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<blockquote data-quote="KidSnide" data-source="post: 5977735" data-attributes="member: 54710"><p>This is a reasonable desire, but it doesn't have very much to do with the xp budget. The xp budget is a method of estimating what type of battles the PCs can win. If you want to set up encounters that your PCs are supposed to beat, you can use it for that. If you want to put monsters in the world and let the PCs face whatever they run into, it lets you estimate whether or not they are likely to win.</p><p></p><p>What you are asking for is the ability to have a fun encounter -- even if the PCs can't really win it. That's a reasonable desire (I share it!), but the tools to get that are rules or techniques to help players estimate the difficulty of battles and mechanisms to let PCs avoid, evade or retreat from battles without generating a TPK.</p><p></p><p>I note, incidentally, that 4e-style monster scaling makes it harder for the PCs to figure out what's a difficult battle. If a manticore varies from levels 6-14, it's hard to know how difficult a fight with three of them will be by looking at them. On the other hand, the "bloodied" rule is very helpful in this regard, as it the information "we haven't even bloodied two of them yet!" is very valuable to knowing when you're in over your head. More spells and class abilities designed to let characters evade or retreat would go a long way to helping this kind of gaming.</p><p></p><p>-KS</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="KidSnide, post: 5977735, member: 54710"] This is a reasonable desire, but it doesn't have very much to do with the xp budget. The xp budget is a method of estimating what type of battles the PCs can win. If you want to set up encounters that your PCs are supposed to beat, you can use it for that. If you want to put monsters in the world and let the PCs face whatever they run into, it lets you estimate whether or not they are likely to win. What you are asking for is the ability to have a fun encounter -- even if the PCs can't really win it. That's a reasonable desire (I share it!), but the tools to get that are rules or techniques to help players estimate the difficulty of battles and mechanisms to let PCs avoid, evade or retreat from battles without generating a TPK. I note, incidentally, that 4e-style monster scaling makes it harder for the PCs to figure out what's a difficult battle. If a manticore varies from levels 6-14, it's hard to know how difficult a fight with three of them will be by looking at them. On the other hand, the "bloodied" rule is very helpful in this regard, as it the information "we haven't even bloodied two of them yet!" is very valuable to knowing when you're in over your head. More spells and class abilities designed to let characters evade or retreat would go a long way to helping this kind of gaming. -KS [/QUOTE]
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