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<blockquote data-quote="spinozajack" data-source="post: 6627013" data-attributes="member: 6794198">Ask Han Solo what he thinks of those million to one odds. Balanced encounters means the invisible hand of god is stepping in to make things fair which really have no place being. Generals don't try to square up their armies so they have a fair fight ahead of them, they try to eke out every possible advantage to crush their enemies. As they should do to PCs. So PCs should learn to run. If they always expect each encounter to be balanced, that's just reducing the game to combat as sport. And combat is not a sport, it's dangerous and should be avoided at all costs if you want to live long. What I see here is a philosophy of having your cake and wanting to eat it too. You want a glorious outcome from long odds, but want those odds to be fair (whaaat?), so that there's equality of opportunity for every participant. That's not how warfare works, not in human history, and not in most fantasy. Most of the time, the good guys are besieged by long odds and are the underdog. That's the classic trope that's also the most rewarding. It seems to me like you want the story benefits of the underdog vs favorite trope to be played out by even odds, fair fight maths. Actually not even. In 4th edition a &quot;balanced&quot; encounter was one that PCs were definitely expected to win most of the time, so in effect it's a lie. It's dishonest to call such skewed odds &quot;balanced&quot;, because if they were 50-50, PCs would last at most a handful of battles.&nbsp; And that's not how it played out, and you know it.A 50-50 chance of winning in typical D&amp;D battles, even once in a while, would be substantially increasing the difficulty of the game, even in 5th edition where PCs die more often (at low levels, at least). So if you mean by &quot;balanced&quot;, an substantial increase of what the current monsters have over PCs, then that would be an improvement. But not in the sense that you think. Because the game is already mechanically way too easy. It's moderately harder to survive the lower levels than in 4th edition, but after level 5, PCs are next to unkillable.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="spinozajack, post: 6627013, member: 6794198"] Ask Han Solo what he thinks of those million to one odds. Balanced encounters means the invisible hand of god is stepping in to make things fair which really have no place being. Generals don't try to square up their armies so they have a fair fight ahead of them, they try to eke out every possible advantage to crush their enemies. As they should do to PCs. So PCs should learn to run. If they always expect each encounter to be balanced, that's just reducing the game to combat as sport. And combat is not a sport, it's dangerous and should be avoided at all costs if you want to live long. What I see here is a philosophy of having your cake and wanting to eat it too. You want a glorious outcome from long odds, but want those odds to be fair (whaaat?), so that there's equality of opportunity for every participant. That's not how warfare works, not in human history, and not in most fantasy. Most of the time, the good guys are besieged by long odds and are the underdog. That's the classic trope that's also the most rewarding. It seems to me like you want the story benefits of the underdog vs favorite trope to be played out by even odds, fair fight maths. Actually not even. In 4th edition a "balanced" encounter was one that PCs were definitely expected to win most of the time, so in effect it's a lie. It's dishonest to call such skewed odds "balanced", because if they were 50-50, PCs would last at most a handful of battles. And that's not how it played out, and you know it. A 50-50 chance of winning in typical D&D battles, even once in a while, would be substantially increasing the difficulty of the game, even in 5th edition where PCs die more often (at low levels, at least). So if you mean by "balanced", an substantial increase of what the current monsters have over PCs, then that would be an improvement. But not in the sense that you think. Because the game is already mechanically way too easy. It's moderately harder to survive the lower levels than in 4th edition, but after level 5, PCs are next to unkillable. [/QUOTE]

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