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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GX.Sigma" data-source="post: 6705312" data-attributes="member: 6690511">So far, no encounters have felt deadly in 5e--except for ones that felt unfair, like a CR+10 monster with breath damage 3x the characters' max HP, or five wraiths coming out of a wall behind you and hitting you with surprise life drain. I think a big part of the problem is the labels of the difficulty levels. "Easy, Medium, or Hard" is not doing it for me. It implies the PCs are supposed to win each encounter, and the DM just has to figure out how much of an inconvenience it's going to be. In this system, it's hard to make sense of the "Deadly" label.I'd rather have thresholds like this: Speedbump (e.g., Batman vs. some random thugs), PCs Favored (e.g. Batman vs. Joker), Evenly Matched (e.g., Obi-Wan vs Anakin in Episode III), Opponents Favored (e.g., Obi-Wan vs. Darth Vader in Episode IV), certain death (e.g., the Hobbits vs. the Nazgûl), and "are you crazy?" (e.g., Frodo vs. Sauron). Those would be more helpful descriptors, especially since I want to run a world where some enemies are supposed to be totally out of the PCs' league.The problem with any mathematical system for encounter difficulty is that different groups will have different amounts of treasure, system mastery, and tactics. Thus, whatever math you're using, you'll have to re-calibrate it for each individual PC group. Perhaps with some sort of <a href="http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-danger-room-funnel.html?zx=ba741bd1c30bd581" target="_blank">danger room</a>.But honestly, the only actual way to see how the encounter is balanced is to playtest it and see how it goes. Dicking around with numbers can only get you so far.</blockquote>

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