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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8117803" data-attributes="member: 29398">Hot take: encounter-building rules are for the birds.The DMG needs to have some very rough guidelines and a few tips and pointers, to be sure, but putting actual rules and numbers to it makes far too many assumptions about how people play.  Sure, WotC's market research might give some averages, but there's far too much table-to-table variance to make those averages be of much use.In reality, one table might have 3 players each running a single character and another table going old-school might have 5 players each running two PCs with a couple of henches and adventuring NPCs along as well.  And even if one assumes a typical party size of 4 or 5 PCs the DM still has to account for party composition, degree of optimization, optional rules in use (or not), and - as the campaign goes on - amount of accumulated magic and treasure.Rather than presenting a catch-all formula that might - particularly for new DMs - give a false sense of reliability, what the 'rules' (as guidelines!) need to do is to leave it up to the DM to gauge her table and the party she's running, adjust accordingly, and not be afraid of some 'oops' moments and trial-and-error during that process.</blockquote>