Does 4e limit the scope of campaigns?

[Nightson]

The DM tells you if a skill check is appropriate in a given situation or directs you to make a check if circumstances call for one.

The DC depends on what you’re trying to accomplish and is ultimately set by the Dungeon Master. The skill entries in this chapter give sample DCs for each skill. The DM sets the DCs for specific situations based on level, conditions, and circumstances, as detailed in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.

If a character tries an action that might fail...

A quick rule of thumb is to start with a DC of 10 (easy), 15 (moderate), or 20 (hard) and add one-half the character’s level

There's no difference in any of the examples, they're all examples, some are just more abstract then others.

 

[Burrito Al Pastor]

Ok what I mean is this...

Open Lock

Heroic Tier 20
Paragon Tier 30
Epic Tier 35

As opposed to...

Climb DC's...
Surface

Ladder 0
Rope 10
Uneven Surface (Cave Wall) 15
Rough Surface (Brick Wall) 20
Slippery Surface +5
Unusually Smooth Surface +5

It's a consistency issue. In one example the DC's are derived through an objective comparison of negative attributes that effect the difficulty... in the other it is abstracted into "tiers" which honestly mean what? All I'm saying is that there would have been less confusion if they had stuck with a single way of setting DC's... either as tiers or as the negative attributes that affect the skill.

Would you have preferred "Cheap", "Average", and "Difficult" locks? Or would you have rather had warded locks, disc tumbler locks, bit key locks, and a list of modifiers like double-bitted keys or unusually large numbers of levers?

Walls are a list of types with modifiers because everybody knows what a wall is. Locks are lumped into three broad categories because the details of how the locks are different are too technical for a mass-market RPG.

 

[Imaro]

Would you have preferred "Cheap", "Average", and "Difficult" locks? Or would you have rather had warded locks, disc tumbler locks, bit key locks, and a list of modifiers like double-bitted keys or unusually large numbers of levers?

Walls are a list of types with modifiers because everybody knows what a wall is. Locks are lumped into three broad categories because the details of how the locks are different are too technical for a mass-market RPG.

I would have liked consistency, where they just put everything in the heroic, paragon, epic categories... and explain what these categories actually mean and how to use them in a clear and concise manner.

 

[Lizard]

EDIT: Me? I'd say "just a ledge" is always DC 10. In order to justify a paragon-level DC, it must be more than a ledge. Lava and cattle-prod's could help.

A ledge of elemental ice...
A ledge of searing brass...
A ledge on a plane where gravity is randomly variable...

I have no problem imagining a DC 40 Acrobatics check ledge. I only have a problem with the idea it becomes a DC 10 ledge if a 1st level PC walks on it.

 

[Lizard]

Would you have preferred "Cheap", "Average", and "Difficult" locks? Or would you have rather had warded locks, disc tumbler locks, bit key locks, and a list of modifiers like double-bitted keys or unusually large numbers of levers?

I would have.

Mostly because I DON'T know much about locks, and I'd like to be able to use cool descriptive terms like "disc tumbler" (whatever that is) when telling the party rogue about the DC 30 lock he's found. Or I'd like to know how tough a non-magical lock could "Reasonably" be in a low iron age culture vs. a high Renaissance culture -- it would make it interesting if the PCs found that "average" locks in one city were much more complex than those in another, NOT because the PCs were higher level but because the cities had different levels of local craftsmen. And if the PCs want to buy a DC 25 lock, I'd like to have an idea of how skilled a locksmith would need to be to make one, so I can decide if there's going to be one in a tiny village or if they'd need to travel to a big city. I want the world to feel as if it exists for some purpose other than to satisfy the PCs whims, that there aren't Gypsy Magic Item Buyers in every village just because the PCs might have magic items to unload. I feel the game is more fun -- yes, FUN -- if the world feels real, if it's not painfully obvious how thin the veneer of "realism" is. A set made of paper maiche is still preferable to one made of tissue paper.

 

[Thasmodious]

Seems a lot of people understand the 4e rules as written, get the intent, follow the examples and meanings, understand what is meant by exception based design and what is meant by challenges scaling with level (as Mr. Thompson explained). It seems a lot of people don't.

