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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8367232" data-attributes="member: 42582">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 [USER=386]@LostSoul[/USER] 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 <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/the-abyss-sealed-the-drow-freed-the-campaign-reaches-its-climax.440504/" target="_blank">seal the Abyss</a>. 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 [USER=87792]@Neonchameleon[/USER].)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.)</blockquote>

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