ultimately the GM controls what the players encounter.
How do you figure? Except in a very broad sense, in that the dm presents the game world, the players choose their difficulty.
I think this is a very fundamental difference in playstyle, that I flagged upthread in a reply to [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION].
Gygax takes it as central to play that, while the GM writes up the dungeon, it is the players who choose what they encounter within it (subject to the GM's wandering monsters; hence part of being a skilful player is minimising the time spent dealing with the GM's wanderers). This can be seen, for instance, on pp 107-9 of his PHB:
Few players are so skilful at fantasy role playing games as to not benefit from advice. . .
[A]ssume that a game is scheduled tomorrow, and you are going to get ready for it . . . [T]alk to the better players so that you will be able to set an objective for the adventure. . .
Once the objective has been established, consider how well the party playing will suit the needs which it has engendered. . .
Avoid unnecessary encounters. This advice usually means the difference between success and failure when it is followed intelligently. Your party has an objective, and wandering monsters are something that stand between them and it. . . Do not be sidetracked. A good referee will have any ways to distract an expedition, many things to draw attention, but ignore them if at all possible. The mappers must note all such things, and another expedition might be in order another day to investigate . . . This is not to say that something hanging like a ripe fruit ready to be plucked must be bypassed, but be relatively certain that what appears to be the case actually is.
As soon as a group starts playing in the way that [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has described - ie using pre-packaged adventures designed for PCs of a given level - then all these remarks from Gygax become completely irrelevant. It is the GM (whether solely, or drawing upon a module author) who chooses the difficulty of the encounters. At that point, the difference between "objective" monster building and 4e-style monster building seems completely one of taste. They are simply different tools for generating encounters of a given mathematical difficulty.
Encounter guidelines are inherently contrived, whether you're facing at-level minions or lower-level individuals.
There is a massive difference between "encounter guidelines" and "challenge rating", and that difference lies in their intent. Encounter guidelines, like wealth-by-level guidelines, tell you what you should be doing.
I don't know on what basis you assert this.
From the 4e DMG, pp 56-57:
An easy encounter is one or two levels lower than the party’s level.
A standard encounter is of the party’s level, or one level higher.
A hard encounter is two to four levels higher than the party’s level. . .
A standard encounter should challenge a typical group of characters but not overwhelm them. The characters should prevail if they haven’t depleted their daily resources or had a streak of bad luck. An encounter that’s the same level as the party, or one level higher, falls in this standard range of difficulty.
You can offer your players a greater challenge or an easier time by setting your encounter level two or three levels higher or one or two levels lower than the party’s level. It’s a good idea to vary the difficulty of your encounters over the course of an adventure, just as you vary other elements of encounters to keep things interesting
The guidelines aren't a contrivance. As [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] have explained, they're just a measuring tool. The contrivance consists, rather, in "vary[ing] the difficulty of your encounters over the course of an adventure, just as you vary other elements of encounters to keep things interesting". This sort of contrivance has long been a part of D&D design. It is inherent to the huge lists of monsters in the Monster Manual, for instance - the purpose of this wild variety is to "keep things interesting". It's not any sort of ecological model of a fantasy world.
The sim approach is that it is what it is, regardless of what the PCs are. There are six ogres in this warband, because that's how their social structure works. Whether you're level 1 or level 20, that has zero impact on how many ogres you're going to find together
I would rather beat up three kobolds honestly than a hundred biased frost giants.
As I posted upthread, I don't have a handle on what "honestly" means here. You are rolling dice, adding modifiers, and generating numbers which trigger processes for adjusting numbers in other arrays (eg the GM's monster notes) until one particular tally reaches zero. The whole set-up has a certain probability of it being the monsters' or the PCs' hp which reach zero first.
