D&D 5E How is 5E like 4E?

[Neonchameleon]

That these are the things that are used as the only example that sticks of how you get "better" in the 4e skill system is, to me, extremely ironic.

They aren't. And that you say they are tells me that you aren't actually bothering to read what has been written, instead cherry picking only what you can deal with.

Your skill increases and it's visible that the numbers are going up. If you repeat the same task the DC is still the same and you can see how you've improved. You also see that the same foes become less of a threat also show how you've improved.

And that 5e half-assed its skill system, not benchmarking anything so you don't actually know what a skill level means while at the same time hard coding things so you can show that you literally aren't improving doesn't mysteriously make it better than a skill system with benchmarks.

 

[Neonchameleon]

It's also how the 5e skill system works -- even a dump skill can make easy checks most of the time.

Only if "most of the time" means "barely over half the time".

The claim was that 4e dump skills still showed you getting better, when, effectively, that doesn't matter because of how the DC system works

Except that as has been pointed out it does matter because of how the monster math and the DC skill system works.

But, this same effect in 5e was held out as showing incompetence.

This is a misrepresentation. It's not just the same effect, it's that you are doing literally the same things and see no progress.

The only effective difference, though, is what number you're adding to the d20 -- the outcomes are the same.

Nope. The fiction is different.

Anyway, I should disengage here. I can't tell whether you've not bothered to read or just don't have any arguments but aren't willing to change your mind. Either way goodbye.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Ah, @Neonchamequoted me twice and then blocked me. I had no idea the discussion was so acrimonious for them. It's not for me -- I very much like 4e. His having a difference of opinion was not upsetting to me at all.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If you neglect a skill in 4e you will still get better at it. Which has a meaningful in game effect. If you've entirely neglected both skill and stat and are trying to attempt something hard you have screwed up badly.

Meanwhile the 5e skill system was slapped together to the point they couldn't be bothered to work out how the DCs related to what the PCs were trying to do. That said it's not the worst part of the 5e DM tools; the DMG monster design tools not only don't work but they couldn't even be bothered to make them match the Monster Manual. 5e does a lot right from the players' side of the screen but for DMs "broken treadmills" is a good metaphor.

So let's look at the actual math of 5e.

An easy task is DC 10. Which means someone with no skill and no training has about a 50% chance of completing it (yes, I'm rounding down and it's actually 55%). This leads to the following effects in play:

• If you have only a 50% chance of doing something and failure has consequences it's a bad roll and you should only do it in an emergency.
• If you have a 50% chance of doing something and failure has no consequences it's bad to roll and you should just take 10 or 20.

The results of this are that in 5e if you have entirely neglected a skill you should never be doing it unless you have somehow got advantage. In 4e you use easy skill checks to pitch in and help even if you're no good at the thing being done; you've spotted a great opportunity because (at least the version I use and I fully accept there were several iterations) it needs a 7 not a 10 as the default and you've a 2/3 chance of making things better.

Just need to add. I am looking at the DC chart in my Essentials Rules Compendium, the most updated version of the DCs. A level 1 Easy DC is 8. A level 30 Easy DC is 24. This is a delta of 16 points, which means that a level 30 PC (+15 level bonus) is perfectly capable of passing this check about 65% of the time (you get at least an increase of +1 by Epic in all ability bonuses relative to level 1). So, PCs never 'fall off the wagon' WRT Easy checks in 4e. Moderate checks increase by 20 points (from 12 to 32), which means they WILL be roughly equivalent to a level 1 Hard check (a bit easier) for a level 30 with just baseline advancement in a skill. Hard checks increase by 23 points, so they go from "Only on a 19" for the talentless PC to mildly impossible. Merely gaining proficiency in the related skill will MORE THAN correct for this difference. So, really, considering other likely smaller bonuses many PCs get over 30 levels to many skills, most characters will either slightly improve, or stay the same, on most checks when they didn't invest in the skill.

