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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raven Crowking" data-source="post: 5061992" data-attributes="member: 18280">As I said, I started as DM without a background in rpgs or wargames.AFAICT, I was the first DM in my area, and I was directly responsible (I later learned, through bringing the Holmes book to school) for the second.  About 1/3 of my initial D&D experiences (2 out of the first 6, myself not included) were with bad DMs, and I can say without a doubt that the bad ones then were also the worst I ever experienced.  In both cases, wanting to direct the player characters, and decide how encounters "should" go was the cardinal sin, and 3e does little, if anything, to prevent this!Over the years, though, I have met many more good DMs than bad.The 1e Monster Level system gives more weight to the non-HD strengths of monsters AFAICT.  The exact formula is given in the 1e DMG, and one can see that special abilities can quickly outweigh hit dice in terms of XP value (and, therefore, Monster Level).The CR system reverses the process somewhat.  In 1e, monster hit dice + monster abilities = XP Value, which in turn determines Monster Level.  In 3e, monster hit dice + monster abilities are used (in some undisclosed method) to determine CR, and CR in turn determines a far less granular XP value.While the CR system is far more granular than Monster Level overall, the fact is that in 1e, much higher granularity in the XP Value of a monster can allow the experienced DM to get a better idea of how big a threat a monster is than the CR system allows for.Thus, where 1e gives you Monster Levels 1 to 10, 3e gives you CR 1/6 to 20+, greatly increasing the granularity.  However, underlying ML 1-10 is an XP system running from under 5 to over 10,000, that offers by far the most granularity any system ever has for determining the relative challenge a monster represents.No, because we are talking about the quanta of change.  In 3e at least, the power curve doesn't actually have a high level of granularity.  The step between one level and the next (or one CR and the next) is far greater than that in TSR-D&D.  When increase in power occurs gradually, it is possible to vary the number and levels of characters without having to rewrite challenges to compensate.  Which is why you see so many TSR modules say "For 4-6 characters between levels X and Y".  Likewise, a DM's work in 1e is usable for longer than it is in 3e.  Say that the DM has four characters in his game, each of which is 3rd level.  He then creates three potential adventures, and allows them to choose which to follow up on.In 1e, both because levelling is slower, and because the power curve is shallower, it is possible to use all of this work with the same characters without any redesign whatsoever.  Moreover, it is possible to do so without the last area being too easy or the first area being too hard.Conversely, in 3e, adventures need a scaling sidebar in case there are relatively minor variances in character levels or numbers.Thus, when the power curve uses a granularity of X+1, X+2, X+3, you have less varience than when the power curve is X+10, X+20, X+30, X+50, etc.  It is easier for first level 1e characters to handle a ML 2 monster than it is for 1st level 3e characters to handle a CR 2 monster, even though CR 2 includes creatures that are ML 1 in the 1e system.  The margin of error (i.e., where the DM can misjudge difficulty without sinking the boat) in 1e is far, far greater than it is in 3e.WotC recognized this, and explicitly took steps to deal with it in 4e.  "Flattening the power curve" was a stated design goal.  Whether they were successful or not is, of course, another topic.RC</blockquote>

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