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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 5977999" data-attributes="member: 22779">Note the "Encounters should take up X% of party resources" is a guideline, not a hard and fast rule.  I've too often seen people claim that 3e and 4e force DM's to use EL=Par encounters.  That's flat out untrue and even a cursory reading of the encounter design guidelines in either edition would bear that out.The point of that baseline is just that.  To provide a baseline.  If you want more encounters per day, use weaker encounters.  Good for doing a sort of running battle scenario, or possibly a zombiepocalypse scenario.  It lets the DM more easily gauge how a given encounter most likely will play out.However, there is always the random element in there.  Easy encounters can turn hard and hard encounters can turn easy with dice and/or player actions.  An EL Par encounter should use 20% of PC resources, but, if all 20% come from one character and that character dies, then it obviously used considerably more than 20%.Setting the baseline at 10% means that you have more fudge factor.  If an encounter turns sour, then you don't wind up ganking PC's (usually).  If it's easier, well, no worries, you get them next time.  If you want a harder encounter, just use bigger/more critters and up the EL.It's all about transparency.  We know that in AD&D, throwing 5 orcs at a 2nd level party of 6 PC's is going to be a pretty easy encounter.  No one should die.  You can simply look at the math and determine that.  Not to say that no one will ever die.  That's not true.  One PC gets mobbed for some reason and stabbed to death.  It happens.  But, all things being equal, it shouldn't.I don't mind going back to monsters being less accurate and having somewhat swingier combats.  Swinginess is fun.  One of the criticisms of 4e is grind and I think a lot of that is because 4e is so transparent it becomes pretty obvious how a combat is going to resolve itself long before it does.  The PC's have so many resources and the monsters have no real way of swinging the combat that you can pretty solidly predict the combat.  To be fair, the 4e MM3 revisions have added a lot of swing to combat - monsters go down faster but hit a LOT harder.</blockquote>

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