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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 8414827" data-attributes="member: 3424">If you use the encounter building guidelines in XGtE, you will generally get Medium to slightly below Medium levels of encounter difficulty, which, to quote the DMG, "the characters should emerge victorious with no casualties". This is what the game itself tells you to expect if you follow these guidelines. If you want a greater risk of PC death, run Hard or Deadly encounters instead. That said, the game also assumes that the PCs do not have magic items. As you give the PCs more magic items, expect the encounters to get easier and easier and the risk of PC death to get lower and lower. Speaking for myself personally, I like running games at a Medium level of difficulty on average, I like to keep the risk of PC death low to keep a consistent "cast" of PCs, so I don't feel the need to tinker with the game's default assumptions.</blockquote>