Do you balance encounters in your campaign?

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Do you balance encounters in your Campaign and, if so, why do you do it? Back in the beginning pre-OD&D and in OD&D there was no requirement or suggestion that encounters be balanced. It was expected that players would learn when to fight or negotiate, stall, walk away, runaway or hide or whatever fit the circumstances. I know the concept is part of the rules in BECMI and I don't recall if it was mentioned sooner than that or not. But balance was not part of the original game so if you balance encounters why do you do it and what do you think the pros of doing it are?


I don't ever make any attempt to balance encounters, but I am interested in hearing from those of you that do.


Note: some of these notes are being posted from other places, so ignore the time frame in the post, some of this stuff is not from the current time frame.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

I did not discover AD&D or BECMI until long after they were published, I only had access and knowledge of OD&D for about 20 years before I went searching for more info and discovered all of the things that had been published in that 20 year period, so it is sometimes hard for me to remember that Holmes to the RC do not all predate AD&D.  Yeah, I really do think of them all predating AD&D, because I experienced them that way, when I discovered them.

Yes, dungeon levels and so forth were present and the premise that deeper levels were tougher, but since there was no explicit direction, it was not uncommon back in the 1970's for our games to include high level monsters against low level parties. I remember parties of 15 players ranging from 3rd to 5th fighting to the death against balrogs and such. The other thing for us was the guy (he bought the game in April of 74 and played in high school and then brought us the game in college in September of 75) that taught us the game never ran dungeons since none of us had any connection to the founders so it was all wilderness, then a couple of months in he let me read the rule books (the only one in the whole group besides him that ever had or read them) and after I reffed for a couple of months I created my first dungeon with nothing but the rules to go by with no other exposure to the concept. They were very deadly dungeons the same as our wilderness adventures. TPKs happened and lots of characters died, until we started to get a few people to 6th level and then the death rate went down some. Of course we had 12 players minimum and often 20 players in each game session plus henchmen so as we started to gain some traction on higher level we became formidable. I said all that to say my group in college never gave a thought to balance. A few of us fighters would go toe to toe with a foe that was 2-6 levels higher than we were and sometimes we would win or at least get help before we died. I had a player several years ago fight one on one with 35 HPs against an 80 HP monster and roll well enough to win the fight. He had one HP at the end of he fight but he was still standing. That is a great feeling!

[The Perilous Dreamer]

I can't speak for anyone else. but we don't play to levels 12 or 15. In fact last time around when the first one hit 8th level we rebooted and tried something completely different. We did that for a while and then I had to have surgery, so my friend Michael is reffing now for he next several months and then another friend Tom is going to ref for a while. So when it finally comes back to me I will be refreshed and ready to go. I would like to play to at least level 12, but with only having enough time to game once a month in the home campaign and once a month in something else, tha tis not likely to happen. But to get back to your point, when the players are higher level they have usually already cleared out the first few levels of the dungeon and are aggressively going after the deeper tougher levels. When my players run into something they aren't ready for they will run away regroup and either comeback with a solid plan or get stronger and then come back and it may or may not be there later, since things are not static. My players are always on their guard because they know that death lurks around every corner. It is not a black box, but if I roll something really tough I don't water it down for them. For example, one thing about my campaign is that trolls are immortal unless killed and I have many different types. A really old troll could be very powerful and very large, you better have some serious fire power if you want to bring him down or you might try to slip into his lair while he is out foraging far and wide for food. There is a reason that you have not seen or heard any animals for quite a while and why you have seen these really large footprints. Of course the older a troll gets the craftier he gets.

[mao]

Interesting.....

[Death Even XIII]

I do not balance things, in my first level dungeon you can find monsters up to 4 HD, second level dungeon up to 5 HD and so on.

[youngbuck]

I think trying to balance things is not beneficial. In all of the 5E I have played it is almost impossible to die or even lose a fight and have to run. Everything is just handed to you without a lot of effort, I don't enjoy that which is why I started looking into the origins of D&D. I decided it could not have started this way or it would not have lasted this long.

[ripx187]

I do try to balance combat encounters, at the end of the day this is a game and I want it to be fun and feel like one. My players prefer social interactions and puzzles, I want stuff for them to explore, and interact with. Combat is supposed to be fun so I try to design a couple of medium encounters and one difficult combat. Random encounters are typically easy affairs that help sell the world, but I stack those so that the rarer results are more difficult than the common numbers with the result of 20 being a deadly creature which they probably don't have to fight unless I roll it to often. 

Dungeons can be messy, my goal is to keep combat limited to a round or two. Going into a monster infested hole isn't something that we can really balance, if you run in expecting to kill everything in there you're probably going to have to roll up a new character.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Mar 23, 2021 12:12:34 GMT -5 ripx187 said:

I do try to balance combat encounters, at the end of the day this is a game and I want it to be fun and feel like one. My players prefer social interactions and puzzles, I want stuff for them to explore, and interact with. Combat is supposed to be fun so I try to design a couple of medium encounters and one difficult combat. Random encounters are typically easy affairs that help sell the world, but I stack those so that the rarer results are more difficult than the common numbers with the result of 20 being a deadly creature which they probably don't have to fight unless I roll it to often.

I never make any attempt to balance encounters and (at least IMC) that drives options that do not include combat and creates places for social interactions and such to happen. My whole thing is stuff to explore and interact with, that is IMO the heart of the fun.

Mar 23, 2021 12:12:34 GMT -5 ripx187 said:

Dungeons can be messy, my goal is to keep combat limited to a round or two.

My combat is rarely as short as a round or three. IMO 6-8 rounds is the sweet spot.

Mar 23, 2021 12:12:34 GMT -5 ripx187 said:

Going into a monster infested hole isn't something that we can really balance, if you run in expecting to kill everything in there you're probably going to have to roll up a new character.

This! Trying to kill everything in a dungeon is a fools errand.

[hengest]

These are great posts based on real experience.

It does make me hunger to see a campaign that goes far enough to bleed into domain play, which I have never seen so I wouldn't even really know what to imagine. I can imagine though that a domain-level player who no longer had time for the regular sessions could keep up with the ref and do domaining by phone or email (or hey, even post) which would affect the campaign world. Now that would be pretty cool. I think I posted about this somewhere.

But this all goes to say that if you don't play to level 30 there is a lot more value in the first 8 levels, as demonstrated on this thread.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Mar 28, 2021 8:28:26 GMT -5 hengest said:

These are great posts based on real experience.

It does make me hunger to see a campaign that goes far enough to bleed into domain play, which I have never seen so I wouldn't even really know what to imagine. I can imagine though that a domain-level player who no longer had time for the regular sessions could keep up with the ref and do domaining by phone or email (or hey, even post) which would affect the campaign world. Now that would be pretty cool. I think I posted about this somewhere.

But this all goes to say that if you don't play to level 30 there is a lot more value in the first 8 levels, as demonstrated on this thread.

I think I would probably cap my game at a max of 15th or 16th as the max level for the game. I really cannot see going higher than that or character even living long enough to go higher than that.

[Morton]

Feb 10, 2021 0:56:42 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

Do you balance encounters in your Campaign and, if so, why do you do it? Back in the beginning pre-OD&D and in OD&D there was no requirement or suggestion that encounters be balanced. It was expected that players would learn when to fight or negotiate, stall, walk away, runaway or hide or whatever fit the circumstances. 

The only balancing of encounters that I do is make all opponents appear in odd numbers, never even numbers. The bad guys should always be odd in every way.