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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arlough" data-source="post: 5526270" data-attributes="member: 79335">Okay, the basis of almost anywhere your PCs end up is that there are pockets of peace and/or prosperity in a vast world of enemy filled awfulness.This could be a contrast of walled towns and villages in a monster filled land, or this could be the difference between the wealthy parts of town and the other side of the tracks.Regardless as to where it is, you will run into enemies. This is a vital part of the D&D economy as it eats up resources like healing surges, action points, and daily powers. And that is why we have random encounters.Now, your PCs are, in most cases, a roaming pack of murderous professional psychopaths who look at enemies as sacks of XP that may also carry loot.  As such they specialize in badass and outclass most their enemies, meaning that many of their encounters are not going to be worth pulling out the battle mat for, let alone the time it takes to play out a tactical encounter.I personally believe that it is only an encounter if it is meaningful, and it is only meaningful if it is part of the story, or a viable threat.  So all those other combats that would not fit those criteria should be abstracted out.So, here is my proposal for a points of light system, and I would appreciate any input.Any threatening area is rated on a 1 - 20 scale based on how dangerous it of an area it happens to be.  A 1 would be the safest, like across the river from Rivendale.  A 20 is at the gates of Mordor. (Inside Rivendale would be 0, as in a completely safe haven. And inside Mordor would be epic level, so maybe even up to 30 if you were in Sauron's antechamber. But, I really haven't ever played in Epic tier, so I don't know how to evaluate it.)While in these areas, the players must roll a d20 for every X hour(s) they are there. (Two seems about right, but I haven't had a chance to test this out yet)<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Roll >= Threat Level; the party passes without incident.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Roll < Threat Level; some minor skirmishes, but none worth playing out. everyone rolls 1d4 to see how many surges they lost in the last hour.  If they wish, they can spend a Daily attack power to prevent the loss of 2 surges.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Roll <= Threat Level - 5; you have an actual fight on your hands. A quick encounter of L to L+1</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"> Roll <= Threat Level - 10; Woah, where was that hiding!!! This would be an encounter of L+2 to L+3</li> </ul>The roll would get modifiers for things like taking time to stealth your way across enemy lines, or using the "Create Camp" ritual to when you rest for the night, etc.Thoughts, ideas, jokes?EDIT: Here is a write up of the system as it stands so far.  There are more changes coming, but I wanted to get something down on paper for early review.A couple of quick warnings.<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">I was very tired and silly when I finally finished this the other day, so I apologize if any of it is nonsensical.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">This uses zone levels called Threat Levels.  This is not a measure of how dangerous a zone is in relation to monster levels, this is a measure of how dangerous a zone is in relation to monster density.  All this is designed to do is determine how often your players will be fighting.  It is vital to the system that this does not become conflated with monster level.</li> </ol>Second edit: Forgot to add in surge loss mitigation in v 0.2 of the write up.  It has been added in the new document v 0.21.</blockquote>

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