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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6655494" data-attributes="member: 82106">Dude, are you listening to yourself? You've left the reservation entirely. I mean really, you're out in loony toons left field at this point. Anyone who sets "Vecna's Secret Diary" to have a level 5 Hard DC isn't portraying it in fiction as something awesome. They're portraying it as something that persons you would be likely to meet on a daily basis have a decent chance of accomplishing (IE Fallcrest, a town of under 2,000 people has a number of level 5 figures in it, presumably at least one of them has a decent Thievery bonus). So, any complaints you make based on the supposed awesomeness of this Diary, are now completely absurd, null, and void, because it isn't really that tough a task in the grand scheme of things (its a DC22, and 4e DC chart goes up to DC42). Its not uncommon for level 1 PCs to have a +11 Skill Bonus, so while DC22 isn't trivial it is far from depicting something really difficult.Beyond that how does this work? If you want the 5e PCs to open it, you better have some way for them to be surely able to do so, and a hard DC isn't that way! As for the whole rest of it, its meaningless, your diary was easy in the grand scheme of things, and is roughly a Medium DC for level 10 PCs. So in fact, while you may cast it in the fiction as some big deal, it just isn't, you're using the math wrong.What I would suggest if you want some sort of super spiffy McGuffin like this and have it play a part in the level 5 adventure is to have a series of graded DCs. The players can unravel some of the mystery of the item at level 5, like that it IS in fact a diary, and whatever other fact needs to be known in that context. Then the thing can continue to present challenges at higher levels, as the PCs gradually figure out what it is that they actually have.The level 5 hard DC is the level 15 Medium DC. So by advancing a whole tier (IE from village strong guy to one of the greatest warriors of the current age) you have brought the DC for something that a very talented and skilled PC could accomplish about half the time into being something that your average trained or very talented untrained PC can do half the time.And no, AGAIN, in 5e there is no such thing as 'hard is hard', if you define it that way, then you have to acknowledge that the 4e continuum of DCs from 9 to 42 also forms a range in which some things are 'absolutely hard' and that divining which ones those are is pretty trivial when they are neatly ranked by DC. So in fact 5e's terminology tells you something so trivial that it doesn't even need names attached to it.Again, this is ridiculous because 4e clearly tells you to advance the fiction by advancing the DCs that are considered 'relevant'. 5e doesn't do any such thing. So a 4e level 5 adventure will have totally different fiction from a level 10 or 20 adventure. Foes that were level 5 relevant will be trivial now at level 10, and your character will deploy a whole different sort of powers at level 20, have a PP and soon an ED. It really is a very different game, notionally. I agree that you'll use the same basic mechanics to run it, but not the same DETAILS. At level 1 you push, at level 10 you daze, at level 20 you stun. But the intent of the Neverwinter thing WAS to be a self-contained 10 level mini-campaign. It wasn't intended to be followed by anything else. I don't know, perhaps they suggested follow-ons? Its possible you could go on and tack on another 5 levels and take on the primordials or something.I'm so sick of this balderdash. Everything has significance in 4e just like it does in 5e. If a DC25 signifies something in 5e, then a DC35 (roughly the same point in progression) signifies something equally in 4e. You can keep making up this <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> story that it doesn't BUT IT DOES, and when you keep doing that it really makes your whole argument just this eye-rolling nonsense.In 5e, if you want PCs to be succeeding in DCs a reasonable amount of the time then you will set them in some range, I'd say level 1 PCs that will be between a 5 and about a 15. For level 20 PCs that will be maybe more like between a 15 and a 25. In both cases you might now and then set a DC 5 or 10 higher than that to represent something that is both really hard and you don't really care if the PCs pass or not. Presumably, because you want consistent fiction, you will describe these things as appropriate (IE rusty latches, simple keys, well-made locks, cunning locks, evil gnomish locks, the hardest lock in the world, etc. In 4e you'd use the level 1 Easy/Medium/Hard DC (8/12/19) for level 1 PCs, for stuff. The level 1 locks may be of the rusty latch, simple key, and ordinary lock categories. At level 30 with DCs of 24/32/42 the EASY locks will be made by evil gnomish trapsmiths, and the hard one is a living Far Realms entity that drives you mad as you pick it. I'm lost as to where the lack of progression is here, or why it would be in any way less than obvious to a GM that a DC42 lock is a totally different beast from a DC8 lock.And how is Level 7 more meaningful in 5e? Levels are a meta-game construct, they have NO MEANING in the game. They just represent numerically all the factors in the game that make someone powerful (luck, skill, willpower, toughness, divine protection, etc). You try hitting a CR 8 monster in 5e at level 1 and let me know how it turns out. Better than what? Suppose I wanted to put a Dragon in my level 1-3 4e adventure. Oh, wait, Kobold Hall, the intro 4e adventure in the DMG, did that! Now, they made it the weakest dragon in the MM, a baby white dragon, and you CAN beat it (though it isn't easy). It could just as easily have been a young white dragon, which would be basically impossible, maybe a super min/maxed party could have done it, but basically suicide. Maybe that would have been a more interesting adventure, but I'm not really defending WotC's adventure writing chops, which in fact IMHO suck. They are farming out all the 5e adventures, and its a good thing! I wish to hell they'd farmed out the 4e ones.OK, and 4e has a rule against this? Honestly, read any of the 4th Core adventures. They're stupidly hard, with encounters at level +10 all over the place. You're just expected to either pull off something amazing or die and suck it. 4e does this as easily as any other D&D. There is noplace in the 4e DMG or any other reference that tells DMs to rescale encounters. None at all that I can remember. So, what you're saying is that the only valid way for someone to feel a sense of accomplishment is if they hit more often. That's a pretty darned narrow sensibility there if you ask me. In fact I think this kind of assertion is almost patently absurd.OK, so drop a level 12 4e dragon into a level 3 party. The result is going to be the same. The idea that somehow 5e has invented some marvelous technique that didn't exist or was somehow not blindingly obvious in 4e again just seems absurd on the face of it. One would have to be daft at a level that would preclude functioning as a DM to fail to be able to do this in either system.Nor will the result be materially different. In 5e the PCs might get a few hits for insignificant damage, where in 4e they might wiff and just do miss damage with their daily/encounter powers that they will surely toss out on round one, before fleeing, if they are still at positive hit points.</blockquote>

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