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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Seeten" data-source="post: 2903945" data-attributes="member: 27186">I've been hearing this, "D&D is not a competition" for years. Man is it ever old. I think you guys miss the forest for the trees. I've been in a dozen campaigns where the DM brings up CR appropriate challenges for the party. Most DM's have no real concept of balance. To wit: My current Scarred Lands DM(Not Nightfall, thats my other SL DM) has given out no treasure whatsoever, so the PC's have 0 wealth and no magic items to speak of. We're all level 7 or 8, and we routinely fight monsters that the DMG and MM claim are challenging for a CR8 group. A few fun facts: DM needed to fudge an encounter with a grappling mob, to avoid a TPK. Party had no way to hurt tree do to lack of magic, and wizard had spells that werent appropriate/were mostly used. Plus, he isnt optimized and keeps finding useless spells. We were destroyed in battle by a chain demon/undead/monster whatever it was. The barbarian(my last character) died in the fight(I was the only one capable of dealing dmg) and the rest of the party cut a deal to be able to flee. Party was virtually TPK'd by a demon, as only Barbarian had a magic weapon at the time(via magic weapon spell) and I dropped the demon while I was at 7 hp and the rest of party was unconscious. If not for fudged dice rolls, we'd have had 5 TPK's or more by now, and the reason is: Our PC's are not optimized, but our challenges are. The barbarian(my PC) was the ONLY optimized PC in the group, and I generally finished combats on my own, which A) I felt guilty about, and B) is the only thing that prevented 10 more TPK's. So I would go you all 1 step further and state if a DM has no sense of balance, and is stingy like you all like to brag about about, and a RBDM, etc, then its up to the players to optimize the hell out of their characters to make up for the fact that the MM and DMG assume I can defeat a cr 6 creature at cr 8. If I cannot, well, thats my fault, or the DM's fault, or someones fault, but the DM is told by the MM that CR 6, 7 and 8 creatures are perfectly safe to use against me. Woe be to the PC who is up against the DR 10/Magic Undead as a Rogue with a shortsword and 10 str.So the competition is between the PC's and the Monsters. Its a fight I cannot afford to lose, because I dont enjoy making new characters, I enjoy playing my existing characters. I love to roleplay, but I dont love TPK's, and I dont expect the DM to be a balance genius, when in practice, I am far better about balance than most DM's I know. If I think the party needs me to hit for 30 a round or we lose, I set about finding a way to hit for 30 a round.A lot of DM's around here talk a big game. "I'm the arbiter of balance and I always challenge everyone perfectly, and everything is wonderful" but I don't see it in my local groups. I see a whole lot of standard monsters from the MM up against our woefully non-optimized groups, so your arguments fall very flat on my ears.</blockquote>

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