It seems to me that 5e's PC build rules - including the mechanical definitions of PC abilities - are very similar to 4e (especially Essentials), though obviously not identical. At a general level (as opposed to the particularities of individual classes and subclasses) the most obvious difference from 4e is one of degree: the very great asymmetry in resource recovery across different classes, which puts a fair bit of pressure on the GM to manage pacing in an appropriate fashion.
Once we get to action resolution, I think the game isn't terribly much like 4e at all, though, except in the very general sense that (like 3E also) it is a d20 system.
[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] if 4e's smattering of DC's don't counts as dictating the fiction for DC's then I'm going to have to agree with [MENTION=5834]Celtavian[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6784868]Erechel[/MENTION] since the amount of nailed down DC's is about on par with what I remember in 4e... So I have to revise my opinion. Both games allow the DM to structure the fiction that lines up with DC's.
The difference from 4e that is significant for me (and, I think, some other posters) is the lack of guidelines/constraints on the setting of DCs.
4e has guidelines for level appropriate DCs (page 42 and its successors through the Essentials rules for skill challenges). Furthermore, the relative mechanical symmetry of 4e PCs (in terms of distributions of high and low skill bonuses, and non-skill abilities able to bear on non-combat situations, and - for non-Essentials PCs - ratios of encounter to daily abilities, etc) all mean that infelicities in GM pacing management (whether at the intra- or inter-encounter leve) do not tend to have an uneven effect on different PCs.
5e does not have comparable guidelines for level appropriate DCs. And 5e PCs are more asymmetric than 4e ones. So at one and the same time pressure on the GM to manage pacing in a way that will avoid intra-party imbalance is increased, while the system support for doing so is reduced.
But there is guidelines.
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The DC settings, because Bounded Accuracy and linear, non exponential growth of power, are fixed to the world and not levels, hence the difficulties chart:
5 for very easy task, (75% of probability without being trained),
10 for easy tasks (50% chances without being trained),
15 for average (25% chances whitout training),
20 for hard (5% chance without training),
25 for very hard (0% chance with or without training if you have not a significant Stat Mod -at least +3 with training), 30 for nearly impossible (0% chance if you have not Expertise, magical aid, and a significant modifier -at least for a level 4 character. With Expertise -+4-, exceptional stat -+4/+5- and Guidance -1d4- you have a slight chance, but you are an exceptional expert magically aided).
Whether or not 5e DCs are "fixed to the world" seems to be a matter of contention. [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] and [MENTION=5834]Celtavian[/MENTION] don't agree, as best I can tell from their posts.
My concern, as a GM, is with managing pacing (including the contributions to pacing of successes and failures) in a way that does not unduly favour one player over another. I don't feel that 5e's guidelines help me a lot with that, because (whether or not I treat the DCs as "world set") they don't give me advice on how those DCs relate to expected PC capabilities and player resources.
a 5E DM could incorporate a 4E skill challenge.
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You can use the DC system in whatever fashion suits you.
Why do you believe a 5E DM could not construct a DC system that does what you want it to do? Or determine percentages that create dramatic tension in a non-combat scenario? Why do you believe you can't accomplish exactly the same effect in 5E as 4E? That is what I don't understand. There is nothing that prevents a DM from using the skill system to do exactly what you outlined above.
I've given some reasons why it is actually not that straightforward. So has [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]. So has [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION].
The combination of narrow bands of DCs having a somewhat ambiguous relationship to "world set" difficulties, plus the asymmetry of the resource suites across PCs/players, plus the pacing issues to which this gives rise, seem to me to make it quite tricky.
Personally if I was running 5e I'd run it more like Runequest or Burning Wheel, treating DCs as strictly "objective", and applying "say
yes, or roll the dice". My feeling, though, is that this might make spell casters a little too good, as they can succeed without having to roll the dice (by casting spells), whereas fighters and other non-casters have no similar capabilities (as has been noted upthread). This is another difference from 4e, where the abilities conferred on casters by the ritual system - and, hence, the ability to sidestep rolling the dice in pursuit of success - are a bit more modest.
Whereas in Pathfinder it was assumed that a failure meant the door wasn't damage in any fashion. Whereas in 5E bashing down a door could go like this. Fighter hits it and fails. Second roll he gets advantage or anyone after him gets advantage.
