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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Arlough" data-source="post: 5528331" data-attributes="member: 79335">Thanks for the link. That is an excellent article and is going to be easy to integrate into the proposed PoL system.  Especially if you consider an area's threat level to be the same as the Zone level.After talking this over with a few others in my FLGS, we came to the conclusion that the players roll:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">2 hours after entering a zone/territory, engaging in battle, or setting up camp</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">every 6 hours after that</li> </ol>This accounts for the aftermath of battle (scent of blood, scouting parties missing, etc.) drawing the attention of the nearby enemy population, and discourages reckless action like wandering around slaughtering everything in sight, camping  in enemy territory without taking precautions (a rest must be uninterrupted for the party to gain the benefits of it), or traveling through a dangerous zone without masking the party’s presence.This would also only really be used in situations where tension was building because of the perils of the area or because of upcoming fights.As for L+3.   Yeah, that is the highest my DMG suggests.   This may need tweaking for some parties.I have found that in general, encounters work best for my parties if the max level of an encounter is equal to the party level plus one per demi-tier starting at level 6.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Levels 1 – 5, equal level encounters</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Levels 6 – 10, Level + 1</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Levels 11 – 15, Level +2</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Levels 16 – 20, Level +3</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Etc.</li> </ul>Given that, I think I will change the table to:<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 and divides that by 2, rounding down (a loss of up to four surges was deemed too punitive), to see how many surges they lost in that time frame.  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; “We have an actual fight on your hands.” Encounter L to L+1</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Roll >= Threat Level - 10; “Woah, where was that hiding!!!” Encounter L+1 to L+2</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Roll >= Threat level – 15; “I told you this was a bad idea!” Encounter L+2 to L+3.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Etc</li> </ul>So if your party is traveling through an area that this threat level 5, a roll of a 1 is still higher than “Threat Level – 5” so the worst that could happen is surge loss.  If they, instead, traveling through an area that had a threat level of 15, and they don’t take any precautions to give a bonus to the roll (like, for example, using Nature to obscure their tracks could give them a +2) then the roll of a 1 would be equal to Threat Level – 14, meaning it should be between L + 1 and L + 2.   The party would still have a 25% chance of no encounter and a 50% of an encounter not worth mentioning.Now,  if a level 5 party is in a Level 15 zone, and happens to get unlucky, then they could have some trouble.  But, given how in the last two campaigns I ran, by level 16 I had to throw at least L+1 encounters at them to even really call it a fight, and by level 18 they simply mowed through anything easier than a level 20 encounter.  Mind you, this is all before the release of MM3, so I am not sure how it will play out with the new damages.As mentioned above, we adjusted the frequency to make it hostile but not tedious, but it may need further tweaking. I like all the points you have brought up and will revisit the issue.The Area Threat Level (I really need to just come up with some standardized terminology for these things) is both how often do you encounter monsters, as well as how much of a threat they are.  In a relatively safe area, you will encounter fewer big enemies and fewer organized enemies.  The premise being that you are not the only adventurers in the world, and since safe areas tend to be at congregation points (cities and the such) other adventurers have done a pretty good job at cleaning out things that aren’t a waste of their time (level appropriate enemies.) See Schrödinger’s Gun.Once again, the ATL is an abstraction of threats vs. safety.  So a safe area may have many non-threatening encounters, and you won’t be likely to roll up a random encounter.This actually fits quite well with what I had in mind with regards to the encounter threat level increase.  You may encounter goblins when you first go through an area at low levels, but when you return later, all encounters of that level are inconsequential, just as your party was inconsequential to the higher level goblins you are now fighting. (That’s why the task of taking you out was delegated to those lower level goblins a while ago.)  More commonly, though, is that adventurers will have to venture further and further away from civilization to encounter things that could credibly hurt them.  Otherwise, the level 0 peasants wouldn't have survived living there at all.By the way, thanks to everyone for input.  The way to refine one's ideas is to receive input, or have them challenged.</blockquote>

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