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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gimby" data-source="post: 4590407" data-attributes="member: 49875">Leaving aside that heroes overcome their opposition so often in fiction because their victory is a matter of author fiat rather than any contact with the odds, you do touch on the point about why people would take the +1 sword over the wand of wonder.  If a course of action is proving pointless, you change your action.  In doing so, you *change the odds*.  The use of clever tactics, positioning and so on doesn't mean that you beat unfavourable odds, it means that you first make the odds favourable (represented here by lowering the required target number on the dice) and then beat the now-favourable odds instead.  Essentially, you contradict yourself within your post - you say this:After just giving examples of how actions are determined by unfavourable odds - to whit, taking actions to improve said odds.  So in the context of magic items, getting permanent bonuses is one of many methods that can be used to shift the odds in your favour.  By getting that extra +1 I can now confidently take on more powerful challenges than before.  The point of encounter balance is to make encounter design predicable for the DM - so they can confidently say whether a fight will be easy or hard or nigh impossible.  Its still up to the players to decide whether or not to take on that hard encounter - the heroism of their characters depends very much on what they decide to face, what rewards are worth what risks.  Timid characters will face only easy encounters, heroic ones will risk the tougher ones - confident that they can use their teamwork and abilities to give them acceptable odds of success. To give an example of an unbalanced encounter, consider a CR 9 encounter vs a EPL 10 party.  Should be a pushover, right?  Except that this CR 9 encounter is 20 level 1 kobold sorcerors with Magic Missile.  Unless they have brooches of sheilding, this encounter will probably kill one party member per turn(no save, just die), until they run out of missiles, at which point they present essentially no threat at all.  Its that kind of idiocy that balanced encounters attempt to avoid.  Just because an encounter is balanced does not mean that victory is certain, that you don't have to play smart to win or it doesn't require any player input (or luck) at all.   To address this point:This is certainly true for the real world.  It is not however true for the simulated game world - this is because we know the probabilities associated with every event that occurs in the game world - if we didn't, we couldn't simulate it.  We can use this to follow every path in a decision tree and determine the probability of every outcome.  Do we actually do this in actual play? Of course not, but its part of the game design process.  It's where the values of ACs, attack bonusses and so on come from.  In short, I'm not sure what you are arguing.  That characters shouldn't only take actions that they are 100% likely to succeed at?  That heroism requires taking risks? These aren't particularly contentious positions.  I am confused about your railing against balance here - what is it that you think balance means?</blockquote>

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