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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mostlyjoe" data-source="post: 5818130" data-attributes="member: 56540">The problem as best as I can describe it that the accelerated curve of the math causes a very artifical inflation of NPC stats and values. So to keep the players challenged suddenly a higher level monsters turns it's interest to them, which sounds fine, but gets wonky when you want to deal with say an established lower level group. So the solutions are: A. Monsters that had no reason to care about you previously (Big Red Dragon) suddenly show up to challenge the PCs often with shakey/badly established motivations. B. There are tiers among the NPC population that you suddenly didn't know about before. Big Boss General Drow and his personal guard show up. In video game terms its like the boss behind the boss. or  C. Existing NPCs suddenly get far more powerful than they previously were establsihed to be because they scaled up with the party. The issue has to do with how this can sometimes become very bizarre in a game if handled badly. There are exceptions and some adventures give reasonable explinations as to the scale up, but sometimes they really don't. There in lies the Bigger Fish, the arbitray escalation of difficulity in a campaign to match the PCs. I was just trying to figure out ways they can mechanically offset or delay this issue while presenting a nice gradiant of challenges for the characters.</blockquote>