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<blockquote data-quote="Vayden" data-source="post: 4360421" data-attributes="member: 57791">Huh. Well, I finally see the disconnect between your games and mine. In our games, we saw an encounter of EL &lt; APL maybe once every 20 encounters as a &quot;change of pace&quot;. Our group's style, whether I was running or one of our other DMs was running, was always to try and make fights interesting and challenging, which means that the fights are a threat. If the fights are a threat, your casters can't just sit back and spam 1st/2nd level spells, they have to react at close to their full capacity (which includes everything beyond dealing damage), which means that the non-casters are basically turned into, at best, sentient weapons for the casters to use. If you're running a bunch of non-threatening encounters most of the time, your perspective makes a lot more sense. In fairness, the system was built for that type of play, which is probably why it seems more balanced to you - you're playing it the way it was meant to be played. Most of the rest of us got bored with non-challenging fights and scrapped that system. It's when every fight is a challenge that 3.x's system really starts to show its strain, especially at high levels. The beautiful thing about 4E is that it's built under the assumption that every fight is a challenge. I was running my group through a 2nd level dungeon last week - they handled 70% of the goblins fine, but one room of goblins got a tactical advantage on them, got some good dice rolls, and pushed them within an inch of their lives. That could have happened in any of the fights if a couple things bounced more the monster's way. Out of the 50 or so 4e fights I've DMed or played in so far, maybe 5 were forgettable. All the rest were adrenaline rushes that needed everything we had to take them - and afterwards, we caught our breath and moved on the next crazy fight. I can't imagine ever going back.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Vayden, post: 4360421, member: 57791"] Huh. Well, I finally see the disconnect between your games and mine. In our games, we saw an encounter of EL < APL maybe once every 20 encounters as a "change of pace". Our group's style, whether I was running or one of our other DMs was running, was always to try and make fights interesting and challenging, which means that the fights are a threat. If the fights are a threat, your casters can't just sit back and spam 1st/2nd level spells, they have to react at close to their full capacity (which includes everything beyond dealing damage), which means that the non-casters are basically turned into, at best, sentient weapons for the casters to use. If you're running a bunch of non-threatening encounters most of the time, your perspective makes a lot more sense. In fairness, the system was built for that type of play, which is probably why it seems more balanced to you - you're playing it the way it was meant to be played. Most of the rest of us got bored with non-challenging fights and scrapped that system. It's when every fight is a challenge that 3.x's system really starts to show its strain, especially at high levels. The beautiful thing about 4E is that it's built under the assumption that every fight is a challenge. I was running my group through a 2nd level dungeon last week - they handled 70% of the goblins fine, but one room of goblins got a tactical advantage on them, got some good dice rolls, and pushed them within an inch of their lives. That could have happened in any of the fights if a couple things bounced more the monster's way. Out of the 50 or so 4e fights I've DMed or played in so far, maybe 5 were forgettable. All the rest were adrenaline rushes that needed everything we had to take them - and afterwards, we caught our breath and moved on the next crazy fight. I can't imagine ever going back. [/QUOTE]

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