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Create an iron door. If you don't have a strength of 20, it is disadvantage to break it down. The door requires a DC 20 Str, DC 15, and DC 10 strength check to break it down.
here comes the importance of fighter's Remarkable Athlete feature.
And an easy solve to your problem is that to have the sightiest chance to accomplish a task you have to fulfill a prerequisite (a mechanic already used for several things, like feats and multiclass): for example, having at leat 15 St to smash a particular type of door, or having to use tools like a ram if you don't.
These ideas, of thresholds operating in various ways, are interesting. I don't think they highlight the importance of Remarkable Athlete, though - they tend to undermine it, because it doesn't help a fighter cross any threshold.
They also introduce a degree of complexity into the system which it is generally a virtue of d20 to avoid. And they have consequences like it being hugely important whether a potion gives you (say) a bonus to STR or a bonus to STR checks - because only the former will help with thresholds. In general, they make the maths less elegant and the system less transparent.
Treating GM Force as the answer, more than that...a virtue (you don't have to worry about testing the veracity of your heroic mettle in the crucible of the resolution mechanics because I'll just always spin a yarn when the system's vulnerabilities, which would render that veracity untenable and your archetype illegitimate, stare us in the face), isn't a selling point for a GM like me who abhors the practice.
I sense that you have fear to give any control to the DM.
I don't fear any control. [MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] states the Czege principle upthread, and I generally subscribe to it. I want the GM to have control over the framing of scenes and presentation of challenges. I want the players to have control over deploying their resources to overcome (via their PCs) those challenges. The GM's role at this point should include adjudication, but I think there is a clear difference - even if sometimes it's degree rather than kind - between adjudicating the fiction and deciding whether or not an action declaration succeeds or fails.
Setting thresholds, for instance, is tantamount to deciding that a certain PC just can't succeed at a certain action declaration. That's something that I prefer to be approaches with caution and transparency. When done ad hoc in a bonus-based, target-number resolution system, I find it tends to lead to railroading.
GM force is always used. Even in 4E, the GM or module designer chooses what the mechanic will be used for. I never have and never will understand the belief that anything else occurs. Even the few times I DMed 4E, I created the skill challenges. I decided when they occurred, what skills or abilities would be involved, and the entire fiction behind the resolution process.
This runs together GM control over framing and GM control over resolution. I want these kept separate.
(Also, in a skill challenge, the
players decide what skills or abilities to use: PHB p 179; DMG pp 73, 75.)
The linchpin of 5e is embracing that the DM controls ALL. And I mean Controls with a capital C here. Clearly the DM is always the one running the show in any game. In 5e however, this is sort of like the Force - it's what surrounds the rules and binds them together.
To the extent that this is true, in feeds into the concerns that I have been expressing above.
That's a matter of taste, of course. It was a very useful strategy, from the early days of D&D on through 3.5, so a 'fix' available to more experienced DMs.
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The DM runs by the rules (which do tell him to make rulings from the get-go), until such times as they would give a poor result, at which point he overrides the system and presents a better result.
[The system and numbers] give the players the impression that it's not just all unfettered GM fiat, and the illusion that they have some idea of their characters' abilities and some control over their characters' success or failure. (If that were true, PCs would fail a lot more often!)
Yes, it's a matter of taste. Hence, its utility is highly variable. Personally I'm not a big fan. As a GM I don't want to be making up what happens.
(I also think you have mischaracterised Gygax's advice in his DMG. He is quite emphatic that overriding the dice in respect of action resolution would be contrary to the most important tenets of the game. The only bit of action resolution override he countenances is in how to adjudicate a PC being dropped to zero hit points. But that's something of a tangent.)
I find it a big plus that the wizard actually has a chance to break down the door, when the party doesn't include a fighter or other STR-based PC.
If the party contains no STR-based PC, I will tend not to pose STR-oriented challenges - except perhaps as a bit of colour or light relief (the ogre challenges the wizard to an arm wrestle). But if a wizard PC wants to get into a locked and barred room, for instance, I generally expect him/her to use wizardly means, rather than to try and do it as a fighter would (just as fighters aren't generally able to approach tasks as a wizard would).
