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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 5168542" data-attributes="member: 3424">Now that I've thought about this issue some more, I would say that the key factors that influenced the perceived and actual levels of risk between editions are as follows:1. PC hit points are higher relative to expected monster damage: If the average character rolls 1d6 for hit points, the average monster rolls 1d6 for damage, and death occurs at 0 hp, there is a good chance that a single hit from an average monster will kill an average character. While both PC hit points and average monster damage have tended to increase with editions, the increase in PC hit points seems to have outstripped the increase in average monster damage, to the extent that even a character with fairly low hit points relative to the rest of the party is able to withstand two or three hits before he is in danger of death. This does not necessarily mean that combats become relatively easier for the PCs, especially if average monster hit points also increase by about the same proportion relative to average PC damage, but it does lead to the next point.2. The outcome of combat is less variable: In earlier editions, especially at lower levels, a single lucky hit on the part of the monsters could result in PC death. Since later editions require on average more hits for the monsters to kill the PCs, a single lucky roll (from the perspective of the monsters anyway) has less impact overall. While it is always possible for a string of lucky (or unlucky) die rolls to kill a PC, the likelihood of such an event becomes less probable. Overall, this means that luck plays less of a factor in the resolution of combat, and the actual relative strengths of the PCs and the monsters plays a more important role. Which brings me to the next point.3. The PCs generally face inferior opponents: It is probably an open secret that in later editions, the PCs are expected to win a standard encounter. The PCs will usually have the edge either in terms of numbers or strength. To facilitate the latter, the later editions have introduced more types of opponents who are designed to be inferior to the PCs, e.g. opponents with NPC classes or minions. So, it seems to me that if you want a riskier game, the last point is probably the easiest to tinker with. Just ensure that the PCs usually encounter opponents who are equal to them in strength (i.e. running higher "level" encounters). Or, if you are playing a more sandbox style game, ensure that a significant proportion of the potential encounters are equal or greater in strength to the PCs. In addition, if you want to increase the impact of lucky hits on the overall flow of combat, you could further tinker with the system by halving the number of hit points for both monsters and PCs.</blockquote>

Verification