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Message: <blockquote data-quote="D'karr" data-source="post: 762436" data-attributes="member: 336">The biggest problem with testing the rules in this way is familiarity.A DM that has prepared adventures for the same group of PC's from low levels to high levels and then to epic levels has a high level of familiarity with that group.  This allows him to pick and choose challenges that are truly challenging to that specific set of characters.When you reach epic levels, there are so many capabilities to each character that just putting together an encounter, without taking into consideration the capabilities of the PCs, is counterproductive.Epic levels requires even more tailoring to suit the party of characters.A DM that does this in a progressive manner has a better understanding of which things work, which things work very well and which things just don't work at all.  That balancing act is very difficult to make on a one shot adventure.It is comparable to a newbie DM using an Ancient Red Dragon as a challenge to an appropriate party of equally newbie players.  Even with appropriate level characters the players will not be really aware of all of the capabilities of their characters and the DM will probably not be very aware of all the capabilities of the dragon.  It can become a slaughterhouse or a cake-walk.</blockquote>