Please someone tell me I missed something

[Insight]

One thing that's very important to note is that the system is not intended for you to do too much crossing of the thresholds (Heroic, Paragon, Epic). An Epic monster should not be fighting Heroic characters, and vice versa. A party that should be fighting a Pit Fiend should be in the Paragon tier (at least) and therefore should not be fighting level 6 Goblins.

You can't just say X(Lvl 3 Heroic)*6 = Y(Lvl 18 Paragon) because the system isn't intended to be used that way. I'm not even sure X(Lvl 13 Paragon)*2 = Y(Lvl 26 Epic).

 

[Insight]

And as for scaling encounters -- I don't care if it doesn't scale perfectly, just as long as it can at least scale over a 10 level difference or so. I'm not about to run 20 thousand Kobold Minions against a level 30 party and think it could be remotely balanced...

Here's the thing. Your DM's gut feel is going to trump any mathematical formula someone can come up with. You've been DMing for 10+ years. Use the wisdom gained from that experience to gauge how tough an encounter will be. That's the most important thing.

 

[Psion]

Monsters had a flat XP value before 3e, and it worked just fine then.

Not really.

 

[DreamChaser]

Even then, I don't think 144 of them should be able to take down a pit fiend. Because going further that may mean that 1,000 of the being able to take down a godlike primeval and I don't think that sound right (makes one wonder why the deities and primevals bothered to create angels, giants and whatever else to use as soldiers, if 2,000 first level critters would have done the job just as well)

Volume and controllability. It is much harder to feed and control 2000 mortal mooks...

plus, while I don't know that that Insights comment about the tiers is 100% accurate, it does draw out that there is now a qualitative distinction between levels beyond the former quantitative.

A 26th level character is much more than the 144 common folk...given the right situation, he could plow them into the ground. Plus (if rumors are true) his healing surge ability has pretty much become a daily resurrection spell so even if they do defeat him, they actually need to do it twice (which makes it yet harder).

Because there are so many variables in play, the scaling is incapable of working at the greatest extremes; this is actually a pretty good example of chaos theory at work. Within 30 levels, we can perfectly predict the interplay in a 3 level span; fairly well in a 9 level span; and in broad terms in a 27 level span, because at each of those jumps, more factors come into play.

On a pure mathematical level, distilling down to only the hard numbers (defenses, attack rolls, etc.) 144 goblins = 1 pit fiend but that 24 level difference means that odds are factors that cannot be reflected mathematically will skew the results and nearly always in the pit fiend's favor.

Still, being able to throw a bunch of 1st level creatures against a 10th level party and still have a moderate challenge will be great, since currently anything 2 or 3 CR below is pretty much a waste of time. Overall, I think if you stay with 10 levels, it will work out pretty well.

DC

 

[ferratus]

I don't know if the stacking of XP will scale up infinitely or not. If your NPC big bad is a monster lord though, I think adding some goblin minions to even high level encounters won't be wasted if they provide some kind of tactical advantage. Goblin picadors for example will always be fairly good at slowing down some characters till at least the end of the heroic tier.

I also forsee a scenerio which was either too difficult, or if you went up in levels, too easy. I'm speaking of defending a fortified position against a goblin horde. With the healing surges being a limited resource, and goblin attacks still having a chance to hit and do damage to characters, I could see a tension filled gaming session actually working. As long as the calvary comes at sunrise of course.

 

[Cabled]

Not really.

Yeah, it did.

 

[Just Another User]

PCs have fewer hit points - as do monsters, which makes them even more susceptible to fireballs and the like. As for AC & saves, the effect is the same. Your basic 1e kobold needs a 20 to hit AC 0 (not hard to get). High-level characters still only fail saves on a roll of a 1. The difference in power between a 1e PC and a 3e one doesn't mean much when you're guaranteed a kill each time you hit and are nigh-invulnerable.

mmh, I'm more familiar with 2nd edition, and I'm quite sure some of what you said don't apply there (the fail save only only a 1, for example). When you deal with kobolds that they have less hit points is irrilevant, they go down with an hit even at 1st level, ayway. It is true that I was thinking more like 10th level characters more than 20th level ones.
But I have the impression you are not familiar with the concept of Tucker's kobolds, the idea is to set things up so the PCs have never the chance to get that one hit that kill the monster, use small, intricated tunnels where kobold can escape and Pcs can0t follow, make kobolds shoot throught hidden holes in the walls (After all this is the kobold's home they had years to prepare it and they know it well), use flamming barriers to keep the PCs at bay, smoke them, use any kind of trap to hanper (and accumulate malus on them), make a war of attrition, etc, etc. . This is much easier to do in 2e than in 3e. Between other things healing is less common, when a cleric can't just convert any spells he have in healing or the bard pull out a CLW wand those 1-2 hit points wounds start to hurt pretty quickly.

It is not easy but it is possible and once you do it PCs will never look at kobolds the same way.

 

[Steely Dan]

And this wasn't true in 1e/2e?

Ah, the days when a fighter could make 1 attack per round per fighter level against kobolds and goblins...

Yep, and don't forget segments!

 

[chitzk0i]

Yeah, it did.

what



No, really. Some of us have never played Second Edition or whatever, so could you clue us in to this phantom debate you two are having?

 

[Henry]

Here's the thing. Your DM's gut feel is going to trump any mathematical formula someone can come up with. You've been DMing for 10+ years. Use the wisdom gained from that experience to gauge how tough an encounter will be. That's the most important thing.

I intend to, as I always have, but I'd prefer to have to use my DM's intuition less often, and just plan the adventure instead of the encounters - that's what the goal of the new system is, after all.