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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 6577065" data-attributes="member: 6775031">That's... not as bad as previously indicated. Actually, when you put it like that, it sounds a lot like the issue with scaling DCs that so many people misunderstood back in 2008 - how a barred door might be DC 20 for a level 5 character, but DC 30 for a level 15 character, and the thing they weren't accounting for was that the second door is reinforced with adamantium and the first door is just iron and wood.Of course, that does lead to the obvious vagaries of assigning something like a "level" to mundane objects. Maybe a level 5 barred door is oak and iron so it has DC 20, and a level 15 barred door is reinforced adamantium so it has DC 30. Maybe a level 5 fire source is a burning brazier that deals 2d8+4 damage, and a level 15 light source is a suspended lava orb that deals 4d8+10 damage.Do you describe the object to the players in terms of their level? Or their damage? Or do you just leave it undefined, and fill in the details when it becomes relevant? Do level 15 characters never encounter burning braziers, or do they just know that it's never worth their time to try spilling one onto an enemy? Is the DM careful to never include a level 15 fire source in the same room with level 5 characters?I guess that's where transparency really goes out the window, for me. If you tell me that an iron+oak door has a break DC of 20, and an adamantium-reinforced door has a break DC of 30, then I'm fine; if you tell me that an iron-oak door has a break DC that's appropriate for a level 5 character, and an adamantium-reinforced door has a break DC that's appropriate for a level 15 character, then I don't know what that means. Maybe it's just because I'm not fluent in 4E, and I'm trying to understand based on my fluency in a related language. If I'd learned things the other way around, I can imagine thinking of doors in terms of their relative levels rather than their break DCs.</blockquote>

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