Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="ccooke" data-source="post: 6704304" data-attributes="member: 6695890">Generally, I take the difficulty of an encounter to the effect that it has on that adventuring day.If I want to give my party a hard day, I throw a deadly encounter at them, then another medium. Even an easy. The point is, a deadly encounter eats up the party's resources such that every encounter after it is harder. In 5e, my goal for a difficult day is to get the party to use more than half of their hit dice to recover. If they do, then the next day they will be harder pressed. Basically, I want them to feel that they're in a bad situation because they have multiple threats, not just one day of bad luck that might kill them (although that's fun, too - it's just a different thing).Examples I've recently played with:1) The party assault (and win!) against an entire small fortress, killing about thirty enemies. Later that day, they end up hiding from two trolls inside a tiny hut because they're feeling the pain and decide not to risk facing them. Because of this, the trolls eat their horses and throw the party's plans into disarray (This, by the way, is a big weakness of Leonmund's Tiny Hut: You can't fit horses into it. If you think it's too powerful, give the party a difficult choice!)2) A massively overdeadly encounter a couple of weeks ago that involved four hobgoblin assassins against the (five character, level 7) party. 1d6+2d6+4d6 if they qualify for sneak, plus 7d6 poison on a con save? Deadly. The only reason the party survived (and hence why I threw this at them) was that the fight took place in dense forest with 15' visibility and the party had a better ability to coordinate (familiars and magic). The party then spent the next two days travelling with stealth, avoiding all the traps and encounters I sent at them, because they knew they couldn't face the threat.Basically, a deadly fight should be enough of a threat that your party has to change their tactics afterwards; they should know that they will die if they don't.</blockquote>

Verification