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In PFS or SFS, everything is at least an at level DC. If you are level 10, its at least a dc 27 to Perceive the huge red dragon breathing unholy fire at you, climb a tree, convincing small children to take candy, feed a starving man.
That seems like a problem of GMs who choose to be very inflexible. The rules include simple DCs, DCs for things that shouldn't change based on level basically everything you're describing falls under that. Except for the dragon, which shouldn't be a check at all.
Unless the PFS scenarios are written specifically with all the DCs spell out, and they've written them as scaled DCs then it's unfortunately GMs following the rules for PFS. But a GM ignoring simples DCs is just choosing to be difficult.
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Claxon has the right of it. All save one of those things should be using the Simple DCs.
Dragons who are attacking and not hiding are automatically spotted.
If PFS/SFS doesn't do that in practice, then that is a failing of Society play specifically, and not of the general game rules themselves.
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In PFS or SFS, everything is at least an at level DC. If you are level 10, its at least a dc 27 to Perceive the huge red dragon breathing unholy fire at you, climb a tree, convincing small children to take candy, feed a starving man.
That seems like a problem of GMs who choose to be very inflexible. The rules include simple DCs, DCs for things that shouldn't change based on level basically everything you're describing falls under that. Except for the dragon, which shouldn't be a check at all.
Unless the PFS scenarios are written specifically with all the DCs spell out, and they've written them as scaled DCs then it's unfortunately GMs following the rules for PFS. But a GM ignoring simples DCs is just choosing to be difficult.
PFS scenarios typically do have DCs specified and PFS GMs have limited allowance to deviate from what the scenario specifies. AFAIK there's more tolerance for deviation now than there was a few years ago, but there is a lot of stuff a GM is simply not allowed to change in a PFS sanctioned game.
Claxon has the right of it. All save one of those things should be using the Simple DCs.
Dragons who are attacking and not hiding are automatically spotted.
If PFS/SFS doesn't do that in practice, then that is a failing of Society play specifically, and not of the general game rules themselves.
I'm not sure I've ever seen a case of "need to beat a standard level DC to spot a dragon attacking a settlement", but in general I agree.
Of course, PFS is Paizo. So if Paizo's published content doesn't use the rules correctly, that suggests a problem somewhere. Do scenario writers not understand the rules? Are the rules confusing/misleading? Are they being told to scale everything?
PFS isn't the only instance of that, though. The Kingdom rules in Kingmaker infamously use the control DC (aka: DC by level) for things that should use a simple DC (like building a farm, especially since building construction in a settlement does).
So one of the difficulties here is that when a new GM looks for guidance on how to use the different DC systems, they see Paizo using level based DCs all over the place and assume that's how it should be done.
A lot of them it really should be a standard DC and it's totally cool for your PCs to find it easy because they're good at the thing.
PFS tends to use at-level DCs strictly for Skill Challenges. Which is understandable, as the whole point of a Skill Challenge is to be, well, Challenging. So you end up with things like overly difficult to climb Walls, because, well, see above.
Skill checks outside of Skill Challenges should still be up to the GM though, and should definitely use stuff like Simple DCs.
So the question really seems to come down to -- Paizo, why are you not following your own rules in published adventures and scaling to level DCs for skill checks?