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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark Hope" data-source="post: 3290238" data-attributes="member: 27051">Sure, we played this way for many years.  The AD&D1e "monster level" wasn't wholly related to character level, nor was it meant to be a one-for-one equivalent to dungeon level either.  Just a guideline to judge relative strength between monsters.  If you look at the Level 10 monsters, you are looking at things like liches, demon princes, arch-devils huge ancient dragons etc.  In my games no 10th level party could handle one of those - they're meant to represent the top-level single-monster challenges.  My feeling is that a 10th level party that takes one of those critters out is having an easy ride.Again, this is wholly unlike my own play experience.  I rarely ran combats that were toe-to-toe slugfests where each side was just hammering on each other until someone ran out of hit points.  Powerful, intelligent creatures need to be run as such, rather than big bags of hit points that jump out from behind a rock and try to eat you.  And even then, there were certainly plenty of 2e creatures that could hold their own in a straight up fight without a need for DM tactical shenanigans.I do recall seeing complaints in old Dragon magazines along these lines, but I also recall several articles on running effective monsters in order to challenge powerful players.  I guess I took those articles to heart - I never had real trouble challenging characters in 1e or 2e (or 3e, for that matter).I'd also agree with S'mon's point about wilderness adventures.  There was a strong paradigm in earlier editions that adventurers would "graduate" from the dungeon to the wilderness, where far more serious challenges could be encountered.</blockquote>

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