Do you own a 4e PHB? Because skill descriptions in 4e that have at least some static DCs include:

• Acrobatics (balance)
• Arcana (Identify conjuration or zone, identify ritual, identify magical effect, sense the presence of magic)
• Athletics
• Dungeoneering (Foraging)
• Endurance
• Heal
• Insight (recognise effect as illusionary)
• Nature (Forage)
• Perception (Listen difficulties, Spot or search, Find tracks)
• Streetwise
• Thievery (Disable trap, open lock)

Oh, and knowledge checks for quite a few things. Admittedly Essentials has slightly less (I can't find my Rules Cyclopaedia to check)

Essentials gets a little 'weird', there are a couple sentences in the RC that almost seem like they are trying to say that every DC "Just magically increases" to match your level. I don't know if that was bad editing, or what. Other parts of RC are pretty much consistent with the Original PHB1/DMG1 rules though. Frankly, though I think some parts of the Essentials rules are a genuine improvement (Skill Challenges basically) I'd ignore a lot of the rest of it. It either misstates several things, or states them in ways which simply don't make sense, usually in a misguided attempt to 'simplify' something (falling, flying, and mounts for instance, just use DMG1).

4e was not 3.5 and it was not 5e. It was in many ways a transitional form. And in many ways this gave it strengths that neither individually has; it's a much looser skill system than 3.5 without being the entire loosy-goosey "we couldn't be bothered with any sort of benchmark; ask your DM" of 5e.

And I think it was right to have fewer fixed checks - but that it has some should kill any idea that there's no progression and you're just on a treadmill stone cold dead. The only treadmill you are on in 4e is that as you level up you take on harder challenges - the way it has always been. You're physically and mentally more capable because you've learned things, unlike in 5e.

Honestly, I am not really concerned about the whole issue anyway. 4e could have NO defined 'objective' checks at all, it wouldn't change my opinion/interpretation of it at all. In fact I would not, and haven't, used any of the 'fixed DC' stuff in ages when running it. AT MOST I would consider those DCs 'advisory', that is they are more useful to a GM when building an adventure in order to understand the sort of thematic material that the designers considered appropriate at whatever level you are playing at. So, if you are playing a level 1 adventure, then 20' leaps are challenging but quite doable with a running start, for a talented character. Put those in. For Epic characters you want at least 30' or even 40' leaps. Likewise you would describe a strong door as 'wooden' at level 1, and 'adamantium' at level 30. Noting that if the PCs haul that adamantium door back home and sell it to the dwarves, it is worth a big pile of coin! So the fiction really does care.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Which system?

Burning Wheel has this: lots of difficulties listed for many if not all skills. Any table is of course free to depart from them (and there are some differences between editions, and my charts don't draw exclusively on Revised or Gold but rather straddle the two), but they provide a basic "picture" of a setting.

But I don't think such a thing would be useful for 4e. BW does not need a particular success/failure rate to drive its gameplay; it has other devices for that. But 4e works best when the maths is properly aligned (hence the adjustments to the maths over the lifetime of the edition) and this means that good DC-by-level charts are important, and these are correlated with fiction moment-by-moment to build up the table's sense of what the different tiers of play mean (as per my quote from @LostSoul upthread).

A concreate example: at the high end of Epic Tier one of the players in my 4e game succeeded on a DC 41 Arcana check to seal the Abyss. This was a Hard check at level 29.

Now it's possible for a Heroic tier PC to have a +21 Arcana bonus - eg +6 from a stat of 22, +8 from proficiency and focus, +2 from an item, +2 from race, +2 from background or theme, and +1 from some other sundry bonus. That doesn't mean that, on a roll of 20 giving a total of 41, that PC could seal the Abyss. Such a feat is simply not within the scope of fictional possibilities for a Heroic tier PC. This is what I mean when I say that, in 4e at least as I understand and approach it, the fiction - based on the table's shared understanding of what is possible for PCs of a given tier - comes first, and then mechanics are used to ensure the numbers that are assigned are appropriate for the gameplay. So in the case of sealing the Abyss, it is possible for a level 29 PC to do it, but definitely Hard - hence the DC is 41.

