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<blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 6488273" data-attributes="member: 3424">The number of new and variant monsters you can use in a game is limited only by your imagination. In addition, you can use the same monsters multiple times in different fights. I think a game in which you encounter each monster once and once only is even less realistic than one in which you encounter tougher and tougher monsters as you get more powerful.As for using monsters of the &quot;correct&quot; CR, CR is just a tool to allow you to judge the relative difficulty of an encounter. There is nothing to stop you from making the encounters more or less challenging if you want. That said, if you consistently make the encounters less challenging, that may not suit the tastes of certain players (but more on this later).&nbsp; I think it all boils down to how you use the dice.&nbsp; A bad roll could simply mean that you need to use Special Ability X to recover, and it takes you one round longer to activate Special Ability Y and win the fight. Bounded accuracy is not the issue. The fact is, magic items make fights easier in any edition. The sleight of hand pulled by 5e is that the system tells you that even though the PCs have magic items, you should not change the number and toughness of the monsters they are expected to face. You can achieve the same effect in any edition. For example, using the revised 4e CR system above, if 15th-level PCs with magic items face CR 15 monsters (previously CR 12), the fight is going to be easier as well. The magic items only seem like a benefit because the encounter guidelines don't take them into account. Over time, the accumulation of magic items is going to make the recommended fights easier and easier, and unless you have players that aren't bored by easy fights, they are going to lose interest. I was just making the point that if you don't expect much from the encounter guidelines, then you don't need more than what is currently available in 5e.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="FireLance, post: 6488273, member: 3424"] The number of new and variant monsters you can use in a game is limited only by your imagination. In addition, you can use the same monsters multiple times in different fights. I think a game in which you encounter each monster once and once only is even less realistic than one in which you encounter tougher and tougher monsters as you get more powerful. As for using monsters of the "correct" CR, CR is just a tool to allow you to judge the relative difficulty of an encounter. There is nothing to stop you from making the encounters more or less challenging if you want. That said, if you consistently make the encounters less challenging, that may not suit the tastes of certain players (but more on this later). I think it all boils down to how you use the dice. A bad roll could simply mean that you need to use Special Ability X to recover, and it takes you one round longer to activate Special Ability Y and win the fight. Bounded accuracy is not the issue. The fact is, magic items make fights easier in any edition. The sleight of hand pulled by 5e is that the system tells you that even though the PCs have magic items, you should not change the number and toughness of the monsters they are expected to face. You can achieve the same effect in any edition. For example, using the revised 4e CR system above, if 15th-level PCs with magic items face CR 15 monsters (previously CR 12), the fight is going to be easier as well. The magic items only seem like a benefit because the encounter guidelines don't take them into account. Over time, the accumulation of magic items is going to make the recommended fights easier and easier, and unless you have players that aren't bored by easy fights, they are going to lose interest. I was just making the point that if you don't expect much from the encounter guidelines, then you don't need more than what is currently available in 5e. [/QUOTE]

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