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Message: <blockquote data-quote="happyhermit" data-source="post: 7208127" data-attributes="member: 6834463">There are a few aspects to the problem of "encounter design" formulae that get exacerbated at higher level simply due to the nature of a game like D&D and can only be resolved by adding a host of restrictions on playstyles or by the GM adjusting the difficulty for their party. At high levels there is going to be a greater gap between; optimized and optimized parties, number and power of magic items, etc. Then we have playstyle differences which are probably the biggest factor really. Capn Zapp has said that they GM for players that put a lot of effort into tactics, but that as the GM they don't want to do that at all. Strategy, tactics, and other playstyle differences will have a HUGE effect on the difficulty of any particular encounter, and this can become even more evident at higher levels as both sides have more resources, stats, and tools to choose from. I am sure everyone who has played for awhile is well aware that player strategy can make encounters that are impossible as "charge in and fight" scenarios can be overcome with creativity, obviously the same goes for NPCs. So an encounter formula that might work for the most basic NPC tactics/strategy and the most basic PC tactics/strategy is going to be off whenever one of those varies, this isn't really much of an issue most of the time, it's easy for the GM to just sliding scale things but at the extremes it can cause issues. Obviously we understand that necessarily if the NPCs have an incredibly strong strategy (Tucker's Kobolds or something less funny) then encounter formulae become nearly meaningless, but it is almost as bad on the other side, if the NPCs have an incredibly weak strategy. So, I feel like I'm repeating myself but the point is (using default numbers) "Basic NPC tactics/strategy" + "Basic PC tactics/strategy" = OK, but slightly in favour of PCs at high levels if they have any magic items, etc. "Basic NPC tactics/strategy" + "Reasonably thought out PC tactics/strategy" = cakewalk, in many situations."Reasonably thought out NPC tactics/strategy" + "Reasonably thought out PC tactics/strategy" + adjustment for individual party strength = All good.</blockquote>

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