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Message: <blockquote data-quote="UniversalMonster" data-source="post: 1803122" data-attributes="member: 1034">I don't really agree that much. The whole philosophy of setting the encounter level without regard to the party level seems to assume a large pre-keyed area or a lot of randomness in encounters. And if you disregard encounter balancing, you don't really get verisimilitude- you get a lot of dead PCs and frustrated players. Part of my disagreement is in structure. Characters that stumble onto encounters simply don't happen that much in my game. Rather, they go looking for threats, go on missions, etc. While on a mission, they may stumble on an encounter or three, but it basicly fits together. But it's generally structure so that the players identify the threats and missions they are willing to go on, and then carrying them out. I'd specifically disagree with 'training' your players to avoid kicking in doors every once in a while. All tactics are open game. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but really it's best to let the players come up with their own tactics. Plus, I enjoy mayhem. I mean, whats fun about sneaking around avoiding trouble all the time? I've seen this taken to extremes with partys spending 30 minutes spent deciding whether to try to open a door or just listen to it. I usually don't use random encounters at all, because there's simply too many monsters to choose from, and I don't even have a good table. I used to use random encounters for wilderness areas, though. I guess I still use small random tables in certain areas, but those encounters are carefully chosen. I'm a hollywood director and a Homeric epicsmith when I DM! Thats my philosophy. When pre-keying an area, I try to make the ecology work out. If there's a totally bad ass dragon in the area, everyone knows about it, and it doesn't live alongside goblins, unless those goblins are working for it, or enslaved by it. In either case, I have no problem throwing warrior levels and classed NPC leaders into a goblin tribe when I want them to be more of a tuned encounter. And anyway, there has to be some reason the dragon didn't just eat them all. Other than that, I have an island based campaign, so I can conveneiently compartment really tough monsters on an island-by-island basis. I guess if they decide to go randomly sailing around they copuld end up on an island with Polyphemus or something, but even that will probably be a very well thought out adventure.</blockquote>

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