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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6647379" data-attributes="member: 82106">You are mischaracterizing 4e as if all you can do is some rigid thing. Its exactly the opposite, its giving you loads of advice and help by example, and then you go and play with your paper airplane and make whatever you want. Rulings SUCK because I don't know what they are until I get to each table. I don't DO crazy things because who knows what happens if you do? You stick to the things you KNOW work, because they're in the book.This is bass-ackwards. I don't sit down and take a DC and figure out the words for it. I sit down and say "I want to make this task pretty simple for the PCs" and then I have 'Very Easy' and 'Easy' to choose from, which one is appropriate? Its splitting hairs.Huh? There IS no absolute definition of what is 'hard'. For a level 20 PC the 5e hard DCs are cheese, you aren't even give a tool to challenge them. In 4e 'hard' means something. It means that at the level this challenge is designed for, the level of the DC, the check will be hard to accomplish for an average PC. I could give a piss about the 'general population', I'm not running 500 peasants through my dungeon, I'm running the PCs through it. 2 different 4e PCs will also have vary different rates of success, but a level 15 Medium DC tells me a HUGE amount. It tells me that this is a challenge for a level 15 PC, and that it will be a success about 2/3 of the time for a character who is either trained or has a high attribute bonus, but not both. By level 15 he will probably also have had to acquire SOME sort of additional skill bonus in the given skill to still have exactly the same chance as at level 1 vs a level 1 Medium DC, but not a ton. It could easily be just some side benefit of an item or feat. A really focused PC OTOH will succeed about 90% of the time on this Medium DC, that would be a guy that has training, AND a high ability score, and has spent a bit of resources on this skill. The beauty of this is, I can tell what the designer of any item, adventure, etc intended just by knowing that phrase 'level 15 medium DC ability check'. By contrast 'Difficult DC check' in 5e leaves me entirely at sea. Was this supposed to be something that a level 5 PC was supposed to be stumped by, or something a level 15 PC was supposed to find slightly challenging? I just don't know.</blockquote>

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