Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Lord Zardoz" data-source="post: 5969706" data-attributes="member: 704">In and of them selves, there is nothing wrong with managing encounters as either the 'one big encounter + 15 min adventuring day' vs the 'unending attrition with 8 encounters per day.&nbsp; This is mostly something managed by the Dm's with the way they run encounter creation.&nbsp; The problem is that it is very difficult to design and balance monsters to be used in encounters of either type.&nbsp; I believe that 4th Edition did a better job at managing that disparity then previous editions.&nbsp; Players had a set amount of HP combined with multiple healing surges.&nbsp; You could set up encounters built around elites and solos or you could set them up with brutes and minions.&nbsp; The players were always able to go into an encounter at reasonably close to maximum effectiveness due to the short rest + healing surges.The new edition appears to be going back to using the older scale of HP and recover to some extent.&nbsp; I think that the best way to manage the disparity is to actually spell it out in the DM guide with something roughly as follows:When creating your adventures, you must decide what the frequency of combat to rest will be.&nbsp; Balancing an encounter for a completely fresh party that will use all its strongest powers quickly is much different than balancing an encounter where your players might be badly damaged and short on expended powers. Reasonable guidelines for how to adjust encounter difficulty for either scenario is better then trying to design characters and powers that perform with perfect balance in every possible permutation of encounter difficultyand frequency.END COMMUNICATION</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Lord Zardoz, post: 5969706, member: 704"] In and of them selves, there is nothing wrong with managing encounters as either the 'one big encounter + 15 min adventuring day' vs the 'unending attrition with 8 encounters per day. This is mostly something managed by the Dm's with the way they run encounter creation. The problem is that it is very difficult to design and balance monsters to be used in encounters of either type. I believe that 4th Edition did a better job at managing that disparity then previous editions. Players had a set amount of HP combined with multiple healing surges. You could set up encounters built around elites and solos or you could set them up with brutes and minions. The players were always able to go into an encounter at reasonably close to maximum effectiveness due to the short rest + healing surges. The new edition appears to be going back to using the older scale of HP and recover to some extent. I think that the best way to manage the disparity is to actually spell it out in the DM guide with something roughly as follows: [INDENT]When creating your adventures, you must decide what the frequency of combat to rest will be. Balancing an encounter for a completely fresh party that will use all its strongest powers quickly is much different than balancing an encounter where your players might be badly damaged and short on expended powers. [/INDENT] Reasonable guidelines for how to adjust encounter difficulty for either scenario is better then trying to design characters and powers that perform with perfect balance in every possible permutation of encounter difficultyand frequency. END COMMUNICATION [/QUOTE]

Verification