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Message: <blockquote data-quote="!DWolf" data-source="post: 8102970" data-attributes="member: 7026314">No it’s not. There are no mechanics that enforce that type of scenario. There are many mechanics that enable scenario 2 to be run (for a small sampling: perception, skills like survival, actions like recall knowledge, feats like experienced tracker, and classes like the investigator). It is clearly geared towards running scenario 2.Now whether scenario 2 is a better game experience than scenario 1 is a different question. I focus heavily on player decision making and enjoy giving them situations to see how they react. If they can trivialize or bypass an encounter, especially through skilled or clever play, then I am overjoyed. My players tend to play proactively, coming up with lots of solutions. Some people play different though: they are in it for the combat. For them the decision making and skilled or clever play is draining. They are more reactive, they just want to bash in some monster heads you know? The problems is when the game (scenario + mechanics) assumes one styles and the players assume the other style:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If players assume 2 and the game assumes 1 (common in 1e pathfinder): then they either get bored of the endless fights with little interesting in between (see retreaters post about 4e in the exploration thread) or they start to easily blow through the fights with clever tactics and strategies that are completely overmatching the encounters.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> the players assume 1 and the game assumes 2. Then the game becomes a nightmarish slog of deadly combats, repeated tpks, parties huddled together desperately trying to heal before a monster finds them. (Though I guess some people might find that fun? Like dark souls for tabletop?)</li> </ul>Note: I don’t mean to exclude other styles of play such as heavy role playing or building focused, it’s just that the mismatch between the two styles is what is causing the problems here. Yes having foreknowledge of a fight and being able to choose when and how to engage it makes the fight much easier. The complaint was that the encounters were excessively difficult resulting in tpks and frustration. This approach addresses the complaint.I find this totally unnecessary (and counterproductive to what I want to accomplish). Again I focus heavily on decisions and agency. I find it perfectly acceptable if the players choose to save the wine merchant, learn that the hill giant stole his wine, stealthily track the giant back to his camp, wait until he’s passed out drunk, and kill him in his sleep and thus they entirety negate the combat. I realize that this style is not for everyone - your reaction (adding more combat to make up for a reduction of combat) shows that you are firmly in the stream-of-combats camp. Which I stress is not a bad thing. It’s just you may struggle a bit with material that assumes the other playstyle and find features that support the other playstyle unnecessary or frustrating.When I started encounters were written basically as a footnote. Creatures: two guard dogs (ac 6, hp 10,THAC0 19). It took me a while to realize that there was supposed to be more to the encounter than just having creatures randomly appear/sit in a room waiting and attack. And when I did I found running the adventures a much richer experience (because again I focus on player decisions and agency). Today, 25 years later, I find that adventures are basically written the same - and what I am advocating (going through and supplying the encounter fundamentals that the writer can’t include because otherwise it would be a massive, unrunnable mess) is not rewriting them but translating them to be run at the table and thereby bringing them to life.</blockquote>

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