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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6800634" data-attributes="member: 42582">This was discussed at great length in the <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?456928-Why-does-5E-SUCK/page74" target="_blank">Why does 5e SUCK?</a> thread, which you posted in.AD&D has very few DCs - you could treat location/detection checks in that way if you want, and loyalty/reaction checks - but they are mostly level-independent. Thief skill and saving throw chances of success increase with level. The closest thing I can think of to 4e-style level scaling is the use of magic item and DEX bonuses to give the drow in the D-series ACs that are actually a challenge to high-level PCs. (The fact that the drow items auto-disintegrate is an additional marker that their game function is not to be magic item treasure, but rather to make the ACs of the enemies meaningful.)3E has DCs, but the scaling rules for skill DCs are based on in-fiction descriptors ("very well made lock", "steep cliff with overhangs", etc) rather than correlated with level. Save DCs are more obviously level-correlated.4e gives tables that explicitly correlate DCs to levels, which - as was discussed at length in that thread - some GMs find makes life easier when it comes to adventure and encounter design in a system where PC capabilities scale extensively. (The trigger for the whole discussion was the comment by one poster that the lack of such advice or tables in 5e is a reason why it "sucks", as that lack makes it harder for the GM to assign DCs in a manner that will generate desired success rates - the more profitable outcome of that post was some discussion of the way in which "bounded accuracy" works and the extent to which it succeeds in making the issue a non-issue.)Some posters in the thread asserted that level-scaling in 4e means that the DC for the very same ingame phenomenon may vary based on level, but I have never actually heard of a 4e GM running the game that way, and nothing in the rulebooks suggests that the game is intended to be run that way.Here is a re-post of post 1261 in that thread:Those last few paragraphs actually make some points about GMing techniques and mechanical support for them that are relevant to thinking about how "fail forward"-style games work, and how they differ from games in which the fiction, and its mechanical expression, is all pre-authored by the GM.See above for the discussion of out-of-combat. Within combat scaling of opponents was mostly in terms of hit points able to be taken, hit points of damage delivered, and magical effects that could be inflicted. As the D-series shows, though, Gygax was aware that scaling ACs was an important tool that could raise some tricky issues. (3E didn't really solve this problem for NPCs, who are notorious for dropping too much magical loot because it is necessary to get there numbers into some sort of balance, but doesn't disintegrate like Gygax's drow loot. For non-NPCs it invented the "natural armour class" bonus, something completely spurious in my view and ungrounded in any robust fictional sense - eg what does it mean to say that a great red dragon has "natural armour" granting a bonus more than twice as good as is provided by the very best magical plate armour?)I don't think I understand this point. "Story" in an RPG is primarily a series of events resulting from the resolution of players' action declarations for their PCs. And those action declarations are resolved via checks.In my experience, if investing resources in succeeding at checks has little or no effect on the direction of the "story" - ie does not tend to increase the likelihood of the player (and his/her PC) getting what s/he wants, then the players get frustrated.This has certainly been my experience in campaigns and gaming groups where heavy GM control, typically taking the form of imposing a pre-written plot, is the norm. In D&D a particular form that this takes is building PCs who very heavily emphasise combat capability, because even the most railroad-y D&D GMs tend to use the combat resolution rules, which means that building combat capable PCs is one way building PCs who will be able to shape the campaign (admittedly in a rather limited sort of way ie by killing things) via deployment of the action resolution mechanics.</blockquote>

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