Do your PCs ever completely outclass the enemy?

[kigmatzomat]

Rather than throw in an "occasional" low-level encounter, the adventurers are more likely to face mooks "all the way up the ladder,"... - my high-level encounters tend to involve either a singular challenge, such as a "leader" with levels appropriate to challenge the adventurers, or more often a group of lower level figures that together provide a +2 or +3 EL encounter, but in either case, there will be the "usual" low-level minions to be dealt with throughout the adventure, such as guards or servants.

I do something similar for planned encounters but I also hand-waive away many random low CR encounters by virtue of the party's appearance. Simply having every mount in barding implies a certain degree of wealth and martial experience that typically eliminates any sentient encounters of CR<4 and if they are perceptive enough to recognize the barding as mithral or possibly spot the two levitating mounts pops that up to CR8. Any use of spectral mounts or if their NPC ogre-paladin ally and his dire wolf mount are present that goes up to about CR12. The party size (7 characters) plus mounts & pack animals drives off non-sentients CR<6, which means that in any vaguely civilized lands they are almost never bothered and even the untamed lands have few creaures willing to make the attempt.

 

[Desdichado]

On occasion, yes they do. Very occasionally, it's kinda fun to lay some smackdown on some lame goblins or kobolds, or the equivelant of that.

Of course, in my campaigns, the opposition is much more likely to completely outclass the PCs...

 

[Henry]

Well-said, Sammael - I concur.

Rather than throw in an "occasional" low-level encounter, the adventurers are more likely to face mooks "all the way up the ladder," as in the case of Sammael's hobgoblins...

For us, the definition of "Mooks" changes as we level up, though. At 5th level, a bunch of 1st level warrior bandits are "mooks." At 15th level, "mooks" is half a dozen Bearded Devils and their Bone Devil overlord.

 

[Tinner]

This happens a lot IMC, but I like it.
I kind of use this as a gauge of my adventure design.
If I'm using the CR/EL system correctly, then the first couple encounters should be fairly easy for the PC's. After all, they have full hp's, and haven't used any resources yet, right?

After a few easy encounters the PC's start having problems in the fights. The tanks are taking wounds, and the casters are using up spells.

I tend to pack a lot of encounters into my game sessions, and the players know that if they get too greedy and go for "one more room" eventually they will get their butts handed to them.

Works for me.

 

[Rystil Arden]

My players in my FtF games often come across opponents they outclass. Sometimes, this makes them complacent, and there's one Dragon (lower CR than the party's level) that has consistently killed party members because they never come after it together, but rather, each party member has tried to go off and kill it by himself during downtime and died trying.

In PbP, I haven't had time to throw too many of those easy encounters in yet, but I've still done two, when there was only one PC around and they posted pretty consistently. The reason is that otherwise, fights take so long in PbP that it would derail the adventure to throw too many encounters.