LostSoul
Adventurer
The way I run 4E is that I assign "levels" to different adventure areas: hexes or dungeon levels. I use the typical encounter budget to build encounters (random or not) within those areas. Players are free to have their PCs explore more or less difficult areas. In other words, PC level has nothing to do with encounter difficulty; it's more about player choice.
It's easy to run 4E this way because 4E has a pretty good system for judging the difficulty of any specific encounter. It's not perfect - especially since I'll throw two 11th-level Hill Giants in as a 5th-level encounter - but I find it works well enough.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'd like to see a "monster level" as a baseline assumption of difficulty - tied to PC level or not - and the assumption being that players can pick and choose the level of difficulty they want to face. That requires information for the players. But if you do that - give players information and have a baseline assumption of difficulty, like 4E does - you can build sandboxes and adventure paths with equal ease.
It's easy to run 4E this way because 4E has a pretty good system for judging the difficulty of any specific encounter. It's not perfect - especially since I'll throw two 11th-level Hill Giants in as a 5th-level encounter - but I find it works well enough.
I guess what I'm saying is that I'd like to see a "monster level" as a baseline assumption of difficulty - tied to PC level or not - and the assumption being that players can pick and choose the level of difficulty they want to face. That requires information for the players. But if you do that - give players information and have a baseline assumption of difficulty, like 4E does - you can build sandboxes and adventure paths with equal ease.
