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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tetrasodium" data-source="post: 9593741" data-attributes="member: 93670">I agree with pretty much everything you wrote, especially the need for encounter building guidelines to better factor in number of PCs who can heal given death saves rather than trad ho-attrition, but my point was a slightly different one.  The baseline itself is one that sets the stage to apply uncorrectable problem escalation when the various power scales start deviating from the baseline of[Spoiler="nonexhaustive power scales"]<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Number of PCs in the group : 5e's math assumed this is low</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Level of CharOp across the party: 5e math assumes this is self inflicted deliberately suboptimal wounds.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Number of PCs who can heal others: 5e mechanics set this pretty high with a plurality or even majority of classes being capable of gaining healing abilities from base or subclass</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Risk of trad style HP attrition: 5e designs this for an expected scenario of a small group unoptimized with no healers to ensure that dropping to low/zero HP is a non concern and that recovery from there to full itself is a trivial all of nothing reset rather than a concern worthy bit of resource attrition</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Function and number of magic items the party has: 5e math assumes this is zero but d&d is & had always been a game swimming in magic items <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/giving-an-ad-d-feel-to-5e.679228/post-8243611" target="_blank">with good reasons</a></li> </ul>[/Spoiler]When past editions had Monster math that assumed magic items would be required it allowed the GM to use them to massage deficits the party has across those power scales (above and hypothetically unlisted ones) to bring inferior PCs up as needed and add missing capabilities they feel are critical to a party lacking in some(or healing dpr crunchiness etc). When it was a large group with lots of healing so and high CharOp some magic items were still expected and encounter scaling delayed rollout or just so it"hey guys let's talk" were all options the GM had solid footing to use.... All of that collapses under the assumption of small group with no healing no CharOp and no magic items the GM has few tools and a weak footing when trying to discuss/correct for the mismatch with players who have been given an expectation of guaranteed power in a world of cardboard.</blockquote>

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