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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6650386" data-attributes="member: 42582">Thanks for the reply - I had thought about this before I posted, and I think it warrants some further discussion. I think your point about armies is illustrative of a pretty basic design difference between 4e and 5e -  not in respect of the minutiae of action resolution (eg is it AC or damage/hp where the real action is?) but in respect of the way fiction is built out of mechanics and vice versa.In 4e, at least as I GM it - and I think I'm following the lead of the rules pretty closely in this respect - the question of whether or not an army is always dangerous isn't answered by considering the mechanics. It answered by considering the fiction - are these characters vulnerable to an army? - and then, having answered one way or another, statting up an army in the mechanically appropriate way.Thus, at low-to-mid paragon the PCs in my game fought <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?319168-The-PCs-defeat-Calastryx-(and-get-up-to-some-other-hijinks)" target="_blank">hobgoblin</a> <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?324018-Wizard-PC-dies-returns-as-Invoker" target="_blank">phalanxes</a>, statted up as swarms. At low-ish epic, they fought a <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?342615-PCs-defeat-Miska-but-relinquish-the-Crystal-of-the-Ebon-Flame" target="_blank">small demon army</a>, also statted as a couple of swarms. At mid-epic, <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?353496-First-time-godslayers-PCs-kill-Torog" target="_blank">when they had to cut their way through an army of Torog's shrivers to shut down his soul abattoir</a>, most of that was resolved as a skill challenge.I think, when this point is generalised, it connects to   [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s complaint, upthread, about the 5e approach to setting DCs. In 4e (at least as I run it), the "direction of fit" for fiction and mechanics isn't to stat up the world in some "objective" fashion and then find out, via play, whether it is impossible, hard or easy for the PCs to deal with it. Rather, the GM decides on something that seems like it would make for a fun situation (factoring in everything s/he knows about prior episodes of play, the expressed and implied preferences of his/her players, etc) and then uses the mechanical tools the game provides (including, when it comes to armies, the swarm rules) to set it up.My sense from reading Chris Perkins columns talking about his Iomandra campaign is that he would, in that campaign, have treated an army of hobgoblins as still posing a threat even to his epic level PCs. Which means that he would give them different stats from me - the PCs in my game are about to try and escape from Thanatos just having killed Orcus, and the demon armies they have to deal with will likely be framed in skill challenge terms rather than with combat stats. Which is not a problem: our games are based around slightly different fictional/genre conceits, and we use the system tools to realise that fiction.Much as AbdulAlhazred wants to know what levels a given DC is intended to be hard for, so that he can use the tools of the game to realise some particular fiction (eg in his vision of the D&D world Vecna's lock is probably Hard even for upper epic PCs, and so he imposes the appropriate DC from the DCs-by-level chart).What do you mean?</blockquote>

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