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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 8420020" data-attributes="member: 7006">Did the three hill giants get a chance to each throw a rock at your PCs?  That's their real damaging attack and is what is bumping their CR up.  Because if the giants can get two rounds of throwing rocks at the group before the group can engage in melee, the odds of someone getting knocked to 0 HP become much greater, especially if the three giants then also focus their attacks on only one of the PCs.  That's what can make the encounter Deadly.  Throw in a crit or two and it's even worse.  As the others above have said... there are so many variables for any one fight that the encounter building rules are just trying to guesstimate what the average table will experience, but any one particular table won't be average.In that way, I almost think WotC did players a disservice in actually including encounter building rules in the DMG in the first place... because it gave players the unrealistic expectation that it was possible to actually make a single system that would apply to every single table.  What I think they would have been better off doing is just stating in point of fact "Creating combat challenges for your players is more an art than a science.  Because every table is different-- with variable numbers of characters, types of characters, optional rules being used, number of fights between rests, number of magic items available and so forth-- you will need to just experiment to find the sweet spot where fights can accomplish what you wish for combats to do in your game."</blockquote>

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