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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5818266" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, I do see it. I don't think there's anything wrong with what you're saying at all. I'm really just pointing out that for the most part it is VERY hard to do in a really objective way. Even for the DM it is usually pretty hard to say exactly what a given opponent may or may not be capable of, and I'm saying this as a DM who habitually constructs enemies that are clever, have many different options, etc. There are a couple of things that can happen. One is that the DM simply IS 'crappy' (though honestly I think it is a high standard to be able to do this sort of thing well, there are plenty of perfectly good DMs that will have problems with it). Another possibility, and the most usual, is that the DM lacks the wherewithal to really push it, so there's a token nod to the bad guy taking some action. Third the DM does a pretty decent job and the PCs get waxed either because of bad luck, incompetence, or just being out of their depth (which in a sandbox logically is quite likely). In the third case the players can't really tell the difference between that and 'crappy DMing'. Either way they got owned. Case 2 is the reliable one. It provides a sense of danger (and whatever degree of actual danger the DM cares to provide). Whether or not it is 'War' is harder to say. It could be war by a weak or ill-suited enemy, or it could be more of a sporting convention against a more potent enemy.Of course all of this is going to be in the context of what I personally as a DM have time, energy, interest, and competency to do. IME all-out war is a tough game to run. I tend to really prefer the option of being able to quickly assemble challenges that are pretty close to but not quite too tough and construct stories out of them. Often the players will subvert some of the encounters, and that's great, but 4e was nice in that it is a good bit less easy to find tools on your character sheet that will easily do that. In the context of discussing 5e, I would like it to stay that way.</blockquote>

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