I generally agree with this. Where I disagree is in the Athletics rules for jumping in combat - which establish an at-will baseline against which other abilities are to be measured - and the Perception vs Stealth checks for dealing with hiding and invisibility in combat. But for foraging and the like, it is the skill challenge maths that is important and those charts in the PHB are just a distraction. (Here I disagree with @Neonchameleon.)


The second of these quotes is in my view more accurate than the first as a description of how (what I am calling) a system of "subjective" difficulties works (eg 4e as I understand it, HeroQuest revised, Marvel Heroic RP, also Agon and even Apocalypse World insofar as these have few or no modifiers to reflect circumstantial difficulty, outsourcing all that to the narration of framing and consequence). The fiction takes care of itself - we have a table understanding of what is possible at a given level/tier - and DCs are set by reference to the level-appropriate charts (whether for skills, or monsters, in the latter case having regard to the possibility of higher level monsters for various purposes and in the former case having regard to Easy, Medium and Hard checks as well as different complexities of skill challenge).

There are long lists of traps, creatures, terrain and architectural features, etc with numbers assigned, but these are (in my view) just guides: they give you some default fiction for your level/tier. Departing from them - eg 12th level non-minion bugbears, an iron door that is DC 30 (ie moderate level 27) rather than DC 25 (DMG p 64) to break down, etc - won't cause any problems as long as no one balks at the aesthetic result (eg a bugbear that is a meaningful challenge to a paragon tier PC; a metal door that a demigod cannot bust through without effort; etc).

The first of the two quotes is correct to say that, on the approach I'm describing, the setting of a DC is not based on the fiction but is not really correct to say that good practice is to make sure your fiction aligns with those DCs as there is no "alignment" beyond the fact that no one at the table balks at the scene as framed, nor finds the resolution contrived or threatening to verisimilitude. I think this is a difference from 5e, where if climbing the mountain with pitons and robe was deemed DC 15 last session then one would expect it to be the same this session: at least as I understand it, 5e DCs are meant to correlate to the fiction in a consistent way. Likewise the difference between a monster with 50 hp and +6 to hit and one with 80 hp and +7 to hit is expected to be noticeable in the fiction. The idea of the maths purely as a pacing/gameplay device is not part of the 5e approach, as best I understand it. Again, this is what I am getting at via the terminology of "objective" vs "subjective" DCs. And in this respect I see 5e as being like BW, Classic Traveller and AD&D. (And probably 3E too, but 3E is weird enough to me at least that I don't really know what sense to make of its difficulty rules.)

I don't think I have any really great dispute with what you are saying as a representation of most PRACTICE of 4e. That is, I'm going to have that level 12 bugbear, and he's going to have some swirly ninja-like fluff maybe to his moves. Mechanically he's just a bugbear jacked to level 12, and I used that particular level to depict him because it was convenient to do so, and not through some deep analysis of what kind of challenge Bugbearjutsu should be (and how would I know anyway, its all fantasy, there's nothing to go on). Likewise adamantium doesn't exist and cannot be objectively rated for hardness, it is just a word that evokes an idea. So, we describe the black clad super bugbear leaping out of the darkness with a great KIYIEEEHHH! and thwacking the fighter up side the head with a roundhouse kick. Ouch, you just took 4d8+12 damage from that surprise kick! Yup, a bugbear seems to have rather easily hit you, even though you are a mighty Paragon Arena Master!

OTOH, I would fully expect that that specific bugbear will be a super badass regardless of what party he goes against. I might change his numbers up to make him a Solo of level 4 if he's kicking the arse of a level 1 party, but his fiction, and whatever mechanics are selected to represent it, will be pretty consistent and have a fictional basis.

