Balanced encounters - yesterday vs. today

[billd91]

If Monster Level mapped to character level as CR does in 3.X, then your analysis would be spot-on. However, it does not. A level 1 party meeting a ML I monster doesn't necessarily need to use 1/4 of its resources; it might not even need to use any. Or there might be a fatality. The level 6 party that assumed it could "take" any ML VI monster it met had a short career indeed.

As you say, "that's how the level system was designed"....and it was not designed to hold your hand.

I would argue that the EL/CR system wasn't designed to hold your hand either. It was designed to take a system akin to the earlier "monster level" system and make it both more useful and more precise.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I would argue that the EL/CR system wasn't designed to hold your hand either. It was designed to take a system akin to the earlier "monster level" system and make it both more useful and more precise.

Maybe so, but I note that the 4e designers seem to be headed back toward set XP and monster levels determined by examining XP.




EDIT: BTW, my comment about "hand-holding" related exactly to your comment about making the system more useful and precise. The more precise the system is, the easier it is to determine the relative danger, and less thought is required for the players to determine whether they should fight or run.

Q's analysis relies upon the idea that ML can be mapped to character level in a fashion implied by the numerical ML and CL. This is true in an extremely limited sort of way, but is certainly not true in the way CR/EL works.

 

[Quasqueton]

it is an extreme stretch to the point of being false to say that "1E had the same thing as 3E as far as CR/EL rules".

I would agree with that statement.

Let me say my opinion in a quote box so it is easily identifiable:

AD&D1 had guidelines for judging challenge-to-character level balance. The guidelines were not direct or precise, but they did exist. Gygax, Mentzer, and crew advised balance in the game. I don't understand why following that advise in later editions, by trying to make the guidelines more direct, precise, and clear is considered a bad thing by some.

Vague and confusing guidelines and advice is still guidelines and advice. But I don't see why anyone would deride as a bad thing, having more precise and clear guidelines and advice.

Like I've said, note that adventure modules were explicitly designed with challenges appropriate for the character levels announced on the front (and inside). It's not like the old modules were just a hodge-podge of different challenge levels.

The more precise the system is, the easier it is to determine the relative danger, and less thought is required for the players to determine whether they should fight or run.

Are you suggesting that when Players' PCs encounter a challenge, they figure up the challenge level/rating and base their fight or flight decision on this? That's absurd.

Quasqueton

 

[gizmo33]

Like I've said, note that adventure modules were explicitly designed with challenges appropriate for the character levels announced on the front (and inside). It's not like the old modules were just a hodge-podge of different challenge levels.

I agree. I think it's an overstatement to say that 1E wasn't conscious of challenge levels, or balancing such things for adventures. There's plenty of stuff written by Gygax and others with regards to that. I never had the impression that you were saying anything other than what you were saying here. I thought another poster was taking the 4 quotes in the OP and trying to make them say something that they weren't saying.

But the 4 quotes to me say something that is a matter of degree, and that is that there was less of a focus on the challenge rating being the only criteria for what PCs ought to face. It seems to me that the 3E rules and literature focus almost exclusively on that in any kind of systematic way.

1E on the other hand had significant written statements showing that versimiltude (what makes sense) should be used for encounters. For example is the section on the DMG where Gygax describes how a lair full of creatures responds to raids by the PCs. The actions of the monsters in this section is not based on the PC level, but instead based on the alignment and general culture of the monsters.

1E also repeatedly warned players that their PCs should expect to run away and fight another day.

None of these things are rules though, and there is no reason that you can't do the same things in 3E. It's the culture of 1E and 3E that are different, and granted that's highly subjective. And CR has given players a tool to complain about encounter difficulty that they didn't have before. Combine that with the lack of the kind of advice and I think maybe you can see that the 1E and 3E general experience are different in these areas, and that IMO comes through prettly clearly in the 4 quotes you post and is something I agree with.

 

[billd91]

None of these things are rules though, and there is no reason that you can't do the same things in 3E. It's the culture of 1E and 3E that are different, and granted that's highly subjective. And CR has given players a tool to complain about encounter difficulty that they didn't have before. Combine that with the lack of the kind of advice and I think maybe you can see that the 1E and 3E general experience are different in these areas, and that IMO comes through prettly clearly in the 4 quotes you post and is something I agree with.

Whenever I hear a lot about this sort of thing, I keep asking myself, "Who isn't reading their Dungeon Master's Guide?" The discussion on Tailored vs Status Quo encounter is right there in the DMG, both the 3.0 and 3.5 editions. Same with Static and Dynamic adventure sites. The advice is most definitely there and always has been.

