Originally Posted by
NichG
Ironically, this is probably more an example of an asymmetry than a symmetry. If the antagonists have a 50% chance of entering a fight wounded, lets say, then that means that they're ostensibly engaged in an encounter difficult enough to cause them enough that a few hours of rest doesn't heal it every other day on average. Meaning that, if they were really using symmetric rules with the PCs, then they should be gaining a level roughly once per month. You could run a campaign where you write down a list of all of the antagonists and their forces ahead of time, and once a month (regardless of whether they have interacted with the PCs yet), everyone's level goes up by one. But it would be a brutally difficult campaign since now, if the party ever spends a month of downtime or a month travelling without dense encounters, they're permanently 1 level behind the curve.
There's an implicit asymmetry here - PCs level, the world doesn't. And it's one that's important to maintain game balance.
I suspect Talakeal's players would hate it if this particular asymmetry were made symmetric or if e.g. Talakeal spent as much effort optimizing each enemy as a player is likely to spend on their build.