Admittedly, stock Standard monsters are not exactly something you need spend vast amounts of time describing and justifying. It may well be that said bugbear gets exactly 2 minutes in play and nobody gives a fig why he's level 12, unless it has some profound plot relevance. I still don't feel like FUNDAMENTALLY the DCs are subjective though. I just think they are not really the focus of play.

Having played 4e and 5e, I must say, there seems to be a lot more focus on this sort of justification, and on the minutia of what exactly justifies every DC in 5e. It can get rather tedious IME. You have all this mechanics, but it doesn't actually DELIVER ANYTHING, because the GM can simply call for another check or describe what happens next as something trivial, regardless of what I invested in success.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The fiction increases because the DC does. The DC does not increase because the fiction does. This is apparent -- change the chart to a different progression and you'll have to alter the fiction you're using. If you change your fiction first, it now no longer aligns with the chart, and the players will be seeing DCs outside of the range suggested by the fiction.

Also, there's my conversation with @pemerton that clearly suggests his approach is to only make sure the tier is represented in the fiction, actual DCs are selected due to pacing or challenge concerns. They only need align to the fiction enough that they aren't glaringly inappropriate.

I honestly have no idea what you mean by this. I am STARTING AND ENDING WITH FICTION. The DC is simply a number, which happens to work within the context of the other mechanics of 4e. If those numbers were different, then the mechanics would be different, but the fundamental mechanical assumption of about a 55-65% success rate would still obtain. No fiction would change at all.

I mean, obviously if you want to imagine 'not-4e' that uses a different overall success rate, then maybe (depending on other factors) you might want to change the fiction at a given level, but this not-4e is (wait for it) NOT 4E! lol.

As I just said to @pemerton, I don't have a real big bone with the idea that GMs don't spend all their time intricately developing every fictional justification for every exact DC/Level they assign to each element in play, especially the less important ones. Still, I absolutely start from the fiction. I absolute end with the fiction. Numbers are a tool which can be used to make the mechanics support that fiction. Granting Pemerton's point, I could make the bugbear level 16 and meh, yeah, the same fiction will 'stick' because level 12 and level 16 are both pretty much 'mid-paragon' and nobody is going to care THAT much.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Great! Here's the thing. Bob the Ignores Climbing Skills Man has exactly the same chance to scale the loose scree slope of gentleness at 1st level (an easy challenge, DC 8) as he does to scale the cliffs of Tartarus at 30th (DC 24) for "reasons." Nifty. It looks like Bob has gotten better, but, in reality, Bob is on a treadmill and will never, as I've been told multiple times, ever even have to roll to climb the loose scree slope of gentleness. It's a non-issue now. But, when I say that 5e lets the GM determine this, I get met with disbelieve -- there's no way 5e suggests doing this! But, it does, because the guidance is to consider if the task is uncertain, and, if so, has a consequence for failure. Bob in 5e, at 20th level, faces no consequence of note from the loose scree slope of gentleness, and the climb up the cliffs of Tartarus can be an easy task in 5e as well with the right approach. So, Bob in 5e has the same chances as well. This is my point -- there's nothing about the monotonous increase in baseline numbers in 4e, because, in play, it just keeps you in the same place against the math increase, at the easy end. The hard end, though, is a different matter. If the tasks to climb above are hard instead of easy, Bob the 4e character will never climb the cliffs of Tartarus -- he cannot make the check. For Bob in 5e, he still has a chance at it.

And I take it as the 4e approach is entirely successful, by default. 'Bob' climbs the scree with difficulty at level 1 and the slope in Tartarus at level 30. Yeah, so what if the numbers are the same on the DC, it is the fiction I care about, and how the game engine DRIVES the resulting outcomes. Its a d20 system, so there isn't really all that much choice in terms of numbers on the dice being the same. I mean, if you want to do dice pools, then you can make bigger pools match against bigger DCs instead of using a level bonus type of concept.

