Re: Balancing encounters?

On Sat, 29 Nov 2003 17:59:32 -0600, Bill Seurer
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>JefWilson wrote:
>> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Kataphractoi"
>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> 
>> 
>>>The biggest things that prevent me from converting completely over to GURPS
>>>are: my perception that the game requires a great deal of calculation and my
>>>perception that balancing an encounter seems to be tough.
>>>
>>>I'm not going to talk about the calculation right now, but my biggest
>>>attraction to xD&D is the fact that the classes and levels makes it rather
>>>easy (more or less :) to balance an encounter.  But in GURPS, how do you
>>>tell--prior to a TPK--when an encounter will be too tough for the players?
>> 
>> 
>> ROTFLMAO!  You've GOT to be kidding!  I ran D&D3 for a short while and was
>> _never_ able to predict whether an encounter was going to be close or a
>> walkover.  D&D3 also had the problem that by the time a group realized they
>> were in over their heads they couldn't get away.  The specialized nature of the
>> characters meant that the weaknesses of a single character became party
>> weaknesses.
>
>That's a HUGE problem with D&D3e.  You tend to either do OK or have a 
>TPK (total party kill) because once things start going bad you can't get 
>away.
>
got to wonder what kind of drugs the game designers were using when
they assigned the challenge ratings for some of the monsters?  dragons
especially are well below the proper challenge ratings imho.  the
charming idea that all people move at exactly the same speed makes
disengaging pretty tough given many monsters are "faster" than the
players.