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Message: <blockquote data-quote="UngainlyTitan" data-source="post: 4431309" data-attributes="member: 28487">interesting postI think the problem with prep time was, because there were complex rules for creating monsters, people felt obliged to follow them, the CR system was not a reliable indicator of challange. Of course any arbitary group of 3e parties could be highly variable as to power, moreso than a similar sample of 4e parties, I suspect. Other than that, I agree.Don't agree, with point a, but the exponential growth can be a problem, there is a lot to be said for flattening the power curve but I think in 3.xe systems the problem is that character strengths increase dramatically while weakness get worse, which sets of the hunt for magic items to compensate and encounters that challange some party members can obliterate some others.I disagree that balance is an illusion, but it is not the be all and end all either. However, I believe that all player characters should be able to contribute in a meaningfull way in play at any given time. That said, I am beginning to suspect that some of the balance issued in 3.x was due to the variances between high medium and low bab and saves.From my experience most of the slow down in 3.x combat was recalculating bonus to hit, AC or saves due to cascading effect of items, buffs, debuffs and so forth. Remove most bonus stacking and less divergence between base save, ac and attack numbers, so people would not be seeking all theses bonuses might solve the problem.I fail to see what relevance this has? What level the npc are and how many npc are at what level is a setting and flavour issue. When the PCs reach a certain level the DM will provide opponents of a level appropiate to challange the party and the default background assumptions are not going to enter into it.Would it not be better to slow the effects of levelling rather than reducing the rate at which the characters level. I like levelling and I find it keeps the players engaged. Some of us do not have a weekly game.<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" />Well feats should be decoupled from level anyway but decoupling skills sounds an interesting idea. How are you thinking on achieving it and can one start with a maxed skill?Well not everyong wants sandbox play and beside that I do not believe sandbox play will stop the 15 minute day.Also if resources are replenished daily(Vancian casting and so forth) then the party at a given time can have a huge variance in its current power level, particularly if the party has a lot of casters. This makes encounters hard to balance. An encounter that would be easy to the party at full resources could be tough at minimal resources. It is much easier to balance encounters against a party that has small variance between power levels.Tried that, don't reccomend it, swingier and more trouble that it is worth.</blockquote>

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