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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7524493" data-attributes="member: 42582">So Imaro, Parmandur - tell me more about your fiction first 5e play.To be frank, this is why I say that I'm not getting a clear picture of how DCs are set in 5e. I'm told that it's bounded accuracy - that the AC of the hobgoblin is 18 whomever the combatant, that (as [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] has said) the DC to break down the door is 15 whoever is trying. But I'm also told it's fiction-first, and that I can set a DC for the hands-in-the-forge moment that reflects the fact that the PC is a 15th level fighter and the toughest dwarf around - and which, by implication, would therefore be a different DC (impossible!) were a 1st level fighter to try it. But then I'm told that the way to produce this doable at 15th level but impossible at 1st level thing is to set a DC of 25+. Which is not fiction-first.Or to put it another way: if the DC follows "the narrative" (which I am taking to be synonymous with what I and others are calling the fiction - ie an understanding, prior to mechanics, of what is and is not feasible for the protagonists) then what is the role of bounded accuracy? They are different methodologies - opposed, almost.Thus, as I said, my confusion on this point.4e builds in level scaling, and minionisation, and the rest. (And I see that [MENTION=82504]Garthanos[/MENTION] also makes this point.)The mathematical result of keeping the door at DC 15 and scaling the bonus by 0.5 per level; and of keeping the bonus to the attempt confined to the raw STR bonus and stepping down the DC by 0.5 per level; is the same. Either way, we have a change in the fiction - ever-growing prowess of the PC - that is then expressed mechanically - the same door get easier to burst down or the same ogre gets easier to defeat.5e doesn't have the level scaling. And it doesn't adjust the DC of the attempt vs the door (I think - see my uncertainty reported above). If it's nevertheless fiction first that means the fiction is the 15th level fighter has rather little more prowess than the 1st level fighter, as relative feasibilities change hardly at all. But to be honest there's little that I see in the design to suggest fiction first, and the most common refrain I here from 5e proponents is "bounded accuracy", which as I have said is a quite different methodology.And this is a clear illustration. The reason we know the rogue will beat it is not because we have a prior conception of the fiction, but because we know the numbers on the rogue's PC sheet. For exactly the same reason, we know that the 15th level fighter with STR 20 is only marginally more likely to break it down than the 1st level fighter with 16 STR (raw STR check: 11 in 20 vs 9 in 20; including remarkable athlete if the 15th level fighter is a champoin, 13 in 20 vs 9 in 20 ie not even 50% more likely; if Athletics applies, which I would have thought it doesn't but maybe some people think it does, 16 in 20 vs 11 in 20 and so still not even 50% more likely and looking at it from the prospects of failure still 20% chance compared to 45% for the 1st level PC).Notice that the PC in the example is 8th level fighting an ogre. The fiction is built into the example.28th level PCs don't fight ogres in chandelier-hung halls (as a general rule).There have been on "burned out shacks" in my 4e game since mid-heroic, because I follow the advice on the tiers of play that the default fiction of the game (eg power descriptions, allocation of monsters to levels, etc).</blockquote>

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