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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 7196445" data-attributes="member: 37579">Random encounter building is fine. I don't think every encounter *needs* to be a fair fight - especially random ones- and some encounters can be stealth based or roleplaying. That's fun. That's a way of building encounters, but not the only way. And not the best way in every situation. It's not very useful if you know the difficulty of the fight you want. If I want a few lookouts guarding a door to a dungeon, I know I want, then rolling 1d12 trolls doesn't help. I know what the tone of the encounter should be (a small incidental fight) and random doesn't help. Neither does being unaware of the challenge posed by monsters or the anticipated difficulty of the encounter. Similarly, if I want a challenging boss fight, rolling 1d12 trolls for bodyguards isn't very helpful. It's not a fight that can become a roleplaying encounters or you can sneak past...It's nice to have both options. To have good guidelines for the expected challenge if you need it, and the ability to ignore those guidelines and throw out some random dice...I don't pay much attention to the DMG guidelines. Those are a ballpark for baseline players, but mine have a little more system mastery and knowledge of gaming, so they can generally take out a "normal" encounter with ease. I tend to build encounters less on numbers of xp budgets and more based on what minis I have. Or, if I have a lot of minis, the encounter's whatever I can grab with one hand and throw onto the battle map. But I also have years of DMing experience to fall back on for how much PCs can take. Plus, knowing whether you should charge in or run is a *learned* skill. If, as a new player, you see five trolls ahead of me, you wouldn't automatically know if a level six party could face them or not. You don't know if that's a deadly fight or barely as challenging as fighting ogres or goblins.Assuming the DM even identifies them as trolls and not "large shambling humanoids". You can't run from every fight.</blockquote>

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