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<blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 5840323" data-attributes="member: 7006">Random encounters made sense prior to 3E, when the only real healing at the party's disposal during the adventuring day was the cleric's.&nbsp; So after the encounter... after the party lost like maybe a handful to a quarter of their HPs... they would have to decide whether the loss was worth the cleric using some of his precious healing on them.&nbsp; If not, then the RE did what it was supposed to and &quot;softened up&quot; the party for what was to come.&nbsp; After all... the party was not going to have the cleric blow his healing on them, then take a rest after this random encounter in order for the cleric to get his healing back... before most likely another random encounter would occur while they were resting.It was only with the advent of 3E and the item creation feats, that random encounter became pretty well obsolete.&nbsp; There was usually at least one party member who had made or bought one or more Cure Light Wounds wands (since they were extremely cheap)... which meant that after the RE was finished... the party would just blow through however many charges were needed to get them all back to full HP.&nbsp; Thus, all the RE did was blow a relatively infinite resource (wand charges).&nbsp; And when it comes to 4E... that game basically takes the premise of the 50 charges of Cure Light Wounds wands and just bakes them straight into each individual character.&nbsp; So again, a RE doesn't really do anything other than make the party blow some healing surges (which is not as deep a resource as CLW wand charges were, but still tends to get fairly deep all things considered).The only way Random Encounters serve a meaningful purpose is to not having healing so prevalent that the party can easily heal back to full when its done.&nbsp; They need to be judicious with their minimum amount of healing such that continuing to adventure even though they are down a certain percentage of HP is a valid tactic and something they really need to think about.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="DEFCON 1, post: 5840323, member: 7006"] Random encounters made sense prior to 3E, when the only real healing at the party's disposal during the adventuring day was the cleric's. So after the encounter... after the party lost like maybe a handful to a quarter of their HPs... they would have to decide whether the loss was worth the cleric using some of his precious healing on them. If not, then the RE did what it was supposed to and "softened up" the party for what was to come. After all... the party was not going to have the cleric blow his healing on them, then take a rest after this random encounter in order for the cleric to get his healing back... before most likely another random encounter would occur while they were resting. It was only with the advent of 3E and the item creation feats, that random encounter became pretty well obsolete. There was usually at least one party member who had made or bought one or more Cure Light Wounds wands (since they were extremely cheap)... which meant that after the RE was finished... the party would just blow through however many charges were needed to get them all back to full HP. Thus, all the RE did was blow a relatively infinite resource (wand charges). And when it comes to 4E... that game basically takes the premise of the 50 charges of Cure Light Wounds wands and just bakes them straight into each individual character. So again, a RE doesn't really do anything other than make the party blow some healing surges (which is not as deep a resource as CLW wand charges were, but still tends to get fairly deep all things considered). The only way Random Encounters serve a meaningful purpose is to not having healing so prevalent that the party can easily heal back to full when its done. They need to be judicious with their minimum amount of healing such that continuing to adventure even though they are down a certain percentage of HP is a valid tactic and something they really need to think about. [/QUOTE]

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