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<blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 4776404" data-attributes="member: 40961">Right, the issue is just that some people believe very strongly that you don't &quot;punish&quot; the PCs in a sandbox game with an &quot;exciting&quot; fight because they wandered into dangerous territory. &nbsp;You do one of two things: &nbsp;1. If you are a nice DM, you give them the opportunity to run the heck away. If you do this, you will not need to worry about frustrating grinds.&nbsp;2. If you are not a nice DM, you kill the characters with an overpowered fight they cannot win, thereby teaching them a lesson in planning ahead and anticipating dangers, so that their next characters won't blunder into these situations.&nbsp;In short, either version of sandbox theory tells you that you don't actually have a problem.&nbsp; One theory involves running away from unpleasant fights, the other involves embracing them as a stick in a carrot/stick combination.&nbsp;Your issue seems to be that you want to make sure that there are areas that are more or less powerful, but you don't actually want to pick either of those two options. In that case, you should go with Umbran's idea and just adjust the difficulty of the regions on the fly. Some people do not view that as a true sandbox, but it does provide open ended gaming and a satisfying experience.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Cadfan, post: 4776404, member: 40961"] Right, the issue is just that some people believe very strongly that you don't "punish" the PCs in a sandbox game with an "exciting" fight because they wandered into dangerous territory. You do one of two things: 1. If you are a nice DM, you give them the opportunity to run the heck away. If you do this, you will not need to worry about frustrating grinds. 2. If you are not a nice DM, you kill the characters with an overpowered fight they cannot win, thereby teaching them a lesson in planning ahead and anticipating dangers, so that their next characters won't blunder into these situations. In short, either version of sandbox theory tells you that you don't actually have a problem. One theory involves running away from unpleasant fights, the other involves embracing them as a stick in a carrot/stick combination. Your issue seems to be that you want to make sure that there are areas that are more or less powerful, but you don't actually want to pick either of those two options. In that case, you should go with Umbran's idea and just adjust the difficulty of the regions on the fly. Some people do not view that as a true sandbox, but it does provide open ended gaming and a satisfying experience. [/QUOTE]

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