My group rotates DMs, and it's my turn next. While writing an adventure I've been thinking about what level monsters to throw against my party, and I've had several thoughts.
My group tends to fight against monsters quite a few levels higher, I think. I'm not sure off hand, but I imgagine the average monster is 1 or 2 levels higher than us. This is partly because the group are quite effective, so need +2 encounters for a challenge, and +4 for real danger. However another cause, I think, is that we have several parties, and people like to use monsters we haven't seen before, which means using higher level monsters as the lower level ones have usually seen action.
Looking at the DMG under encounter templates, it appears than in a standard encounter setup, most monsters would be 1 or 2 levels lower than the party, with only some controllers, artillery or leaders at a higher level. Even for a more challenging encounter, they are not recomending many monsters more than 1 level higher.
My experience of fighting encounters with generally higher level monsters is that they are not great fun, particularly soldiers- they tend to hit almost all the time, and you tend to miss. Both of these are not fun.
Using more, lower level monsters, should give a fight where you hit more, and take less hits, but there are more monsters to kill. You'll feel more powerful, dropping monsters more quickly, but the threat will be from the horde of monsters overwhelming you.
So consequently, I'm going to write my adventure with monsters of a similar or lower level than the PCs, to see how it pans out.
My group tends to fight against monsters quite a few levels higher, I think. I'm not sure off hand, but I imgagine the average monster is 1 or 2 levels higher than us. This is partly because the group are quite effective, so need +2 encounters for a challenge, and +4 for real danger. However another cause, I think, is that we have several parties, and people like to use monsters we haven't seen before, which means using higher level monsters as the lower level ones have usually seen action.
Looking at the DMG under encounter templates, it appears than in a standard encounter setup, most monsters would be 1 or 2 levels lower than the party, with only some controllers, artillery or leaders at a higher level. Even for a more challenging encounter, they are not recomending many monsters more than 1 level higher.
My experience of fighting encounters with generally higher level monsters is that they are not great fun, particularly soldiers- they tend to hit almost all the time, and you tend to miss. Both of these are not fun.
Using more, lower level monsters, should give a fight where you hit more, and take less hits, but there are more monsters to kill. You'll feel more powerful, dropping monsters more quickly, but the threat will be from the horde of monsters overwhelming you.
So consequently, I'm going to write my adventure with monsters of a similar or lower level than the PCs, to see how it pans out.
