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<blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 6812456" data-attributes="member: 53980">The Champion was a party member. Whether he was a PC or NPC is irrelevant. Also, the party Monk was injured to the point where he withdrew (most likely one hit away from unconscious). If the rule is &quot;NPCs don't count&quot;, then the DM ought to ignore the NPCs and focus fire on the PCs.Remember that the DMG merely says that a deadly encounter could be deadly for one or more characters. The Champion went down and the Monk almost did. Had the enemy wanted to finish them off (hardly out of the question for drow) they could have likely killed one or two party members. Which falls under the definition of a deadly encounter.Magic items most definitely fall into the category of things not factored into encounter difficulty. I recall someone (probably Mearls) discussing how they could either go the 3rd edition route, and require magic items, or magic items could be treated as a reward that flat out made your character more powerful, ala AD&amp;D. They went with the latter. As for feats, that's an optimization issue. I seriously doubt that Alertness or Keen Mind is going to skew encounter difficulty calculations by any real measure. On the other hand, if the party is filled with GWF/SS users and always casts Bless, then yeah, that might skew the difficulty. The encounter guidelines are calibrated to a certain degree of optimization, and it doesn't seem to be hyper-optimized party from my perspective. Which is arguably fine, since from what I've hear Pathfinder already does that well. In my estimation the assumed party optimization is a group who make strong characters, but don't really make any effort to achieve party-level synergy. If the party accumulates a significant horde of magic (particularly if those items have synergy with the party) you'll need to make encounters tougher to compensate.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Fanaelialae, post: 6812456, member: 53980"] The Champion was a party member. Whether he was a PC or NPC is irrelevant. Also, the party Monk was injured to the point where he withdrew (most likely one hit away from unconscious). If the rule is "NPCs don't count", then the DM ought to ignore the NPCs and focus fire on the PCs. Remember that the DMG merely says that a deadly encounter [I]could[/I] be deadly for [I]one or more[/I] characters. The Champion went down and the Monk almost did. Had the enemy wanted to finish them off (hardly out of the question for drow) they could have likely killed one or two party members. Which falls under the definition of a deadly encounter. Magic items most definitely fall into the category of things not factored into encounter difficulty. I recall someone (probably Mearls) discussing how they could either go the 3rd edition route, and require magic items, or magic items could be treated as a reward that flat out made your character more powerful, ala AD&D. They went with the latter. As for feats, that's an optimization issue. I seriously doubt that Alertness or Keen Mind is going to skew encounter difficulty calculations by any real measure. On the other hand, if the party is filled with GWF/SS users and always casts Bless, then yeah, that might skew the difficulty. The encounter guidelines are calibrated to a certain degree of optimization, and it doesn't seem to be hyper-optimized party from my perspective. Which is arguably fine, since from what I've hear Pathfinder already does that well. In my estimation the assumed party optimization is a group who make strong characters, but don't really make any effort to achieve party-level synergy. If the party accumulates a significant horde of magic (particularly if those items have synergy with the party) you'll need to make encounters tougher to compensate. [/QUOTE]

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