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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5501040" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, perhaps, but I don't really see how the 4e design prevents that. The DM simply has to set DCs to give the desired effect. It is rather a corner case and means you're going to have to set some fairly arbitrary DCs, but remember, the world is not made of numbers. DCs are just a tool. The design of 4e gives you appropriate DCs out of the box probably 99% of the time. The other 1% you may have to set them by hand.Correspondingly the 3.5 way of doing things gets it right 1% of the time and for the vast majority of common cases leaves the DM with the responsibility to figure out how the party that doesn't happen to have a guy with 20 ranks in a useful skill will execute an 'epic' difficulty task. Actually combat and out-of-combat situations in 4e are quite consistent. If you spend none of your feats on increasing damage output and accuracy, adding additional effects onto your attacks, stacking stuff ala frostcheese etc then the character will be at best mediocre in combat at high levels. This is very similar to the guy that starts with a +15 Arcana and never dedicates anything more to it. He'll be pretty good even at level 30, but not the ultimate crackerjack arcanist.The reason it works this way is that it gives the players some control over the development of the character over its lifetime and gives a feeling of evolving and learning new tricks and actually working at being the ultimate guy for that skill. Again this is like combat where as you level you pick feats, powers, and items which work together to make you really effective.I don't think this is vastly difficult in either case. Skills have simple ways like taking Skill Focus and maybe getting a bonus from a power. With combat there are fairly straightforward obvious feats that you take, Superior Weapon Proficiency, Expertise, Weapon Focus, and some of the more situational feats.</blockquote>

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