NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jhaelen" data-source="post: 5061558" data-attributes="member: 46713">Hear, hear. Now, I don't know what game you're talking about here, actually.I'll just say one thing about my personal experience with 1e:If a game was balanced or not depended entirely on the DM (nothing new there, hey!). Most DMs I played with didn't have a clue (or cared) about balance. So it wasn't only difficult to find a DM, it was, that it was difficult to find a DM that managed to properly judge what was easy, what was challenging and what was overpowering.Bad experience with DMs ultimately led me to abandon AD&D. So, I was overjoyed when 3e came along with the promise of an objective system that would allow a DM to judge the difficulty of planned encounters with a minimum of effort.The CR system was intended as a protection from bad (or simply inexperienced) DMs. For DMs that were actually interested in providing a fun game for their players it was a tool to measure if their encounter ideas would provide an appropriate challenge or not.It was supposed to be an additional tool that DMs may find helpful but never a straightjacket. The idea was that providing DMs with better tools would allow more DMs to become good DMs.Now, we know that the CR system was far from perfect but it was _something_.Ultimately, I don't care for anyone's definition of balance but mine. I want my game to be balanced in the way that I find appropriate. My 2e Darksun Campaign used a different 'balance' than my 'Standard' campaign.There is a time for easy encounters and a time for overwhelming encounters. But I, as the DM, want to be able to plan them that way.Every tool that can help me to judge if an encounter will represent the kind of challenge I'm looking for is welcome.</blockquote>

Verification