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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8364230" data-attributes="member: 16814">I started to reply in parts to this, but realized something along the way.  Bear with me.4e assumes competence for all characters, right -- this is your argument that you just keep getting better as you level at all things because you're out there doing them.  But, the assumption is that you'll be doing things that are level appropriate.  The upshot of this is that your assumed competence puts you on a treadmill -- the DCs increase at the easy end in perfect tune with the baseline improvement, while the hard end they increase with the "normal" invested skill increases (ASIs, feats, race bonuses, etc.).  So, you really maintain the level of competence you start with, you're just doing more leveled things as you go along.The odd thing to this is that your chance of success at the easy end for neglected skills is always pretty much the same.  It doesn't move.  And hard challenges rapidly outpace your ability, getting harder and harder until they become impossible.So, then, let's look to 5e.  It's very similar, actually, in that if you neglect a skill, your odds of success remain the same for easy challenges.  They also remain the same for medium and hard challenges.  If you're good at a skill, you actually improve over time, making hard challenges easier -- to the point that you can even trivialize them without more than the class abilities.  And there's still the assumption that you'll be dealing mostly with level appropriate things, although that window is wider.My point?  5e is also assuming competence, they've just moved where it exists.  In 4e, there's a constant increase in skill bonus, yes, but there's also a similar constant increase in DC -- you stay in about the same place.  4e retains parity in challenges.  5e fixes DCs, and so needs to fix automatic increases as well to maintain that parity in challenges.  Both systems are actually simulating competence, they're just doing it in different ways.  And people are getting hung up on whether or not the number next to the skill goes up.  As for fixed DC monsters, I think you're missing a point, here.  In 4e, you determine what level the adventure is, and then pick monsters within that level choice.  So, you're only going to get a purple worm with their +X attack vs non-AC to swallow whole (saves work very differently) when it's level appropriate and not when it's not.  Adventure level picks monsters to support it in 4e.  5e, on the other hand, picks monsters and those inform the adventure difficulty -- the process is reversed.  So, you shouldn't be fighting a purple worm until it's level appropriate.And, if you run the numbers against characters, you'll find that the chances of success are slightly better in 5e for neglected skills/defenses and still slightly better for moderate investment, and way better for heavy investment.  I assumed that the purple worm was fought by a level 16 party (it's a 16 solo), while the 5e party was fighting at level 10 (it's CR 15 in 5e).  What I saw was that an neglected REF defense for 4e meant that the purple worm could only miss on a 1, while the same neglected defense for 5e was the same (+21 vs 18 in 4e and +9 vs 10 in 5e)  Any modest improvements to both, like boost a stat up to 14, has a bigger impact in 5e because it immediately reduces miss chances while you have to climb over a +3 in 4e to start to see benefits.  Similarly, on the attack to swallow whole in 4e vs save to avoid in 5e, the 5e character with with neglected skill fairs better -- they have a 10% chance to save versus the 5% chance to miss the attack.  Bonuses here immediately help the 5e character while you still need better than +3 before the 4e character sees any benefit.This isn't a completely fair evaluation, of course, because systems do things differently,  I tried to account for this by making the 5e numbers based on a deadly encounter, and you can drop the levels even further and it doesn't change.  Still, I don't think this is a terribly worthwhile comparison, but it doesn't show that 4e is really shining in making neglected skills represent a clear improvement in ability.</blockquote>

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