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<blockquote data-quote="NCSUCodeMonkey" data-source="post: 3755663" data-attributes="member: 2047">Hah, this thread is awesome. My $.02: As others have said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having over-CR and under-CR encounters in a game. It makes things way more interesting and can add that threat-of-deathyness that makes getting out of a combat by the skin of your teeth the best feeling in the world. My only comment is on:There's nothing wrong with having an intention for an encounter. I think that most encounters are designed with some end result in mind. The only problem is, IME, there's a fairly good chance that the encounter won't turn out as planned. If you're planning on the BBEG escaping at the last second, give a thought to what would happen if he were to get killed by a lucky critical. If you're planning on the beguiler talking his/her way past superior numbers, give a thought to what happens if they kick down the front door. In this case, could the cultists have captured the party and then the beguiler could have beguiled them out of the situation?You can't plan for every contingency, but I usually ask myself: What happens if the enemy escapes? What happens if he dies? What happens if there is a TPK? Sometimes the answers are simple, like &quot;The whole party dies.&quot; Sometimes, it might be more complex like, &quot;They become prisoners.&quot; or &quot;They become ghosts and have to fight their way back to the land of the living.&quot; As another example, I always assume that my players will kill all of their opponents. The bad guys always try to run away, but actually making it out of a combat alive is a bonus for an NPC, not a given.From the sound of things, I think you're a great DM and probably figured all of that out a long time ago, but the part of your post that I quoted leapt of the page and beat me in the face until I agreed to reply <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink&nbsp; &nbsp; ;)"&nbsp; data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="NCSUCodeMonkey, post: 3755663, member: 2047"] Hah, this thread is awesome. My $.02: As others have said, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having over-CR and under-CR encounters in a game. It makes things way more interesting and can add that threat-of-deathyness that makes getting out of a combat by the skin of your teeth the best feeling in the world. My only comment is on:There's nothing wrong with having an intention for an encounter. I think that most encounters are designed with some end result in mind. The only problem is, IME, there's a fairly good chance that the encounter won't turn out as planned. If you're planning on the BBEG escaping at the last second, give a thought to what would happen if he were to get killed by a lucky critical. If you're planning on the beguiler talking his/her way past superior numbers, give a thought to what happens if they kick down the front door. In this case, could the cultists have captured the party and then the beguiler could have beguiled them out of the situation? You can't plan for every contingency, but I usually ask myself: What happens if the enemy escapes? What happens if he dies? What happens if there is a TPK? Sometimes the answers are simple, like "The whole party dies." Sometimes, it might be more complex like, "They become prisoners." or "They become ghosts and have to fight their way back to the land of the living." As another example, I always assume that my players will kill all of their opponents. The bad guys always [i]try[/i] to run away, but actually making it out of a combat alive is a bonus for an NPC, not a given. From the sound of things, I think you're a great DM and probably figured all of that out a long time ago, but the part of your post that I quoted leapt of the page and beat me in the face until I agreed to reply ;). [/QUOTE]

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