Why do we have such different experiences?

[Beginning of the End]

Some time ago, I did a similar thing with the CR/EL system. I noticed that there were a number of posters who had very different experiences with the system than I did. I like the CR/EL system. Stop laughing. Really I do.

Here's a few from my observation:

(1) People who interpreted the word "challenging" in the CR system to mean "memorable, life-or-death struggle". These DMs tended to be frustrated by the "broken" CR/EL system that gave them challenges which were "too easy". They responded by routinely throwing PCs against monsters 3 or 4 CRs higher than their level. This leads to an arms war syndrome: The players faced with such difficult challenges are forced to uber-optimize their characters in an effort to stay alive. The DM, convinced that all encounters should be life-and-death struggles, responds by upping the ante. Every encounter becomes a major set-piece that needs to be painstakingly designed down to the last detail because the balance between "challenging" the PCs and completely destroying them was razor-thin.

This style of play can be contrasted to the people who read "challenging" to mean "appropriate challenge that will expend some resources but is rather unlikely to prove life-threatening". Those DMs were far more willing to use EL-appropriate and even build encounters out of large numbers of lower-CR creatures. (Uber-optimizers would scoff at that type of low-CR, EL-appropriate encounters as being example of the CR/EL system being broken because the individual monsters were "too easy".)

(2) People who saw all the customization tools in 3rd Edition and decided that they needed to customize every single encounter that they ran.

This style of play can be contrasted to people who would use the customization tools only when they really needed to. For the former group, stocking a dungeon could take hours. For the latter, they could write "4 orcs" here and "2 worgs" there and be ready to roll in a couple of minutes.

(3) Allowing player control of encounter pace. Or, as Justin Alexander calls it, the Death of the Wandering Monster. This has a huge impact on how the classes perform.

(4) Similar to #3 and often resulting from #1, the "one encounter per day" standard vs. "many encounters per day".

As a particularly extreme example, in our current campaign we just wrapped up a single campaign day of activity that stretched across four gaming sessions and took up about 30 hours of table time. A lot of time was spent in character interaction and dungeon exploring, but we also wrapped up 15 combat encounters -- three of them being quite epic (one fought across multiple levels of an apartment complex; another fought against an entire platoon of enemy riflemen + spellcasters; and a third being fought through several buildings of an ancient city buried beneath the earth against more than a dozen foes). By the end of it are spellcasters were tapped out, but people just kept thinking outside of the box and trying to find new ways to contribute.

 

[S'mon]

The Nova Wizard existed before 3e. I think the big change in 3e is the inability of the Fighter to reliably stand in line against CR-appropriate foes. For instance, a 3rd level Fighter may struggle against an ogre, a 5th level Fighter will certainly struggle against a troll or ettin. And compare the giants to fighters of their CR. This means that when the Wizard wants to rest, the fighters say yes. In 1e the fighters would often scoff and keep on going - and they might well be packing nova items like wands of fireballs that a 1e fighter could use.

 

[Beginning of the End]

The Nova Wizard existed before 3e. I think the big change in 3e is the inability of the Fighter to reliably stand in line against CR-appropriate foes. For instance, a 3rd level Fighter may struggle against an ogre, a 5th level Fighter will certainly struggle against a troll or ettin. And compare the giants to fighters of their CR. This means that when the Wizard wants to rest, the fighters say yes. In 1e the fighters would often scoff and keep on going - and they might well be packing nova items like wands of fireballs that a 1e fighter could use.

Emphasis added.

Now, go back and look at the #1 point in my previous post.

There's nothing wrong with that particular style of play, per se. But I think it's interesting to note how pervasive it's become. And how most people don't even realize how their adventure design methodology has changed.

Adventures didn't used to be designed this way. And it has a huge impact on how the game plays. Justin Alexander has an essay talking about this specifically.

 

[S'mon]

Emphasis added.

Now, go back and look at the #1 point in my previous post.

By CR-appropriate, I meant CR = to party level, the so-called 'moderately challenging encounter'.

In 1e, hit dice were equated with level, but an 8th level 1e Fighter PC could usually trash hordes of 8 hd hill giants. A 7th level 3e Fighter PC can't take on even 1 3e CR 7 hill giant.

I think the solution is to recognise that the '25% of party resources' paradigm doesn't work very well; and treat CR as pretty much the absolute maximum you should ever throw against typical PCs. With monsters, 2-4 foes each 2-4 CR under Party Level is probably the sweet spot for a fun 3e encounter. With NPCs, they are usually much weaker than monsters of CR equal to their level, usually their effective CR is about 2 below their level, so a single NPC has to be at least 2 levels over party level to give a moderate challenge.

Edit: I agree with your point about adventure design, but I think it's inherent in the 3e CR system and in the way 3e monsters are statted out. Plus, 3e combat is so lengthy, players will even complain about easy fights as being a waste of time!

Edit 2: The Designing Better Encounters section at your link http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/encounter-design.html says it right:

(1) Design most encounters around an EL 2 to 4 lower than the party's level.

(2) Don't be afraid of large mobs (10+ creatures) with a total EL equal to the PCs' level. The common design wisdom is that these creatures are "too easy" for the PCs. This is true if you're thinking in terms of the "common wisdom" that sprang up around misreading the DMG, but in practice these types of encounters work just fine if you're looking for fast encounters and lots of them.

(3) Encounters with an EL equal to the PCs' level should be used sparingly. They should be thought of as "major encounters" -- the memorable set pieces of the adventure. It actually won't take very long before the expectations of your players' have been re-aligned and these encounters leave them thinking, "Wow! That was a tough encounter!"

