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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jdfrenzel" data-source="post: 1327016" data-attributes="member: 810">I've been lurking on these boards since EN still ran them and we all knew the rule about his grandma, and I haven't said much in that time (you guys are fast and damn good). But I really need to get this out there.BALANCE SCHMALANCE. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  That felt good.Now don't get me wrong. I'm 100% behind the desire for balance in the game, and the need for it. But it just can't be perfect folks, too many variables. Have you ever tried to pass off your off-the-rack blue blazer and your off-the-rack blue slacks as an off-the-rack blue suit? You might have fooled yourself into thinking the colors were the same, but believe me, no one else was buyin' it.So it is with balance in the game. The harder you try to get it just right, the weirder it starts to look. My solution to the blue suit problem is to say a bad word followed by "it", and wear the damn khakis instead.In game terms that means setting the expectation for the players that they should never feel comfortable that I have made any effort at all to matching the challenge of the villains to the party's ability; feel free to run. So my happy group of 4th-lvlers may meet 3 plain old orc warriors. That's an encounter. Then next they may meet a cocaine-amped, 16th level fire giant barbarian who just caught his wife cheating on him, and she only gave him this ridiculously huge greatsword and 3 heal potions to say she's sorry. And the dogs. That's also an encounter.The point is, whether the party is barely making it through the encounter, breezing through, expending precisely 20% of their resources to make it through, or running, as long as it's fun then who cares? Believe me, players really love to romp through low-level fodder more than anything. And running from the second encounter is at least as memorable.No one cares, in the end, about CRs and ECLs. Not even about experience points really, since in 10 or 20 or 30 years what they remember is "One time our group was just roaming around the land, and we run into this really pissed giant...".So I really appreciate all the time and effort to balance the classes, the monsters, the game. It is a truly daunting, thankless task that can never, IMO, be done to 100% accuracy. It is certainly better than before and bravo for that. But if I can't buy the whole suit, I'm sticking with the blue blazer and khakis. --- John</blockquote>

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