Quote from: Sacrosanct;579576No.  No one says you had to kill the monsters. In fact, it was better if you found a way not to.  

That's true of every edition of D&D, right?

Quote from: Sacrosanct;579576That way you didn't have to put your character at risk for beating something not worth very many XP (the monster) when the treasure was the real goal.

So, basing PC advancement on treasure (includng having treasure based on adversaries) rather than overcoming adversity trains a GM to provide a specfic playstyle experience?

Quote from: Skywalker;579578So, basing PC advancement on treasure (includng having treasure based on adversaries) rather than experiencing dangerous, dramatic or exciting situations trains a GM to provide a specfic playstyle experience?

I don't think I'm following.  Tricking/avoiding the monster to get to its treasure is typically a dangerous, dramatic, or exciting situation.  They aren't exclusive.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;579579I don't think I'm following.  Tricking/avoiding the monster to get to its treasure is typically a dangerous, dramatic, or exciting situation.  They aren't exclusive.

I agree. In fact, I see gaining treasure as a subset of the overcoming adversity (which is IMO a better overall measure for PC advancement).

The line you have jumped in on follows CRKrueger's comment that having encounter per level somehow trains a GM to provide a specfic playstyle experience. I am not sure how basing PC advancement on treasure gained is any real difference, given that treasure is attached to mosnters in a very definite way in AD&D.

I actually think Benoist's comment is a sidetrack in that the heart of CRKrueger's point is that by using the encounter measure you are suggesting a band of difficulty appropriate to PC power/level and this creates an artificiality in the design of the adventure.

FWIW I have some sympathy with that comment, but again it raises the question brought up by jibbajabba above as to who actually runs their D&D games with no reference to PC power/level.

Quote from: Benoist;5795713.5 DMG for sure.

What page?

Quote from: Skywalker;579580I agree. In fact, I see gaining treasure as a subset of the overcoming adversity (which is IMO a better overall measure for PC advancement).

The line you have jumped in on follows CRKrueger's comment that having encounter per level somehow trains a GM to provide a specfic playstyle experience. I am not sure how basing PC advancement on treasure gained is any real difference, given that treasure is attached to mosnters in a very definite way in AD&D.

I actually think Benoist's comment is a sidetrack in that the heart of CRKrueger's point is that by using the encounter measure you are suggesting a band of difficulty appropriate to PC power/level and this creates an artificiality in the design of the adventure.

FWIW I have some sympathy with that comment, but again it raises the question brought up by jibbajabba above as to who actually runs their D&D games with no reference to PC power/level.

I'm willing to bet that people would rather have PCs advance based on accomplishments not necessarily wealth gained. If you base advancement on how much wealth you can garner that makes gaining wealth disproportionately more important to players. If you give rewards based on the PCs getting to some benchmark or achieving some greaet feat that will make doing great things more important to PCs. I'd think that kind of influence is what people want in the end because it doesn't matter what that great thing the PCs do is or how they accomplish it. They don't have to horde or be milked into doing something purely for how much wealth it brings them but the challenge/glory of doing it and that sounds pretty damn heroic. Plus it tends to work out when I run so there's that to.

Quote from: jeff37923;579581What page?

The idea of having Encounters per Day in 3.5e gives me hives. You could almost manage it in 4e as the resource management system is relatively transparent (not sating that 4e does contain the concept) but in 3.5e the system variables are obscured so much that "Encounters per Day" would be very dangerous.

Quote from: jeff37923;579581What page?

I don't have my DMG next to me and would have to unearth it, but it's either where ELs are first introduced along with the table showing CR X + CR Y = EL N, or the part where you have the table showing XP earnings per EL (not the same chapters). It is expressed as an amount of resources expected to be spent per EL plus minus or equal to APL, and the mention somewhere that the system was designed to handle on average 4 encounters of CR = APL per day.

I do recall a reference in 3e about an equivalent level encounter normally using up about 25% of the resources of a 5 person party. I don't recall it going so far as suggesting 4 Encounter per Day though. Admittedly, that would be a logical conclusion for a DM to make based on that benchmark.

Quote from: RPGPundit;579563A recent post where someone mentioned the idea of "x encounters per day" (balanced to CR, no doubt) being an important part of (I think) 4e rules, and they seemed to be taking it seriously.

RPGPundit

And then they wonder why 4E gets compared to MMOs...

I build a world, you explore it. If you do it carefully and with planning, with luck you will survive and get rich. Blunder about and charge in without thinking and you will probably die.

Quote from: Lilaxe;579593And then they wonder why 4E gets compared to MMOs...

I build a world, you explore it. If you do it carefully and with planning, with luck you will survive and get rich. Blunder about and charge in without thinking and you will probably die.

The same thing is in 3rd edition but, outside of RPGA I've never met someone who tried to stick to the idea. Encounters per day goes on my no no list because it simply cannot account for the way each individual table will run a given game and it serves no real purpose. It is good enough to attempt making a decent CR system so you can at least gauge what is close to a level appropriate encounter/enemy and let the chips fall where they may after that.

Quote from: MGuy;579594The same thing is in 3rd edition but, outside of RPGA I've never met someone who tried to stick to the idea. Encounters per day goes on my no no list because it simply cannot account for the way each individual table will run a given game and it serves no real purpose. It is good enough to attempt making a decent CR system so you can at least gauge what is close to a level appropriate encounter/enemy and let the chips fall where they may after that.

