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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Harlekin" data-source="post: 5823638" data-attributes="member: 18615">I don't think the difference is even remotely as big as you are making it out to be.This is true for any edition of D&D ever. Lifespan of a creature in combat and damage output are random variables and have therefore expectations. And IIRC, AD&D monsters not only had treasure types, there was even a table in the DMG that provided the expected yield from a given treasure.The only difference is that modern editions, especially D&D 4th actually consider these variables in their design rather than leaving game masters to figure it out by themselves.Again something that existed in all editions. You yourself say below that you balance encounters with more powerful foes by giving players the opportunity to avoid them. <Some Snippage> You really think there is any difference whether a GM plans 5 challenging encounters or he plans 10 challenging encounters, but rolls which of the 10 happen? I as a player would assign the same level of agenda to the GM. As the GM can also roughly expect how long it will take the players to explore a certain dungeon, he can even predict how often he will roll on that table.Again, the DM decides what's on the random encounter table. If only 5% of all encounters include anything that can be tracked, the GM is being a dick to the amazing tracker, if 30% of all encounters are trackable, it doesn't matter if the DM rolls on a table or assigns them to a specific location.To summarize, it may be nice for the DM, if he cannot always know what the next encounter will be, but he looses the abillity to have encounters build on each other. From the perspective of the players it makes very little difference. The GM still controls pretty precisely how many encounters and of what difficulty the PCs will encounter. If you add that the GM can arbitrarily modify the setting of the encounter, for example by turning an encounter into a simple sighting of a monster (as you describe below), I think the differences are pretty trivial between 1) planning encounters in a given order and 2) planning encounters and then randomly rolling in which order they happen .</blockquote>

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