This is just speculation, but I wonder if a lot of the people that don't "get" 4e possess considerable game mastery of 3e (or another edition)? You hear a lot of talk about how 4e "removed" craft skills or "took away" half orcs and other things that show the person writing the message is reading 4e as an extension of 3e, comparing everything to how it was done in 3e. Doing this leads to a lot of misconceptions, such as the idea that the intent of scaling DCs is that things actually become harder to do with level. Or that sliding down a bannister and kicking an opponent does a massive amount more damage at epic tier than it does at heroic tier.

This is not meant to be insulting in any way. I don't mean that some people who have problems with 4e didn't read it right or just aren't smart enough to understand it. On the surface, 4e looks like an extension of 3e, but is really a considerably different philosophy, so if you apply the "3e mindest" to it, a lot of things don't make sense or are easily misintepreted. Similarly, 4e plays a lot like 1e but doesn't look anything like it. If a 1e player who never moved on read 4e they would hardly recognize the game, despite the fact that many people who have played both editions find the experience of the latter is evocative of the first.

I have a pair of friends who are big time CharOps guys, both post regularly on the CharOps board and both are experts with 3e and know it inside and out. Both read 4e and just really didn't "get it" for exactly the reason I mentioned above, making some of these same common misconceptions. They were viewing the game as a sequel to 3e and expected it to follow 3e's general philosophy when that is definitely something 4e does not do. A huge difference in philosophies is static DCs versus PC based interaction.

On the other hand, I never quite got 3e, and I didn't realize it until after 4e had come out. I played and DMed it for years, tweaked and houseruled the crap out of it to cover what I wanted it to do, grumbled about its multiclassing limitations, etc. Whenever I needed to create a character I went to the two guys mentioned above. They were experts. I said "here's my concept, how do I pull this off". They replied "take the following 4 classes at these levels, take these 7 feats from these 5 different books..." and they did this without needing much time to consult, they just knew things cold, knew how the system worked and how to get the most out of it. But there was an underlying philosophy to 3e that I just didn't really "get" and it caused me to misconstrue many things and, of course, dislike many things because that just isn't my approach.

I get 4e, I get the philosophy behind the game, it makes sense to me and works with the way I want to run games. I like that it plays fast and loose like the old school and that effort was put in to streamline rules into broadly applicable sets of easily understood and manipulated mechanics like the power framework, skill challenges, pg 42. I like and get the weight of the mechanics and intent behind them. I understood on reading that the intention of level scaling DCs was that the PCs are expected to be facing challenges their level and the same lock has the same DC if encountered twice.

Again, I really want to stress that I'm not denigrating anyone, as I realize it could sound like that, especially given my tendency to get sucked into editionwarz. Instead, I am just trying to stress that its important to realize 4e is a new edition, not a sequel, and that reading it as such can lead to some of these misinterpretations. That doesn't mean Wizards wrote a bad book or that some people aren't smart enough to get it, its just inevitable. If you show the same paragraph to a 1000 people and ask them to tell you what it means you are going to get a lot of different interpretations.

That banister example someone mentioned a page or two back is a good example. Someone thinking about a stunt like that might interpret pg 42 to mean that an epic PC must somehow pack such a wallop by sliding super fast or something that it does a massive amount more damage at lvl 26 than it did when he kicked an orc at 2nd level off the same banister. It doesn't. Hit points are abstract. The stunt does enough damage for the opponent to notice it. Sliding off the banister and doing a set 4 points of damage is a waste of an action at epic level. With the rules as they are, it has the same relative effect at lvl 2 and lvl 26, it does enough for the level appropriate challenge monster to notice. Hit points and damage are abstract and whether the opponent is a lowly kobold or an efreet noble its going to be demoralizing to get a whole bootfull of your awesome right up in its grill in front of everyone.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

So really what is the difference if people choose to max their skills out in 4e as opposed to 3.5? How has any of this actually been solved, except through player agreement or DM fiat (same as in 3.5) in 4e?

It isn't as big of a problem. Keep in mind that the difference between +16 and +7 is still such that a DC 20 is an appropriate challenge for both of them. The +16 guy is likely going to be the guy doing it, however.

