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<blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 7701538" data-attributes="member: 37579">This will vary depending on the DM. But I didn't really use &quot;predictable&quot; to describe, I used &quot;fair&quot; and &quot;balanced&quot;. Which is something that spawned out of 3e: encounters have a budget and use 24% of your resources, and you have four per day. Which continued into 4e. Where you had encounters that you had a good chance of winning with decent tactical play. It worked well with the &quot;kick in the door&quot; playstyle. And players got used to that. There's the assumption that the DM is playing fair, and that any encounter will be balanced for the players at their current level. Because those are &quot;the rules&quot;. Doubly so if the players participated in any sort of organized play or ran a published adventure.You could see how this affected people by the playtest reports from early 5e, where they put people into the Keep on the Borderlands unmodified, and there were numerous TPKs from &quot;unbalanced&quot; encounters that weren't nearly as challenging in 1e, because players didn't assume a fair fight. Now, again, this will vary depending on DM. Some DMs might never have read the encounter building rules for 3e or 4e, and continued to wing it like 2e and before. Others might have ignored the rules when it suited them. Others might have embraced the sandbox and had encounters that were far too hard because it made sense in the world. What are your most memorable encounters? How many encounters are memorable because they were balanced and fair? Because they were textbook encounters right out of the book. And conversely, how many of them are memorable because of some other element: a set piece, some creative terrain, a unique mechanic, exceptional rolls, creative tactics, etc? I postulate that what makes a fun, exciting, and memorable encounter has very, very little to do with the rules designed to make a balanced encounter. And very often, the best way to make a memorable incident in the game, is to ignore those rules.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jester David, post: 7701538, member: 37579"] This will vary depending on the DM. But I didn't really use "predictable" to describe, I used "fair" and "balanced". Which is something that spawned out of 3e: encounters have a budget and use 24% of your resources, and you have four per day. Which continued into 4e. Where you had encounters that you had a good chance of winning with decent tactical play. It worked well with the "kick in the door" playstyle. And players got used to that. There's the assumption that the DM is playing fair, and that any encounter will be balanced for the players at their current level. Because those are "the rules". Doubly so if the players participated in any sort of organized play or ran a published adventure. You could see how this affected people by the playtest reports from early 5e, where they put people into the Keep on the Borderlands unmodified, and there were numerous TPKs from "unbalanced" encounters that weren't nearly as challenging in 1e, because players didn't assume a fair fight. Now, again, this will vary depending on DM. Some DMs might never have read the encounter building rules for 3e or 4e, and continued to wing it like 2e and before. Others might have ignored the rules when it suited them. Others might have embraced the sandbox and had encounters that were far too hard because it made sense in the world. What are your most memorable encounters? How many encounters are memorable because they were balanced and fair? Because they were textbook encounters right out of the book. And conversely, how many of them are memorable because of some other element: a set piece, some creative terrain, a unique mechanic, exceptional rolls, creative tactics, etc? I postulate that what makes a fun, exciting, and memorable encounter has very, very little to do with the rules designed to make a balanced encounter. And very often, the best way to make a memorable incident in the game, is to ignore those rules. [/QUOTE]

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