Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8367464" data-attributes="member: 82106">Sure they do, because the 'cliffside' and the 'Infinite Spire' are simply NOT THE SAME. There is no such thing as "Oh, they're both just cliffs, I do the same thing to climb them." The cliffside outside town is in a clement climate, with calm air, good light, and some sort of familiar rock conditions. Even if I am not a climber I can at least apply my normal common sense about rocks which pretty much everyone possesses in SOME degree, right? So there might be medium level 1 checks involved. The Infinite Spire is made out of some sort of entirely magical material. It sure ain't any sort of rock I ever saw before! We don't know how hard a material it is to climb on, but my guess is it holds a few surprises. Beyond this, the spire itself is in a weird zone of anti-magic and IIRC even normal life functions don't quite work right there (I haven't read 1e MotP in a few decades). Surely there is wild magical/elemental energy surging around it, the light is weird/bad, and I'm probably on the lookout for some sort of nasties that are lurking around, real or imagined.Now, maybe the Infinite Spire is actually EASIER for the level 25 party that is climbing it. I don't know. Probably so in some sense since they are Epic and have lots of crazy tricks up their sleeves. I will grant that the effective DCs may be similar. The fiction certainly is not! As for easy, medium, hard, I would again state that this sort of activity is CERTAINLY covered by SC mechanics, canonically. So they are medium, with possibly a few easy or hard checks involved. I would say this is true for analogous scenarios at all levels. While it is likely that the GM framed this challenge with full knowledge of the exact level of the PCs, in principle, and practice if it was say a module, the level of the adventure would be set, and DCs would be appropriate to that, as would the fiction. Yeah, I don't really dispute that its not always easy to say that a specific encounter like this must be level 21 vs 25, or 30. So if the GM suddenly frames this scene as an SC, probably the checks will, within some range, be set with consideration of PC level, but if you build an adventure (and this is what 4e envisages, not scene framing in a Story Now fashion) then you'd build the spire and all the associated elements to be consistent fictionally with each other and with other fiction that you create that is an equivalent challenge (IE equal in level). However, I am still starting with the fiction, I am then looking at where I'm going with fiction for, say level 21. At this level the PCs are not capstone characters yet. They are just now establishing their Epic Destinies. They may well be literally just achieving them in the process of this monumental undertaking of climbing the unclimbable. There will be some goal which is appropriate to that context, and that is a fiction, from which is stemming a set of DCs! So, yes, level in a contextual sense, is there as a kind of starting point, or guidepost. By laying out the careers of heroes systematically, 4e has erected these signposts by which I can shape the fiction so as to produce the kind of campaign story that is 4e's design goal (and presumably what I want, since I am playing it). Now, I think it COULD be fruitful to talk about the way this works in 5e! I'm not much interested in DCs though, TBH. They are just numbers, they don't shape anything. Remember, I started playing this game when it was 3 LBBs and you basically had to write most of the rules yourself! I am all about fiction. How does 5e tie a fictional progression and evolution together? Do the mechanics "do the right thing"? Is it really practically amenable to a more varied set of arcs? Is it extra work and is that extra work, if so, worth it? What if we are only playing in a narrow level range? These are interesting points, and they may be points that are similar or not between 4e and 5e, I'm not 100% sure yet.</blockquote>

Verification