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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pedantic" data-source="post: 8945209" data-attributes="member: 6690965">So it seems like we're having three different conversations simultaneously here and randomly mixing terms/arguments across all three of them. I feel like we're all kind of pushing more toward the extreme ends of each sliding scale than anyone probably actually wants to go as a result.PCs should generally defeat most encounters without much struggle vs. PCs should generally struggle to defeat encountersThis axis appears to be invoked mostly by the emotional response a given person has to the term "balanced encounter." The term doesn't really mean anything in relationship to this scale, it's a design question what the preferred norm is here. 5e, for example, generally has fairly easy encounters when you use a CR that precisely matches the player levels but can be unexpected more difficult, or you could always opt to use a higher difficulty CR. How one handles this question is unrelated to having an effective CR system though, that just defines the parameters a GM is making encounter building decisions in.Encounter difficulty should be clear to the DM upfront vs. Encounter difficulty should be opaque to both the DM/playersShould the DM know the expected outcome (and chance of survival/victory) when planning to put a given monster (say a red dragon) in a given place? I don't think anyone actually holds the second perspective outright and I'm not particularly sympathetic to anyone who claims to. Even without a system in place, it's not hard to see the difference between a dire rat and a dragon, and insisting one shouldn't is ridiculous. I think largely that this position is getting conflated with the next axis. Encounters should be planned by the DM with regard to difficulty vs. Encounters should be planned by the DM without regard to difficulty.This is the naturalistic vs. planned scenario/adventure design question. Should the DM consider the expected outcome (and chance of survival/victory) when planning to put a given monster (say a red dragon) in a given place? This is a more complicated and more interesting question than whether a system to evaluate encounter difficulty should exist at all. I generally think players should have access to level appropriate problems they could solve, and ideally the world will have plenty of problems outside of their capability running around them at the same time. This is the axis that the initial article actually seemed to be talking about, though it also seemed to conflate including non-combat encounters inside combat scenarios as part of this, which is also an orthogonal issue (though often good encounter design).The only place I think these three axes really overlap, is in questions of tone. Does the presence of a CR system somehow act on player expectations about encounter difficulty and/or encounter design? Generally, I don't think so, and even if it does, that's a discussion that should be explicit at any given table.</blockquote>

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