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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8364935" data-attributes="member: 42582">[USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER]'s point is that this is true, too, in 4e. (As a general proposition, and ignoring minutiae of differences in build maths.)Eg with the gelatinous cube: in 5e D&D both a 1st and 10th level PC have to roll to hit the same DC using the same save bonus (assuming it's a non-proficient save); but other features of PC or party build will make the significance of being hit by a cube less (PCs have more hp, the party has more ways to buff saves, etc).In 4e, the relevant bonus or defence will have scaled up, but so will the cube's DC - instead of a Heroic tier cube that requires a level-appropriate DC to avoid being slowed or immobilised or whatever, we have a Paragon tier cube (that is perhaps standard rather than elite, or even a minion) that on a hit does damage plus slows or whatever until the end of its next turn.I personally think the 4e approach produces more dramatic fiction, and less of the feel of "bumbling through" that you get when the 10th level character is paralysed by the cube but can brush off the few hit points lost. On the other hand, judging from what gets posted about D&D play both here and on other sites, a lot of players seem to like the "hilarity ensues" aspect that flows from the 5e design choices.I follow what you're saying here, but it doesn't describe how I experienced GMing 4e. What you're leaving out, that was central to my experience, is that before I go by the fiction I have to have regard to the tier of play. I think this is a hugely important part of 4e, but it seems often to have been neglected (and I don't think the 4e published adventures fully appreciated it either - a bit like your feeling that 5e adventures don't fully appreciate the rules for setting DCs).So when I think about the fiction, I think what tier? what fantastic thing is involved here? and then I think about appropriate fiction. And the game has some tools to help with this, like a chart of vertical drops appropriate for different levels, and long, long, lists of NPCs, monsters and traps statted out by level (it also has some tools that don't help quite as much, like long lists of fantastic terrain that tends to be presented in a tier-neutral fashion).If, after thinking through things in this way, I still want my fiction to contain something that seems tier-inapt, I then have to think about how to mechanically express it. In a combat, the scree slope might be difficult terrain rather than require a check to climb. In a skill challenge, it might mean that physical checks which the scree might affect go from Medium to Hard, or if that seems too brutal then they suffer a -2 penalty. (The most modest circumstantial modifier that 4e generally recognises.) Or thinking about NPCs and monsters, if I still want a goblin in my paragon tier situation then I have to think about how I'm going to express that - eg levelling up and describing the goblin as a serious leader-type; or statting the goblin as a minion; or doing what I did at low-to-mid paragon and writing up hobgoblin phalanxes as swarms.In some cases I might just change the default fiction: eg in my 4e campaign I ignored the fact that frost giants are (in the core books) a paragon threat and treated them as an epic threat. This is a change, but it doesn't have the "scree slope" problem because there is no intuitive sense as to how tough giants should be (eg we all know Thor fought frost giants, and presumably his adventures are epic tier ones!).My general impression is that 5e doesn't use the process I've just described for moving from fiction understood as tier-appropriate to mechanically-appropriate expression of that fiction. But I can't say I have a 100% handle on what the process is. The following two bits of quotation from your posts address the process directly; hence I turn to them!To me, this seems to describe a framework of "objective" DCs - ie the DC is established by reference to how hard something is in the fiction, where that difficulty is conceived of in some "absolute" sense rather than relative to the person attempting it. So freehanding a sheerwall of volcanic glass is framed as very hard because that's what it is: and the fact that it's actually only moderately hard for the high level rogue (because the rogue is so skilled in freehand climbing) is not factored into the setting of the DC at all - the rogue's superior ability is all expressed, mechanically, on the PC build side which then yields a number applied to the d20 roll to see if the DC of 25 is achieved.Games I think of that use this approach are Classic Traveller (without coming out and saying so; it's just absolutely taken for granted), AD&D (ditto as for Traveller) and Burning Wheel (which is very self-conscious about it and gives advice to the GM about how the setting of obstacles in this fashion is a key tool for establishing the feel of the setting; Burning Wheel factors in approach a bit differently from 5e, eg because skills figure differently in PC build and it has a different system for augments based on similar/complementary skills).Games that I think of that don't use this approach are HeroQuest revised (difficulties are set based on pacing considerations - basically the more previous successes the higher the DC), Marvel Heroic/Cortex+ Heroic (all checks are opposed, either by another character whether PC or NPC, or by the Doom Pool) and Apocalypse World (there are no modifiers to moves for difficulty; that's all handled in framing and consequences).4e is a bit of a mix but, in the end, I think closer to the second suite of games. In 4e difficulties do have an "objective" dimension in the sense that (say) Orcus has a higher AC than a kobold, and the DC to sneak past Orcus's silent watchers in Thanatos will be higher than the DC to sneak past a goblin sentry. But most of the time this "objective" aspect simply falls out of picking level appropriate DCs and doesn't need to be thought about case-by-case; and the skill challenge structure with its resultant closed-scene resolution also generates a "relative to" rather than "absolute/objective" dynamic to resolution. Furthermore, in 4e the descriptors used to set a level-appropriate DC - easy, medium and hard - are used relatively, not absolutely. So something framed as easy for an epic-tier PC (say, climbing up a wind-and-snow swept mountain side to reach the portal to the Elemental Chaos at its peak) would certainly be hard for a low-level PC. It would also be reasonable at Epic to treat this as just one move in a skill challenge, whereas at heroic tier it would make more sense to frame the climb as a skill challenge in itself.I think the analysis I've just given of the difference between the 5e and 4e approaches is pretty consistent with the contrasts I see others post, although a bit more thorough and with less obscurity (I'll come back to that at the end).This confused me a bit. The first three sentences seem to be describing 5e working as intended; but then you say "this is on me as the GM" which implies that the first three sentences are describing some sort of error or clumsiness on the GM's part. That implication is reinforced by saying "the system should be acting to save me from that choice". What's wrong with the choice?In 4e, as I said, the presence of the scree in a higher-level situation would probably be treated as difficult terrain or a DC-adjuster. In 5e, as I also said, the wizard struggling while the fighter trivialises it seems to be working as intended.What have I missed?</blockquote>

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