Secret of the Silver Blades is really trying my patience with its encounter rate. No joke, I've probably had 150 encounters just crossing the glacier before the castle. This makes Wiz 7 look restrained by comparison. It's fortunate that GB combat is good.
One way to get around this is to turn the difficulty level all the way down to minimum (and it really does have to be
all the way). You can then get away scot-free from many random encounters.
Whether that's cheese or not depends on the person. Arguably, SSI intended it as part of normal gameplay, as combat XP does actually scale to combat difficulty. But that scaling isn't by much. It's like deliberately fighting extra kobolds in the Slums in Pool of Radiance -- the extra XP does exist, but is likewise a drop in the bucket.
Well now I want to test that. What I liked about poolrad was your party number, gear, and level (maybe stats) could affect the encounter. Say you use uge or w/e and give yourself top stats 25-30 and oh +3 gear (probably overkill) the bugbear is leading a lot troops in the slum and other areas. I never quite figured out all the numbers there and to what degree.
I don't recall Curse and beyond doing that.
Statistics do affect number of monsters in Pool of Radiance, but the only two stats that have a strong direct effect are Strength and Dexterity. Current hit points matter, so Constitution has an indirect effect; and so do caster levels, so Intelligence and Wisdom specifically for single-classed magic-users and clerics respectively also have a slight indirect effect.
High levels, and powerful magic weapons and armor, cause much more of a boost than your statistics do, though.
Curse does do this scaling -- in like three places, and just barely. You'll likely never notice a difference if you are not stunt-running the game (i.e., either playing with fewer than 6 characters, or are speedrunning).
Other Gold Box games generally don't scale at all to your levels, statistics, or gear. I think that's because all other Gold Box games have difficulty levels, which typically affects both how likely it is you can evade a random encounter, and how likely you'll be disturbed when resting. (In the Buck Rogers games, skilll checks also sometimes matter a lot for this.)