5e just misses the boat here, yes, you can simply set the DC of Tartarus the same as the DC of level 1's scree. Fair enough, but you have radically changed the relationship of the challenge for every other PC except Bob! (IE the ones that are proficient).

And 4e's RC DC chart indicates that even a Hard level 30 check is only BARELY impossible for 4e Bob. I mean, granted, even if he finds another +5 he is unlikely to pass the check, but then again 5e Bob won't either if the GM actually increases the DC, which I think he is obliged to do if he wants to demonstrate more dangerous circumstances.

Sure, 4e without using an SC has a valence issue similar to 5e, but the fact is 4e DOES have SCs, and they are normally pretty easy to implement for situations of a "We take on this environmental/terrain challenge" I would be surprised to find very many GMs who are unable to make that work. I don't think it is fair to judge 4e on the basis of no SCs any more than it is fair to judge 5e on the basis of ignorance about how skills should(n't) be used, if it comes down to it.

So, if we look at both systems PROPERLY PLAYED, then 4e provides both terrains as SCs or SC elements, and provides a DC which will mechanically work with the characters of the PC's level, trusting that the GM will 'skin' things in an milieu/genre appropriate way (IE Tartarus vs some hill near town). Each of these SCs will, presumably, yield equivalent chances of success.

5e will provide that you can ask for a skill check. The GM will then have to ask himself if he wants to depict the climb in Tartarus as any different from the one near town. Maybe yes, maybe no, its up to him... Presumably he folds in some sort of sense of 'genre appropriateness' and maybe he decides the slope in Tartarus is 'equivalently hard', and then most of the party will just climb up with basically no chance of failure. Nobody even knows what happens if Bob fails, does he take some damage? Does he get stuck and then someone needs to rescue him (IE expend some other resource) or what?

In 4e if he fails, it checks a fail box on the SC, maybe another PC can undo that failure (this is an option in some SCs), or help Bob in the first place (Aid Another), or maybe the players can describe an approach in which Bob never has to make a check, or his check is only a test to see if he slips and gets dinged an HS on the way up. There are choices, but all this will be spelled out ahead of time.

Frankly, in 4e I would only use standalone Skill Checks for situations where the player really initiates a test of their skill, or where another subsystem already establishes the value of the outcomes (IE a monster knowledge check or similar). In other situations the outcome is fundamentally just advisory and for color. I don't even bother with those. Something happens, it isn't really important what it is, or it spurs some new scene framing down the road, perhaps.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I honestly have no idea what you mean by this. I am STARTING AND ENDING WITH FICTION. The DC is simply a number, which happens to work within the context of the other mechanics of 4e. If those numbers were different, then the mechanics would be different, but the fundamental mechanical assumption of about a 55-65% success rate would still obtain. No fiction would change at all.

I mean, obviously if you want to imagine 'not-4e' that uses a different overall success rate, then maybe (depending on other factors) you might want to change the fiction at a given level, but this not-4e is (wait for it) NOT 4E! lol.

As I just said to @pemerton, I don't have a real big bone with the idea that GMs don't spend all their time intricately developing every fictional justification for every exact DC/Level they assign to each element in play, especially the less important ones. Still, I absolutely start from the fiction. I absolute end with the fiction. Numbers are a tool which can be used to make the mechanics support that fiction. Granting Pemerton's point, I could make the bugbear level 16 and meh, yeah, the same fiction will 'stick' because level 12 and level 16 are both pretty much 'mid-paragon' and nobody is going to care THAT much.

I don't see how this is possible. Let me give an example:

The scene is a character is scaling a cliffside with reasonable handholds, but wet from recent rain. What is the DC of this climb? I'll be nice and set this in the heroic tier, although the basic setup can exist across all tiers of play -- it could the the cliffs outside the home village, or the cliffs surrounding the Dread Necromancer's Keep, or the cliffs of the Infinite Spire in the center of the Outlands. You do not get a level. Select a DC for this, not a range, and explain how that DC is correct instead of another based on the fiction.

