Difficulty Class - What makes narrative sense?

[Turkeycubes]

I'm finding that the way DC's are generated doesn't seem to reflect how easy it is for higher level characters to accomplish mundane tasks. Playing "The Mirrored Moon" it's clear that setting all DC's reletive to the PC's level isn't the way to go.

I'm playing a 9th level Druid, so searching a hex of forest should be easy, right? Nope. Even with my survival maxed out at 17 it's a near impossible roll. If this is sensible narrative, then most druids would spend levels one through eight completely lost in the wilds. The idea that anyone other than a druid or ranger could ever cope in a hex map would therefore be rediculous.....

The upshot is that searching doesn't make sense on a sliding scale DC. Infact, my thinking is that DC's should only EVER change if NPC'S or campaign forces make the search harder. Filling the forest with illusions, moving the search to another plane, or tracking enemies near or above the party level would certainly up the DC. But just because you're running a 9th level adventure doesn't mean that every step of the way need be a 9th level challenge.

I've found that my players get a lot more enjoyment out of their levels when I remind them of all the things that used to make trouble. Quickly searching a section of map that used to take days to complete is an excellent way to show them how far they've come.

I strongly believe that DC's are something that GM's need to balance in the moment. Using the provided charts, decide on a DC that reflects the abilities of the player. Playing the piano is far easier for a piano player; and searching the forest isn't a challenge for a character in tune with it.

I'd love to see your thoughts!
Thanks!

[Nettah]

Well I think there might be some kind of misunderstanding.

First of all, you are right it doesn't make any sense for the forest etc to scale with your level unless enchanted or something else (which is why its not supposed to in the rules) but it does in the specific playtest adventure to gather data about how easy you succeed etc.

Secondly you are not lost or anything if you fail the check, you just don't search the hex faster. So if you don't succeed it takes two days and if you succeed you do it in only 1.

[Bob Bob Bob]

I mean, video games do this very well (ish). Fallout 4 and Skyrim (if I'm remembering the system right) had difficulty floors (so X area will always have at least level Y monsters) but would otherwise generate a difficulty level for the area when you first explored it. This did lead to some weirdness (area right next to the starter area has level 50 monsters if you skipped it) but otherwise lead to a map that would grow in challenge with you but still allow backtracking. And areas that were out of your league you could leave until you leveled up some and then be able to do them. I think Skyrim later introduced some kind of forget mechanic so stuff would scale back up with you but it's been released so many times I can't keep up.

So divide the world into zones, assign each zone a level (maybe some variation within zones, unique monsters way over level, certain caves much higher level, areas around cities much lower level) and then make up reasons for why. Maybe all the trees in that zone are cacti and have spines. The cliffs are sandstone instead of granite. Stuff like that. If you want to get real fine-grained you can even assign specific levels just to the foliage, rocks, whatever to set the DCs. It lends itself real well to in-world exposition as well. "Stay away from the valley, nobody who goes there comes back alive" (some much higher level threat). "Stick to the roads, lots of wild animals around here" (lower level roads, higher level wilderness). "If you're confident in your climbing you can try to steal dragon scales, just don't try to fight them" (low climb difficulty, high level monsters).

Basically a giant heat map for difficulty. Some hot/cold spots for harder/easier ares within an area. Way more work than I'm willing to put in though. Might work well for a West Marches campaign, come to think of it.

[ryric]

It's easy for video games to remember exactly the difficulty of every place the player has been, thus allowing a consistent world. It's much trickier for a human GM to do the same.

Table 10-2 is a horror show of a mechanic if you like to run internally consistent campaign worlds.

[PossibleCabbage]

So narrative sense is that picking the lock on the footlocker of Zesty Pete is always easy (unless Pete has some good reason to start buying better locks, which is unlikely because people keep robbing him). On the other hand, picking the lock on the Dwarf King's vault is always really hard.

For low level characters robbing Zesty Pete is an appropriate difficulty task, because they can do it, but robbing the Dwarf King is not because they have no chance.

For high level characters, robbing Zesty Pete is absolutely trivial and so is beneath them, but they can do it if they really want. Robbing the highly secured vault of the Dwarf King however, is something that will challenge them but should nonetheless be doable, so is a more appropriate task.

It's mostly akin to how high level PF1 characters fought relatively few Axe Beaks and Imps, and how you would never ask low level characters to fight a Marilith. But if your high level PF1 party really wanted to pick a fight with an Imp, they will win easily, and if your low level character really wanted to fight a Marilith I guess they *can* but it will not go well.

In actual "homebrew campaigns" this works well and is pretty easy, I think the real problem is in Doomsday Dawn which is designed to stress test the math of the system. High level characters *should* be able to easily complete tasks which are easy, but DD isn't really set up that way.

[dragonhunterq]

Table 10-2 is fine, it's well explained on how to use it and when it is appropriate to do so, and it is extremely useful at what it's designed for. It is still a tool though and as subject to misuse as any other tool.

As for the DCs in mirrored moon, they are not inappropriate to the task. It shouldn't be easy to half the time to search nearly 100 square miles.

[Bob Bob Bob]

The DCs in Mirrored Moon are absolutely not appropriate. Those hexes are 12 miles across, on a flat plane the average person sees something like 3 miles away. So like a quarter of the hex. Extra height (climb a tree, trivial DC) can easily extend that a mile or two. And we might as well treat it as a flat plane because two of the features are so obvious that you really can't miss them. The longhouse is both large and smoke is coming out of the chimney from the cooking fire. The village is explicitly intentionally very visible. Also, honestly, probably a lot of smoke from cooking fires there as well. So unless the grass is 30 feet tall it shouldn't be that hard to locate them.

For some the DC seems appropriate. To avoid spoilers, K in particular seems like it'd be difficult to find. The rest are more of a mixed bag but you can certainly fluff them one way or another. But unless the longhouse is buried in the ground it should be super obvious. Ditto the village. Anyone who can fly should literally be able to fly straight up at the middle of their hex and see either of them. From a quick calculation (no clue how accurate) you only need to be 25 feet off the ground to see six miles away. So not even flying, a monk with a good jump could do it.

Which is what I said before. Different things need different difficulty levels. The plains hexes should be much easier to search than either the mountain or forest. You can just see so much farther. Additionally, the longhouse and village should be even easier to find than other stuff in the plains because they're so large and glaringly obvious. Ditto the Moonmere, which explicitly says it's so obvious the players will see it well ahead of time. Yet, somehow, is just as hard to find as all the rest of the stuff.