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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8364390" data-attributes="member: 16814">I don't see how when, by the guidance in the book, your choice of what action you take goes into determining the DC.  If you pick something that's hard, how it that favoring random chance over decisions -- you picked it?The GM is picking the monster based on the threat of the monster.  Vice picking the threat of the adventure and then choosing from the allowed menu of monsters that fit that threat in 4e.  In 4e, I am very much supposed to build encounters that fit within the narrow level bands of the structure of the game.  I am not putting a purple worm, level 16 solo, out for a 12th level party, or for a 20th level party.  My choice is constrained by the level guides.In 5e, I can say I want a purple worm, and all I need to consider is the threat of that monster vs the party.  I can toss a CR 15 purple worm at a 10th level party -- it's not that bad of a fight for them.  But a 5 level difference in 4e, because of the treadmill math, means that this threat should not be considered -- the level of the adventure controls the bands for which I can look at threats.This example is very odd.  To get here, you're saying that a GM has built a mayor with impressive, way above ordinary, wisdom scores and giving the mayor proficiency with WIS saving throws.  And then you're saying that the Knights have no proficiencies with negotiation and have dump statted CHA.  And then you're saying that whatever the Knights have to do involves intimidating the mayor, who is built to be a pretty serious guy with high stats and save proficiencies (uncommon in 5e for NPCs).  Essentially, you're claiming this mayor is a low level guy, but he's built with high level stats, and then you're claiming the Knights are high level, but need to, for some reason, just intimidate this weird low-but-not-low threat mayor guy.OK.  Let's say the Mayor has a +5 WIS, and proficiency in WIS saves.  That's starts at +2.  That's a +7 WIS saving throw.  The Knights wander into town and randomly decide to intimidate this really impressive mayor guy, renowned for his iron will and wisdom, but they suck at it, having never ever had to negotiate anything as a Knight of the Table (weird) and having dump statted CHA (as paladins and cavaliers often do), so they're -1 on their Intimidate check.  Of course, these buff knights choose sly manipulation over physical threats so they choose to lean on the -1 CHA instead of their +4/5 STR, but they don't make good choices, clearly.  They roll.  Of course, they represent the King, and are the heroes of the land, and are talking to a town mayor, so they're likely to get advantage on this roll, but let's ignore that.  The spread here is 8, so the knights need to beat the mayor's roll by 9 (ties to defender).  The mayor wins so long as he rolls as 12+, then the knights have an increasing chance the lower that goes.  Overall, the knight's chance to intimidate is 16.5%.  But, they chose to make their builds bad at this kind of sly intimidation.  They chose to engage in sly manipulation.  They chose to target this mayor (who the GM purposefully built to stymie them, so we're already in bad faith play examples).Let's say the nights knights roll up and threaten him physically.  That's a +4 on the check vs an +7 WIS save.   In this case, the chance to successfully intimidate is 34%.  Here, the knights still chose to not put any build resources into intimidation, but made a play choice to leverage a better stat for the situation.  The mayor is still the GM's pet built to stymie these knights, but their odds have doubled from a single choice.  That seems like choices matter quite a lot!And, all of that said, the actual situation shouldn't be that weird.  You seem to think that it should be impossible for a high level character to not get their way against any low level threat, but, to me, there's very much a good story here.  Maybe the mayor is protecting someone they love or making a bad decision.  Why can't he successfully stand up to two knights, even if they are good at intimidation?  If the dice say he stands up, the story gets interesting, as the easy option for the knights is off the table, and now they have to consider how they're going to balance the honor of the Table versus the need to solve this situation.  In other words, to me, the issue here isn't that a mayor might stand up to high level characters -- that's a boring challenge -- but why that might be so and where that puts the Knights in making choices about what to do next.</blockquote>

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