Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5576095" data-attributes="member: 82106">I think the fundamental issue is just that when you go FAR outside the encounter design guidelines that XP starts to get to be a poor indicator of difficulty. This is most easily seen at low levels. I mean you can make an almost invincible 1st level encounter with a level+0 (100XP/character). Just take all minions and make them all ranged. Likewise 20 minions at-level at low paragon will probably be trivial, even if they are all ranged.Fundamentally though I'm not sure I really understand what is happening here. It is a sandbox, so if the PCs are in an area that was designed around a 5th level difficulty and they are 8th level then of course it will be easy. The XP they get is the same either way, but presumably they will hit some harder and some easier regions over time depending on the order they visit things and what they skip. I think if they are going to slum it ALL the time in easier areas though and that's causing an issue then simply salt your sandbox with some plot. Enemies start to work against the PCs, areas that were easy last year are not anymore. It doesn't all have to scale, but an evolving sandbox works fine, or just push the players out of the easier areas by making their long-term goals achievable only by going to the harder areas. "The King, having noted how you cleared all the undead from the old graveyard appoints you to defeat the ogre menace, he doesn't ASK." (yes, that could be a bit railroady, but the players will always be able to find another choice if they really don't want to go along, it will just lead to a similar result).In short I would say this isn't a system fault, nor a deficiency in 4e's ability to handle a sandbox type game, but more of an issue of 4e favoring some level of momentum in story arc development.</blockquote>

Verification