Is a DM supposed to ensure level appropriate encounters, by the RAW?

[Gez]

An example of rule: "Rogues get a +1d6 sneak attack damage at every odd level, starting with the first."

An example of guideline: "If you want to remove sneak attack from rogues, try to find something else that could be useful, like, I don't know, something. Maybe bardic knowledge. The rogue would then because some sort of sage classes, so give him then the knowledge skills as class skills. Maybe reduce his BAB to 1/2 and increase his Will save to a good one. Yeah, that seems a nifty idea. Or find something else."

OK, it's not exactly redacted in that particular style, but whatever. Everytime you have computations more complicated than simplle additions or substractions, that's a guideline. Calculating treasure, XPs, and magic item creation costs are all guidelines. They give you formulaes, and precise these may not always work. They give you alternates and variants (like story XP awards and ad-hoc XP awards).

 

[Belen]

Bold emphasis mine.

Is this true or baloney? Is this a written rule? Is it implied? Is this any different than in AD&D?

Quasqueton

Not true at all. A GM should come up with fun and interesting encounters. I never pay attention to CR or EL or any of that mess. I do a quick judgement of creature power level and make a decision of whether the party can handle it. Nice, easy, simple, done.

 

[the Jester]

It's not a rule, it's a guideline.

If it was a rule, the dmg wouldn't even talk about status quo type encounters (rather than tailored encounters).

 

[Oryan77]

What's really baloney is bologna.

I really dislike the way XP & CR is handled in 3e. It affects my style of DM'ing adventures. Sometimes you just have to always throw equal or harder challenges at a party because they might only have combats once or twice during an ingame day (and 1 ingame day might take a full real-time session). If an adventure lasts for several ingame days and you keep throwing those same CRs at them each session, they level up in no time. And that's just from the xp given for overcoming encounters...not including bonus xp for other things.

Going by the DMG guidelines of "leveling every 13.3 encounters"...my PC's level after only about 5 encounters when I challenge them each time. And I feel I need to challenge them in this type of adventuring or they'll just be bored with fights being pushovers.

I've tried cutting xp in half and it still levels too fast for my style of DM'ing.

 

[S'mon]

Not true at all.

Yes it is true. That's what it says in the book. Whether the book is right or not is entirely a matter of opinion.

BTW I think I've been pretty good-humoured about having something I said in one thread taken out into another thread for out-of-context dissection. I'm getting a little tired of being misinterpreted though.

 

[Thanee]

I think that the rules assume, that the DM does so, yes.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Belen]

Yes it is true. That's what it says in the book. Whether the book is right or not is entirely a matter of opinion.

BTW I think I've been pretty good-humoured about having something I said in one thread taken out into another thread for out-of-context dissection. I'm getting a little tired of being misinterpreted though.

huh? I was responding to the original poster of this thread. No idea where you're coming from.

I said :

A GM should come up with fun and interesting encounters. I never pay attention to CR or EL or any of that mess. I do a quick judgement of creature power level and make a decision of whether the party can handle it. Nice, easy, simple, done.

 

[MerakSpielman]

I babysit them until 5th level, only giving them encounters I know they can beat. They're just too darn fragile.

After 6th level, the kid gloves come off. Through dipomacy, guile, stealth, combat, or bravely running away the party can survive just about anything. I don't deliberately pit them against critters I know they can't beat, but I don't tone anything down for them that they're getting themselves into either.

 

[S'mon]

BU - the original poster Quasqueton seems to be obsessed with disproving my statement which he quotes (unattributed) in his initial post. I said "In 3e the GM is supposed to ensure that PCs meet level-appropriate challenges" - maybe you think this is a bad idea (& maybe you're right), but it's clearly in the DMG - eg see pg 102 3.0. So what I said IS true.

 

[Belen]

BU - the original poster Quasqueton seems to be obsessed with disproving my statement which he quotes (unattributed) in his initial post. I said "In 3e the GM is supposed to ensure that PCs meet level-appropriate challenges" - maybe you think this is a bad idea (& maybe you're right), but it's clearly in the DMG - eg see pg 102 3.0. So what I said IS true.

Bad form not to correctly attribute the quote.

In any event, I was not commenting on whether the rules was written, only that I do not do it that way and I have only seen by GM do it to spectacular failure. The CR/EL system has never worked properly and IME using it as written forces one to run games in a tight, restricted, and uniform manner.