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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4693289" data-attributes="member: 5143">The idea is to control pacing of an encounter.  In an average 6 round combat at first level, you are expected to spend 5 of those rounds using at-will attacks at 1st level.  If you allow a character more encounter powers, then they are more powerful than expected.  If you force them to use Basic Attacks for those 5 rounds than they are less powerful than expected.Consider a round where a Wizard uses a Flame Burst(or whatever it's called) and hits 3 enemies for 7 damage.  He is doing 21 damage total.  If he instead attacks with a Longbow, he might hit for 1d10+3, for a max of 13 damage(average around 8).  It's dramatically lower.If, you allow Flame Burst to do 2d6+int instead, you've increased the damage to 33 damage on average to those 3 creatures.  Which, as you've mentioned, actually speeds up combat.  Which may not be a good thing.  If monsters die quicker, they don't have as many actions per combat.  If they have less actions per combat, they have less chances to do damage to the PCs.  Which means they are weaker than expected.  If the PCs lose less healing surges than expected, they can survive longer and fight more battles.  This causes a huge imbalance in the encounter design/wealth expectation/pacing of an adventure.When the game expects otherwise, yes.Not dead in the water, just harder.  But it cancels out one of the advantages of playing a cleric...that it is easier to fight undead.It depends on the solution you use.  As I mention, if you give them more encounter powers, it does speed up combats.  Mostly by making anyone with more encounter powers better than all the other classes.  If you give all classes no at-wills and more encounter powers, it just makes them ALL better and reduces the difficulty of all monsters.I don't think they need a boost.  They appear to, if you are used to them being more powerful in older editions, but the ability to hit multiple creatures with most of their powers while hitting Reflex helps them a lot.  If you remove their at-wills, they will for SURE need a boost, however.If he isn't suggesting it, then I am.  I'm telling you that the vast majority of DMs out there don't have time to tailor encounters to their PCs.  I'm also telling you that a number of them don't WANT to tailor encounters to their PCs.I certainly don't think it should be a necessity.  I think of encounters as a "what if" scenario.  What IF there was a group of cultists planning to bring back their dark god.  What IF a group of PCs decided to stop them.  What happens?  At the same time, I want my players to be able to play whatever the most fun is for them and not have to change the entire scenario around them.  If I tailor the encounters to my group, it ruins the what if.  It turns it into "What if a group of PCs ran across a bunch of encounters specifically designed for them?"  Which isn't that much fun for me.I've been running Living Greyhawk adventures for years without adjusting them to the party that was playing it.  I've been running Living Forgotten Realms now for 6 months in 4e without adjusting adventures to the party.  I've run published adventures in my home games for years in 3e and 3.5e without adjusting a single one of them to my party.They don't need to be adjusted, and I'm not going to do unneeded work when there is laundry to be done, movies to be watched, books to be read, lawns to be mowed and so on.  I think that the game system should be balanced enough so I don't have to.  I also take offense to the fact that your implication is that I'm somehow a mindless computer because I don't adjust them.Even if I was going to adjust them for my party...how do you adjust them?  This is always the question I have when someone says, "You need to adjust for your party".  If I have a wizard who uses 90% fire spells but has 10% of his spells as cold spells...well, is a creature with fire immunity but vulnerability to cold a bad idea to send at the party?  What if is is Fire Resistance 30?  20?  Is it worth it to make the wizard feel useless for a battle in order to allow the fighter to shine?Sure, I could come up with answers to these questions, but they'd be guesses.  Not based on anything other than a gut feeling of what they'd be able to handle.  I could be(and have been) completely wrong when adjusting things.  I've nearly killed off an entire party.  I've made an enemy so easy that they died before taking an action.  All while thinking I was doing the right thing.</blockquote>

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