There is nothing more "honest" about a system in which this is determined primarily via attrition (which is how it works in pre-4e D&D, and how it works in 4e when PCs do damage to a non-minion), or primarily via a lucky hit (which is how it works in 4e when PCs attack a minion, and how it tends to work in Rolemaster in all cases because of its crit rules), or primarily via draining a gameplayer of the resources whereby s/he can replenish depleted tallies (which is how 4e PCs tend to lose - their players run out of ways to access their surges and thereby regain hp that have been lost during the course of the combat).
4e is somewhat unusual in RPGs in mixing different mechanical approaches into the one system: minions work on a "lucky hit" principle, standard monsters on a "wear down their hp" principle, and PCs on a "deplete their surge-unlocking and damage-spiking resources" principle. But that doesn't make it any less honest. It just makes it obviously more abstract in its build and resolution mechanics.
As for the comment about ogres, (1) unless you are playing Gygaxian D&D, as per the quote above, then whether or not your 1st level party encounters 6 ogres is in the hands of the GM, and (2) it is actually not true that the number of ogres encountered is consistent regardless of context. Page 177 of Gygax's DMG has the encounter table for 3rd level monsters, and it lists "Ogres, 1-3". And p 174 has this note (emphasis original):
Lesser monsters on lower levels have their numbers augmented by a like number of the same sort of creatures for each level of the dungeon beneath that of the assigned level of the monster type encountered. . .
Greater monsters on higher levels will have their numbers reduced by 1 for each level of the dungeon above their assigned level, subject to a minimum number of 1.
Hence, on the 1st dungeon level only solitary ogres will be encountered. Whereas to meet your group of 6 I have to go to the fourth dungeon level (where 2-6 ogres can be encountered). This is not a sociological model of ogredom (and every other D&D monster, all of whose numbers are governed by the same dungeon-level principles). It is a contrivance (as [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION] noted above) - though the purpose of the contrivance is not narrative or literary (to increase drama) but "gamist" (to support a certain sort of gameplay, namely, one in which players can knowingly increase the stakes by descending to lower dungeon levels).
The real substantive difference is that "level" has an inconsistent meaning in 4E
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Not only was a level 8 monster not the equivalent of a level 8 PC, but it could vary wildly depending on whether that "level 8" monster was a minion or an elite or a solo. And at that point, why even have levels?
Level, as a label both for encounters and for the elements from which encounters are built (monsters, NPCs, traps, hazards, DCs, etc) has a perfectly consistent usage in 4e - it tells you what level of character will be challenged to a standard extent by an encounter built from those elements. It does this by regulating DCs (including ACs and other defences), attack bonuses, and damage output, and to a slightly lesser extent conditions inflicted. It is also, more loosely, connected to story elements via the idea of "tiers" of play (on tiers, see the discussion in the DMG pp 146-7, and the PHB pp 28-29).
The point of having levels is to know how these various elements can be used to build encounters that will be satisfying in play, as Balesir explained.
A monster's xp value should be calculatable from its level (or HD) which in turn defines how well it can fight; its abilities, and its defenses...otherwise, if I invent my own monster how on earth can I work out what it's worth in xp? Yet here a level 8 is worth the same xp as a level 25. I don't get it, and likely never will.
If you make up your own monster, you decide whether you want it to be a solo, elite or minion (which is a function of the degree of "heft" you want it to have in the encounter). You then look at a chart which suggests suitable defences, attack bonuses and damage for a monster of that role and level.
The XP value of the monster is 1/4x, 1x, 2x or 5x the base XP for the monster's level, depending on whether it is a minion, standard, elite or solo.
Up until epic tier, the base XP value doubles every 4 levels. (At epic it grows just a bit more quickly than that.) So a minion of level N+16 has the same XP value as a standard monster of level N+8 (because 2x2 = 4), which has the same XP value as an elite of level N+4 (because 2=2), which has an XP value just a bit less than that of a solo of level N (because 2 is just a bit less than 5/2).
