Game balance and 3rd edition implications

[WayneLigon]

Eh?
Is that writer serious? Why would I ever run anything else? Yet there it is, the assumption that everything will usually be "tailored" (instead of "balanced") for the PC party, and that if it isn't, I should let the players know.

Lower part of the same page...
"To balance [there's that word again] an encounter with a party...<snip>...You want the party's level to match the level of the encounter..."

Eh...no I don't. I want to create an encounter according to a variety of goals. And balance isn't one of them.

I think you'd best get used to hearing complaints, then, unless you make sure your players know that negotiation is an option - don't assume that, ever. Very, very seldom have I ever seen negotiation as an option save with the most intelligent monsters - most encounters are with beasts or things that have such a hatred of humans that negotiation is useless. If I know beforehand that you'll run thing differently - that orcs will take ransoms, or prisoners, for instance - I'll act differently. But if that's not communicated to me beforehand, I'm going to assume that anything that initiates hostilities means to kill and eat me.

Flattery may work on dragons, but it doesn't work on things like, say, wyverns, manticores, or any of a number of horrible things.

Before, you balanced an encounter roughly with the level of the creature vs the level of the party. You didn't send a troll or roper after a second level party, and the same still holds true. There were a lot of odd spots in the MM, where a creature over performed or under performed according to it's HD, but you eventually worked out what those monsters were and adjusted (That's tailoring an encounter, something you should always do to maintain some sense of fairness to the thing). The CR thing makes that a lot easier. No, it's not perfect but it's a lot closer to perfect than the rough eyeballing of previous editions.

 

[Delta]

I largely agree with SMD.

3E has some distinct positives (namely, d20 core mechanic). Unfortunately, the negatives outweigh the positives (complexity of skills, feats, spells, magic items, miniatures, etc.)

Regarding adventures, yes, the DMG recommends a mix of encounter strengths (and they even followed through in the very first adventures like "Forge of Fury"). However, WOTC adventures (also, Monte Cook 3rd-party stuff) have basically dropped that idea as time passed. Pick up a new adventure WOTC, Dungeon magazine, or new online adventure at wizards.com... usually every encounter through the whole publication is set at a single EL. I was totally stunned the first time I saw it, but that seems to be the current design expectation in practice.

 

[Kormydigar]

Now, I don't blame the DM, I think it was kind of poor design on the part of the adventure. Am I being one of those whiny people, or in that kind of situation is it something for genuine concern?

There are some important questions to be aske here:
1) Did anyone sneaky (like your rogue) try and creep in for a little recon BEFORE the rest of the party?

2) Once the T-Rex was unleashed was there an attempt to flee ( so you could go regroup and come up with a plan to deal with it) ?

The creature itself doesn't seem too overpowered for a well prepared, and properly equipped, group of your your level. The problem was engaging in melee without any game plan. If your DM made it clear that you would die if you tried to run, then he may be somewhat to blame. If that is not the case, then your group just made a bad call to engage under those conditions.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

There are some important questions to be aske here:
1) Did anyone sneaky (like your rogue) try and creep in for a little recon BEFORE the rest of the party?

2) Once the T-Rex was unleashed was there an attempt to flee ( so you could go regroup and come up with a plan to deal with it) ?

The creature itself doesn't seem too overpowered for a well prepared, and properly equipped, group of your your level. The problem was engaging in melee without any game plan. If your DM made it clear that you would die if you tried to run, then he may be somewhat to blame. If that is not the case, then your group just made a bad call to engage under those conditions.

Presumably the party crossed this plain on horses?

It isn't that hard to outsmart a dinosaur with a brain the size of an orange. I'd have had one of the characters distract the T-Rex with food, probably - such as a dead horse. Mmm, smell blood. Eat.

Even if you didn't want to sacrifice a horse, fighting any creature that doesn't have a missile weapon in a wide open space like a plain where you can see for miles in any direction, probably shouldn't be overly taxing. Unless the T-Rex could outrun a galloping horse, in which case, you've got to use a bit of lateral thinking to find a way to slow it down.

 

[Kaodi]

Well...

Most of our horses were a few miles back, so that they wouldn't be killed in combat... go figure... Ultimately, the halfling wizard on the flying dinosaur would of survived... unless he was shot down by the other halflings on dinosaurs, with bows...

As for scouting, we knew there was a big creature in the trees by the halflings camp, very close to the entrance to the tomb (like within 100 ft). However, like I said, it would of been cheating to tell everyone else it was a t-rex, because I already knew before we even left the city on this expedition. Maybe my rogue could of scouted it out... but he has no ranks in spot and listen, not that it would of helped him, since, like I said, we were basically on a flat plain. The scouting we did do was done by our warforged monk, since he didn't need to breathe.

 

[Barak]

I've played D&D way before 3e, and I don't think people complained less. Sure, they didn't say "this isn't balanced!", they said "This is so cheesy!", or "This makes no sense!" or "There's no way X would do Y!".

The words change, the whining's exactly the same.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Please don't take this the wrong way!

I'd say that the encounter was probablty fair, and perhaps the party needs to learn a lesson from it.

In a wide open space, stay near the horses in case you need to run away.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Hmmm, thats interesting. I guess I just started with a relatively good groups, but that mentality is something I never encountered until 3E.

