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[Very Long] Combat as Sport vs. Combat as War: a Key Difference in D&D Play Styles...
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<blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 5828485" data-attributes="member: 5143"><p>I've read the full section in the 3e DMG. It says that encounters more than APL+4 should be immediate death for the party. It says encounters that are APL-10 or lower aren't worth XP at all because of how easy the fight is.</p><p></p><p>So you have a range for 15th level characters of EL 6 through EL 19. Which created a "range" around the PC of useable monsters. Then experience with the game system quickly showed me that encounters more than 1 EL below the Average Party Level took longer to put on the battle map and roll initiative than they took to kill and with no resources lost at all. And the amount of XP they gave meant we could spend an entire session fighting them and not really get significantly closer to next level...nor feel like we accomplished anything.</p><p></p><p>So, it created a range of "appropriate" encounters that was approximately EL 14 though EL 19. Which is a range of 6 ELs of monsters that you can use that follows the PCs around. And one of those ELs(the APL+4 one) was nearly certain death for most parties. Another one was still extremely easy(the APL-1 range), to the point where over 50% of them wouldn't result in one of the PCs using a single spell or taking a single point of damage. This meant that the practical range was instead 4 ELs.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Majoru Oakheart, post: 5828485, member: 5143"] I've read the full section in the 3e DMG. It says that encounters more than APL+4 should be immediate death for the party. It says encounters that are APL-10 or lower aren't worth XP at all because of how easy the fight is. So you have a range for 15th level characters of EL 6 through EL 19. Which created a "range" around the PC of useable monsters. Then experience with the game system quickly showed me that encounters more than 1 EL below the Average Party Level took longer to put on the battle map and roll initiative than they took to kill and with no resources lost at all. And the amount of XP they gave meant we could spend an entire session fighting them and not really get significantly closer to next level...nor feel like we accomplished anything. So, it created a range of "appropriate" encounters that was approximately EL 14 though EL 19. Which is a range of 6 ELs of monsters that you can use that follows the PCs around. And one of those ELs(the APL+4 one) was nearly certain death for most parties. Another one was still extremely easy(the APL-1 range), to the point where over 50% of them wouldn't result in one of the PCs using a single spell or taking a single point of damage. This meant that the practical range was instead 4 ELs. [/QUOTE]
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[Very Long] Combat as Sport vs. Combat as War: a Key Difference in D&D Play Styles...
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