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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8367954" data-attributes="member: 42582">Your point about situations is not disputed, and there is nothing you say here that I disagree with. In both cases the situation is established having full regard to what the character is attempting to do, and how they're doing it. But I still think there's a difference between 4e and 5e in method/"spirit".For instance, I posted above that in 4e we might "explain" the change in DC - the word narrate would really do better here than explain - by reference to nothing more than This time we're under pressure from yeth hounds, not wolves; I don't think that 5e really contemplates that sort of abstract/"stakes" way to thinking about setting difficulties. Or to put it another way, I don't think 5e sees the PCs, what their hopes and fears are, etc as part of the situation that is being expressed via the setting of a DC; whereas I think 4e does - or, to put it better, by using the DC-by-level tables and the techniques for levelling monsters up and down (mostly up, in my experience) 4e builds those things in.I could try and point my idea using (notional) canonical locutions: in 4e it is this is how hard we find the situation, whereas in 5e it is this is how hard the situation is.It's probably no surprise that I agree with the first two sentences. As for the third and final, it's not my place to tell you what you do or should feel - but I feel that once we have it that DCs are not the focus of play, and no one really cares why the bugbear was statted up as level 12, and what really mattered was the aesthetically satisfying resolution of the conflict with the bugbear, it doesn't convey any useful information to say that the DCs are not fundamentally subjective.The Burning Wheel Adventure Burner talks about the important role that difficulties play, in that system, in establishing the feel and "truth" of the shared fiction. Here is that advice (I'm quoting from the reprint in The Codex, pp 132-33):When a player wants to perform a task, the GM is obligated to set an obstacle. The GM can refer to the skill, spell or trait list in most cases. . . . Some tasks ask the GM to determine an appropriate obstacle using the rather loose guidelines on page 15 of the Burning Wheel. . . . What is not obvious behind this system is that these obstacles create setting. When a player acts in the game, he needs a difficulty for his test. The obstacle is the number, but it's also the object of adversity in the fiction. Obstacles, over time, create a sense of space and logic in the game world. When a player repeatedly meets the same obstacle for the same task, he knows what to expect and he knows how to set up his character to best overcome this problem, or he knows enough to find another way around. . . . [W]hen done right, changing the obstacle for the same intent and task can be a powerful signal that something has changed. . . . but this only works if the obstacle has been used consistently up to a point before the mysterious change is presented. And sometimes, you can change your task and use a different skill to get a whole different obstacle!I see this as a very clear statement of the rationale of (what I call) objective difficulties. Exactly the same advice could be stated for Classic Traveller, or Rolemaster, or AD&D. (Upthread [USER=16814]@Ovinomancer[/USER] posted "AD&D didn't have a mechanic similar to DCs, except the 'roll under stat.'" I wasn't thinking of roll under stat, which doesn't appear in any canonicl fashion in Gygax's AD&D. I was thinking of climbing walls (which has circumstantial adjustments to reflect the "objective" difficulty as per the DMG), searching for secret doors, listening at doors, etc - in all these cases the difficulty (typically expressed as a chance of success) indicates the "objective" nature of the situation.) That BW advice is utterly irrelevant to Apocalypse World (no difficulties), to HeroQuest revised (difficulties are determined by reference to the pass/fail cycle - ie are a consequence of the past proportion of successes compared to failures; and changing the task and hence the ability used will not affect that difficulty), and to Marvel Heroic RP/Cortex+ Heroic (all checks are opposed, either by another character or the Doom Pool, and the GM can step up that opposing pool by spending Doom Pool dice without needing prior justification from the established fiction - an instructional text that was hosted on the publisher's web site described such expenditure as analogous to a film stepping up the intensity of the music and/or going into slow-motion).Now it seems to me, also, that that BW advice is almost irrelevant to 4e D&D. The 4e GM reads the DC of the chart; or settles it by choosing the level of the creature/trap/NPC. As per the discussion of the bugbear, there is no pressure of consistency to establish the feel of the setting. A 4e GM can't generate meaningful signals that the situation has changed by changing the DC - that would have to be done in some other fashion, just as it would have to be in AW. The only bit of the advice that I can see having some relevance is that by changing task and hence relevant skill a 4e player might shift the column on the chart, from (say) Hard to Moderate.If the BW advice is basically irrelevant, to me that's a clear sign that the system uses "subjective" and not "objective" DCs.The last quoted sentence I disagree with (assuming I've understood it); and therefore possible the first also. The chart is just the chart. You use it to set DCs, and the game rolls along with the right sort of pacing. (Assuming the designers have done their job right. I found with the Essentials chart and the MM3 damage, the maths was basically sound. My table didn't use Expertise feats, which I think are an unnecessary "fix" to the maths. But we did use the Essentials non-AC defence feats.)And the fiction is the fiction. It is what it is, getting its life and logic from the shared sense of the tiers of play, from the shared participation in the "story" of D&D (kobolds to Orcus), with nothing as silly as a threatening goblin at the upper end of Epic (unless that goblin is an exarch of Maglubiyet or something of that sort). The fiction can be changed without any failure to "align" with the chart - the only risk is that something as silly as the goblin, or a demigod slipping over on a patch of ordinary ice, will spoil the tone.A lot of players seemed to dislike this, basically because of what I quoted [USER=386]@LostSoul[/USER] describing upthread: if the only thing stopping the GM presenting a 25th level goblin is good taste, then there is a sense in which having a "strong" 25th level PC or a "weak" one makes no difference as to whether or not you can handle a goblin. Boosting your PC's numbers doesn't - in any "objective" sense - make your PC more capable in the fiction; because "the fiction" is whatever the GM says it is. (This is another point of resemblance to HeroQuest revised or MHRP/Cortex+.) That's not to say that having a "stronger" PC is irrelevant, but the relevance manifests itself (i) in showing off to fellow players, and (ii) in  showing off to the GM about how much you can take on before needing an extended rest.If I'm understanding this right, it is consistent with my sense that 5e - without clearly saying so - assumes an "objective" approach to setting difficulties, meaning (among other things) that the Burning Wheel advice would be useful.My own reading of 5e in this respect is of course somewhat conjectural, based on both text and D&D tradition which 5e in some ways harks back to (and which I read 5e fans giving voice to). And my reading of 4e, while based on experience, is also a particular one - the 4e texts are not fully consistent at every point, and I'm sidelining some elements (like the apparently prescriptive "fixed" difficulties for some skills in the PBH) because they seem poor fits with more fundamental elements of the system, like skill challenges and the level-by-DC chart.What I think runs in favour of my take on 4e is that it present a consistent conception of the game, with clear affinities to other systems that are more explicit about their methodologies; and it fits not just with the "treadmill" as that is evident in the PC build rules but also with the XP rules, treasure parcel rules, descriptions of tiers of play, etc. For me, it also helps capture what I feel is a big contrast with 5e even though many mechanical techniques in the two systems are similar (as per the overall theme of this thread).</blockquote>

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