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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5499339" data-attributes="member: 42582">I think this is true in theory, but perhaps less likely in practice. (Of course, I may be generalising excessively from my own experience.) My view is that part of the point of level appropriate DCs and damage expressions is to establish a base level of trust.And it's not just trust that the GM won't deliberately try to crush the players. It's also trust that the GM has the tools to hand not to accidently crush the players. (For me, the main challenge in running Rolemaster is this second issue - because RM has nothing comparable to CR guidelines or 4e encounter budgeting, and has rather notoriously swingy action resolution mechanics.)How does this trust issue play into the scenario you describe? The PCs getting caught without their gear while crossing the river would presumably only ever be the consequence of a failed check in the challenge, and the guidelines as to damage and the like give the GM some guidance as to how serious such consequences should, in general be. Suppose that, without armour, the paladin is likely to be comparatively ineffective in the ensuing combat, but most of the other PCs adversely effected only for a round or so while they pick up their weapons/implements. Then the GM can be fairly confident that an encounter of no more than three or four monsters of the PCs' level will likely be interesting - because of the challenging circumstances in which the encounter starts - but not devastating, because able to be handled by the PCs even without the paladin there at all.Does that make any sense?</blockquote>

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