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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5717516" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>What you say is more or less right. At 1st level, the first encounter - adapted from Night's Dark Terror (and I think upthread I have said The Night Below when I mean Night's Dark Terror - getting my "Nights" confused!) - involved the PCs on a boat being stopped by a chain across the river and then swarmed by cultists. I statted the cultists as 1st level minions (delevelled rabble). Just recently, at 12th level, the PCs were attacked in the streets outside the apartments of a wizard they had fought and killed, and some of the assailants were thugs from the docks. I statted these as (I think) 10th level minions, levelled up from the minions in the Monster Vault. (Which I think are human thugs.)</p><p></p><p>The question of whether dock thugs are tougher than cultists has never come up. No one asked about it. From my point of view, it's about using the encounter building mechanics to get a balance of numbers, threats etc that I think will play well as an encounter. All the narrative/fictional interpretation can be overlayed later, in the course of play as needed!</p><p></p><p>Now once the PCs are demigods I'm probably not going to be using any thugs anymore, whether cultists or longshoremen! But I see this as being driven by colour and by fictional positioning, not by mechanics.</p><p></p><p>A further thought: your comparison of the limited scope of 4e levelling compared to 3E is interesting. I've not played much 3E. But compared to Rolemaster the levelling in 4e is still mechanically very noticeable. In Rolemaster, the difference in attack bonus between a 1st level fighter and a 20th level fighter is about double: from +70 or so to +150 or so, on a table where bonus plus d100 needs to reach somewhere around 100 to do noticeable damage. That double bonus is very signficant - because it is also used as defence, and so in a one-on-one duel the 20th level fighter can put 70 of his/her bonus into defence, leave the 1st level fighter needing an open-ended roll (ie 96+) to do anything meaningful, and still attack with +80. But RM makes defending against multiple foes very difficult, which means that even low level opponents can still be quite significant in numbers, whereas in D&D this is not really the case. And an ambush by low-level opponents, bypassing defences, is utterly huge in Rolemaster, whereas in D&D it is no more than +2 to hit from combat advantage.</p><p></p><p>So compared to what I was used to GMing, I find the level differences in 4e quite marked. Which might in part explain my approach to them.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5717516, member: 42582"] What you say is more or less right. At 1st level, the first encounter - adapted from Night's Dark Terror (and I think upthread I have said The Night Below when I mean Night's Dark Terror - getting my "Nights" confused!) - involved the PCs on a boat being stopped by a chain across the river and then swarmed by cultists. I statted the cultists as 1st level minions (delevelled rabble). Just recently, at 12th level, the PCs were attacked in the streets outside the apartments of a wizard they had fought and killed, and some of the assailants were thugs from the docks. I statted these as (I think) 10th level minions, levelled up from the minions in the Monster Vault. (Which I think are human thugs.) The question of whether dock thugs are tougher than cultists has never come up. No one asked about it. From my point of view, it's about using the encounter building mechanics to get a balance of numbers, threats etc that I think will play well as an encounter. All the narrative/fictional interpretation can be overlayed later, in the course of play as needed! Now once the PCs are demigods I'm probably not going to be using any thugs anymore, whether cultists or longshoremen! But I see this as being driven by colour and by fictional positioning, not by mechanics. A further thought: your comparison of the limited scope of 4e levelling compared to 3E is interesting. I've not played much 3E. But compared to Rolemaster the levelling in 4e is still mechanically very noticeable. In Rolemaster, the difference in attack bonus between a 1st level fighter and a 20th level fighter is about double: from +70 or so to +150 or so, on a table where bonus plus d100 needs to reach somewhere around 100 to do noticeable damage. That double bonus is very signficant - because it is also used as defence, and so in a one-on-one duel the 20th level fighter can put 70 of his/her bonus into defence, leave the 1st level fighter needing an open-ended roll (ie 96+) to do anything meaningful, and still attack with +80. But RM makes defending against multiple foes very difficult, which means that even low level opponents can still be quite significant in numbers, whereas in D&D this is not really the case. And an ambush by low-level opponents, bypassing defences, is utterly huge in Rolemaster, whereas in D&D it is no more than +2 to hit from combat advantage. So compared to what I was used to GMing, I find the level differences in 4e quite marked. Which might in part explain my approach to them. [/QUOTE]
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