To me, you cannot do this. This challenge is fictionally positioned across the entire tier, and the DC is going to be dependent on character level, the +/- level adjustment the GM determines this challenge merits, and whether or not the GM thinks this should be easy, medium, or hard (could think any of these). These considerations do not flow from the fiction -- the fiction is generically placed to support multiple answers. Nothing flows from it. At best, it's a constraint in that if you assign a DC that doesn't fit at all, it's noticeable, but that's about it.

 

[Ovinomancer]

And I take it as the 4e approach is entirely successful, by default. 'Bob' climbs the scree with difficulty at level 1 and the slope in Tartarus at level 30. Yeah, so what if the numbers are the same on the DC, it is the fiction I care about, and how the game engine DRIVES the resulting outcomes. Its a d20 system, so there isn't really all that much choice in terms of numbers on the dice being the same. I mean, if you want to do dice pools, then you can make bigger pools match against bigger DCs instead of using a level bonus type of concept.

5e just misses the boat here, yes, you can simply set the DC of Tartarus the same as the DC of level 1's scree. Fair enough, but you have radically changed the relationship of the challenge for every other PC except Bob! (IE the ones that are proficient).

This doesn't make any sense to me. If I pick an easy challenge in 4e, I've done the same thing. I'm not sure how you think 5e's skill system works -- the guys that have +9 at first level (expertise, proficient, +3 stat) autosucceed at an easy challenge. They have a +17 at 20th (expertise, proficiency, +5 stat) and still autosucceed at easy challenges. And medium challenges. And only fail 10% of the time at hard challenges. As fits a 20th level expert at a skill.

And 4e's RC DC chart indicates that even a Hard level 30 check is only BARELY impossible for 4e Bob. I mean, granted, even if he finds another +5 he is unlikely to pass the check, but then again 5e Bob won't either if the GM actually increases the DC, which I think he is obliged to do if he wants to demonstrate more dangerous circumstances.

Huh? The DC for hard at level 30 is 42. Bob's check is +16. That's a max roll of 36, or 8 points shy. Even if Bob picks up proficiency (+5 more), he's 3 shy of even a chance of success.

Sure, 4e without using an SC has a valence issue similar to 5e, but the fact is 4e DOES have SCs, and they are normally pretty easy to implement for situations of a "We take on this environmental/terrain challenge" I would be surprised to find very many GMs who are unable to make that work. I don't think it is fair to judge 4e on the basis of no SCs any more than it is fair to judge 5e on the basis of ignorance about how skills should(n't) be used, if it comes down to it.

Skill Challenges are not required for 4e -- you can play successfully without them. Is it a lesser experience? In my opinion, yes, but mine is not the only opinion. And lots of people -- as in very many vocal people -- could not make this work. There's evidence of it -- it was rather nasty. You think it's not fair to judge 4e by this? Fine. Then you owe 5e the benefit of the doubt as well.

So, if we look at both systems PROPERLY PLAYED, then 4e provides both terrains as SCs or SC elements, and provides a DC which will mechanically work with the characters of the PC's level, trusting that the GM will 'skin' things in an milieu/genre appropriate way (IE Tartarus vs some hill near town). Each of these SCs will, presumably, yield equivalent chances of success.

5e will provide that you can ask for a skill check. The GM will then have to ask himself if he wants to depict the climb in Tartarus as any different from the one near town. Maybe yes, maybe no, its up to him... Presumably he folds in some sort of sense of 'genre appropriateness' and maybe he decides the slope in Tartarus is 'equivalently hard', and then most of the party will just climb up with basically no chance of failure. Nobody even knows what happens if Bob fails, does he take some damage? Does he get stuck and then someone needs to rescue him (IE expend some other resource) or what?

You start with "properly played" and then make up a proper play for 4e that mirrors your approach and then invent a strawman bad 'proper play' for 5e that's easy to punch and claim victory.

