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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8367312" data-attributes="member: 16814">I don't think 4e is vastly more transparent, it just has clearer instructions.  5e blurred those, intentionally, to allow for more GM arbitrary inputs.  However, the math at the bottom is still pretty similar in impact, and the guidance in 5e exists.  That many choose to assume they know how it works isn't a problem with the system.  The claim you're making is that lots of people choose to play Monopoly where Free Parking is a winning lottery ticket versus a dead space means that Monopoly's rules are worse than Risk's rules, because most people play Risk according to the rules.  This is in error, though, because there's a lot of people that play Risk and ignore the cards because they don't grok how they work and then complain Risk takes too long to play, like Monopoly.  The upshot here is that you're claiming a base of GMs running 4e and doing so properly as a baseline.  What you're ignoring is that there's a large plurality who tried 4e and didn't make it work, and quit playing it.  Many complained vociferously about it, and made arguments that don't make sense because they failed to grok what you're saying just works.  It didn't just work, you still have to make it work.  The difference between 4e and 5e is that 4e failed to work if you tried to play it as a different game, but 5e is more forgiving and still mostly works if played in a manner similar to a previous edition.  What it doesn't do when played that way is support my argument that the math of 4e actually replicates, on average, the no progression mode that 5e starts with.I'm not that special.  I learned to play 5e this way BEFORE I began to really get into how games work.  It was a step in that direction, but the claim that it's because I am a keen student of how games work is incorrect at the time I learned how to run 5e.  Iserith is a champion of the approach I'm suggesting, and he's actively hostile some styles of other games, showing a complete lack of understanding in how they do things.  He's blocked me for pointing out a flawed argument he was making about other games and how they work.  So, no, it doesn't require a special study of games to make 5e work as the guidance suggests.  It requires reading the rules and following them.Yup, no argument, I find it frustrating.  However, 5e is loose enough by NOT being explicit on it's design principles that they can do this an most people don't notice.  You can call that a flaw, but, to me, it reads as a happy accident.I agree with this, but 4e checks outside of skill challenges have the same situation.  It's only using the skill challenge, which is orthogonal to my point about the maths, that this is true.  So, pointing it out doesn't really advance any counterargument to my points, because I'm not arguing that 4e doesn't have the skill challenges system that puts more weight on outcomes than anything in 5e.  It does.  This doesn't affect my arguments that there's little difference between the neglected skill in 4e and the neglected skill in 5e in relation to actual chance of success over the course of a campaign -- it's pretty flat.  You have to average 4e DCs to see it, because of the level ranges, but the general course is that you stay in exactly the same place for anything that matters.Huh.  Follow the guidance and it works way X gets met with an accusation of Oberoni, which is specifically that you can houserule any problems away, so there's no problem.  I mean, the only thing I can see here is a terrible use of bad logic to attempt to dismiss an argument not by counterargument but by smearing it and creating a strawman.  This is absolutely bad pool.As I just wrote above, your valence argument doesn't even touch my point, because my point isn't about the causal weight of a check, but about the math of bonus vs DC.  You're off target.  The meat of it is that, going by on-level only, the DC for an easy task rises exactly as fast as the baseline level bonus that is all a neglected skill gets.  Thus, you're always at the same point.  The counter to this was that levels can be varied, so the DC varies, but this is a failed argument as well.  Either you're mixing it up pretty evenly, in which case the average is still on-level and there's no real improvement for neglected skills, or you're consistently weighted lower or higher (ie, the average of used levels is above or below on level), and so, over time, you're still standing in the same place, just slightly easier or harder than on-level.  This means that if you neglect a skill, your odds of success remain the same for whatever it is you're actually doing in the game, because you are not facing far below station challenges, but only slightly below and then in about the same incidence rate as slightly above (which is a harder DC).  The actual play ensures you do not see any improvement in ability.  It's only a white room example of a far below level that this exists, but it doesn't exist in game.  5e has the same impact, it just got rid of the treadmill and lowered the overall gonzo factor.The fiction increases because the DC does.  The DC does not increase because the fiction does.  This is apparent -- change the chart to a different progression and you'll have to alter the fiction you're using.  If you change your fiction first, it now no longer aligns with the chart, and the players will be seeing DCs outside of the range suggested by the fiction.Also, there's my conversation with [USER=42582]@pemerton[/USER] that clearly suggests his approach is to only make sure the tier is represented in the fiction, actual DCs are selected due to pacing or challenge concerns.  They only need align to the fiction enough that they aren't glaringly inappropriate.I don't agree -- it's a design, and can be good, but scaling is neither necessary nor sufficient to good design.Goodness, no other D&D games has provided different threat monsters.  Truly an innovation!  /snarkI do not follow this line of argument.  You're right because the game has monster manuals with leveled monsters?  How does that help set the fiction for scaling a wall?Great!  Here's the thing.  Bob the Ignores Climbing Skills Man has exactly the same chance to scale the loose scree slope of gentleness at 1st level (an easy challenge, DC 8) as he does to scale the cliffs of Tartarus at 30th (DC 24) for "reasons."  Nifty.  It looks like Bob has gotten better, but, in reality, Bob is on a treadmill and will never, as I've been told multiple times, ever even have to roll to climb the loose scree slope of gentleness.  It's a non-issue now.  But, when I say that 5e lets the GM determine this, I get met with disbelieve -- there's no way 5e suggests doing this!  But, it does, because the guidance is to consider if the task is uncertain, and, if so, has a consequence for failure.  Bob in 5e, at 20th level, faces no consequence of note from the loose scree slope of gentleness, and the climb up the cliffs of Tartarus can be an easy task in 5e as well with the right approach.  So, Bob in 5e has the same chances as well.  This is my point -- there's nothing about the monotonous increase in baseline numbers in 4e, because, in play, it just keeps you in the same place against the math increase, at the easy end.  The hard end, though, is a different matter.  If the tasks to climb above are hard instead of easy, Bob the 4e character will never climb the cliffs of Tartarus -- he cannot make the check.  For Bob in 5e, he still has a chance at it.What does this mean?  Is 4e or 5e better?  Nothing and neither.  They are different.  I'm here because there was a claim that 4e's level bonus shows characters improving across the board, but it really doesn't (outside of fixed DC skill uses, which are the worst part of 4e's skill system). I like both systems.  I prefer 4e, outside of a few glaring issues (fixed DCs get the hairy eyeball), but have no interest in fixing it myself because there are lots of other games that don't do this.  I play 5e because my friends enjoy it and I like it perfectly well enough.  I absolutely bash on 5e -- there's lots of threads where I'm the bad guy because I don't sugercoat 5e.  I see no point in it.  But, similarly, I'm not going to say it's bad on things where I don't think that's warranted, nor will I give 4e a pass.  The skill treadmill is a real thing, and it's important to how the system functions, and acknowledging it doesn't make the system any worse or not work anymore.   It's just how it works.</blockquote>

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