the DC?

Scenario 3: A level 1 character has high Strength modifier, focus in Climbing skill, and has the Mountaineering background. Your character is a level 10 something with no Strength modifier, zero skill points in Climbing, and has the Bookworm background. Which character should find it easier to climb the cliff?

Spoiler: Solution

It doesn't matter. I'm playing a bird man. I'll carry my halfling partner over the cliff, and ignore the cave where there may or may not be goblins and/or ogres. Did we win yet?

Static baby!

 

[Reynard]

Scenario 1: Two characters walk up to a cliff together. One character is level 1, the other is level 10. The cliff is described as being 'difficult' to climb. Both characters must climb it. What is the DC?

Let's call it 15 since we don't have a lot of information.

Scenario 2: A character climbs the cliff at level 1. The DC is 15. He returns to the same cliff when he is level 10. The cliff has not changed. The circumstances and conditions are identical to when he last climbed it. What is the DC?

Still DC 15.

Scenario 3: A level 1 character has high Strength modifier, focus in Climbing skill, and has the Mountaineering background. Your character is a level 10 something with no Strength modifier, zero skill points in Climbing, and has the Bookworm background. Which character should find it easier to climb the cliff?

Now we are in an interesting space. What does "level" mean in this case? In 5E, "level" generally measures your competence in your specific class and subclass, and area of skills expertise (except with regards to hit points, but that is a whole other thread). A level 10 character has the same skills and saves as a level 1 character if they aren't proficient. But in 3.x, that isn't true. level is a much broader measure of overall character competence and power. Similarly, other games treat advancement as either focused or broad.

Spoiler: Solution

It doesn't matter. I'm playing a bird man. I'll carry my halfling partner over the cliff, and ignore the cave where there may or may not be goblins and/or ogres. Did we win yet?

Rocks fall.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Like many have said, scaling DCs are obviously just a terrible idea. If the numbers on your sheet get bigger, this should mean your character gets better at things, and scaling the DC to match that progression is plainly idiotic.

Now there has been some talk about "world scaling" and this is obviously better, but I think you need to be careful with this too, or it might start to feel a lot like the first instance. Yes, at higher level characters will be able to tackle greater challenges and those often come with greater difficulty. This of course is perfectly fine and good. But the GM should be careful that this greater challenge is indeed tied to the fiction, instead of just automatic like in many MMOs, where in the starter zone towns are protected by level 5 guards, you fight level 3 wolves and level 2 goblins and in later zone the towns are guarded by level 80 guards, you fight level 78 snow wolves and level 76 arctic goblins etc.

I think D&D 5e does poor job at defining what the easy, medium, hard etc DCs actually mean, thus it is very easy for the GM to just accidentally scale them. And of course the rules cannot list every eventuality, but they should come with plenty of examples that work as benchmarks and help the GM to anchor the fiction and extrapolate consistently.

For my D&D game I have my own mental benchmarks down, and I believe I am pretty good with keeping the DCs consistent. And yeah, this means that now that the characters are level 14, they just succeed at many things automatically due simple mathematics; their skill is just so high that they cannot roll so low that they wouldn't meet the DC. I also have my benchmarks for what the levels mean, to avoid populating towns with high level guards etc. And of course a lot of time the PCs deal with somewhat "level appropriate" stuff, but they also now live in world where they mow basically are among the most powerful people around and consequently a lot of mundane stuff is quite trivial to them. The high level chracters should feel powerful and capable.