DMG II Preview and Mearls old work

[LostSoul]

I would go with d)
Terrain features do not have levels.

You could call it "a numeric rating of game-world power" instead of "level" if it makes you happier.

 

[Lizard]

I would go with d)
Terrain features do not have levels.

Shrug. If you're going to interact with them, they need STATS, unless you're playing some commie hippie freeform Forge game. Which means there ought to be some mechanism by which you can determine stats. "Meh, it's AC 23 and has 20 hit points" works fine, of course, but it's nice to have a formula or guidelines for making sure the numbers you assign are viable for the type of interaction you expect. If you want the PCs to batter down a door, you want the door to be vulnerable to the kind of damage they can bring to bear.

In a 100% simulationist, sandbox, game, every item has "The stats it has", and you don't think about what kind of interaction the players "should" have with it. Even in a sandbox, though, there's usually areas of greater or lesser threat, and there's reasons to think about what sort of forces may interact with objects. So if you've got a village of frost giants, and they use doors, you have to assume the doors are tough enough that they can slow down a frost giant as well as a normal door slows down an average human. You can either calculate average frost giant damage and build doors which can take it, or you can use the "Leveled item" shortcut -- normal doors are Frost Giant level, secure doors are FG+2, the door to the Jarl's harem is FG+5. This lets you very quickly figure out the stats of any item in the region you haven't statted out.

Items don't have "levels", but they can be stronger or weaker, more or less damaging. The "level" system just helps you get to the base numbers faster and in a consistent manner -- the latter being the most important to me. "Make some up" often results in wildly varying results from game to game; a formula helps keep things regular.

 

[AllisterH]

I think it's what Lizard says.

All of these "terrain level" examples we have seen in both the DMG and now DMG II are presented to the DUNGEON MASTER and not what the player sees.

Basically, the only reason there is a door there is because I put that door there (I mean, if I wanted to, I could have easily just have said "the door is open" since if it is anything like my own house, I have multiple doors open at a time) and if I put that door there, I want the PCs to overcome it so I need the DCs FIRST before I need the description.

(You know...I could've sworn the DMG actually talked about this...Found it. Pg 23. Under Realism and no I'm not joking)

"Sometimes realism is a matter of very small details. If two wooden doors appear exactly the same but one requires a DC 16 STRength check to break through and the other one requires a DC 20 check, the world feels arbitary and inconsistent. It's fine for one door to be harder t break down, but your description should give cues about wy one door is so much sturdier than the other, whether it has adamantine reinforcements or a noticeable aura of magic sealing it shut. That makes the game world seem realistic"

It's basically the same method used for the monsters. As a DM, I don't really care "how my monster gets to doing X amounts of Damage". All I care is that at the level at which the monster interacts with the PCs, it does that much damage.

I don't care about feats and all of that and I think that's basically the 4e DM method. Don't sit there and try to figure out "ok, should I have a wooden door - no the DC too low, a adamantine door, no the DC is too high" but rather "ok, this is the DC for the door - hmm, this is inbetween wood and adamantine, ok, I have a description"