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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 894996" data-attributes="member: 3146">As one of the other posters pointed out, the widely varying difficulty of encounters is partly an artifact of the APL system. OTOH, CRs are somewhat misleading in Living Games (especially Living Greyhawk since the tables are more likely to be full (6 players) than in other Living Campaigns). When I'm writing a mod, I expect a party of 5 or 6 characters, at least half of whom are the level of the APL. I would expect an APL 2 table to have at least three second level characters--possibly a fourth level character (although that will almost always make the module easy). When I'm playing, I consider that as well. I'm a lot more careful playing APL 10 with a party of 2 10th levels, 1 9th levels, an 8th level and a 4th level cohort than I would be with four tenth level characters, a 9th level character, and a 9th level cohort. (Both of which actually happened recently).When you consider that the range of parties that could conceivably play a module also included well constructed, to "what were you thinking?!?" (this class combo looked good at level 4) type characters, the task of balancing encounters is very difficult and at least partially needs to take place at the con organization or table level where players say "playing this mod with this party would be suicide, how can we rearrange this to make it work." That happens pretty much automatically in home games (and is just as necessary if the game is using published materials) but takes a bit of thought on the part of players in a Living Campaign setting.</blockquote>

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