(4) And that means you get even more bang for your buck when you roll out the very rare EL+2 or EL+4 encounter.

Of course few published 3e adventures work this way. Many boast about their EL +2 to +4 encounters (Necromancer, I'm looking at you). I guess the best use of published modules is to run them for a PC group at least 2-3 levels higher than listed.

 

[Hussar]

A friend's mother-in-law had a dog that looked like a 4-legged chicken. We never considered eating him either.

On Topic: This is a great thread, and with simplicity it helps explain the varied and multi-faceted experiences we have all had with D&D.

Dang, I love this game!

And the Frequency of Sessions revelation mentioned by Garnfellow helps explain some of the difference in perspective that I have with other gamers on EnWorld as well.

It's threads like these that take the edge off of a lot of the wild emotions in the edition war arguments.

Don't be shy with the posrep mate. I'd love to get a level or two up y'know.

Amysrevenge and Garnfellow - very excellent thoughts. Posrep for both of you. Also, something to keep in mind for 4e is that I think a large amount of the development of 4e was based around feedback from the RPGA. So, I think this really hits to the heart of why some people are completely bewildered by the claims coming out of WOTC.

 

[Rel]

(1) People who interpreted the word "challenging" in the CR system to mean "memorable, life-or-death struggle". These DMs tended to be frustrated by the "broken" CR/EL system that gave them challenges which were "too easy". They responded by routinely throwing PCs against monsters 3 or 4 CRs higher than their level. This leads to an arms war syndrome: The players faced with such difficult challenges are forced to uber-optimize their characters in an effort to stay alive. The DM, convinced that all encounters should be life-and-death struggles, responds by upping the ante. Every encounter becomes a major set-piece that needs to be painstakingly designed down to the last detail because the balance between "challenging" the PCs and completely destroying them was razor-thin.

It's like you really know me!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

It's like you really know me!

Or me.

 

[smerwin29]

I'm a bigtime RPGA guy. The analogy that I've developed to describe it is this.

If the ridiculous, broken stuff in D&D can be likened to a chicken with 4 legs, then a dedicated RPGA player/DM can be likened to a meat inspector, while a "home game only" player can be likened to the man on the street.

I would guess that over the course of the 8 years of 3.x RPGA games, I saw something on the order of 1000 different PCs in play. It would take a fairly strange home game setup for someone to approach even a tenth of that...

Big Mike, you are my hero. Of course, the chickens cannot use the Internet to discuss with other chickens how to get 4 legs . . .

Shawn

 

[dmccoy1693]

Here's a few from my observation:

(1) People who interpreted the word "challenging" in the CR system to mean "memorable, life-or-death struggle". These DMs tended to be frustrated by the "broken" CR/EL system that gave them challenges which were "too easy". They responded by routinely throwing PCs against monsters 3 or 4 CRs higher than their level. This leads to an arms war syndrome: The players faced with such difficult challenges are forced to uber-optimize their characters in an effort to stay alive. The DM, convinced that all encounters should be life-and-death struggles, responds by upping the ante. Every encounter becomes a major set-piece that needs to be painstakingly designed down to the last detail because the balance between "challenging" the PCs and completely destroying them was razor-thin.

This style of play can be contrasted to the people who read "challenging" to mean "appropriate challenge that will expend some resources but is rather unlikely to prove life-threatening". Those DMs were far more willing to use EL-appropriate and even build encounters out of large numbers of lower-CR creatures. (Uber-optimizers would scoff at that type of low-CR, EL-appropriate encounters as being example of the CR/EL system being broken because the individual monsters were "too easy".)

(4) Similar to #3 and often resulting from #1, the "one encounter per day" standard vs. "many encounters per day".

As a particularly extreme example, in our current campaign we just wrapped up a single campaign day of activity that stretched across four gaming + spellcasters; and a third being fought through several buildinsessions and took up about 30 hours of table time. A lot of time was spent in character interaction and dungeon exploring, but we also wrapped up 15 combat encounters -- three of them being quite epic (one fought across multiple levels of an apartment complex; another fought against an entire platoon of enemy riflemen gs of an ancient city buried beneath the earth against more than a dozen foes). By the end of it are spellcasters were tapped out, but people just kept thinking outside of the box and trying to find new ways to contribute.

Pretty much hit the nail on the head with me on these. DMs, IME that felt that the players should only have 1 encounter per day made every encounter BBEG, which sucks when you're fighting goblins.

Additional:

1) DM that routinely broke the system. One DM would always make sure his NPC got away if he wanted him to. He'd pull out some major spell or magic item that, logically, he'd pull out long before if the DM didn't need him to escape or win or whatever. If I had only had that DM, I could most certainly see where going to a 4E model would be better, but I've had better DMs as well.

2) DM that did no planning whatsoever. I had a DM that did nothing beforehand and would roll on tables for encounters and possessions they had. Very disruptive to the game and very odd to receive high priced gems from Kobolds at 1st level. She also took the time to occassionally template a monster or level up/add HD when the table said so.

 

[Mercule]

The AoE spell thing was probably me.

At least in my games, caster choose the target box and then roll d4 to see which of the corners is the center of the spell, meaning it can never be perfectly placed.

What I like about this (an idea I got from Monte Cook) is that the difference is small enough to often not matter, but when it does matter it can change the whole encounter.

Also, I allow a feat ("Accurate Caster") which allows the caster to choose instead of rolling randomly.

If I ever go back to 3e, this rule is so getting yoinked. With the reduction in friendly fire in 4e, I don't think it'd have much impact, but it might get used there, too.