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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 5803789" data-attributes="member: 2011">Come play in my game.Your experience will change. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devil.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":devil:" title="Devil    :devil:" data-shortname=":devil:" />Bwa ha ha ....Err, yes. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/worried.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":-S" title="Uhm    :-S" data-shortname=":-S" />Actually, I do agree with you as the players start getting higher in level. There seems to be a break even point where any tactics that "normal encounter" monsters do, the PCs have a counter for it (as an example, minons become a total joke at some point in time for most PC groups). For most standard monsters, this break even point is usually somewhere around early Paragon once PCs start getting their Paragon level special abilities. At Heroic, however, it's pretty much a piece of cake for a DM to target whomever he wants as often as he wants.PCs have approximately 20 to 30 hits points at level 1. Foes do 9 points of damage. So, 2+ to 3+ successful hits to knock someone out (not taking into account healing, etc.). At level 30, it's 140 to 250 hit points. Same level foes do 38 damage (maybe a bit more since everyone is an Elite or Solo and WotC doesn't follow its own monster guideline rules). So, 4 to 6.5 successful hits. Granted, higher level monsters have a ton of abilities to boost this, but even so, the PCs have so many abilities by level 30 (like coming back from unconsciousness on their own) that the monsters just don't have enough time, even in a single round with multiple monsters, to really take out a PC quickly anymore.Granted, the difficulty of the encounter and the synergy of the monsters makes a huge difference as well and I think this is where many DMs don't realize just how much encounter difficulty power (with the same amount of XP) DMs really have in their toolkit. I don't care what makeup of PCs is in a group, there are some DMs on this board (who have posted monster encounter design in the past and I'm looking at [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] as one of them) that will just shred PCs with certain monsters.PCs have three edges in combat. Healing, a slightly better chance to hit (and throw effects on) monsters, and doing more damage (with striker and AoE powers) than monsters do on them. But, this advantage is not actually enough for a crafty DM. DMs who really know what they are doing, even with an N encounter, can put PCs at a serious disadvantage. This is done by monster selection (good arrangement and synergy of monster abilities), selective terrain (and starting location for monsters, including traps or hazards), and one thing that the vast majority of DMs rarely if ever do (at least IME), functional and class templates for monsters (and even picking lower or higher level monsters and adjusting their level, attacks and hit points accordingly, just to get certain effects into play in the encounter). Many DMs just use monsters straight out of the game system and rarely modify them. Nasty DMs do more. They modify the monsters (according to the XP rules and template rules) to throw surprises at their players.But, this takes time to design and put together these types of challenging encounters.So yes, for many DMs in many encounters, pulling monsters out of the sack is sufficient (myself included, I'm pretty lazy on this most of the time). Although the players fine tune their PCs to the nth degree, the DM does not do the same for his disposable monsters (not even just designing monsters, but designing monsters as a well rounded NPC party for an encounter). It's too much effort. They're disposable.Rat bastard DMs do sometimes (or even often) fine tune both the encounters, and the monster groups and I opine that most players and DMs have very little actual clue as to how nasty encounters can really get for a DM who sits down and actually designs his encounters to significantly challenge his players. This is why I am somewhat unimpressed with Lair Assault so far. For the most part, the monsters are straight out of the book and that means that PCs can handle them. Not enough thought is put into nasty encounter design for LA.I think my experience with 4E is pretty much the same as everyone else's. A well designed PC party can pretty much handle everything thrown at it as long as the DM just grabs Dungeon adventures or just grabs semi-random monsters out of the Compendium. And, these gets easier for the players as the levels get higher. But, I've seen some pretty nasty encounters because the monsters do a lot more than just damage and inconvenience the PCs: separating the party, blinding/stunning/weakening them, trapping them, buffing monsters, debuffing PCs, changing PC action economy (Beholders are good at this) and a whole lot more. Even something as simple as flight can create serious problems for melee PCs, and total concealment can make most well designed spellcasters have to come in closer in order to use area or close attacks. Have phasing undead range attack, then walk through a wall in a maze-like area. The undead can move through the terrain at ease, the PCs cannot.Combat is only easy for the players and monsters are only really locked down every encounter if the DM is not due diligent. IME. Granted, these types of tougher well designed challenges (even at lower N or N+1 level) should not occur every encounter, but it's not hard to seriously hinder the PCs at any level just by using the proper tools in the DM's toolkit.</blockquote>

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