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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6655847" data-attributes="member: 82106">This is both true AND false. Its true in the sense that you would normally put a huge chandelier 100' above the floor for the 14th level PCs to drop, and a medium sized chandelier 20' above the floor for the 5th level PCs to drop. Naturally the 14th level chandelier does more damage. This is exactly the same as how a 14th level dragon is a huge fearsome monster and does about 22 Damage with its weakest single attack, while a 5th level wyrmling does maybe 12 damage with its weakest single attack.This is also false, because a giant chandelier and a small chandelier, or a giant dragon and a baby dragon, are fictionally ENTIRELY DIFFERENT THINGS. So in 4e, JUST LIKE IN 5E, the differences in stats are derived entirely from a difference in the fiction. There is no case where 4e ever advocated anything like changing the DC of a fictionally identical chandelier from level 5 damage to level 14 damage just because level 14 PCs were present. This notion is nowhere even hinted at in the rules.As for the King thing. I see no evidence that this is an exception to that case. SCs are designed to be level appropriate fiction. You generate a bunch of fiction that seems like it would be appropriately challenging for the PCs at hand, and then the DCs naturally, by virtue of that selection of fiction, are going to be level appropriate DCs. If you don't like this coupling of DC to fiction you have nobody to blame but yourself, you should have changed the fiction! At level 5 you're convincing the relatively friendly King of your own country to do something that can be pretty easily shown to be in his self-interest. At level 14 you're trying to convince drow nobles that they should give you their prize magic item so you can defeat a mutual enemy.So, the only legitimate grounds of comparison here are what sort of fiction evolves from each system. The 4e system encourages you to set up the fiction to be appropriate (in your own view) to the fiction of the PCs features, powers, etc such that they narratively make sense, and then the DCs will take care of themselves. You don't even really have to think about DCs, as long as your fiction logically progresses in a way that meets your expectations. Once in a while PCs may go back to some old haunt and encounter easier fiction and DCs. Once in a while they may go to some higher level place and encounter harder fiction and DCs, at which point you may be projecting what fiction should be appropriate for that harder level. I guess you could get that wrong and regret it later, but most GMs have some idea of what their world is like.In 5e the game is driving you to generate DCs that you like, ones that are challenging to the PCs presumably and meet the DM's agenda. Then the fiction is presumably made to be appropriate to those DCs. There's no concept of more or less challenge explicit in that system relative to the PCs, but in the end the same process applies. The GM is going to build a fictive explanation for his hard DC or his easy DC. He's still unlikely to put a puny chandelier that does irrelevant levels of damage in a high level scenario, not if he has dropping it in mind as a tactic. Nor is he going to bother to play out the high level PCs convincing the king to do what's good for him. Instead they'll get to handle the drow nobles, seeing as they're the only guys around who can.I'm not sold on the funky slow bonus growth that mandates a hard task is ALWAYS hard for everyone, regardless of what sort of use the DM wants to put the check to in his adventure, but I guess if 5e is really supposed to be a game of DM Force and DM Agenda run roughshod over players then that's fine!</blockquote>

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