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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 3797466" data-attributes="member: 42582">Gizmo33, I'll just pick up on these parts of your post because they seem to me to be the crux of our disagreement - or at least one thereof.Consider a 1st level Orc warrior against a 10th level PC fighter, in 3E. Is the PC in danger?Well, if the PC does nothing, the Orc will kill him/her. After all , the Orc hits on a natural 20 (with a like chance of a crit) and delivers damage with each such hit.However, the player of the PC can make a choice which eliminates the threat posed by the Orc, namely, s/he can declare an attack. One round will probably do for a 10th level fighter to kill the Orc.Presumably, then, we would not describe this as a "dangerous" or "threatening" or "win/lose" encounter - because, through sensible choices, the player can eliminate the threat.Conversely, the same PC against (let' say) a Stone Giant is in a "win/lose" encounter, because it has a good chance of hitting each round whatever the fighter does, and delivers about 3 or so hit dice worth of damage per round.What I have in mind is that, with a more complex set of mechanics - giving players more choices as to how the encounter plays out - a greater range of encounters can be ones which (like the Orc) can be rendered non-win/lose through good play, but without the choices being so tedious or obvious, but equally without becoming like the encounter with the Stone Giant, in which no range of choices can eliminate the significant risk of death posed by the encounter.Because the choices would be non-trivial, the encounter would (in round 1, before effective choices have been made by the players) be one in which a significant threat is posed to the PCs. But unlike the Stone Giant encounter, the threat would be not simply one of raw probability.This is a type of threat which the mechanics of core 3E do not really allow to be posed. It is similar in some respects to the sort of threat that people have in mind when they talk about Kobolds with their traps and narrow passages, and to the sort of threat that (at least a certain style of) 1st ed AD&D play aims at. The difference I have in mind from these other examples, however, is that in 1st ed AD&D the players have to meet the threat through ingenuity that has nothing to do with game mechanics (because their really aren't any) - I'm thinking here of White Plume Mountain, perhaps Tomb of Horrors, and the like. In 4e, on the other hand, the players will be succeeding by mastering the mechanics.A recent playtest report on the Wizards site talked about the complexity of 4e for players, and how they are looking at ways to deal with that. This is far from conclusive evidence that the designers are thinking about this in the same way that I am - but it is consistent with it.Does this make any sense?</blockquote>

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