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Message: <blockquote data-quote="UngeheuerLich" data-source="post: 5506102" data-attributes="member: 59057">Optimizing increases grind. Monsters that challenge players need to be higher level ---> hp increase ---> grind, as hitting becomes harder. Increasing the damage is the same as reducing hp and AC. (And reducing xp to allow for more encounters in a level)So many things written here are just plain not really true. The DM just has to keep in mind, that a Monster of MM3 counts as a monster some levels higher when desgning an encounter. It does not shorten the adventuring day. Even if a MM3 monster only gets a single hit in, it is noticeable. A crit can now bloody a character. This invokes fear without costing more surges all in all. But when a single hit can possibly take you out, you start getting more cautious, and running into a bunch of monsters gets exiting, as two lucky hits, and you may be close to down. Where with monsters of old design you can more easily calculate how much damage you receive, as hit chance is higher but damage is lower. So IMHO increasing damage is a good solution, it makes combats a bit more swingy and thus less predictable and more exiting. Also, even if some people disagree, AC buffing powers become more useful, as beeing hit on a 10 or 8 does not have an great impact on yur feeling of safety. If you suddenly reduce the chances of you beeing hit from 18+ to 20, you now feel invincible. (And a hit series that drops you usually does not occur, but a crit will make you fear for your life.) A lot of the fun comes not from the EV but from spikes. Even if the expected damage is lower, increased damage from lower level monsters makes the game more fun. And less frustrating. Edit: I also believe expertise increases the grind. As to hit chance increases with no back up from damage. The DM has to use higher level monsters, those have more hp. With the old Damage expressions, increasing monster level does not really increase the damage output considerably. Hit chance increases, but with already very high hitchances, this is also not noticeable on an encounter scale.</blockquote>

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