I don't have a problem with specialists. This is exactly the difference between characters in 4e. In 3e, the math works out such that there are specialists(those with race, feat, class, other modifiers or a high stat with max ranks), people who are good at the skill(anyone who just took max ranks with a low stat modifier and no other bonuses), and people who can't use the skill(anyone with less than 75% of the max ranks in the skill). In 4e, there are specialists(trained while stacking feat, race, backgrounds), people who are good at the skill(trained in it and a high stat modifier), people who are ok at the skill(trained in it with a bad stat modifier, or not trained in it with a good stat modifier), and people who are poor at it(anyone not trained in it with a bad stat modifier).

Even with your example, if you have a DC 20 challenge, the guy with +16 it going to fail some of the time and the guy with +1 due to a 12 in the stat and no training is going to succeed some of the time. That's the key. You never run into a situation where you CAN'T set a DC without guaranteeing success or preventing anyone but the specialist from contributing(before anyone tries it, I am aware that at the absolute maximum difference it is possible to make a DC that breaks it. But you have to REALLY work at it).

The thing is, at 1st level, if I set a DC of 15, I know that anyone who super specializes will succeed automatically(+14-16). Anyone who trains in the skill and is good at it(+10-12) will succeed most of the time. Anyone who simply trains it in or has a good stat with no training(+5-7) succeeds a lot of the time, with a significant chance of failure, anyone who doesn't train at all in it(+0-2) has a bigger chance to fail than they do to succeed, but a real chance of succeeding.

This creates an fairly accurate way of setting DCs based on how you want a group to do. DC 20 is the sort of check that the average group(one without a specialist) succeeds roughly 55% of the time, a poor group succeeds 30% of the time, and an exceptional group succeeds 80% of the time. It's the "hard" check at 1st level. You can easily adjust this up and down. DC 10 for "easy" checks, DC 15 for "moderate" checks, DC 25 for "nearly impossible" tasks. This holds true all the way through level 30. Where the highest bonus is +31 and the lowest is +15. If you set a DC at 20 and the specialist is away from the party, not showing up for the session, or if you have no idea if the group has a specialist....then the group still has a chance of succeeding.

As a side note, before anyone points out that the Skill Challenge DCs are lower than these, I've gotten word from the people at WOTC that the reason the DCs are so low in the errata'd version is because they assume that PCs will often be forced to roll their low skills. If you allow the PCs to choose their own skills every time in a skill challenge, it's recommended that you up the DCs at least 5 points.

This is in contrast to the 3e method, which could range from -2 through +55(or slightly higher) at level 20. So, if you set the DC at 60 so that the specialist has an 80% chance and he is unable to make the check, the guy with +30 due to "only" having max ranks, a 20 in the appropriate stat and a racial bonus can't possibly succeed.

In summary, specialists aren't the problem. The gap between specialists and the lowest person in the group is a problem. As a side note, ranks would work fine house ruled into 4e as long as the most ranks you could put in was 5 and you kept the +1/2 level, and there was no "trained" skills.

 

[Thasmodious]

I would have.

Mostly because I DON'T know much about locks, and I'd like to be able to use cool descriptive terms like "disc tumbler" (whatever that is) when telling the party rogue about the DC 30 lock he's found. Or I'd like to know how tough a non-magical lock could "Reasonably" be in a low iron age culture vs. a high Renaissance culture -- it would make it interesting if the PCs found that "average" locks in one city were much more complex than those in another, NOT because the PCs were higher level but because the cities had different levels of local craftsmen. And if the PCs want to buy a DC 25 lock, I'd like to have an idea of how skilled a locksmith would need to be to make one, so I can decide if there's going to be one in a tiny village or if they'd need to travel to a big city.

That's all well and good, but I think it's hard to argue that considerations like those should take up precious space in the core books. Nor could it all actually. If you are going to insist on that level of detail, it needs to be across the board, not just about one thing. Even highly detail oriented rules systems don't approach the level of detail that would be needed to cover all the things you would need to cover to justify describing locks in that level of detail. You would need a few dozen break DC tables to cover all the variations of locks, ropes, chains, windows, doors, walls, manacles, all divided up by the technological capabilities of the society that crafted said materials. It would be unworkable, even if it would be kinda cool. Maybe someday when RPGs are entirely integrated with technology the game system database would instantly produce such detail.

