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General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions
4e Compared to Trad D&D; What You Lose, What You Gain
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<blockquote data-quote="Joshua Randall" data-source="post: 7526795" data-attributes="member: 7737"><p>Like all encounter level systems, 4e's is part science and part art. Certainly 4e monsters with their actually prescribed numbers lend themselves more to 'level' being an actually meaningful term, but as pointed out, who's to say a Solo level 30 monster is equivalent to two level 28 monsters, when compared to a level 23 party? Nobody knows. It depends too much on how good the monster designers were, how optimized the PCs are, and how good the DM is at adjusting on the fly.</p><p></p><p>This is why you playtest, as an adventure author.</p><p></p><p>This is also why you offer a lot of levers in a published adventure to make the encounter harder / easier / faster / etc.</p><p></p><p>Of course for a home-play group's DM, you effectively bake in a lot of the 'playtest' results to just... the way you run the game... especially if you've been DM-ing them since level 1.</p><p></p><p>= = =</p><p></p><p>Regarding the skill challenge, this is a perfect illustration of the flaws of skill challenges. The rogue should contribute whatever the rogue wants to contribute, but in actual practice he'll try to shoehorn something into Thievery, Acrobatics, Bluff (if Cha secondary), or perhaps Athletics (if Str secondary).</p><p></p><p>Then you get situations like... "I'll use Thievery to know and expose a flaw in the Far Realms vehicle, that the party can exploit if things come to blows." Some DMs will interpret this as Intimidate and unfairly assign it a higher DC than they would to Diplomacy or Bluff (or Thievery, for that matter).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Joshua Randall, post: 7526795, member: 7737"] Like all encounter level systems, 4e's is part science and part art. Certainly 4e monsters with their actually prescribed numbers lend themselves more to 'level' being an actually meaningful term, but as pointed out, who's to say a Solo level 30 monster is equivalent to two level 28 monsters, when compared to a level 23 party? Nobody knows. It depends too much on how good the monster designers were, how optimized the PCs are, and how good the DM is at adjusting on the fly. This is why you playtest, as an adventure author. This is also why you offer a lot of levers in a published adventure to make the encounter harder / easier / faster / etc. Of course for a home-play group's DM, you effectively bake in a lot of the 'playtest' results to just... the way you run the game... especially if you've been DM-ing them since level 1. = = = Regarding the skill challenge, this is a perfect illustration of the flaws of skill challenges. The rogue should contribute whatever the rogue wants to contribute, but in actual practice he'll try to shoehorn something into Thievery, Acrobatics, Bluff (if Cha secondary), or perhaps Athletics (if Str secondary). Then you get situations like... "I'll use Thievery to know and expose a flaw in the Far Realms vehicle, that the party can exploit if things come to blows." Some DMs will interpret this as Intimidate and unfairly assign it a higher DC than they would to Diplomacy or Bluff (or Thievery, for that matter). [/QUOTE]
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