D&D General Level Independent Challenges

[bloodtide]

Once you remove dice....everything is level independent.

The characters come to a locked door. The DM collects all the dice. Then the DM says to the players "how will you open the door"? Then the players can't just "I ignore the fluff and do a mechanical roll".

Also for things like with five warring sides fighting over the Crown of Rulership, who should the PCs support?

 

[Lanefan]

But can't you do the same thing with combat that you can do with ability checks? Instead of fighting a Phoenix you're fighting a Fire Elemental and suddenly it's a tier 2 challenge instead of tier 3. Anything that requires in-game statistics to resolve is inherently level-related.

Only if those in-game statistics are something, or are affected by something, that changes with a character's level.

In 5e, nearly all statistics are either level-dependent, level-adjusted, or level-derived. Such was not the case in 0-1-2e where a few key stats didn't change with level, most notably your "core six" (Str, Int, Wis, etc.).

 

[Salmakia]

Also for things like with five warring sides fighting over the Crown of Rulership, who should the PCs support?

That's always the most interesting kind of challenge to me - not what do they do, but what should they do.