 

[Lizard]

That banister example someone mentioned a page or two back is a good example. Someone thinking about a stunt like that might interpret pg 42 to mean that an epic PC must somehow pack such a wallop by sliding super fast or something that it does a massive amount more damage at lvl 26 than it did when he kicked an orc at 2nd level off the same banister. It doesn't. Hit points are abstract. The stunt does enough damage for the opponent to notice it. Sliding off the banister and doing a set 4 points of damage is a waste of an action at epic level. With the rules as they are, it has the same relative effect at lvl 2 and lvl 26, it does enough for the level appropriate challenge monster to notice. Hit points and damage are abstract and whether the opponent is a lowly kobold or an efreet noble its going to be demoralizing to get a whole bootfull of your awesome right up in its grill in front of everyone.

That was me with the bannister.

And, yes, what you're describing makes my head go all splodey-like. I "get" that hit points are abstract -- they always have been. However, most means of reducing hit points are not. A longsword doesn't scale with level -- if your epic level character is somehow deprived of his magic longsword and forced to use a normal one, his basic attack is 1d8+Str, just like it was at first level, no matter how many hit points his enemy has. So why should his stunt damage scale? "Because if it didn't, it wouldn't be worth doing"? Well, then, maybe it's NOT. Wizards do not cast Magic Missile at Orcus (unless they're out of all dailies, encounters, magic items, etc). Fighters DON'T use basic attacks if they have any other choice. And if you want epic-level stunt damage, IMO, you'd better come up with an epic-level stunt: Don't slide down a bannister, dive from 50 feet up with your blade pointed straight down, skewering the foe in a way no first level character could imagine doing (not if he wanted to live...)

What I, and others, are complaining -- or at least non-plussed -- about is *inconsistency*. Is 4e a wholly narrative game where everything is scaled, so that you could just as easily describe damage as a fixed % of hit points? (i.e, this attack does 5% damage to a level appropriate monster, plus or minus 1 percent for each level above/below the PC)? Or does "10 hit points" *mean* something: Enough to bloody a kobold, not enough to scratch a dragon, and it means the same thing whether the source of the 10 hit points is a first level character or a 20th level one? Are DCs objective or subjective? Should the DM use "common sense", or simply say whatever it says in the rules, goes? (Before you wholeheartedly say "the former", consider that official party line is that the DM should ignore "common sense" when it comes to "How do you knock an ooze prone?" and "How do you 'pin' a flying monster which is not next to any surface?") The game design seems to be caught midway between old-style simulationism and new-style narrativism, and it seems fans tend to support whichever interpretation puts 4e in the most positive light. If simulation plays better in a given situation, 4e is simulationist; if narrativism plays better, 4e is narrativist. It's a floor wax AND a dessert topping!

4e is, indeed, a lot of fun to play and I look forward to our weekly game a lot, but in order to have fun with it, I have to disconnect a lot of logic circuits and, especially in combat, stop trying to imagine myself "in" the action and instead go into full on Tactical Minis Game mode, so I'm not bothered by "immobilized" creatures being shoved all over the map, non-Euclidean geometry, and the fact I can be immobilized inside a gelatinous cube and whirl my twin bastard swords around with no penalty whatsoever (as I did last week). "Common sense" says that someone who is grabbed, held, or otherwise restrained should not be as effective in combat as a free man, but 4e's "immobilized" condition merely keeps me from leaving my square under my own power -- I can fight just as effectively as anyone else, and as a melee combatant, I usually don't even WANT to move.

 

[Spatula]

It's a consistency issue that could have easily been resolved if the designers had decided on one way to represent DC's for in-game challenges...either through objective description or tier based assignment... but why both?

I generally agree with that, but also note (backing up Halivar's point) that the DMG DCs are under a section titled, "Actions the Rules Don't Cover." OTOH, they show up again (page 60-something) for DCs for hindering terrain, and I do think there is some potential confusion there.