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I've always and exclusively seen the numbers in the 2014 DMG as lower thresholds - mainly since using the XP multiplier meant that you would almost always end up at some random number between the difficulty levels.

No, the difficulty is the same. Hard is Hard, its the same band of XP values. A single CR 8 creature is a Hard encounter in both methods. The differences only show up when you build encounters which trigger the XP Multiplier - that is, swarms of weak creatures or small groups of medium power...

Agree, same takeaway for me. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that higher level parties can handle harder average encounter difficulties. Which, like.... yeah. Anyone who's run a lot of 5e has realized that.

Ultimately the encounter building rules are intended to be loose guidelines - that's how they're treated by official adventure writers for wotc. Wotc obviously doesn't want to market their DMG by saying "yeah the encounter rules don't work, build your encounters based on vibes" since people...

I fully intend to stick with my 2014 books. That's my long-term solution.

Very possible. The removal of the group multiplier is, in my opinion, a far more impactful change than adjusting the upper level difficulty thresholds.

So I've analyzed the DMG encounter building math, which I've included below. TLDR - Deadly difficulty is gone, Easy/Medium/Hard remain largely the same until level 8+, after which they get harder. The big changes to the encounter math process are as follows: The XP number of each difficulty...

Which optional rules (ex: gritty realism resting, proficiency variants) survived the transition, if any?

My understanding is that the 2024 DMG is generally doing away with optional rules and instead presenting a guide on how to play the game "correctly", rather than customizing it to your group.

Exactly. Retreating in order to Long Rest should typically mean that you "Lose" the scenario.

Because no one reads the DMG.

It's an excellent rule to pair with "death at Zero HP" and "Save vs Poison or Die" :)

If they didn't want the product to be scalped, they shouldn't be limiting production so heavily.

Idk man, "When you cast a spell, you can spend a number of sorcery points equal to the spell's level to cast it a second time, but a each creature may be subjected to the spells' effects only once." sounds pretty different from "When you cast a spell that targets only one creature and doesn't...

could be done with 5e as follows: -Remove hit dice for healing entirely. HP is restored to full after a short rest. -Reduce max HP to 66% of current max HP. -divide all per-long-rest resources (including spell slots) by 3, rounding up or down to the nearest whole number. These resources...

" In the same way you figure out the difficulty of an encounter, you can use the XP values of monsters and other opponents in an adventure as a guideline for how far the party is likely to progress. For each character in the party, use the Adventuring Day XP table to estimate how much XP that...

You had to completely change the effect of the Twin Spell ability entirely to make it work for your group. Thats EXACTLY the reason why twin spell was changed.

Exactly. One medium encounter won't challenge your group. If you only give a group medium encounters, you should have them face around SEVEN of them. If you give them only deadly encounters, they should still face around THREE. 5e is and can only work as an attrition game. It will not as...