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Message: <blockquote data-quote="helium3" data-source="post: 3788515" data-attributes="member: 31301">So far it all looks good on paper, but I want to make sure I understand what Mr. Mearls is saying. Correct me if I've got this wrong.In 3E, designing an encounter was a matter of figuring out what the party's EL was and selecting a monster or collection of monsters that added up to a CR equal to that EL. If you did this correctly the party would find that 20% of their resources (however you define that) would be "used up" after the encounter.Problems could occur when the party consisted of more the four players because it was difficult to eyeball whether or not an encounter still used 20% of resources. Also, sometimes when you tried to use larger groups of monsters of a lower CR, you inadvertently would create encounters with a higher CR because of unexpected synergies between the monsters.In 4E, encounter generation is a matter of adding up the levels of all the party members and converting it into an XP value using a formula or chart. Then you select a number of monsters with different roles such that when you add up their XP values you get a number equal to first value determined.Resource attrition is no longer an issue because a party that has expended all resources with a time constant greater than per encounter will still be able to handle an encounter generated with the above formula, barring extremely poor strategic choices and a series of disastrous rolls.</blockquote>

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