Re: The 4e rules as a wargame

Allen Wessels <awessels@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Bradd W. Szonye" <bradd+news@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Yes, which suggests that you should vary the road dropoff by a few
10s of feet.

How do you draw that conclusion from this text? "Monsters that are
more than eight levels higher than the characters can pretty easily
kill a character, and in a group they have a chance of taking out the
whole party. Use such overpowering encounters with great care" (DMG
p.104).

Perhaps I should have said vary "at most".

That is already how I read what you wrote.

Which suggests that road dropoffs should be tailored to the level
people crossing them.

Again, how do you draw that conclusion? The guideline above says that
there is NOT an upper bound to the level of monsters appropriate to an
encounter, but merely that you must exercise great care when using very
high-level foes. Since hazards are equivalent to monsters for encounter
design, the same thing goes for cliffs.

Now, that goes mainly for cliffs that are part of ENCOUNTERS. If you're
just traveling uneventfully, it doesn't matter how you describe the
scenery. There's no encounter, no challenge, no difficulty, no
experience, etc. But if you're setting up an encounter, you should pay
attention to everything that goes into it, whether it's a monster or an
inanimate hazard.

2. Many of your criticisms apply equally to D&D3. For example, the
D&D4 advice for combining tailored encounters with "status quo"
encounters is substantially similar to the D&D3 guidelines for
enconter- building. I do not understand why you criticize one system
and defend the other.

I don't see anything in the 3.5 DMG that addresses terrain in this
fashion. Both the section discussing Location (page 50) under
Encouters, and the section covering Mountain Terrain (page 89) simply
describe the conditions and don't talk about tailoring the conditions
encoutered to the PCs.

Why are you only looking in the rules for terrain, and not the rules for
encounter level, when we're specifically talking about encounter level?

And just as an example, a 60' (6d6) pit trap is a CR3 enounter that
would almost certainly kill a wizard of the appropriate level.

And here we see that D&D3 does handle dropoffs in the same general way;
only the specifics differ. The fall has a level, the encounter has a
level, and you compare them to the characters' level to judge whether
it's appropriate.

As for the specifics: It appears that you are defending the system where
a CR3 hazard can easily kill a 3rd-level character. Is that really what
you intend?

And back to the main topic: You appear to defend an approach where the
characters may frequently and arbitrarily be put in precarious
situations that can kill them. Is that really what you intend?
--
Bradd W. Szonye
http://www.szonye.com/bradd
.

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