My first thoughts after reading the Essentials

[Stalker0]

I agree in principle, I guess... But not sure if it's really the issue a newbie would face, as opposed to us "elders" inventing problems they'll face based on preconceived notions of "how stuffs done."

I will agree with this, I should have said "The new players that start to get experience with the game".

I find most new players are so bewildered by a game that actually lets them do what they want (as opposed to most video games) that they don't give a lick about the rules.

Only as you get better do you start looking at the DCs and rules and other things, and start to question "Should the DC of a rough wall really be 30?"

 

[KidSnide]

I agree in principle, I guess... But not sure if it's really the issue a newbie would face, as opposed to us "elders" inventing problems they'll face based on preconceived notions of "how stuffs done."

...

All it's really saying is the game suggests this idea be easy/moderate/hard, but the DM can set the difficulty level to whatever he wants based on whatever he wants.

There is no question that it is very useful for the rules to tell a GM what DCs are appropriate for an easy, moderate or difficult challenge for a party of a given level. I think everyone agrees that this information is valuable and that a well thought out set of numbers is a crazy-useful tool.

I also think that everyone agrees that there are times in GMing that you just want a "moderate" challenge (and - just as importantly - you don't want to have to look up some chart of various wall materials and their associated DCs) so you just look at you screen and pick an appropriate DC. Honestly, I doubt that anyone would consider that bad GMing if a game master chose to use that tool all the time.

However, there is an issue with that being the only tool provided by the rules. The 4e rules provide considerably flexibility to GMs (which is great!) and make it easy to use the same type of monster or encounter at a wide range of levels (which may not be "great" but is, at the very least, very helpful). That's nice. But, without some careful GMing, it is possible to have a game in which epic level play doesn't feel any different than heroic play. Like in WoW, it doesn't matter if you gain 20 levels, you're still fighting spiders in the forest -- sure now the spiders are red and glow a little bit, but it's still just spiders in the forest.

Fixing this isn't just a matter of keeping the DCs on an old wall so that characters revisiting old locations can scale walls trivially when they had a hard DC before. It's a matter of changing the character's relationships to walls. At low levels, only the climb monkeys can scale a 20 foot wall to get to the archer on the balcony. At paragon levels, many characters should be able to manage such a feat. By epic level, a 20-foot height advantage should be a largely obsolete terrain feature.

...at least IMO.

-KS

 

[Henry]

Or for a wall if they had said:

DC (Moderate)
Level: 5 (Rough Stone Wall), 15 (perfectly smooth wall), 30 (wall of force)

That at least gives the DM some context on what the DCs mean, and he can adjust for there.

So if I have a level 10 wall, I know its not perfectly smooth but its pretty smooth, etc.

For me, it doesn't bother me, whether I'm planning in a "sandbox" style or whether I'm scaling with level. Even if you're planning for PCs to face challenges far above or below their level, that wall of force, or glass wall, or stone wall doesn't exist in a vacuum. The DM always knows not just at what level the PCs are facing the challenge; he also knows what level they would face the challenge with a reasonable expectation of success. That wall of force is going to be in a, for example, low level 20's area. The module (or DM) says, "that will be a Hard DC for a low 20's PC in this area. Therefore, the DC will be X." So, if the level 15 comes along, way out of his element, the wall scaling is STILL going to be X, instead of X minus 5, which is what would be a hard challenge for a level 15.

 

[Quickleaf]

I agree with you about the skill DCs. Thanks for breaking it down, your insights are really precise! Would give you XP, but I've given too much today.