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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8942116" data-attributes="member: 6790260">That's what "balanced encounter" means, and has always meant.If you have absolutely no clue whatsoever how strong a combat is, how will you ever know what is "unbeatable" and what is "beatable"? And if you do have that knowledge, and use it to craft encounters that "[make] sense in the context of the campaign," you ARE making balanced encounters. Being balanced does not, and has not ever, meant "being perfectly in lockstep with the party and always guaranteed to be perfectly beatable with only minimal effort." This is a pernicious myth that encourages designers to make half-arsed structures (rules, tools, advice, etc.)There is nothing whatsoever wrong with providing challenges that require solutions other than the most primitive, thought-free "charge!!!" at the enemy. That is, in fact, exactly what you should always do. Having a system which produces balanced combats makes it easier to do this, because you have a very good idea of what kinds of things will be required to make victory possible. You can thus reward wise player actions with objectively useful benefits, rather than throwing stuff at the wall and hoping it sticks. Even doing that does not guarantee a fight will go smoothly; high variability and large damage output, for example, can mean that even a couple mistakes swing things wildly in the other direction.Your four rules should always happen before any encounter design--regardless of the system you use. These are, in fact, absolutely essential to making the best use of a well-designed, well-balanced ruleset. Failure to answer those four questions will lead to dull, pointless, repetitive fights regardless of whether those fights are balanced or not.Good balanced encounters do not tell you that. They tell you how dangerous a fight is likely to be unless mitigating circumstances apply. The two are not the same thing. The onus is on you as GM, and on the players, to alter the conditions when and how they are needed.These two statements are contradictory. 4e D&D, the system everyone decries as being "too balanced" etc., explicitly instructed DMs to do this: make every encounter such that it fits in the context it appears, and provide a broad spectrum of challenges, some truly white-knuckle, some cakewalk, most challenging-but-doable. (Note: that last one is "most" only because if most fights are white-knuckle, people will lose interest in participating in fights at all both due to fatigue and due to constantly losing characters, while if everything is a cakewalk it gets dull really fast. Challenging-but-doable keeps things fresh while still having room for surprises, both good and bad.)</blockquote>

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