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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7298266" data-attributes="member: 42582">[MENTION=762]Mort[/MENTION], thanks for the reply. I don't think we disagree as much as our back-and-forth might suggest, and so in this post I'm going to try and hone in on where I think the action is in our exchange.A bit of both. I think anyone coming to one of our game's high level PCs, who hasn't practised playing that character, would have trouble. (In include myself in that, and each of the players vis-a-vis the other's PCs. It can be as simple as having a good intuitive sense of the ranger's off-turn attacks, which is a matter of familiarity; or as complex as managing a very complex polearm fighter build with a range of AoE and forced movement options, plus various off-turn actions, and who switches between two weapons to trade off reach and damage. If one player is away and another player tries to play the missing player's PC from the sheet, that PC inevitably functions far below optimality. Especially that fighter, who is the most compI don't think scaling up DCs is itself a part of a problem. Nor is it a solution to a problem. Obviously if DCs are higher, but bonuses are higher by the same amount, then resolution hasn't changed in mathematical terms. But that doesn't mean that scaling DCs is pointless. For instance, it can be a device for signalling challenge level - only PCs with a +7 rather than a +1 bonus have a real chance of success against the foes whose DC-to-defeat is (say) 20 rather than 14. This is one function of the scaling defences in 4e (5e tends to do it through scaling hit points and damage rather than scaling ACs, but I don't think that's very important at the level of abstraction we're working with).If DCs aren't scaled - so that, as fiction escalates numbers don't - then you get a situation where at the start of the campaign you rolled with a +1 bonus to try and defeat the kobold, and at the end of the campaign you roll with a +1 bonus to try and defeat Tiamat - the maths haven't changed, but everyone knows that the meaning of the maths in the fiction has changed.I don't know of any RPG that works quite like that (even HeroQuest revised, which of systems I'm familiar with comes closest to it, has some bonus and DC scaling) but there's no reason in principle that it couldn't work.But anyway, one reason that play gets harder at higher levels in 4e or in AD&D is because the mechanical choices become more complex to make and manage. In AD&D this is mostly around spell load-outs and magic item use. In 4e this is the number, complexity and interaction of PC capabilities.Another reason that play gets harder over the course of a campaign, though, is independent of numerical scaling or increases mechanical complexity. And this applies to Hercules vs a phalanx rather than a single hoplite. Engaging the fiction when what you are trying to do is recruit a phalanx, rather than just persuade a single hoplite to stand down, is harder. The situation is conceptually and narratively more complex.In a system like Classic Traveller, where PC mechanics are largely static, this sort of increase in fictional complexity - the plots get more intricate, the stakes higher, the consequences of choices harder to predict and more dramatic when they occur - is the main way in which player skill improves and is manifested over the course of a campaign. (And this difference between Traveller and D&D was regularly noted in commentary back in the late 70s/early 80s.)But this sort of increase in fictional complexity can accompany numerical scaling (this is how HeroQuest revised works) and/or increases in mechanical complexity (this is how AD&D works, and 4e has this as well as scaling). And it makes gaining levels matter, without any sense that one is being cheated because the game doesn't get easier to win at.</blockquote>

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