Here's a trick -- imagine I might be correct, and strive to see if you can make it work. This is how I actually learned how D&D wasn't the only game or only approach out there. I see what you're doing -- it's good stuff, I highly recommend this approach to 4e. It's not guaranteed that everyone does this, or even most. It's also not the only interpretation of 4e rules.

In 4e if he fails, it checks a fail box on the SC, maybe another PC can undo that failure (this is an option in some SCs), or help Bob in the first place (Aid Another), or maybe the players can describe an approach in which Bob never has to make a check, or his check is only a test to see if he slips and gets dinged an HS on the way up. There are choices, but all this will be spelled out ahead of time.

Frankly, in 4e I would only use standalone Skill Checks for situations where the player really initiates a test of their skill, or where another subsystem already establishes the value of the outcomes (IE a monster knowledge check or similar). In other situations the outcome is fundamentally just advisory and for color. I don't even bother with those. Something happens, it isn't really important what it is, or it spurs some new scene framing down the road, perhaps.

Yes, you are clearly putting how you run the game in place of the game itself.

 

[pemerton]

You've just described what I meant, though. That the fiction follows the DC, the DC doesn't follow the fiction.

<snip>

I'm not sure I agree with your last example. If, in 4e, you climb a wall and the DC is X, and then later, you climb the exact same wall in exactly the same way, but the DC is now Y, I think there would be issues.

I think this is where we have a difference of conception.

It's probably hard to pin down to the level of precision you state here ("exactly the same wall") because that almost never happens. Even if it's literally the same place, the pressures on the PC are probably different - eg you're fleeing yeth hounds rather than wargs rather than wolves rather than a pack of rats.

What I'm trying to convey, though, is that broad sense of change of scope/stakes is - in general - enough to do the work of carrying the DCs. Another way to put it, borrowed rom Burning Wheel, is that assignment of DCs is not doing the work of conveying the colour, the tone and feel and detail, of the world. That work is being done prior to DC assignment, by everyone's sense of who these PCs are, what tier they are, what the stakes are, etc. One upshot is that the world of 4e is painted with in much broader strokes, with a much more neon palette, than the intricacy, subtlety and "grittiness" of BW or even Tomb of Horrors. I personally think this is a feature - of course history reveals that not everyone agrees.

Unless your assumption is that climbing any way with piton is DC 15? In which case, no, I don't agree with this at all. The fictional positioning for different walls will be different, so the DC will alter to reflect that.

We agree on this. I've restated your point here just above, with my reference to "level of precision". But there is something in the neighbourhood that I'm trying to convey, pointing to games I'm familiar with that mark the difference.

The only way I could see a player being upset at a different DC would be if it was the same wall and nothing else was different as well. But, even gaining a few levels can impact that in 5e, as the GM may feel that this challenge has moved down in tier, or that prior experience with it lends itself to making it easier.

I read your first sentence as referring to upset in 5e. I hope that's right.

My view is that in 4e, the player can never be upset (on reasonable grounds) about the maths, provided the GM is following the DC-by-level and monster/NPC/trap-building guidelines. So, for instance, s/he can never validly complain How come that bugbear had so many hit points? - which is a legitimate complaint in (eg) AD&D, if the GM just makes a bugbear arbitrarily tougher. (For related reasons, I think advice about "curb-stomping"/"roflstomping" encounters stated in the books and restated in this thread is not good advice - that advice presupposes that a monster has an "objective" mechanical expression. But showing the players that PCs with the maths of 10th level characters can defeat an encounter designed for 5th level characters, to my mind, has all the thrill of reminding them that 10 is greater than 5 - ie it can be done pretty quickly and trivially and is not worth even a minute's time at the table. The way to convey "roflstomping" is by use of minions, swarms etc in meaningful encounters which are devices that convey the change of fictional scope/stakes using the (non-DC related) toosl that a 4e GM has ready to hand.)

What a 4e player can legitimately complain about is that the fiction is silly/unpersuasive/repetitive/boring. This is one reason - not the only one - why I think discussions of what makes for good scene-framing, that come out of "indie" RPGing, are useful for 4e in a way that they're not for (say) AD&D.

