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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6654762" data-attributes="member: 82106">I'm honestly not sure what 5e's recommendations look like, I haven't read every bit of DMG cover-to-cover and studied all the DM advice in the uttermost detail. 4e definitely can be faulted for not just coming right out and plainly saying &quot;OK, here's all the rules for a balanced encounter, but that doesn't mean you should balance every encounter.&quot; I mean the intention is there, there's a very robust set of rules for doing things other than beating stuff to death, but its not really made clear that you could just use a big ogre as basically a non-combat challenge, or as a &quot;figure out a different strategy&quot; challenge.That being said, when I started to run 4e the 2nd encounter I made was a Carrion Crawler (level 7 elite Controller IIRC). I just set it up so that if the players were cunning they could defeat it. Of course the players didn't instantly pick up the perfect tactic, they had to find out the hard way that the beast was quite tough! Still, I thought 4e worked really well for this, the PCs were tough enough that they were able to get out of it without dying, and even patched themselves up enough to go on and finish up the rest of that encounter area. I think 5e aims for the same thing. I liked the HS/healing concept in 4e a little better, you weren't stuck with a cleric in every party, which seems kind of weird and genre-limiting. Still, in basic concept you're getting the same thing. I'll have to go back and see how 5e's advice on that sort of thing is written since I can't comment on that right now.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 6654762, member: 82106"] I'm honestly not sure what 5e's recommendations look like, I haven't read every bit of DMG cover-to-cover and studied all the DM advice in the uttermost detail. 4e definitely can be faulted for not just coming right out and plainly saying "OK, here's all the rules for a balanced encounter, but that doesn't mean you should balance every encounter." I mean the intention is there, there's a very robust set of rules for doing things other than beating stuff to death, but its not really made clear that you could just use a big ogre as basically a non-combat challenge, or as a "figure out a different strategy" challenge. That being said, when I started to run 4e the 2nd encounter I made was a Carrion Crawler (level 7 elite Controller IIRC). I just set it up so that if the players were cunning they could defeat it. Of course the players didn't instantly pick up the perfect tactic, they had to find out the hard way that the beast was quite tough! Still, I thought 4e worked really well for this, the PCs were tough enough that they were able to get out of it without dying, and even patched themselves up enough to go on and finish up the rest of that encounter area. I think 5e aims for the same thing. I liked the HS/healing concept in 4e a little better, you weren't stuck with a cleric in every party, which seems kind of weird and genre-limiting. Still, in basic concept you're getting the same thing. I'll have to go back and see how 5e's advice on that sort of thing is written since I can't comment on that right now. [/QUOTE]

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