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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crimson Longinus" data-source="post: 9857763" data-attributes="member: 7025508">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.</blockquote>

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