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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 7794400" data-attributes="member: 6696971">A few points:1)  Medium DCs are the litmus test for this as the overwhelming % of DCs in 4e Skill Challenges (the site of noncombat action resolution) are going to be Medium DCs.  Complexity 2 SCs are almost surely the vast bulk of SCs across the population of 4e games.  Those feature:5 Medium DCs1 Hard DC2 Secondary Skill (augments) uses at either Easy or Medium 2)  67 % or greater success rate is what 4e maths are aiming for.  Hit that and your archetype is realized.  Fail to hit that and you aren't going to positively move the gamestate's micro or macro trajectory through the deployment of that Skill.  Its not, "can you hit it at all?"  Its "can you reliably 'move story units' (succeed within the framework of 4e's noncombat conflict resolution mechanics) through the conflict-in/conflict-out deployment of this skill?"3)  Again, to bring it back to the original premise, this was to compare the "noncombat story-unit-moving through archetype" of a Fighter who fights Red Dragon Wyrmlings vs one who fights Ancient Red Dragons.  Do they scale in proportion to the magnitude of the scaling inherent to the differential in that combat task?  Hence why level 5 (mid Heroic) and level 30 (end game Epic) were chosen.  A level 5 Fighter is going to have somewhere around a +13 Athletics.  Level 30 Medium DC is going to require a 19 to hit.  10 % chance.  That isn't remotely legitimate.  Again, "capable of hitting" isn't the litmus test for actual play.  Even at the beginning of Epic Tier (which is the arena of Elder Dragons, not the cosmological endgame with Ancient Dragons, Primordials, et al), you're talking about only a 35 % chance of success.  This isn't remotely legitimate.  You aren't positively affecting the gamestate in noncombat conflict resolution if you're succeeding around 1/3 attempts.  Fundamentally, Heroic Tier PCs cannot succeed in Epic Tier Noncombat Conflict Resolution.  They cannot succeed at all against the Hard DC.  So they'll never win a Skill Challenge.  But even deploying their apex archetype ability against the standard DC they'll face, they fail most of the time.  They aren't getting those 5 other Medium DC successes required to shape the outcome of the scene in their favor.  Its a "story death spiral" (along with an actual PC death spiral).4)  Its not necessary for the exercise, but the Elder Red Dragon Fighting Epic Tier Fighter will have around a +30 to Athletics...auto-succeeding at their Epic shtick and having a huge success rate even at the High DC.The Ancient Red Dragon Fighting Epic Tier Fighter will have around a +37 to Athletics (unless Epic Destiny adds something).  Again, auto-succeeding at their Epic shtick and having a huge success rate even at the High DC.The differential between these two Fighters and the Heroic Tier Fighter is enormous.I hope I've illustrated the how and why that you're framing this incorrectly:(a) Its not GM gating, its system ethos and system math gating.(b) 4e noncombat isn't about singular task resolution.  Its about conflict resolution.(c) Even if it was (again, its not), the maths overwhelmingly bear out that the Epic Tier Fighter is able to realize their protagonism/archetype and achieve "Epic Tier story wins" through noncombat feats that their Heroic Tier analogue fundamentally cannot.d)  When we bring this to the arena of combat stunting, it gets even more askew.  Fundamentally, the Heroic Tier Fighter and the Epic Tier Fighter are different creatures.  One is saving villages, fighting Wyrmlings, and climbing brutally treacherous terrestrial walls...the other is saving the cosmos, fighting Ancient Dragons, and climbing the coils of the World Serpent, to look it in they eye and demand parley, as the Elder Spirit violently attempts to shake the hero off.</blockquote>

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