Maybe your campaign will feature a brain-addled barbarian that just happens to have the world smallest giant space rabbit?
In RPGs I dislike scaling enemies because they signal changes in the world's power level which are entirely dependent on my character(s) instead of relating to wider world. It sends the message that there in fact isn't a world of which my character(s) are part. Hence it emphasizes gameplay (action, combat, difficulty) over roleplay.
Of course I can see the case for making enemies scale, but I'd recommend doing it in moderation. We don't want to see level 20 rabbits and wolves, or level 20 bandits fighting level 20 guards just because the player leveled up a lot. For some opponents a higher level makes sense though, and scaling does too. Because if player characters can gain experience, why shouldn't other villains, adventurers and heroes be able to do so too? But this is taken too far when entire organizations, communities, and nations are included in the scaling process.
I love to see such things explained as part of the setting. Which goes two ways. First you can explain or depict why certain opponents grow in power, and secondly you can give hints and information about certain powerful opponents. For example that werewolves require silver weapons to damage / kill. And that vampires require stakes and silver weapons. That sort of thing. So long as the players aren't overwhelmed when combat begins they can usually mange a tactical retreat.. assuming the story allows that. Which is something to keep in mind.
Dragon Age Inquisition does some of these things fairly well. It limits the scaling to a small amount (roughly 5 levels) per zone but no explanation is offered for why your enemies keep growing stronger. Near the end you face foot soldiers which are roughly 15 levels higher than their initial versions when the game began. Why? No answer is offered. Just for the sake of gameplay. Even your own troops appear to scale at that rate. So the game could have explained that better (soldiers becoming vetrans perhaps). Like most games Dragon Age Inquisition emphasizes action gameplay over the roleplaying aspect.
One way to avoid that is to spice up the encounters by giving the opponents tactical benefits. For example by way of ambushes and smart tactical setups. Such as by combining 'tanks' (warriors meant to take a beating) with traps and archers. That would properly signal that a lower quality force can still try to adapt and deal with more powerful player characters (consider giving the option to sneak up on them, so there are no traps laid yet). Perhaps while waiting for a boss or reinforcements. The more in depth you get, the more difficult and time consuming creating such encounters becomes though. But I think that with a bit of thought for the wider (organisational) context you can come a long way and really draw the player into your narrative. The KOTOR games come to mind as examples for tactical encounters, opening vents to gass enemies etc.. , although they too use the scaling system.
It would be really cool if we could develop a system that could recognize player tactics and adjust AI encounters to show a plausible response. Including the ability of player characters to wipe out the entire force, so that the enemy can't adapt, because no one escaped to tell about it. Unless the enemy somehow observed it, or examined the battlefield afterwards. Which could be tied into the roleplay narrative too. Laying an ambush for scouts who arrive to find out what happened, and so on. Way too much work for average gaming company though.
Hope it helps 
Guest_Iveforgotmypassword_*
Personally I don't think levels have anything to do with much, sure your wizard will have learnt more spells and your fighter is better at killing tings but why wouldn't a peasant with a pitchfork still be able to kill him/her. Why would somebody that's been on a few dungeon crawls become untouchable by guards or goblins have they become a god ? No they haven't, so I look at levels as just a means of earning feats and skills and not a way of making the player super strong. So if you've got 200 hp that means nothing other than that you are experienced enough to avoid blows that will kill or incapacitate you, you'll still take damage but that's nothing and the more you take the sooner the mortal blow will hit you be it from a kobold or a dragon whatever level you are.
There's not much point in playing a game where you just march in to town declare yourself the great hero because you're some imaginary level and then massacre all the guards, destroy all the bandits and take down an entire orc tribe without so much as a scratch. Things have to be scaled or there's no point in playing and to me gameplay rules over fictional levels and statistics that say you're superman. In fact it would be far better if you didn't gain hit points like in a lot of games, that way there'd be no need to scale anything you could just increase attack bonuses or armour on enemies and similarly be better at protecting yourself or killing things.
I never scale enemies, because I think it's important to give the player a sense of mastery as their character gains levels. If the enemies are always equally challenging, then the player feels as if they're just running in place, and gaining levels becomes meaningless (even risky, because a bad choice at level up could leave them relatively disadvantaged). I'm proud of how this plays out in LotD, with the PC struggling to even run away from a few goblins at the beginning, to fighting goblins on even terms in the middle, to cutting a bloody swath thought a whole goblin army at the end. The transition from struggle to easy victory has a certain thrill to it.
