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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RodneyThompson" data-source="post: 4673813" data-attributes="member: 3594">Augh, I just had a whole huge post responding to a bunch of people, and then my computer ate it. For the love of...this is going to be much more brief than it was intended to be.I think it's easy to dismiss the abstraction here as not making sense, but I can think of a number of ways it does. Maybe you're just better at improvising maneuvers, maybe you're physically stronger, maybe both. Why does a longsword do more damage at higher levels (not just 4E; think about how stuff like Power Attack worked in 3E). We accept the abstraction as a function of your general prowess increasing.I think, in many cases, they are clearly called out as examples. You start with the tools (page 42 and 61) and create specific examples. That being said: the quote from page 23 talks about the importance of realism. Those static numbers are examples of how to create realism and consistency. They are not the be-all, end-all, though, and we give the ability for DMs to improvise challenges when those fixed rules don't cover it.Not everyone and everything that the PCs interact with--just the people that are meant to challenge them! It's perfectly OK to have lower-level peons in the City of Brass, but they're not going to be as much of a challenge. The idea of putting epic threats in the City of Brass is to present a challenge to the heroes. If you want to present a lesser challenge, or none at all, then by all means do so. However, it's just as easy to assume that the City of Brass has epic locks on the doors to keep out the epic thieves that roam the city, not just the PCs. So a list of 5 doors isn't good enough, but 6 is? Of course, I'm just ribbing you here, but it does bring up a point: how much is enough? How many examples do you need? I could give you a list of a description of doors/locks/walls/whatever at every DC from 1 to 40...or I can give you the tools to make your own and 5 ideas, which is what was done.Also: I believe that there is some truth to the saying, "to define is to confine." If I give you too many definitions, you have the problem of the DM/players/designers being straightjacketed in the definitions you've already given in the DMG. You should be consistent, but some people will say, "OK, I need a DC 24 door for the PCs to break down...guess it HAS to be an adamantine-banded door made of treant wood." And, of course, the first time you do something different in a published module, well, suddenly your designers are hacks, your editors should be fired, and you're not publishing quality material. <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=";)" />This is exactly what the DMG section on Realism is talking about. If it's just a ledge, you can use the sample DCs which assume it's Just a Ledge. If it's a ledge of ice covered in jagged shards of icicles, it might just be a paragon tier ledge...so you use the scaling DCs. Just because you become paragon tier doesn't mean that every ledge is a paragon ledge; it only is a paragon ledge if you, the DM, need it to be. And then you need to describe it accordingly. Because sometimes you want specificity, and sometimes you don't? Because unless you know a lot about how locks work, specific descriptions don't help you visualize it any easier? You can argue that the Open Lock DC descriptions are not to your taste, and I'll buy it. To say it's some larger flaw of game design seems more like a stretch, since playing and DMing a roleplaying game demands some level of common sense and the ability to put together different mechanical concepts. We can safely assume you understand both what specific examples mean, and what "paragon tier" means.I think this is where the section on Realism from page 23 has to come into play. Besides, if you've already defined the ledge at DC 40, then that's the DC. You use the improvisation rules to define, mechanically, the current situation. If you tie a description to a DC, it's a two-way street; once you've tied a DC to a description, you should stick with it.</blockquote>

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