 

[Ourph]

Let me say my opinion in a quote box so it is easily identifiable:Vague and confusing guidelines and advice is still guidelines and advice. But I don't see why anyone would deride as a bad thing, having more precise and clear guidelines and advice.

Some people might feel that the more precise and clear guidelines and advice become the more they seem like hard and fast rules rather than guidelines and advice.

 

[gizmo33]

Whenever I hear a lot about this sort of thing, I keep asking myself, "Who isn't reading their Dungeon Master's Guide?" The discussion on Tailored vs Status Quo encounter is right there in the DMG, both the 3.0 and 3.5 editions. Same with Static and Dynamic adventure sites. The advice is most definitely there and always has been.

Cool. I'm not surprised that I wouldn't have seen it, I don't look for DMing advice in the 3E DMG. However, i wonder if it's as vivid as the 6 or so examples that Gygax gives in the 1E DMG. I don't see it come up much, if at all, when 3E people are discussing their encounters. My general impression is that CR takes precedence over everything else in the way 3E people design encounters. This isn't of course, a mandate of the rules, but I do think it's become a general practice, at least as far as what I read on message boards. If the 3E DMG is vague and brief on it's "status quo" advice for encounter design, then I would expect the CR rules, where are pretty ubiquitous in the books, would take much more of a precedence in people's minds, especially those people without experience with 1E.

 

[billd91]

Cool. I'm not surprised that I wouldn't have seen it, I don't look for DMing advice in the 3E DMG.

Where else would you go???
Seriously, I understand an experienced DM has plenty of other sources of advice. But since the core rules are the ultimate source from which 3E's culture is derived, your lack of experience with it could explain why you're not seeing that part of the edition's culture.

However, i wonder if it's as vivid as the 6 or so examples that Gygax gives in the 1E DMG. I don't see it come up much, if at all, when 3E people are discussing their encounters. My general impression is that CR takes precedence over everything else in the way 3E people design encounters. This isn't of course, a mandate of the rules, but I do think it's become a general practice, at least as far as what I read on message boards. If the 3E DMG is vague and brief on it's "status quo" advice for encounter design, then I would expect the CR rules, where are pretty ubiquitous in the books, would take much more of a precedence in people's minds, especially those people without experience with 1E.

Well, like in 1st edition, the majority of encounters you see are going to be tailored to the particular PCs at the time. They may be part of a published module which lists the appropriate PC levels, or they're encounters that happen at the DM's initiative, or were designed based on the DM's plot and how far he expected the PCs to advance by the time the plot events happen, etc.
Tailored encounters also involve the most rules in the form of the CR/EL subsystem. If the encounter is status quo, we aren't really worried about the CR/EL until we're figuring out the XPs at the end or putting together the pile of loot. I liken this to people thinking the majority of D&D's focus is combat. Of course when you look at the rules, it appears that way. But that's only because combat requires the most substantial chunk of drafted rules to make consistent and fair. It's no more the thrust of the game than playing the role of your character out of combat (which requires fewer drafted rules).

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

If Monster Level mapped to character level as CR does in 3.X, then your analysis would be spot-on. However, it does not. A level 1 party meeting a ML I monster doesn't necessarily need to use 1/4 of its resources; it might not even need to use any. Or there might be a fatality. [/quiote]

Gee, sort of like a level 1 orc warrior against a 1st level party in 3e. You know, the ones armed with weapons capable of killing someone.

 

[Tarek]

Yes, there was a balancing system in place, one that was less "defined" than that of 3e, but it worked better, because it depended on the DM knowing the capabilities of the player characters in the group.

However, along with that balancing system came something else: "The characters will encounter this monster here/in this area. If enough noise is made nearby, this monster might wander over to find out what's going on."

There was no implication, as there is in 3e, that encounters are isolated from one another.

Mike Mearls illustrates this mental trap quite nicely, when he himself says outright that he never 'threw a whole bunch of humanoids at the party' in 3e because it wasn't a 'level appropriate' encounter under the CR rules. Because he let himself be boxed in by the 'appropriate challenge' system, he never actually found out that the CR system is completely broken.

So there is a 'rough' balancing system in 1e that works fairly well, and there's a "refined and 'precise'" balancing system in 3e that's rather broken for many monsters... the two are not equivalent. I throw CR out entirely as it is unreliable.