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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6654854" data-attributes="member: 2067">If you pick Vecna's lock as a level 5 character, at a hard DC (because the story took you there) then it is hard to feel like when you're picking tomb locks as a level 10 character at a hard DC (because that's where the story is then) that you've actually gained much mastery. That's the show vs. tell distinction. But it's up to the DM to determine what those DC's mean in the fiction, they don't have any inherent qualities. So there's no reason presume that an adamantium dwarven lock or a rusty tin lock have ANY particular DC - they have the DC that seems relevant to the DM at the time, whatever offers the players that narrow band of success. It's hard to feel that sense of accomplishment when there's no objective basis for determining what you've actually accomplished. The Rules Compendium even explicitly talks about this: "Some DC's are fixed, while others scale with level. A fixed DC represents a task that gets easier as an adventurer gains levels...In contrast, a DC that sales with level represents a task that remains at least a little challenging throughout an adventurer's career."5e just decided that its DC's are fixed by default (and they can do that because even an easy DC has some chance of failure for even high-level characters and even a difficult DC has some chance of success even for low-level characters). Good DM's magically fix all problems, yes. You can't use the best case scenario as the basis for rules discussions, though. My argument was never that all 4e tables inevitably must always have this problem, merely that 4e's structure can create this problem. Neverwinter mindflayers and aboleths are a signifier of what I'm talking about. If you save the world at level 7, when there's 23 levels left to go in the game, there's no mechanical accomplishment there, so it can make the fiction feel entirely empty of relevance. Bounded accuracy means that you might go up against that dragon at level 11 or level 20 rather than level 17, if the story leads you there, and it will still be the same threat. It doesn't change into a lower-tier threat just because you're confronting it at level 5. That consistency is key for this feeling of achievement, because it means there's something to measure yourself against. If you always fight precisely on-level monsters, I imagine it would indeed feel more like a treadmill than it currently does. Some tables have a high treadmill tolerance and appreciate a more regular experience. That's possible to achieve fairly easily. Bounded accuracy introduces a flexibility - you can fight divergent threats. At a table where the treadmill is a concern, the DM just doesn't worry too much about the level of his monsters, and the game works just fine. The option to get off the treadmill is there. A +5 to hit a DC 20 and a +10 to hit a DC 25 can be a change in the fiction, but it's mechanically irrelevant. In an RPG, that's usually what it means. But as a general principle of game psychology, the fiction is irrelevant for the feeling. You can get the feeling without any fiction whatsoever. A +5 to hit a DC 20 and then after flapping your arms and squaking like a chicken, getting a +10 to hit that SAME DC, feels like you've accomplished something, but you've done nothing narratively speaking. A +5 to hit a DC 20 and then after a months-long story about slaying evil and triumphing and saving people and restoring order to the world, getting a +10 to hit a DC 25, feels like you've accomplished jack diddly. In 5e, monster AC's are not a bad poster child for this. The AC of CR 1/2 svirfneblin is 15 - tough to hit! The AC of a CR 13 storm giant is 16. At first level, you were cursing that slippery little gnome. At 13th level, you are comfortably hitting that massive giant, and it's AC is nearly the same! The intervening months of story have done something.  Well, since I've got it open - rules compendium, skill DC's: "the goal is to pick a DC that is an appropriate challenge for a particular scenario or encounter." IE: "stay within these careful guidelines because the game kind of breaks if you don't." or: "Don't do anything too weird, that would be inappropriate."That's exactly the problem - the goalposts keep moving, so it can be difficult to feel that mechanical achievement. The stats don't MEAN anything, they're just a pacing tool. That can cause issues with that feeling of achievement and accomplishment. Yea, that's mechanical irrelevance, numbers without meaning in the game (just in the fiction, as the DM decides). That's the problem. Oh there's action resolution, it just doesn't vary much from the narrow possibility window 4e paints for it over the course of 30 levels.</blockquote>

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