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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fanaelialae" data-source="post: 7037601" data-attributes="member: 53980">My experience differs. Are guys with 20 to 30 years of experience who started in 1e/2e what you would call experienced veterans? Guys who for at least the past 17 years have, on average, played D&D at least once a week with sessions that tend to go for 6 to 8 hours? Guys who have played every edition or almost every edition of D&D/AD&D? Is 19th level what you would consider a high level campaign? If so, then yes, I've run high level games for veteran players in 5e, and I had little difficulty challenging them (though I did have to think about how to create challenging fights a bit more at high levels than low levels, though not nearly as much as even a mid-level campaign in 3.x). And yes, I play with all the options turned on and then some (I've created a fair number of options myself). I honestly mean no disrespect, CapnZapp, but perhaps it is you who is not listening to me.I don't think you'll ever get your wish for a monster book with harder monsters, unless it comes out on DM's Guild. It runs counter to the newbie-friendly mentality that 5e is based around. A newbie isn't going to know not to buy the "Advanced" D&D monster book on the shelf of Barnes & Noble; in fact they might think that the "Advanced" means it's a newer and better version of the original Monster Manual.A quick look at the designing monsters section starting on page 274 of the DMG shows ways that you can easily tweak monsters to make them tougher without increasing their CR. For example, one of your complaints was that monsters have terrible saves, poor skills, and low ability scores. Do you realize that you can give a monster proficiency with every saving throw, every skill (with expertise if desired), and increase their non-combat related ability scores all the way up to 30 without changing their CR one iota? There are a wide assortment of monster features on pages 280-281 of the DMG which can be given to any monster as you desire without changing the CR at all, including the Hobgoblin Captain's Leadership trait which is basically Bless. (Your players like to have always-on Bless? Well, now so can your monsters!) I'd recommend creating a list of the no-CR-change features for yourself, so you can easily add them on the fly. Additionally, do you realize that you can add +2 AC or step up a creature's HP one step on the monster chart (DMG 274) or step up a creature's damage one step on the monster chart, or increase it's attack bonus by +2, often without changing the CR (because each of these is only worth a half CR). In fact, you can add + 1 to both a monster's attack and AC, without any change to the CR whatsoever.Other things you can do is use monsters tactically. Have a bunch of bag-of-hp monsters? Have them use the Shove action (remember that you can give them expertise with Athletics without changing their CR) to push PCs into traps / hazardous terrain, or knock them prone and grapple them. Have those monsters fight in terrain that favors them. Use monsters that complement each other (like the aforementioned Mind Flayers and Intellect Devourers; just don't really use that example unless you're tired of the campaign, it's too mean). And you have to take the party's capabilities into consideration as well. If your PCs all ride brooms of flying then don't send a horde of melee monsters against them unless you want to give them a gimmie (which can be fine and fun on occasion). Send a horde of flyers against them, who can use shove to knock them off their brooms and send them plummeting. If your party is made up of a bunch of Sharpshooting snipers then use monsters who can either also attack at that range (removing disadvantage at long range does not change the CR of a creature) or use creatures that can get close (via invisibility, etherealness, or even just a good stealth check). Occasionally things won't go in the monsters' favor and the players will nonetheless run roughshod over them; that's okay, IME that's supposed to happen now and again, particularly at the higher levels.But there's a reason why many old school players fear the puny kobold. As my father likes to say, "Work smarter, not harder."Obviously, the above should only be used if you feel you are having difficulty challenging the party. Against an inexperienced or non-optimized group the above would likely result in frequent TPKs, IMO.For guidelines on magic item prices, I consider this the best supplement I've seen (it's from DM's Guild):<a href="http://www.dmsguild.com/product/205126/Discerning-Merchants-Price-Guide?term=Discerning+Merchants+Price+Guid&test_epoch=0" target="_blank">http://www.dmsguild.com/product/205126/Discerning-Merchants-Price-Guide?term=Discerning+Merchants+Price+Guid&test_epoch=0</a>As an added bonus, it's free. (Note that I would not recommend letting your players go hog wild and pick items from here based on a gold allowance, as that is likely to result in very potent characters who find the game "too easy" with respect to untweaked encounters.)</blockquote>

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