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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7701732" data-attributes="member: 996">'Amenable?'  It certainly isn't robust to it, class balance depending heavily on pacing.    I did find pemerton's insight about player-controlled pacing and 'CaW' interesting.  I'm not sure if I'm convinced, but it's interesting.  OK, scaling with level, vs Hemlock talking scaling with numbers of foes on one side.  Not scaling with level (like BA) means numbers tell more heavily.  So, yeah, OK...Well, numbers tell heavily in 5e, so you should be able to take on a lone enemy of higher CR with healthy chance of success (though maybe, because of the significant damage scaling, not without PCs being dropped).  In 3e that wasn't so much an option because basics like AC scaled, while in 4e a lone higher-level enemy could be translated to a solo 9 levels lower.And it was part of an optional alternative to simply death at 0 hps.I has more involved encounter building guidelines than 4e did or 3.5/PF does, but AD&D didn't really have such guidelines, at all, at least, not explicit & formulaic enough to be characterized as 'more involved.'  More art than science, certainly... and more Picasso than Rembrandt. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Yes. Yes.  HotDQ could sure have benefited from them. I doubt any guidelines could be that good in this context.True, once that rapport is established, but they can be a useful tool, none the less.  They could also be useful to the DM running one-offs or with a varied roster of players, where 'knowing your players' is less of an option.Encounter guidelines also serve as the foundation that allowed 5e to deliver the promised 'crystal clear guidance' about encounters/day (and, it turns out short rests/day) around which the classes were designed to balance.  So there's that, too.  The bottom line is that, like just about everything else in 5e, the DM can use those guidelines as a starting point from which to make the game his own.  You're presented with a game that you can make better, rather than one you might fear making worse.D&D combat can resemble cinematic combat (or 'have a cinematic feel'), depending on edition, and, particularly upon how you visualize 'hits' and hps (and the restoration of same)...  4e tended to get very cinematic, including in ways that some people reacted very poorly too.  5e 'fast combat,' can be less so, sure, in both senses.</blockquote>

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