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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9286557" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Yes, you do, if you follow the guidelines for how encounters are supposed to be built in 4e.Here, let me get the quotes for you:(excised portion regarding encounter complexity, e.g. terrain, plot importance, conflicting interests, etc.)It explicitly says you should use some encounters that are really easy, and some that are pretty hard; it even pointedly does not say you shouldn't use very high-level monsters, only that doing so should be done with great care and, generally, preparation for giving the players some other kind of solution besides fight-to-the-death (such as fleeing or parley.)They do, in fact, want the impact of the escalation. They want there to be SOME fights which really are a cakewalk. And some fights which are brutally hard. While also having actual, observable progression, where what you could barely fend off X levels ago is chump change to you now. That's even called out as a technique to use to give players context and meaning for their advancement over time, to genuinely use the exact same monster from "six levels ago"Your thesis is simply wrong. Not only does the text explicitly say you shouldn't have every fight be in lockstep with the PCs, it says that fights should vary a fair amount over time (even though the central tendency should still be somewhere in the "medium" to "hard" range). Further, it gives useful advice for how to do things well outside those ranges, beyond simply saying that you should use minions or the like. Though it does also recommend their use (in a different section, not the one quoted here), alongside various other approaches and tools to help create more interesting, varied, memorable combats and challenges.And this does, in fact, relate back to "bounded accuracy." Because a system designed the way 5e is struggles to do what I've just described. A CR 4 monster is something that should be a nasty threat for a group of level 2 characters (over the line for Deadly, though not at a hypothetical "Deadly+" difficulty). But a full eighteen levels later, despite the rules claiming that 10 CR 4 monsters would be an "easy" fight (a bit below Medium, actually), that fight would be way, way more deadly.There just isn't enough room in 5e to allow that real, obvious, unequivocal feeling of growth. 4e offers not one but (at least) two distinct ways to achieve that feeling: just straight-up using a monster 5-8 levels below the party, or turning it into a Minion. Both clearly demonstrate that the players have massively outclassed such monsters. There is no such thing as "massively outclassed such monsters" for anything past CR 2-3 in 5e. Only a massive damage spell--e.g. dropping literally a 9th level spell like meteor swarm--has such potential, and even then it isn't guaranteed because that's assuming every target fails its save, and at least a handful should pass.</blockquote>

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