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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6288612" data-attributes="member: 4937">There is a general trend over the course of 3e and 4e to focus on the exiciting fight or exciting encounter as the core experience of play.&nbsp; This culminates in the 4e design structure where the party is expected to enter into each encounter with basically the same resources so that you can design a consistant experience for each encounter.This is not an old school or retro approach.&nbsp;&nbsp; In retro games you should expend relatively few resources on designing encounters compared to what you spend on designing dungeons and adventures.&nbsp;&nbsp; The focus is not on the individual encounter, but on the scenario as a whole.&nbsp; Foes are meant to be experienced in relationship to that environment and scenario, and the challenge isn't winning the encounter but doing so with the minimal expenditure of resources.&nbsp; To make more challenging encounters, you generally don't take the approach of making more challenging foes.&nbsp;&nbsp; Instead, you have encounters that risk shading off into each other as monsters organize their defenses.&nbsp; Or you put the foes in places they'd have signficant advantages.&nbsp;&nbsp; If you look at an old school module though, very little effort is spent on ensuring 'balanced encounters'.Until your PC's get to be about 10th level, you'll not need to worry too much about making monsters challenging.&nbsp; If you are careful about not letting the munchkin factor get high, actually applying the rules particularly with regards to spellcasting, and your players aren't power gaming you can probably get to about 12th level without needing to worry too much about challenge.&nbsp;&nbsp; Above 12th though, almost everything in the Monster Manuals is a push over for high level PC's with expected levels of treasure.&nbsp;&nbsp; At that point, we have to start talking about level invariant attack modes and things like that.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6288612, member: 4937"] There is a general trend over the course of 3e and 4e to focus on the exiciting fight or exciting encounter as the core experience of play. This culminates in the 4e design structure where the party is expected to enter into each encounter with basically the same resources so that you can design a consistant experience for each encounter. This is not an old school or retro approach. In retro games you should expend relatively few resources on designing encounters compared to what you spend on designing dungeons and adventures. The focus is not on the individual encounter, but on the scenario as a whole. Foes are meant to be experienced in relationship to that environment and scenario, and the challenge isn't winning the encounter but doing so with the minimal expenditure of resources. To make more challenging encounters, you generally don't take the approach of making more challenging foes. Instead, you have encounters that risk shading off into each other as monsters organize their defenses. Or you put the foes in places they'd have signficant advantages. If you look at an old school module though, very little effort is spent on ensuring 'balanced encounters'. Until your PC's get to be about 10th level, you'll not need to worry too much about making monsters challenging. If you are careful about not letting the munchkin factor get high, actually applying the rules particularly with regards to spellcasting, and your players aren't power gaming you can probably get to about 12th level without needing to worry too much about challenge. Above 12th though, almost everything in the Monster Manuals is a push over for high level PC's with expected levels of treasure. At that point, we have to start talking about level invariant attack modes and things like that. [/QUOTE]

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