It's a bit of a ratcheting effect, first you present the player with a challenging, then they meet the challenge, gain XP, level up, and use the new levels to master the challenge. The player enjoys a bit of easy going, and then a new challenge arises.
Guest_Iveforgotmypassword_*
So what happens with things like city guards and bandits, are they all retired adventurers that can handle a level 15 barbarian ? And how do you explain the ability of somebody to withstand being stabbed fifty times after a couple of months on the road ? The whole level system with people becoming invincible to certain creatures is a bit daft isn't it. Nobody is invulnerable to a stab in the neck no matter who they are.
ps. I have ran away from those goblins !
In my view hit points are not purely a measure of physical prowess for the adventurer. Both the low level adventurer and the high level adventurer only have maybe 10 physical hit points. The adventurer with a lot of hit points is adept at blocking/dodging/getting lucky etc against attacks that would physically hit a less experienced combatant (low hit points). Those events aren't misses even though the attack didn't result in a sword going into flesh, they're hits and the punishment adds up. Ultimately the high level adventurer is unable to block/dodge/luck runs out and takes a physical hit point blow, no adventurer is getting stabbed fifty times.
For monsters, the physical/non physical punishment division of hit points can vary. A gelatinous cube isn't dodging or blocking anything, it's hit points are almost purely physical. At the same time a drow might be like an adventurer with 10 physical hit points and the rest being non-physical.
If you think about it from a movie fight scene perspective, it's only the last blow or two that does physical damage to the hero/bad guy. The first five minutes of the fight, with their last second dodges/blocks etc, those represent the wearing down of the non-physical hit points.
It is a "movie" mechanic - where the hero faces great danger and either survives despite all odds or dies gloriously. If things played out realistically, King Richard the Lionheart would die from an arrow to the eye in a minor tussle over back taxes, and Alexander the Great would succumb to a really bad hangover. The unrealistic leveling is necessary to make heroic feats not only possible, but likely.
As for the town guards, I think it's important for the builder to make sure that relatively low-level guards can actually take out a higher-level PC, provided the PC makes a few dumb moves and has a few bad rolls. Once the levels get too high, though, nothing makes any sense. I struggled with building for a level 15+ character, just because I couldn't find a logical in-game rationale for level 15+ adversaries.
Guest_Iveforgotmypassword_*
Personally I don't think levels have anything to do with much, sure your wizard will have learnt more spells and your fighter is better at killing tings but why wouldn't a peasant with a pitchfork still be able to kill him/her?
That's how The Witcher died, before being resurrected for the first computer game. Some guy called Rob stabbed him in the chest with a pitchfork. Even the mightiest warrior can't spend all day every day wearing heavy armour, or anticipating an attack at any moment.
I like to scale encounters within realistic limits (no epic-level rats, for instance). I like to give players an added bit of challenge by introducing higher-level variants, so that encounters don't become boring too quickly. Eventually players will out-grow each encounter type, but I like to stretch them out a bit.
In the module I'm currently working on, gnoll encounters vary from ordinary gnoll fighters/archers with a few hyenas, through to gnoll shamans with a ghoul or ghast, to fiendish clerics of Yeenoghu and Yeenoghu-blooded fighters, up to a shoosuva. Due to the vagarities of encounter spawning, sometimes a lower-level party might encounter a shoosuva. In that case, they'd better run!
Xvart encounters on the other hand are very quickly out-classed. Apart from normal xvart warriors, you might occasionally get a single shaman with them. They're a handy source of ammo (darts and sling bullets), but never much of a challenge. Although if the shaman's summoned wolf knocks you down, you can take quite an embarrassing beating before the rest of your party members mop the floor with them.
Nothing with less than one hd should scale. They suck too much in general. I'd extend that to two hd or less creatures, really.
Indeed - although you can always spawn more of them.
I was disappointed at how crappy gibberlings were for a level six party, not matter how many of them surrounded you. So I gave them the Expert Tactician feat and added a low-DC disease to their rusty shortswords. If one of them gets in an attack of opportunity, the rest of them get a +2 attack and damage bonus for that round. Individually they still suck, but in groups they become slightly more challenging.
Getting completely surrounded by them is a bad idea, since even the crappiest fighter will land a blow a least 1 out of every 20 attempts (rolling a natural 20). The more of them there are, the more likely it is that one will roll a 20. If you fail your fortitude check and become diseased, then you're even further in the poo.
Baldur's Gate 2 did it subtley and that is the way I would do it if I did it at all (I do a mild increase of encounters... through enemy addition only. 5 levels to me is not limited scaling... thats a ridiculously huge level range for most monsters). For example if you do their quest that involved beholders when you are still level 9ish you get like 2 gauths at a time, or even 1. Come back at level 13 and it's 2 beholders, plus double the Gauths. But yet at that level the quest is still way more easier.
