The real idea behind the DMG is that, if you build that adventuring day, the average GM and the average group of players will, most of the time, experience just enough of a sense of danger and use up just enough resources to have a satisfying play experience. It’s actually a book of poorly explained ideas. And the reason it seems like that is because the DMG is a book of lies. The DMG basically swears if you build an adventure that includes precisely six 1st-level encounters, one of which is easy, one of which is hard, and the rest of which are moderate, the party will survive all six in one day and gain enough XP to attain second level. It’s about minimizing the impact of chance and skill to make the outcome as much a foregone conclusion as possible. Game balance, though, is about precisely the opposite. We want the skill and chance elements to have a say in the outcome. Likewise, winning because you came up with just right the plan or high fiving your teammate because the two of you executed a perfect combination of spells and special abilities is also fun. We could take the dice out of the game and come up with systems of numerical comparisons based solely on the choices the players and the GM make to determine precise mathematical outcomes for every outcome. Random chance is fun precisely because it’s unpredictable. Skill and chance together f$&% up that perfect balance. GMs who are tactically weak will present less of a challenge to their players than those who are really effective. Players who build very effective characters and put together combinations of races and classes that work well together and perfect their teamwork will spend far fewer resources than players who are less effective or tactically inclined or just not making the effort.
On top of that, there’s a great deal of player and GM skill involved.
#Warcraft 3 world editor experience gain series#
A series of great rolls can turn combats into a cakewalk. A series of crappy rolls, especially at the lower levels of the game, can cost the party dearly.
The game relies on random elements, AKA, dice, that can really f$&% up the balance system. And, if you read the first part of this series, you’d be forgiven for thinking that I’m going to make that same promise.īut, look, perfect balance is bulls$&%. And that’s the promise that the D&D encounter balancing system TRIES to make. The players always experience just the right amount of challenge and spend just the right amount of resources to earn just the right amount of rewards. Right? The idea behind game balance is to provide a nice, level play experience. Let’s talk about this whole game balance deal. I need to because of some of the feedback I’ve gotten. So, if we’ve got random encounters running around, that’s going to f$&% up our careful balance, right? Okay, hold on.
#Warcraft 3 world editor experience gain driver#
But, the primary driver of XP in D&D is monster encounters. We sat down and examined the XP system very carefully to map out how many encounters and days of adventure we want the dungeon to have. That’s all really cool, that also brought up a tricky problem. And we can reward the party with shortcuts through the dungeon that allow them to bypass restocked areas. We can have alarm traps or alarm monsters that bring random encounters down. Moreover, we can also have traps and other dungeon elements that interact with the random monster system. Moreover, the nuisance monsters can change as the party takes actions in the dungeon.
As the PCs clear areas, vermin and nuisance monsters wander around. Moreover, we can make our dungeon seem more dynamic and alive. Those things will keep the party focussed on not sitting still for too long in the dungeon and not spending too much time outside of the dungeon resting. Ultimately, we decided that A) we’re going to need to have random encounters and B) we’re going to have to have a way to restock the dungeon between forays. Last week, we did a lot of high concept dicking around, talking about the structure of the adventuring day.