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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7298104" data-attributes="member: 42582">Even from a game perspective what you say isn't true.When I started playing 500, I had an even chance to beat another newbie and little chance to beat a good player unless the cards were very lucky. When I got better, I have a good chance to beat anothe newbie (only lose if the cards are very unlucky) and and even chance to beat another good player. Who did I prefer to play against? Other good players - because the game is more interesting.Professional gameplayers, for whom the game is purely instrumental (eg a means to winning money) want games to be easy. The easier, the better. But for a hobby player, who plays the game as an end in itself (or perhaps as a sideshow to a social gathering) then interesting play is more important than easy play.If you picked up the 30th level 4e PC sheets and tried to play them in our 4e game, I think your chance of success would be less than 50%, because you would not have the acquired skill to do it. This has been a feature of D&D going back to the original game - levelling leads to confronting tougher challenges, and puts more demands on players to beat them, but players develop the skills to meet those challenges through their experience of playing the game. To quote from p 7 of the AD&D PHB:By successfully meeting the challenges posed, [the adventurers] gain experience and move upwards in power, just as actual playing experience really increases playing skill. Imagination, intelligence, problem solving ability, and memory are all continually exercised by participants in the game. . . . As players build the experience level of their characters and go forth seeking ever greater challenges, they must face stronger monsters and more difficult problems of other sorts . . .The plauyer-side mechanics that ensure that constant chance of success in 4e play include increasing complex combinations of buffs and other mechanical-manipulation effects, plus a greater skill and familiarity with the increasingly high-stakes fiction. Getting better at that is a real feature in playing the game.That seems obvious. But the challenge of the tasks we bother talking about around the roleplaying table might be comparable.I'm not going to waste time seeing if Hercules can beat a single hoplite. But I might spend time at the table finding out what happens when he meets a whole phalanx of them; and his chance of beating that phalanx, or turning them to become his loyal followers, might be comparable to the chance of a 1st level fighter beating a single hoplite, or persuading that single hoplite to stand down.I don't play adventure paths and haven't read many adventure path scenarios, but to the extent that they don't escalate the fictional stakes in ways that make sense, that would be yet anohter reason that justifies the lack of attention I pay to them!</blockquote>

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