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Message: <blockquote data-quote="iserith" data-source="post: 6791729" data-attributes="member: 97077">Since difficulty is something that is not reliably quantifiable by the numbers, I would suggest focusing instead on creating challenges that are engaging rather than just difficult. Certainly some measure of difficulty is required to make a challenge satisfying, but more satisfying in my view is a challenge that can be overcome by any number of means and has options for engaging with all three pillars of the game.Difficulty is not just a measurement of how many hit points the PCs have to expend during the challenge after all and player engagement in my view comes from compelling stakes and a chance to freely exercise agency. If "Kill All Monsters" is the only way to win the "tough fights" you design, then naturally they'll get good at doing exactly that, making the fights easier than you intended. So instead, consider alternate goals for the monsters or PCs to achieve (or both) while maintaining deadly difficulty in terms of number and CR of monsters in the challenge.Take, for example, a simple scenario like <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?465060-Monkey-Business" target="_blank">Monkey Business</a>. By the numbers, it is 5x higher than Deadly - 10,200 XP (adjusted) for four 4th-level PCs. But the goal isn't to kill the monsters - it's to rescue Fey Ray before he dies while Ponga and the Terror Lizard fight each other. The PCs could, if they wish, attack the monsters. And they might even win that fight, but still fail in their goal if Fey Ray dies. What is the difficult rating of this challenge? I have no idea. I didn't focus on that and I don't think it's quantifiable by the tools given to us in the DMG. I instead focused on creating an interesting challenge that could be resolved any number of ways. In the doing, I am going for player engagement rather than creating a tough fight.</blockquote>

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