The difficulty curve... what in the world is it?

[Wayfarer]

If I may quote myself…

@Wayfarer

You balance a game to the PCs you have and the genre you want. Acrobatic heroics in a pulpy action game of BW might be Ob 2; in a grim and gritty war campaign they might be Ob 5. If you want the PCs to be larger than life heroes you make the acceptable intents and the possible consequences of failure match. Pulpy or heroic might be, “Succeed and you kill all ten of them while the Baron stares slackjawed. Fail and you still cut them all down, but the Baron makes his escape in the commotion.” You’re awesome either way. In a grimmer game, there may be no intent that allows victory against ten to one odds. Maybe success is managing to escape yourself and failure is getting disarmed and captured.

Balance is how you set expectations and genre. It’s not a thing in itself. You match it to your game.

So keep in mind that difficulty is relative to what you want to make difficult in this particular game, and that tuning those Ob knobs is a big part of setting up the game expectations.

And I stand by what I said. Ob 1-3, maybe 1-4, should be most tests for most games, at least until everyone’s always doing crazy stuff after a year or more of consistent play and increasing stats. There will be harder tests, of course, but they should stand out as the exception, not the rule. Because those harder tests are hard and should hurt.