Codifying a "strength" or CR of monsters is not new. They were trying it in 1978 as well. Check out the Monstermark System in the early issues of White Dwarf. I think issues 2 - 5? Don Turnbull came up with it, he later went on to run TSR, UK.

Quote from: Lilaxe;579593And then they wonder why 4E gets compared to MMOs...

Last I checked MMOs didn't have a set number of encounters per day.

Also, last I checked they also don't predate the idea of balance for the sake of the game over the imagined world.  And those debates have been around since TSR-era D&D.  Unless people have forgotten the RuneQuest grognards and the "Why the fuck can't my rogue use a longsword?" type discussions.  You can still find RuneQuest dudes on Youtube bitching about it.

Quote from: jhkim;579485As I see it, if every danger in the world has appropriate warning signs - that is just as unrealistic as there being only level-appropriate opponents to fight.  Both of these come from the same principle - that if the players die, they should have had a fair chance.  The difference is adding in threat-assessment challenges.  

In my experience, though, threat assessment in D&D is based mostly on reading GM cues rather than any realistic in-game-world logic - because the whole setup of monsters isn't really logical.  The vast majority of D&D adventures that I've seen - published or not - are based more around making challenges appropriate to the PCs, not around "what would an underground dungeon really look like".

Realistically, dungeons as they exist in D&D should not exist. Excavating as many tunnels as even a relatively small one would be a colossal undertaking, and would also produce extreme quantities of rock that would need to be placed somewhere. And that doesn't even address food chains, ventilation, territorial predators, socio-cultural impossibilities or any of those other things. We can reduce any D&Desque setting to its internal contradictions, but that's - no offence - missing the point or trolling.

There is a whole range of possibilities between an ecology experiment (pure setting logic) and a game which doesn't even pay lip service to internal consistency (pure game logic). A game which employs GM cues, for instance, is an excellent middle ground.

• Part of that is to create chains of cause-and-effect, which I believe are rather central to the enjoyment of roleplaying games.
  
• Part of that is because player characters have a "limited field of view" - since their connection to the game world is through the GM's spoken word, they do not have the range of faculties a human does, and they need some sort of information to make meaningful decisions.
  
• And part of it is to make the setting seem richer, more lived in.

Do the players always need warning? Not necessarily an immediate one. There are multiple possible levels, such as:

• they find information about Dragon Swamp, stating that there be bad things;
• they Travel to Dragon Swamp and find clues pointing to the dragons' presence;
• they light their lanterns and enter a cave whose entrance is littered with human bones and ashes;
• they investigate a side room and get jumped by a giant spider without warning;
• after defeating the spider, they start a loud argument about how they should be more careful. By the time they hear the approaching footsteps, they are trapped and get a full blast of dragon fire in the face. They die.

Here, we had GM cues which told the players they would be facing significant danger in the swamps. We had cues pointing at the cave as the main source of danger. There was a possibility of finding even more with a little bit of caution - but the group's carelessness negated them. So it goes.

I tend to give my players a good amount of environmental feedback (a lot of which I learned from Thief, the excellent first person sneaking game). Guards mutter and grumble. Floorboards creak. The wind wails through the towers and footsteps clatter. There are threats which are silent, or invisible, or come by surprise, but they are fairly rare. And the really bad stuff - yeah, it tends to have flashing lights and loud alarm sounds for the people willing to listen. And, unlike the "spherical cow on an infinite flat plain" arguments that characterise online discussion, there is always a logical explanation. Actually, hiding a dragon so well that the players get no cue of its approach would break my suspension of disbelief - and it does not even break too easily.

Quote from: RPGPundit;579367Seriously, does someone want to try to defend this notion?  In what way can this make sense in roleplaying?

The potential number of encounters you might have should depend on SETTING considerations, not fucking "balance" considerations! If you are traveling through "Dragon Swamp" with your level 2 party you shouldn't expect only level-2 encounters; and it should not happen that the "caves of peril" should have only 1st-level perils for a 1st level party but the moment a 10th level party steps inside suddenly 10th level perils are spawned!
Likewise, the idea that in the course of the day there must be "x" encounters, not more nor less, or something of the sort is absurd.

There should be as many encounters as makes sense in the place the PCs actually ARE, in the fucking SETTING.

RPGPundit

Depends.  What monster level are Rodents of Unusual Size?

JG

Quote from: MGuy;579583I'm willing to bet that people would rather have PCs advance based on accomplishments not necessarily wealth gained. If you base advancement on how much wealth you can garner that makes gaining wealth disproportionately more important to players. If you give rewards based on the PCs getting to some benchmark or achieving some greaet feat that will make doing great things more important to PCs. I'd think that kind of influence is what people want in the end because it doesn't matter what that great thing the PCs do is or how they accomplish it. They don't have to horde or be milked into doing something purely for how much wealth it brings them but the challenge/glory of doing it and that sounds pretty damn heroic. Plus it tends to work out when I run so there's that to.

It could actualy be worse than that.
You can imagine a Paladin or Ranger PC who is there to destroy the big Evil and clear the land of the monsters never taking treasure at all because they have no need for it. Thus reducing their XP gained by 70 or 80%.

And as a connection to Ben's post on greed its an interesting dilema (yes the paladin could take all the gold back to the village and distribute it as alms but surely they should be off slaying the next big bad even more true of rangers).