A level 17 standard Hill Giant, a level 13 Elite Hill giant, a level 8 Solo Hill Giant and a level 25 Minion Hill Giant are all worth the same XP in an encounter, might represent the same Hill Giant* and are roughly as troublesome to kill and as damaging to a party of fixed level. The reasons for treating them differently is really not to do with making an easier or harder challenge - it is to do with making encounters fun and interesting.
<snip>
the recommendation is to use roughly same-level enemies - not out of some sort of "fairness" fetish, but because battles will be more interesting that way.
This is exactly right, and reiterates and develops the point I made upthread in post 111.
The whole design of 4e is aimed at supporting the building and resolution of encounters which will be mechanically engaging, and which - as a correlate of that mechanical character - will be emotionally engaging. Hence the idea that it is more satisfying to have frequent success (between on-level characters the success rate for attacks will be around 60%), but with more than one success required for victory - hence creating the narrative "space" for turn-arounds, surprises, etc.
Whereas a combat between 1st level PCs and a 9th level minion will be basically static - the players will hit only 10% or so, and hence the combat will mostly take the form of failures, followed by the single blow needed for victory. Rightly or wrongly, the designers deem this less interesting and hence design a game that makes it very easy to avoid.
The difference is that a single hit can kill the minion... so at that point get the guy with the largest to hit bonus, pump everything into it and everyone aid him
If the party spent its whole action economy on a standard monster it typically would go down in a single round also. I agree that the mathematical equivalence often won't be exact, but it's near enough.
And now the great hit point debate!
The question of having the same creature have a variable number of hit points (L25 minion and L17 standard as the same creature) was brought up above. This is simply a question of how one visualises hit points. They have always, as far as I'm concerned, been a "fuzzy" concept anyway, so adding in a "quantum" element of a sort of "uncertainty principle" to them seems non-problematic.
Which is a real kick to the sim, since it implies that there is no objective reality which is even attempted to being modeled. If you visualize hit points as being less fuzzy, and an actual measure of how many arrow hits you can take before falling unconscious and bleeding out, then this sort of uncertainty is particularly irksome.
Getting hurt is the primary outcome of someone hitting you. Falling unconscious is the primary outcome of getting hurt a lot.
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If you look at D&D, prior to 4E, there was basically nothing that could make you lose hit points that wasn't something doing physical damage to your body.
The phrase "objective reality" in your assertion "there
is no objective reality which is even attempted to being modelled" is ambiguous.
4e hit points don't model any objective feature of the ingame situation. But it does not follow that the ingame situation is not objective. (Or as objective as a fiction can be.) The attack rate of an AD&D fighter, and the rolling of a surprise or initiative or attack or saving throw die in AD&D, doesn't model anything objective either (see Gygax's DMG pp 61-62, 80-81), but that doesn't mean there is no objective reality to the ingame situation.
Read what I wrote carefully. If you claim this, you are saying that quantum mechanics do not model any objective reality. I have a real world here that says you are wrong to do so.
The example that I thought of wasn't quantum mechanics but special relativity: a given event can be described using multiple pairings of time and location, but the space-time interval is constant.
So in 4e, the level and corresponding hit points, defences, attack bonus and damage potential are variable across the solo, elite, standard and minion designations, but the XP is constant and is the overall measure of "puissance", which is the objective ingame phenomenon that the combat stats are trying to track. The reason we want different possible configurations for tracking that objective phenomenon is exactly as you have said - to create interesting encounters for characters of a range of different levels.
the whole point of a sim is to see what happens.
The point of gamist play is to see what happens, too - who is a skilled player, able to reach his/her objective despite the distractions and wandering monsters sent by the referee? Likewise my preferred form of play - we get to find out what choices the players make for their PCs, and which values and alliances and loyalties are affirmed, and which repudiated, and how the ensuing conflicts unfold.
The presence of literary (or gamist) contrivances doesn't make the game a railroad. That was one of my points upthread (in post 68), where I contrasted "Forge-y narrativism" with "90s-style railroading. [MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION] has pointed out that even in railroaded play the players can still be "seeing what happens" eg how will a particular character be depicted by his/her player?
