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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Oofta" data-source="post: 8003568" data-attributes="member: 6801845">I design encounters based around goals of the competing parties, who or what will be likely opponents and if there's anything that I can throw in that will move the story along.  Then I take into consideration what the goals are, how to implement those and so on.As far as what monsters to use, I start by figuring out what would be thematically appropriate, including reskinning existing monsters or creating custom ones.  Finally I use a spreadsheet that calculates PEL.  I generally calculate medium and hard levels, occasionally deadly (depending on goal).  That means that I can easily adjust based on story demands or based on how things are going.  I also take into consideration the group - some groups are just far more effective than others.</blockquote>