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<blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1513873" data-attributes="member: 5171">Yup.&nbsp; To clarify, I don't object to tough encounters -- but I try now to avoid making incredibly overpowering encounters with the specific aim of &quot;And then I'll let them win.&quot;&nbsp; I realized how incredibly annoying that was, and stopped. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />And yeah, another friend of mine, an occasional DM, makes a habit out of taking easy encounters and making them hard through tactics -- his goblins will focus all of their ranged attacks on a single person, usually the least-armored target. His encounters are easy on paper, but whereas the Overpowered Encounter DM will send your 7th-level party up against 10 goblins, each of whom have 10 Levels of Monk and Flaming Unholy Ki Straps, only to have said goblins just run up and try to punch you, the Maximized Tactics DM will send you up against 10 ordinary goblins, and you'll find yourself grappled, hit with hit-and-run tactics to use up your spells, your mounts hamstrung, your packs rifled as you drop them to give chase, and your weapons disarmed by all ten people aiding another against the fighter...Personally, the nice middle ground I've found is to improve my use of flavor-text, rather than giving bad guys a ton of power.&nbsp; If my 6th-level party encounters a knight clad in blood-red cruelly barbed armor from which black, oily smoke constantly pours, holding a flail whose head is a scorched human skull with glowing red nails protruding from the eye sockets, and he laughs and clenches his fist, and then the smoke pouring out of his armor billows out to form a leering demonic visage... the party is going to be nervous.&nbsp; When it turns out that, on paper, said dark knight is a Fighter2/Cleric3, far below the party's power level, with a +1 Light Flail and +1 Full Plate that also functions as a Wand of Obscuring Mist, he loses a lot of his mystery -- but the goal is to keep the players scared, even though they radically overpower this guy by the numbers.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="takyris, post: 1513873, member: 5171"] Yup. To clarify, I don't object to tough encounters -- but I try now to avoid making incredibly overpowering encounters with the specific aim of "And then I'll let them win." I realized how incredibly annoying that was, and stopped. :) And yeah, another friend of mine, an occasional DM, makes a habit out of taking easy encounters and making them hard through tactics -- his goblins will focus all of their ranged attacks on a single person, usually the least-armored target. His encounters are easy on paper, but whereas the Overpowered Encounter DM will send your 7th-level party up against 10 goblins, each of whom have 10 Levels of Monk and Flaming Unholy Ki Straps, only to have said goblins just run up and try to punch you, the Maximized Tactics DM will send you up against 10 ordinary goblins, and you'll find yourself grappled, hit with hit-and-run tactics to use up your spells, your mounts hamstrung, your packs rifled as you drop them to give chase, and your weapons disarmed by all ten people aiding another against the fighter... Personally, the nice middle ground I've found is to improve my use of flavor-text, rather than giving bad guys a ton of power. If my 6th-level party encounters a knight clad in blood-red cruelly barbed armor from which black, oily smoke constantly pours, holding a flail whose head is a scorched human skull with glowing red nails protruding from the eye sockets, and he laughs and clenches his fist, and then the smoke pouring out of his armor billows out to form a leering demonic visage... the party is going to be nervous. When it turns out that, on paper, said dark knight is a Fighter2/Cleric3, far below the party's power level, with a +1 Light Flail and +1 Full Plate that also functions as a Wand of Obscuring Mist, he loses a lot of his mystery -- but the goal is to keep the players scared, even though they radically overpower this guy by the numbers. [/QUOTE]

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