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<blockquote data-quote="mearls" data-source="post: 2796677" data-attributes="member: 697">It's funny, because in a way I agree with you. Zones are one of those things, along with drawing bigger dungeon rooms, that 3e sort of assumes you'll use, but no one really figured that out and put it in the DMG in big, bold letters.The rules for zones, IIRC, give guidelines and rules for balancing their effects across character levels. The idea is that a pool of lava can be cool, but it's just going to kill low level PCs. The book gives you guidelines and samples to help keep things interesting without making them too deadly or too weak.I think the key to the zone rules is that, by talking about terrain effects and giving some rules, they make DMs think a lot more about interactive terrain. If you're already doing that, they might not give you any extra help. But if terrain isn't something you think about a lot when building encounters, they can be very helpful.I've also found that the act of telling players about the zones present in an encounter really helps encourage players who might not normally try wild stuff to use terrain.People seem to like them. I think the rules are one of those things that, once people see them, it's like a light comes on, and they realize that they like using interactive terrain, that it makes the game more fun, and the rules for zones give them a concrete, tangible tool to do that.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="mearls, post: 2796677, member: 697"] It's funny, because in a way I agree with you. Zones are one of those things, along with drawing bigger dungeon rooms, that 3e sort of assumes you'll use, but no one really figured that out and put it in the DMG in big, bold letters. The rules for zones, IIRC, give guidelines and rules for balancing their effects across character levels. The idea is that a pool of lava can be cool, but it's just going to kill low level PCs. The book gives you guidelines and samples to help keep things interesting without making them too deadly or too weak. I think the key to the zone rules is that, by talking about terrain effects and giving some rules, they make DMs think a lot more about interactive terrain. If you're already doing that, they might not give you any extra help. But if terrain isn't something you think about a lot when building encounters, they can be very helpful. I've also found that the act of telling players about the zones present in an encounter really helps encourage players who might not normally try wild stuff to use terrain. People seem to like them. I think the rules are one of those things that, once people see them, it's like a light comes on, and they realize that they like using interactive terrain, that it makes the game more fun, and the rules for zones give them a concrete, tangible tool to do that. [/QUOTE]

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