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<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6751622" data-attributes="member: 6787650">It's no wonder D&amp;D has a bad reputation from a fiction perspective. How often does Harry Dresden, professional wizard, get in eight fights per day of activity? He's pretty much the thuggiest wizard out there, and even on his worst day of the year (the ones captured in the books), it's more likely to be three or four than six to eight. E.g. in Skin Game, it was one fight on day one with the octokongs, three separate fights with Tessa, Binder's Goons/Bob, and Nicky/Genoskwa on day two, and six semi-separate fights with security guards, Tessa, *spoiler* and Nic, *spoiler* again, Genoskwa, and Nic's goons on day three.The other thing you see in good fantasy novels is that unlike D&amp;D fights, the protagonists are almost always punching up. D&amp;D DMG guidelines concentrate on lots of easy fights, equivalent to Dresden fighting the security guards, which gets maybe a page of attention from the author, barely even a fight. The fights the author spends time on are against things that are always tougher and stronger than Dresden is; D&amp;D calls these fights (high-end) &quot;Deadly&quot; and most DMs apparently won't touch them with a ten-foot pole because they're &quot;unfair&quot;. (If Dresden were an 11th level PC, the Genoskwa would be a CR 16 threat, 6.25xDeadly, even before you apply the *spoiler* template from *spoiler*--and Dresden has to tackle that threat solo when he's already tapped out from everything earlier. There's no way he could possibly have won that fight if he hadn't cheated. And it's not even the last fight of the day.)DMG-recommended style of &quot;lots of 'Medium'/'Hard' fights&quot; are boring. Quality is better than quantity. And that is why dungeon crawls make unmemorable stories and why balancing via attrition is doomed to failure.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 6751622, member: 6787650"] It's no wonder D&D has a bad reputation from a fiction perspective. How often does Harry Dresden, professional wizard, get in [I]eight fights per day of activity[/I]? He's pretty much the thuggiest wizard out there, and even on his worst day of the year (the ones captured in the books), it's more likely to be three or four than six to eight. E.g. in Skin Game, it was one fight on day one with the octokongs, three separate fights with Tessa, Binder's Goons/Bob, and Nicky/Genoskwa on day two, and six semi-separate fights with security guards, Tessa, *spoiler* and Nic, *spoiler* again, Genoskwa, and Nic's goons on day three. The other thing you see in good fantasy novels is that unlike D&D fights, the protagonists are almost always punching up. D&D DMG guidelines concentrate on lots of easy fights, equivalent to Dresden fighting the security guards, which gets maybe a page of attention from the author, barely even a fight. The fights the author spends time on are against things that are always tougher and stronger than Dresden is; D&D calls these fights (high-end) "Deadly" and most DMs apparently won't touch them with a ten-foot pole because they're "unfair". (If Dresden were an 11th level PC, the Genoskwa would be a CR 16 threat, 6.25xDeadly, even before you apply the *spoiler* template from *spoiler*--and Dresden has to tackle [I]that[/I] threat solo when he's already tapped out from everything earlier. There's no way he could possibly have won that fight if he hadn't cheated. And it's not even the last fight of the day.) DMG-recommended style of "lots of 'Medium'/'Hard' fights" are [I]boring[/I]. Quality is better than quantity. And that is why dungeon crawls make unmemorable stories and why balancing via attrition is doomed to failure. [/QUOTE]

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