Tony Vargas
Legend
One of the regular DMs I played 3.5 with used that strategy. Nothing wrong with dusting it off.That first critical sneak attack wrecked encounters, to the point where I remember once or twice putting a big massive enemy into the fight, simply to absorb that initial attack. Solo enemies never worked.
Nothing unreasonable, or confusing, no. But, 5e's emphasis on fast combats and mechanically differentiated PC classes just reduces the value of such metrics, is all. Whoever populated those guideline tables just didn't have as good an idea what a PC party might be capable of. When you try to use them, there's always going to be some 'error' in the form of 'player skill,' synergy, dice-luck, and so forth, and it could be very large. If a combat goes many rounds, some of that, particularly the dice, might 'average out.' But if you're playing a game tuned for fast combat, that's less likely to be something you can depend on.But could it have been more fun and lived up to what they (and I) perceived was a life-threatening encounter? Definitely, yes.
I really want to know what metric I can use to predict and deliver challenges of a certain difficulty to my group going forward. So far my experience with the DMG metric is that it produces less challenging fights than advertised, though I'm not sure yet how much less difficult.
I don't know what's unreasonable or hard to grasp about that.
JMHO, but the way to handle it in 5e is to just pull in the monsters you want, only hesitating for crazy CR and numeric mis-matches (400 orcs may not be quite the thing it was in 1e). Keep in mind you shouldn't outnumber the party by much, and that you can go pretty high in CR. If you want deadly, make the encounter deadly on the face of it (before the multiplier).
But don't expect it to be deadly when you run it, /make/ it deadly. Especially the first round. Fudge die rolls, mentally add damage, whatever it takes, but make the first round overwhelming. Then dial it down as needed to get the resolution you're aiming for (or that seems like it might be best as the scenario develops - maybe it should turn into a flight or capture scenario, for instance).
That's it. That's all I got. It's working for me, for now (at Encounters, fwiw), YMMV.
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