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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wayne62682" data-source="post: 4882909" data-attributes="member: 40455">I have a slight dilemma.  I'm currently in a 4e campaign but until we started this campaign, my DM hadn't played since 1st edition in high school.  He doesn't seem to grasp the fact that 4e is simplified and that the rules are more "set in stone" than previous editions to ensure balance; he still seems to think that every rule in the game is a guideline that he can change as he sees fit.This causes a lot of issues in our games because he's not balancing things properly.  Here's a few examples:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">He doesn't balance encounters; we only have 4 PCs but he uses encounters as-written in the published adventures.  He says that the math WotC uses is flawed because we easily deal with encouners designed for 5 PCs but this is because half the time he forgets creature's powers, gets them flat out wrong, and/or plays monsters as mindless AI.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Not only does he not scale down encounters, he also cheats us on XP as he divides the encounter by 5, not 4.  He thinks that when a 4e adventure says it's for "14th - 17th level" it means like 1st edition where the PCs can be between those levels, when in fact it means it's supposed to take us FROM 14th level TO 17th level.  We're playing through Demon Queen's Enclave right now but we're only level 13, about to hit level 14.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">He skimps on treasure; I'm not sure exactly what the ratio should be but we seem to have slightly less powerful items than we should have at 13th level.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">My girlfriend recently said she wanted to play, so I made her a character at the same level as us; until I convinced him otherwise the DM was wanting her to start a level or two behind, and STILL not scale the encounters or scale her XP accordingly to have her catch up; I can't seem to find an exact rule that says what XP amount new PCs are supposed to start with.  He keeps saying that we blast through encounters with 4 PCs so "even if she was at 2nd level you would be better off than you are now, since you'd have 5 PCs". </li> </ul>I really don't know how to deal with it; I have the 4e DMG myself and the stuff he says makes no sense at all to me, and IMO it's not how the game is designed to work; I've played 1st, 2nd, 3rd and now 4th edition of D&D.  Sure, he's the DM, but IMO 4e supposed to be a lot more "these are rules, not guidelines" than previous editions were, because the game is intended to be balanced on core assumptions, or require DM interaction to bring things into balance.  Once you start changing the core rules or things like that, you're breaking that balance, more so if you don't compensate for it like my DM seems to do.Any advice on this situation?</blockquote>

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