Guest_Iveforgotmypassword_*
Hi All,
Thanks for all the feedback, I read it all quite closely.
A few points occurred to me, which may be obvious, but I will mention from my own perspective ...
1) I believe scaling should only occur UPWARDS. (i.e. A high level/HD creature should always be so and will NEVER scale downwards to make it possible for a low level party to beat.) (See exception in 3b.)
2) If possible, scaling UPWARDS should involve greater numbers and/or better abilities in creatures (like spell casting) before any actual levelling of any type. (i.e. The OC encounter system that we have with NWN.)
3a) Any scaling UPWARDS that affect levels/HPs should be limited according to the type of creature in the first place. (i.e. Having "guards" improve makes sense, as different places will have some guards better than others.)
3b) There should be a "maximum limit" possible to any scaling type in 3a, according to the creature type. As an example, it should be possible for another "party of adventurers" to scale in all manner of ways to meet the encounter difficulty. In fact, this example is possibly the only one where I would consider a DOWNWARD scaling. However, some creatures may have a "natural" top limit to their ability and/or HPs. We can use the D&D "improvement scaling" of creatures as a guide for this of course.
So, basically, I can see a good use of scaling if done sensibly. However, it also needs to be done in moderation to prevent "boring" or/and "absurd" situations from happening.
I agree with all of those points.
Some Monster Manual entries will list a range of HD that a particular creature will typically have. Dragons have quite a large potential range, from wyrmlings of just a couple of HD up to epic-level ancient wyrms. Redcaps level up like players by soaking their hats in the blood of enemies. An elder redcap will be of much higher level than a regular one (although lower-level examples will always be more numerous).
Some 'monsters' also have the potential to be playable races (although not necessarily in this game), which conceivably allows them to be any level that a player could achieve, and to be of a range of possible classes.
Mine did and it's got lvl 12 zombies, Lvl 13 Duergar, Lvl 12 Bladelings, Lvl 10 seletons and lvl 11 Ghasts to name but a few and I've never heard any complaints about it so if I was you Mr Botelle I'd just do what you think feels right and not worry about it.
So long as it's not too hard or too easy nobody minds, it's only a game and what some old monster bible says is a level range for things should be taken with a pinch of salt unless of course you believe that was how it was originally written and therefore exactly how it should be done which is a bit sad because the toolset is about creating your own stories.
Ps. I'm pretty sure they're all levels of fighter and things like that too because undead levels are crap.
(See 3e notes below.) I think my only real concern would be if we levelled such creatures downwards (after setting them for an encounter) to allow lower level PCs to cope if they accidentally came upon this encounter before the DM anticipated ... if you see what I mean.
1) I believe scaling should only occur UPWARDS. (i.e. A high level/HD creature should always be so and will NEVER scale downwards to make it possible for a low level party to beat.) (See exception in 3b.)
Some games scale down monsters by having the player encounter them while they are wounded and damaged. That evens up the odds some. But usually that requires some customization anyway.
Some games scale down monsters by having the player encounter them while they are wounded and damaged. That evens up the odds some. But usually that requires some customization anyway.
Diseased gibberlings in Baldur's Gate, for instance.
They gave level 1 characters something fairly easy to kill, and their diseased status justified the existence of lone gibberlings. Healthy gibberlings always move about in huge (usually overwhelming) numbers, but they have a tendency to kill any member of the group that is weak or injured in some way. A diseased gibberling would have no choice to but strike out on its own, or risk becoming a snack for the horde.
Haha I just learned way more than anyone should care to know about < 1 HD monsters.
Some games scale down monsters by having the player encounter them while they are wounded and damaged. That evens up the odds some. But usually that requires some customization anyway.
Diseased gibberlings in Baldur's Gate, for instance. <SNIP>
Haha I just learned way more than anyone should care to know about < 1 HD monsters.
I think scaling down is perfectly reasonable. Our side of the sick and feeble you have the young .. I have a young ogre mage mourning his dead mother in one of my areas, and the less strong. there may be weaker individual in a group. If they possess intelligence they may strike out on their own if their weakness puts them at risk among their peers.
PJ
I think scaling down is perfectly reasonable. Our side of the sick and feeble you have the young .. I have a young ogre mage mourning his dead mother in one of my areas, and the less strong. there may be weaker individual in a group. If they possess intelligence they may strike out on their own if their weakness puts them at risk among their peers.
PJ
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