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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6659577" data-attributes="member: 42582">The only person who is talking about changing DCs for the very same fiction (which I think is what you mean by a "static challenge") is you. Other posters, including me but also most of your interlocutors in this thread, have already explained why this is nonsensical in reply to a series of posts from       [MENTION=2067]Kamikaze Midget[/MENTION] (the last one seems to have been post 917 upthread - the first one was a few pages before that).I've also just noticed that in post 1010, in reply to my comment in post 1008 that "the scaling cave slime is not the same stuff in the fiction. Locations of greater magical power, which are the sorts of places where paragon and epic PCs hang out and have their adventures, have more slimy slime", you repliedGiven that, in post 1258, you wrongly imputed to me the view that "it was the duty of the DM to always make sure that the SAME WALL was harder to climb if and when the party came back later, the lock would always be better, etc, etc. You made it clear that this applied to anything and everything," I infer that either you didn't follow what I was saying, or else that you forgot.Either way, I hope it is clear that I have never - in this or any earlier thread - been talking about "shifting DCs for static challenges".Looking at another post upthread, post 972 - in reply to a post in which     [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] pointed out that the technique of restatting creatures as solos, then elites, than standards, than minions, of progressively higher level, was "entirely a step beyond what the rules suggest" - you responded thatYou didn't say anything, though, about "shifting DCs for static challenges".Then, in post 1152, in reply to AbdulAlhazred saying that "you need SOME criterion for a given DC. In 4e it might well be 'well, these are paragon PCs, so climbing the mountain in the blizzard is DC 28,'" you replied thatAt this point, there is still no discussion of "shifting DCs for static challenges". That is certainly not what AbdulAlhazred was talking about. He was saying that, as GM, if he wants a blizzard to pose an interesting challenge for climbing a mountain, he has to set it at some value or other, and so he chooses to set it at a value that will provide a meaningful challenge for the paragon PCs he knows that his players will be bringing to the table.(Another post that makes it clear that AbdulAlhazred is not talking about "shifting DCs for static challenges" is his post 984, where he says that "there's no indication that AN INDIVIDUAL PATCH OF CAVE SLIME has a different DC for different characters. Just that in a level 20 area its level 20 cave slime, and in a level 5 area its level 5 cave slime. Presumably you'd describe it that way (IE this cave slime looks particularly thick and slippery).")So I don't see any bait-and-switch. I see people talking about various sorts of approaches to setting DCs, and relating that to the fiction of the game.What I also see is you making it clear that you regard designing gameworld elements having in mind how they will be engaged by the players, given the PCs they are bringing to the table, is a "non-starter" - which is to say, roughly, that you reject a scene-framing approach to GMing - but that also has no connection to "shifting DCs for static challenges". It doesn't even have any connection to objective vs subjective DCs, because BW is all about scene-framing but uses objective DCs (plus a version of bounded accuracy, plus other devices as well). A BW GM who doesn't have regard to the particularities of the players and their PCs in introducing a new element into the shared fiction of the game is breaking the most fundamental rule of the system.By whom? By you - presumably not, given your preference for objective over subjective DCs, and your preference for worldbuilding and GM control over backstory rather than scene-framing.By others, who want to run a game that is different in style and techniques deployed from what you prefer? Yes.The most elegant form of such a chart is found in Robin Laws's HeroQuest Revised - DCs are set based on party average bonuses, and then amped up at a steady rate as long as the players (and their PCs) keep succeeding, but then drop again in resopnse to failure. This is called the "pass/fail cycle", and the idea is to ensure that pacing is always maintained, with cumulative successes amping the difficulty and thus the tension, until failure takes place, which then allows the cycle to start again.Marvel Heroic RP does not use a DC-by-level chart at all, but it tries to incorporate a version of the HeroQuest revised approach directly into the GM-side Doom Pool mechanics: the more actions the players declare and resolve, the bigger the Doom Pool grows, and hence the more resource the GM has to amp up the mechanical degree of adversity against the PCs (which their players then have to engage with). Managing the Doom Pool is the biggest distinctive challenge that MHRP poses for a GM - it is somewhat self-correcting (if you overspend in a given encounter you might knock the PCs for a loop, but they will have an increased chance to get back into the game in the next scene, given the depletion of the Doom Pool), but I think not as elegantly as HeroWars/Quest.4e PC building has far more bells and whistles, and bucketloads of mechanical minutiae, than HeroWars/Quest, and its action resolution is also more baroque, and so a system as elegant as the