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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5745649" data-attributes="member: 54877">Right. Then the problem becomes that you have to look at the chart, because the chart relates the needed difficulty of that kind of task to character of an appropriate level. I agree fully that this has been misunderstood, and that you are supposed to relate the difficulty to the fictional game element (only picking elements that matter to even worry about). However, this is a level of indirection in the thinking that a lot of people have trouble with. (It's not a problem for me, having taught myself pointer logic in the C programming language. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />) You can streamline the math so that you can replace the chart with a calculation and/or memorize the chart more readily. Some people have done this. That doesn't change the thinking process, however. Think about it this way. The order of operations in 4E when assigning a DC to a fictional element: 1. This thing is an X (e.g. stout wooden door, whatever).2. That is an appropriate challenge for characters of level X.3. Look at chart. Get the DC. (Or do the calculation.)4. Determine if this is inside the range of difficulties that characters should even care about or not. If not, bypass it or replace it. Otherwise, characters interact with it. Or, alternately (and I think this is the way most of us that like 4E do it): 1. This thing is DC N.2. This is easy, medium, or hard for characters of this level (from chart of calculation).3. So narrate what kind of thing X is that fits that criteria.4. Characters interact with it. The second version replaces the indirection in the process with indirection in the approach. (That is, rather than worry about the conditional possibilities of X not mattering, we go straight to it mattering, which moves the indirection to the narration.) Whereas the order of operations in what I proposed (and what BW does, and many other games) is: 1. DC 15 is the baseline for a creature competent in that skill. (Stays the same all the time, and no chart or calculation needed.)2. Easier or harder than that is shifting up or down by 3, a number of times based on roughly how easier or harder you think it is. (Easy calculation.)3. If not sure, compare it to some other examples.4. Characters interact with it. At start, this is more time consuming. It mirrors what Balesir was talking about with establishing parameters during play, however, in that the more you do it, the easier it gets. Once you are comfortable with the ranges, there is no indirection from the fiction. If a stout wooden door is DC 15 to budge, then that is the baseline. A weak wooden door is DC 12 and a ramshackle door is DC 9, and a termite-ridden door is lower than that, and thus not a challenge at all. Now maybe someone doesn't care for the math behind my example. No problem, as it was only a rough example anyway. But my main point is that the math behind the 4E numbers as written make it impossible to easily convey this kind of rule of thumb to people who expect to operate with the traditional order of operations. You can't because the character scaling and jumps in DC by 5, don't allow enough steps to handle the fictional expectations that a such a person wants. You are effectively stuck with, at most: DC N-5 - really darn easyDC N - standardDC N+5 - really hard (until my character scales some)DC N +10 - the crazy stuff, barring magic items and such. The several tweakings of the easy, medium, hard numbers on the chart is one reflection of this problem. You can't get numbers that everyone likes, because those numbers are compromises trying to handle different expectations. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/angel.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":angel:" title="Angel    :angel:" data-shortname=":angel:" /></blockquote>

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