David J Prokopetz
Social Justice Henchman
Validated User
- Sep 30, 2014 Using encounter building guidelines in the dmg do really help a lot. Record the party's easy, medium and hard encounter thresholds in terms of xp value. Then try to build medium encounters. Note the party performance. If it is mediocre challenge, then your encounter worked as intended. If it was hard, tune down the next one, or just opposite if.
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https://healthnew821.weebly.com/blog/diablo-3-dmg-calculator. If an encounter is like skiing off a cliff (see the previous article), then building an encounter is like planting a tree on the slope. Rats dps area dmg. Partly because when the PCs come skiing by, you might be able to break their legs, but mostly because you start by planting a seed.
The 2e DMG was written during the transitional phase between these two broad types of playstyles. The actual 2e system still held the 1e DNA, and so, the system itself did not even really contemplate this newly forming playstyle. And while the playstyle reached maturity under 2e, the system cannot handle formulaic encounter building. Thusly, it was not until 3e that we ever actually got formulaic encounter building rules/guidelines.
Not actually true. The notion of building balanced encounters shows up as early as the Rules Cyclopedia