Quote:
Originally Posted by crash_beedo  Game balance expects PC's to have a certain amount of magic items (and money to spend on more, or potions and rituals) - and in 4E, this aspect of the game is managed by the Parcel system. From that perspective, the DM can create treasure and magic items for a series of encounters, literally in minutes. |
My advice?
Ignore game balance.
Seriously.
Balance the encounters on any given level as though it were for a given level (or level range) of characters, and then give treasure as you feel appropriate. Let the
players worry about "game balance". If you really want that Old School feeling, the primary difference between OS & NS is that in OS, it is incumbant upon the
players to decide what they can handle.
If the PCs don't have enough OOMPH to survive on level 3, they don't go to level 3. Or they don't survive. Easy.
(But let your players know what you are doing.....
WotC-D&D players are unlikely to be expecting this! Unlike the 1e PHB, the
3e and
4e PHBs have scanty or no advice for the
players in terms of how to judge a challenge and survive it. I would suggest having them read the player advice section from the 1e PHB. Lots of good stuff there.)
Quote:
If you built a level 1 dungeon with 50 encounters, you literally could give every monster an appropriate treasure. And one reason players might not spend time on level 1 any longer is the XP and Treasure rewards they're getting no longer keep them moving forward at an acceptable rate.
In the 4E paradigm, I don't believe XP is exponential any longer... it's a more gradual curve... raising the issue that a level 2 party could still be advancing at a decent pace while whomping on level 1 monsters.
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That's what happens when you change things without understanding why they were designed in a particular way in the first place. The easiest thing to do here is to simply 'port in another XP paradigm. Use the Fighter XP progression from the 1e PHB, and determine XP with the 1e
DMG....without giving XP for hit points, because hit points are crazy in
4e.
(You might need to do a bit more tweaking than this to make
4e work in megadungeon mode, but that's the way I would handle this particular problem.)
RC
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