Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5846777" data-attributes="member: 82106">Exactly. There is always and always will be a 'treadmill'. The idea that just because one number might not increase exactly in step with others the treadmill goes away doesn't make much sense to me. Look at it this way. Sure, your level 9 fighter taking on Hill Giants can hit them without a +3 sword, but he isn't going to be nearly as effective. Even more important are going to be his giant/ogre strength item (unless he happens to have a high % STR already, unlikely), etc. It is to some extent true that AD&D monsters are fightable over a greater range of the game. Sure, 1st level PCs can sort of fight a Hill Giant (a weak one can be a decent capstone fight). OTOH the same Hill Giant's saves and hit dice make it much harder for the wizard to affect with low level spells that are designed to work on low level monsters. I'd also note that since AD&D was really only playable in the normal sense over about 12 levels it is hard to compare. You can actually have a group of level 1 PCs interact with a 4e hill giant for instance and fight it. This will be quite tough, but not hopeless (AC 25, quite hard to hit, though REF 23 is probably a bit easier to crack). You'd be better off making it a level 8 Elite hill giant instead, but you'll get the "this is incredibly hard to beat but can be defeated if you use clever tactics" that you'd also get in 1e. It is just that 4e has 30 levels of monsters to throw out there, so yeah, a lot of upper level ones are just about untouchable. Then again a lot of 1e upper level monsters are pretty much untouchable too (if not literally so).As the 5e designers have already stated, they're considering a shallower power curve for 5e. I don't know what the level range will be, but with 30 levels this makes sense. If they go back to 20 levels, maybe less so, but probably still some.The real issue with AD&D was the vast range of numbers that would come up within a party and within an adventure or even encounter. You could easily need a 10 to hit one foe and a 19 to hit another. That made it pretty much impossible to give encounter guidelines. Of course if you don't expect too much from said guidelines, then the whole qustion of wealth and items by level is pretty moot. The DM makes up whatever encounters he makes up and if you can't handle them, well oops...</blockquote>

Verification