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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 5118931" data-attributes="member: 80487">I'm looking at this with a lack of 4e expertise relative to those who have played it a lot. At first glance, that strikes me as very strange. Especially with 4e's basically reciprocal "easier to hit you = harder to get hit by you" setup, that seems like a pretty notable advantage.(1) If the PCs are going to lose, then I would expect that to be clear and resolved -- whether by surrender, withdrawal or slaughter -- sooner rather than later. Is not greater likelihood of defeat normally reflected in greater rapidity, e.g., in HP loss?(2) If the PCs win, then that is not likely to have been a product of giving unfavorable odds more time to assert themselves! 4e, like casinos, is designed on that principle. A win against the odds is much more likely to be a result either of (A) a lucky fluke of chance; or (B) a stratagem that changes the odds dramatically, perhaps more than temporarily due to cascading effects. In either case, a finish if not sooner, then at least not so much later, than in the case of an even match seems to me expected.Based on that, I suspect that the problem is that your high-level monsters did not in fact so shift the odds. In that case, the outcome (maybe even the cost in resources) is probably not much more in doubt than if the fighting power were made up of lower-level foes.However, the multiplying double whammy of having more HP and better defenses makes the high-level monster take longer to wear down. The excitement factor is probably less than if players were able to mark progress by felling foe after foe. I guess it might add interest if the damage the monster dishes out were enough more to put individual characters significantly more at risk -- but that seems to me not the way 4e tends to go.So, maybe a "higher level monster" is really worthwhile mainly when the total challenge is remarkable -- either when PCs "ought to" lose a fight (if they ill-advisedly start one), or when there is some cunning way for players to tilt the odds at least back to even.</blockquote>

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