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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4609864" data-attributes="member: 2067">I can see this, and I see it as an example of a problem I honestly never had. I never felt particularly compelled to get the exact right rule from 3e's admittedly labyrinthine pool. But I also never really based these DC's on a character's level. I based them on the "game world baseline" of 10, based on how well I think some normal person off the street would fare in this situation. If the streets were likely to cause this idealized normal to slip and fall, I might make it a DC 12 or even DC 15. If the streets could be navigated safely, maybe more of a DC 5 or a DC 7 (knowing that this isn't much of a challenge, but that they're rolling every round in this combat, so there's a chance...). If the normal person probably couldn't walk it without falling, maybe a DC 17 or DC 20. I might justify an especially high or low DC in my description: "The fresh mist has just crystallized over the twigs of trees, and the black ice undoubtedly lurks just beyond torchlight," or something. If I ever had a complaint about how "usually the Balance DC is 15!" or something, I can easily say, "Yes...so what does that tell you about this particular situation?"I didn't base my mechanics on the capabilities of the PC's, but rather on the reality of the campaign world around them. This made it feel much more real when I pulled a number out of my hat. I'm not much of a simulationist, but the narrative is more satisfying for me when it's not about what the PC's can do, but rather about what they end up doing. Their level doesn't matter. Their particular training doesn't matter. This is the difficulty the situation presents, and I don't know what they're going to do to overcome it, but sooner or later, they might, if they do something that can overcome it. Or they might not, and they might go somewhere else. I'm ready for that, too.  If the session was fun, I never had a problem with getting a rule wrong. If we couldn't find the rule quickly, I didn't really care if it was wrong: this was the challenge before them. If I did make a mistake and set it to high, maybe I'll give them some extra XP or treasure for it. What's the big deal?Did anyone say that they could? Or even that they wanted to?In any given session I might use 4-8 different monsters. If I use a brand new 4-8 monsters in each session, every other week, for a year, I'll use about 200 monsters. I easily had over 3,000 monsters available in any of 3e's huge volumes of monster books, and many, many more if I used palette swaps or stripped stats or added class levels or NPC's or any of the other amazing monster customization tricks that 3e enabled (that 4e doesn't really have a use for given it's primarily results-based monster design). And that's assuming I'm using a pretty insane amount of monster variety to begin with.There was never a need to generate monster stats on the fly. Why would I? I've got thousands of monsters ready to go, each of them given loving individual attention that nothing I whip up right now is going to match.Again, a problem I never encountered. I'm sure I won't be able to finish my 4e campaign, but I finished a dozen or more 3e campaigns, with flare and gusto. I never felt the need to know the rule -- 3e's simulationist elements were reliably there to launch my idea from. I knew that if farmers from podunk did it, it was around 10, and if only heroes could do it, it was around 20. I had an immense pool of monsters to draw from, so I never needed stats. It was especially relevant because I never had a "gap." I would work with what was there. If none of the desert monsters I have available are a high enough CR, and if I can't do a palette swap or something, and I can't have you fight a hoarde of them for some reason, I guess the desert is easy to cross.Okay, on to the real challenge. Like Psion and BotE, some of 4e's more nebulous rules make it tough for me to improv with that "emergent atmosphere."</blockquote>

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