Nice episode, and I have no issue with less episodes per week, the content is more important.
Regarding some of your analysis, whilst there seems to be an opinion that earlier versions of D&D were deadly because you often had random encounters you could not win, I can point to a lot of evidence in all editions to state to the contrary; al…
Nice episode, and I have no issue with less episodes per week, the content is more important.
Regarding some of your analysis, whilst there seems to be an opinion that earlier versions of D&D were deadly because you often had random encounters you could not win, I can point to a lot of evidence in all editions to state to the contrary; all encourage the DM to balance encounters with party strength.
Certainly deadly encounters can be decided upon by player agency, like venturing into a lower dungeon level, or going to a known region where deadly monsters exist, or ignoring the "a lich lives here" sign.
But a completely random encounter - I don't think so?
Even with a balanced encounter, players would still have the need to avoid them, they may not want to waste resources on their way to a tougher encounter, or they may be low on health and resources from previous encounters, at least that's player agency at work.
The final question is "why"? As a player, if I spent a session just running away from "run or die" encounters for no possible xp or reward, what would be the point, hardly an exciting session?!
Great thoughts here.. but the point of that was your game may not always have level appropriate monsters in it. Various modules even threw in these weird combinations of monsters (granted small chance). You do get the same XP for avoiding monsters in a clever way in my games.
Nice episode, and I have no issue with less episodes per week, the content is more important.
Regarding some of your analysis, whilst there seems to be an opinion that earlier versions of D&D were deadly because you often had random encounters you could not win, I can point to a lot of evidence in all editions to state to the contrary; all encourage the DM to balance encounters with party strength.
Certainly deadly encounters can be decided upon by player agency, like venturing into a lower dungeon level, or going to a known region where deadly monsters exist, or ignoring the "a lich lives here" sign.
But a completely random encounter - I don't think so?
Even with a balanced encounter, players would still have the need to avoid them, they may not want to waste resources on their way to a tougher encounter, or they may be low on health and resources from previous encounters, at least that's player agency at work.
The final question is "why"? As a player, if I spent a session just running away from "run or die" encounters for no possible xp or reward, what would be the point, hardly an exciting session?!
Great thoughts here.. but the point of that was your game may not always have level appropriate monsters in it. Various modules even threw in these weird combinations of monsters (granted small chance). You do get the same XP for avoiding monsters in a clever way in my games.