I feel that we do not disagree in the broad scope, but that our examples are raising conflict due to assumptions about 5e play that don't align with my understanding of it. Your larger points are good, though. I still dislike the terminology you've selected, because I'm not being objective when setting DCs for 5e -- it's entirely my interpretation of things. The same situation can get different DCs from different 5e GMs. I don't really see that as objective, so I dislike the term. It's grounded in the fiction, though, in that whatever heuristic a 5e GM is using should treat similar situations similarly, but this doesn't mean there's an objective tie, just consistency. Your approach to 4e eschews this consistency outside the level/difficulty bands (it's consistent within them) so I definitely see a difference.

I stick to the terminology of objective/subjective because (i) I've used it over many discussions for many years and so am comfortable with it, and (ii) it conveys - to me, at least! - that the purpose of the DCs is, or is not, to convey some "truth" about the fiction. I think in AD&D this is the case (eg 8 HD vs 4 HD tells us that a hill giant is bigger and tougher than an ogre) whereas in 4e I think that is not the case - the fiction prior to the mechanics which is based on D&D tradition, expressed thematic content, etc tells us that sort of thing (perhaps together with non-DC related mechanical elements like a size stat, the description implicit in a combat ability, etc); whereas the level and DCs and damage expressions (ie all the stuff for which there is a "by level" chart) are then wheeled out simply to make sure that the thing we've already conceived of will deliver appropriate game play.

Part of the reason I am keen to spell all this out is that I think it reveals, transparently, what so many RPGers disliked about 4e D&D without applying spurious labels such as "dissociated mechanics" or misleading ones like "treadmill" that - as this thread shows - some people interpret as an implausible denial that earlier versions of D&D never had scaling. Of course they did! But the relationship between mechanics and fiction evinced by scaling in AD&D is completely different from 4e D&D. (3E is much harder to comment on, and much weirder, as I said above.)

As you know I'm nothing like an expert on 5e, but I think it's return to more-or-less AD&D norms as far as DCs (both in combat and out-of-combat) are concerned is an important part of its success. It treats hit points a bit differently from AD&D, but I think leaning into the pre-existing slipperiness of hp/damage is a clever design decision, because hp already either conceal a multitude of sins, and have been forgiven for doing so. The cost for someone like me is that the combat game becomes far less dynamic than 4e made it, and the colour that in 4e was so rich (which I say without resiling from what I said above about broad brush strokes and neon colours) is much diluted. (In this thread, I think the term "mundane" is used by some posters to convey the same idea. I prefer my way of conveying it.)

Also, there's my conversation with @pemerton that clearly suggests his approach is to only make sure the tier is represented in the fiction, actual DCs are selected due to pacing or challenge concerns. They only need align to the fiction enough that they aren't glaringly inappropriate.

I say something different from this - perhaps I should say I go further than this. I assert that there is no alignment of DCs to fiction. That is a concept that presupposes, in some fashion or to some extent, what I am calling "objective" DCs.

I am asserting that there is the fiction, and then there are DCs and other level-dependent stuff like damage expressions, and the former has to stand or fall on its own merits and plausiblity/consistency/verisimilitude/thematic heft, while the latter stand or fall based on the technical adequacy of the maths. (This is why there were multiple maths revisions that did not require any fiction revisions; and conversely why you can have fiction variants - like Neverwinter cramming paragon theme into heroic tier, or (in my view, though unlike Neverwinter not expressly stated) Dark Sun expanding paragon theme into epic tier - without needing to change any maths.)

A comparison - imperfect but hopefully comprehensible - is to AW, where there is no alignment of DCs to fiction, either loose or tight. There is just a constant spread of probabilities, designed for pacing reasons (and mathematically much more straightforward and transparent than 4) with everything else being carried by the fiction itself separately from the mechanics/maths.

EDITed to fix format issues.