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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Erechel" data-source="post: 7220409" data-attributes="member: 6784868">I'd say I partially agree with the above statements... on the combat pillar, mostly. I've just finished a long (almost two years) campaign, where the characters reached 14th level. And yes, it is very hard to challenge them in combat. The combat resolution tends to negate almost all ill-effects that would hinder the party, so they don't fear any effect from combat, so they don't really risk anything. The party was composed of a land human druid, an ancient's half-orc paladin, a human eldritch knight, a halfling assassin and a high-elf wizard. They were equipped with powerful magic items: the assassin was the direst here, as he used a +3 shortsword of demonic origin, a +1 cape, and custom talisman that gives the benefits of 2nd level Armor of Agathys, but everyone in the party was carrying at least one +2 weapon, and the paladin had an absolutely incredible although seemingly trivial item: the jumping ring, that allowed him to jump up to 60 feet each round. They killed a balor and four chasmes in 2 rounds like it's no biggie. The wizard, the EK and the druid never runned out of spells, although the Paladin was. The final fight ended when the druid (with 1 HP remaining) turned himself into an elephant and stomped the evil warlock, but ended with 3 characters down (not dead, but almost). But also they have struggled for an hour to bypass a heavily guarded watchtower with siege weapons, they spend the only 7th level spell the wizard has, and lost three knight henchmen in the process. And they don't even attacked the tower. They were stopped also by a smoke-filled dungeon.I would dare to say that the monsters CR is plain-out wrong. Or at least, it's just stupidly easy if you just use one of them. Let's see: a CR 6 monster has a value of 2.300, that's an easy encounter to a party of 4, whose Medium XP treshold is 2.400. A party of five needs 3000 XP to be minimally challenged: a CR 6 monster is just too weak to be taken account of. Magic items increase amazingly the power of the PCs, so using them would certainly "break" the game, specially at higher levels. That is partially corrected with the Legendary Actions, but most monsters don't have the stamina to fight for more than 3 to 5 rounds. And that affects the amount of resources the party should exhaust at higher levels (a wizard without short rests alone has 17 spells to cast, compared to the 9 of a 5th level one, WITHOUT COUNTING CANTRIPS), without counting the more powerful effects. And that in company of possibly 4 other powerful companions, everyone with its own spells or features. Compare with a boss: it may even have very powerful resources, but it is completely possible that the monsters don't even come to use them. Many of the demon's powers, for example, are a waste of resources: their action economy is moot (the Teleport of a demon should be a Bonus Action or even a Reaction, not an action, or it is completely useless), or they took a lot of time to be used effectively (and the durability of the monsters is... really bad). The problem here is that, with many monsters, the time of resolution is a drag, so they are delayed not only in the amount of rounds, but in the lenght of them also. A solo monster should be freakingly easy to use, but it should also increase a lot its survivability: not only by being a big bag of HP, but actually hindering player's possible actions (EG: passively provoking conditions and debuffs). A solo fight should be designed to last for many rounds, but each round to be resolved easily. Also, the solo monster should have a way to "be better" than any single character. But a fighter of 19th level could easily dispatch a Balor in 2 rounds, without magic items whatsoever. The "non-magic weapon resistance" is moot, although 5th edition isn't designed to mathematically require magic weapons, it has a good third of one of the main books dedicated to magic items, and should have some aquitance of this.That's saying: high CR monsters aren't difficult, and they are generally bad designed.With that considered, it is entirely possible to make the game run on higher levels. You need:a) To beef up your combats, EG using terrain, cover and range creatively, and creating obstacles. Also, you need to re-hash your monsters (possibly increasing their AC and HP).b) focusing on other pillars of the game, like Social Interaction and Exploration. Exploration, EG, is an underused pillar, focused only on "Oh, ok, a trap hit me. Heal me". Poisons, disease, exhaustion; this are excellent sources of danger and resource expenditure. You should enforce this to challenge your players beyond fighting. A sample of poison that doesn't really goes with the damage could be one that every 15 minutes increases exhaustion, or saps hit dice. Poison that only do "XdX poison damage" is just underwhelming.c) Using straight up the DMG variant rules to healing (gritty realism and healer's kit dependency). This forces using resources to heal, and generally increases the deadliness of combats. d) You could even house rule certain things, like magical healing ALWAYS requiring spending Hit Dice, and being injured beyond half your max HP causing the character to gain exhaustion.I don't really agree with [MENTION=12731]CapnZapp[/MENTION] that the AD&D DMG should dedicate its space only to magic items. That resolves nothing and only increase the problem. A new DMG should bring new ways to challenge player characters, like exploration and social encounters, and a rehash of CR.</blockquote>

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