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<blockquote data-quote="Reynard" data-source="post: 8623018" data-attributes="member: 467">I am preppinga&nbsp; Fallout2d20 campaign and I was surprised to discover that the rulebook doesn't actually give any advice on how to &quot;balance&quot; encounters in play. That feels especially weird since it is a level based game where both the PCs and the enemies have levels, but there's no discussion I can find about how those things interact. How many feral ghouls or mole rats should a trio of 1st level PCs encounter? Who knows!This go me thinking more broadly about encounter design guidelines and when they became a Thing. I don't really remember how explicit games pre D&amp;D 3.x were about this (and I don't have any books close to hand). I know older versions of D&amp;D hinted at it with dungeon level encounter charts and so on, but it wasn't explicit as far as I can recall. I can't say I remember Earthdawn or Deadlands providing encounter balance formulas.Was that basically just a D&amp;D thing, and have I so internalized it that I just expect other games to provide those guidelines and systems?When you personally run a game new to you without that kind of advice, what do you do? And if you make a mistake in balancing an encounter, how do you deal with it?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Reynard, post: 8623018, member: 467"] I am preppinga Fallout2d20 campaign and I was surprised to discover that the rulebook doesn't actually give any advice on how to "balance" encounters in play. That feels especially weird since it is a level based game where both the PCs and the enemies have levels, but there's no discussion I can find about how those things interact. How many feral ghouls or mole rats should a trio of 1st level PCs encounter? Who knows! This go me thinking more broadly about encounter design guidelines and when they became a Thing. I don't really remember how explicit games pre D&D 3.x were about this (and I don't have any books close to hand). I know older versions of D&D hinted at it with dungeon level encounter charts and so on, but it wasn't explicit as far as I can recall. I can't say I remember Earthdawn or Deadlands providing encounter balance formulas. Was that basically just a D&D thing, and have I so internalized it that I just expect other games to provide those guidelines and systems? When you personally run a game new to you without that kind of advice, what do you do? And if you make a mistake in balancing an encounter, how do you deal with it? [/QUOTE]

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