HeroQuest Revised system is not feasible. And 4e does not have a system of GM-side resources comparable to the Doom Pool. The DC-by-level chart is the version of challenge-setting and pacing-management that 4e offers. In my experience it works relatively well, despite not being as elegant as some of the other approaches out there.This is all biographical information about you. But it doesn't give AbdulAlhazred, or me, any reason to stop wanting a DC-by-level chart.I will requote from Maelstrom Storytelling (p 116):A good way to run [the game] is to use "scene ideas" to convey the scene, instead of literalisms. . . . A ten foot fence might seem really tall to one person, and a little tall to another. But if the fence is described as really tall instead of 10 feet, everyone gets the idea. In other words, focus on the intent behind the elements in the scene, and not on how big or how far things might be. If the difficulty of the task at hand (such as jumping across a chasm in a cave) is explained in terms of difficulty, it doesn't matter how far across the actual chasm spans. In a movie, for instance, the camera zooms or pans to emphasize the danger or the emotional reaction to the scene, and in doing so it manipulates the real distance of a chasm to suit the mood or "feel" of the moment. It then is no longer about how far across the character has to jump, but how hard the feat is for the character. In this way, the presentation of each element of the scene focuses on the difficulty of the obstacle, not on laws of physics. . . . [A] wide range of arguments can arise from saying that the chasm is 15 feet across. . . . If the players enjoy the challenge of figuring out how high and far someone can jump, they should be allowed the pleasure of doing so - as long as it doesn't interfere with the narrative flow and enjoyment of the game. The scene should be presented therefore in terms relative to the character's abilities. . . . Players who want to climb onto your coffee table and jump across your living room to prove that their character could jump over the chasm have probably missed the whole point of the story.The same considerations apply to setting the DC using the idea that the mountain and/or blizzard "is what it is", and the related idea of "then letting the party see where they match up". (See also your post 1251: "The world is what it is. The characters make choices and the chips fall where they may.")  The same considerations likewise apply to the idea that balancing on a cloud is stated in a rulebook to be DC 120. This sort of approach shifts the focus of play away from the thematic idea the GM was trying to convey - "You are on the side of a mountain in a terrible blizzard. What do you do to survive?" - to "OK, so we have to succeed on a DC n check - let's see how we can start stacking some bonuses!"4e supports the former approach, because it already factors PC progression - with magic items as an element of that - into the DCs. So the emphasis for the players becomes engaging the fiction - it's not about piling on the bonuses, but rather framing their PCs into the right sorts of action declarations. (Look at some of my spoiler-blocked examples in my previous post.)Whereas the latter approach shifts the focus of play from thematic and story-oriented to operational and procedural. Grab a bonus from here, a buff from there, and look! - we've made the GM's DC quite achievable!You can see the same contrast in the 4 year old thread I linked to a few pages upthread:[sblock][/sblock]A system based on "objective" DCs (in this case, the "objective difficulty", whatever that actually means, of taming a bear) encourages optimising and the expedience that goes with it. (Hence, in part, the need for alignments in classic D&D play as a way of incentivising non-expedient behaviour by the PCs.)In post 1010 upthread, you express distaste for "the system dictating the world to me". But for the reasons I have been stating in the past few paragraphs, I do not share your distaste. (Some other posters agree with me, and at least some of them I think for similar reasons.) A system based on "subjective" DCs - in this particular case, sticking to my bear as level 13 and complexity 2 - makes other dimensions of theme or value salient. In the case of the bear, it makes the decision to tame rather than kill express a moral view rather than simply an estimate of mechanical difficulty. In the case of surviving the mountain, it turns the focus of play away from mustering up skill bonuses and towards shaping the fiction so as to make desired skill checks feasible. (Eg in my game, there would be some PCs wanting to call on the Raven Queen as god of winter, others wanting to call on the sun-god Pelor, and at least one wanting to use raw elemental fire to keep the PCs from freezing.) The actual setting of DCs, and prospects of success when checks are made, largely take care of themselves, as is illustrated in the spoiler-blocked examples that I posted upthread.I'll conclude by noting that, when one adopts a system of "subjective DCs", it's not actually the system dictating the world to me at all - that way of framing it only makes sense from an objective DC, world-building perspective. What the system is dictating is the DCs used to give mechanical expression to the fictional situation ("the world") which the players at the table have already conceived of. That is why   [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] calls 4e fiction-first resolution, and likens it to Dungeon World.</blockquote>

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