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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8365644" data-attributes="member: 82106">OK, so I started with 4e and really 'pulled it apart' and thought about all of this, and then redesigned it. My conclusion is that 4e has objective DCs. This is born out by all the reams of lists of such in the DMG! An iron door has a DC of X to break down, etc. Then there is a 'tag' attached to each such DC that is 'level', which tells you the level of PCs that this might be a moderate challenge for (exactly the same way level works for 4e monsters, BTW). Now, 4e isn't 100% consistent in labeling everything with a level, and maybe some adventures give different DCs for basically the same stuff, or whatever. Its not a perfect system and different GMs can subtly alter the flavor of the game by moving these DCs around a bit.When I designed HoML 1.0 I then simply built a chart, it shows LEVEL and DC, no 'easy', 'medium', 'hard', none of that stuff. Every level has an attached DC, period. Never again anywhere in the system does 'DC' come up. Everything is simply described as being a 'level N thing.' This is the pure distillation of what 4e was doing. If you want something to be harder, its higher level, easier, it is lower level. Circumstances don't favor you, disadvantage, circumstances do favor you, advantage. Your extra strong, OK you get an ability bonus on your check result for that roll. Very simple, very much 4e distilled to its essence.So, when you create an adventure (frame a scene anyway) you simply populate it with things that are described as being of the level appropriate to the scene (presumably that of the PCs). Anything that is far below their level is simply wallpaper or fictionally significant in some other way besides presenting a challenge. Likewise if something was far above the PC's level in a scene, presumably there would be a special circumstance, or again it isn't directly engaged as a challenge in and of itself (IE you negotiate with the Ancient Huge Red Dragon, it is 20 levels above you, this is not a combat situation).Right, so framing is one potential factor there. A hard check for a high level PC might be 10 hard checks for a low level PC (of his level) with bad consequences for failures, this is possible. I'd call that an 'advanced concept' that isn't something every 4e GM needs to master in order to function though. They can just set the DC as "hard for a level 20" and the level 1 guy is told "you cannot do this." Maybe he can do it, but he needs to get the blessing of Kord or something first, its not a direct obstacle he can pass on the face of it.Yeah, I am a bit unsure on that one as well. AFAICT 5e seems perfectly happy to hand the same scree slope to any party of any level. Obviously higher level parties over all will handle it better, but it isn't clearly 'easier' for them, like it would be in 4e. This is where I find that 5e is much more inclined to produce a sort of 'non-fantastical' world fiction. In 4e you'd send the PCs to Tartarus to find the slope that they will be challenged by. In 5e the GM is not clearly told to do that, he can just let the action wander around in the same old locations for 20 levels. 5e seems quite equivocal about what it is actually about sometimes.</blockquote>

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