At the very least, when we were outclassed, we dealt with it and didn't consider it an issue. I wonder about these other players you guys reference, where did they develop these expectations? When I started, encountering something that outclassed us made the game more exciting, it didn't provoke complaints.

I didn't game with anyone who complained about stuff like that, but I was aware of other groups where it occurred. The notion I was talking about was the concept of "balance" in regards to encounters. Take a look at the monster charts in the 1e DMG (for example) which lists monsters from the MM and shows the level - from I to X - at which each monster should appear. So the concept was there, and there were players who would reference that - "Hey! This is the 5th level of the dungeon, and that's a 9th level monster!" You may not have heard stuff like this way back when, but it was going on.

 

[Frozen DM]

Lower part of the same page...
"To balance [there's that word again] an encounter with a party...<snip>...You want the party's level to match the level of the encounter..."

Eh...no I don't. I want to create an encounter according to a variety of goals. And balance isn't one of them.

snip

Then on page 50 of the DMG, description of encounter difficulties....
"Overpowering: The PCs should run. If they don't they will almost certainly lose..."

Oh, I see. So I guess they can't negotiate with the encounter, using flattery to play on the ego of a dragon. And I guess a bribe to let them pass is out of the question. So is sneaking past the encounter. Or baiting and leading it into an environment/situation that gives the characters a combat advantage. Or engaging in a riddling contest, so that it is a contest of wits rather than physical might. Or attacking to cripple or trap the creature rather kill outright, so that it can be bypassed. Or a million other possible ways of dealing with an encounter besides killing it.

I think one of the issues is that the balance (and tailoring) talked about here really apply to the game mechanics that form the backbone of the game. Mechanics in D&D cover a lot more than just combat, since they also cover social interaction between PC's and NPC's and how the PC's can cope with their environment. Social skills, trap finding, spells, all these mechanical constructs are used to overcome challenges. The DMG simply suggests that if, as a DM, you will be pitting players against challenges where none of their abilities will allow them to succeed, you should probably warn them, since the default assumption seems to be that encounters will, more often than not, have a solution available to the party.

If the way the party is meant to overcome an encounter is through role-playing and social interaction, the expectation is that players will be rolling skill checks such as Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Sense Motive, etc... So in my opinion, an overpowering encounter is one in which the party would have little to no chance to succeed through combat, negotiation or stealth, where simple avoidance is the only way to survive.

In these cases, their is still a question of "can the PC's at their level overcome these challenges?". If the 1st level characters meet a CR 10 dragon, they are clearly overmatched. Even negotiation will likely fail if the dragon happens to possess social skills in the +15 to +20 range. Now, of course, if as a DM you feel the party can simply role-play their way through that encounter with no skill checks, more power to you. But the designers cannot predict for every style of DMing out there. So skill checks become the measure of a character's ability.

Remember, encounters are meant to be overcome, not just through combat. If I set my 1st level PC's up against a sleeping 15 HD giant, I would say this is a fair and balanced encounter, exactly because they could just try and sneak past. Obviously if they charge in and attack they will be slaughtered, but in this case, they really aren't solving the encounter the way it was meant to be solved.

Folks, I am not trying to be disagreeable. Maybe you and I are looking at the DMG and seeing two different things. But when I look at the rulebook and the modules what I see is:

1) Melee and killing (or running, if necessary) is the proper method of dealing with encounters (except traps)
2) Thus every encounter should be balanced for the party level

It seems to me this is written into 3E, through and through, and I think that is a much worse version of the game.

Perhaps this is true, but I've seen encounters in games where social interaction would be the preferred resolution. In fact, currently in my Shackled City campaign, our party wizard has probably overcome more encounters through social skills than he has combat. But again, the default assumption is that a character's ability to socially influence a NPC is directly tied to their level (max skill ranks).

If, as a DM, you would prefer your players to simply role-play through these types of encounters, trusting the player's skills as opposed to the characters attributes, that's a great way of doing it, but that's where a DM "tailors" the game to his players. As a DM who frequently purchases and makes use out of pre-published scenarios and adventures, I would much prefer the designers adhere to the philosophy that all challenges in the game will be overcome through a dice roll + modifiers, than assume that my campaign is one where non-combat encounters are handled exclusively through role-playing.It's a lot easier to ignore the giant's sense motive skill than it is to try and come up with consistent mechanics to represent these challenges.

 

[ThirdWizard]

When I ran Forge of Fury for my players, I ran the Roper as a straight up encounter, nearly killing 2 characters. They ended up killing it by improvising a stalactite as a thrown weapon, doing damage basically as a giant's hurled boulder, with some bonuses. Up to that point, it was looking like they would loose several characters permanently, if not TPK.

Do you know who came up with that plan?

An old school 1st Ed. player.

For the record, I find the whole stalagtite thing silly, and I would never allow that to work in my game. You can't throw stalagtites around like giant boulders. I find the very concept rediculous. What, did they break the thing off the celing, then all heave ho together to toss it at the roper while it sat there watching them? How far can you throw one of those things?

It seems to me that the 1st edition guy's idea wasn't smart or clever, in and of itself. It was smart and clever because he knew you would be amicable to the idea, and thus with you as the DM it would work.