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<blockquote data-quote="jayoungr" data-source="post: 7923800" data-attributes="member: 6702445">If that's your players' attitude, you can fix it.&nbsp; There are multiple ways to do that.In the first place, if you think your players are bored with the combats they're getting, you can make them harder or more interesting in some way!&nbsp; I firmly believe that keeping things interesting for the players is what a DM's job is, and blaming it on the system is (IMO) a cop-out.&nbsp; You just have to figure out what would hold your players' attention.Anyway, the difficulty of 5E encounters can't be calculated as finely as in 4E.&nbsp; Some abilities are really swingy, and the luck of initiative or a random crit can turn an encounter from deadly to trivial or back again.&nbsp; For example, I instakilled a level 5 PC with a zombie beholder's disintegration ray in Ravenloft last year.&nbsp; No death saves.&nbsp; Neither the DM nor the players should assume an encounter is going to be predictable.Or if you have a different sort of players, you could just do what the story seems to require, and to heck with the daily encounter budget.&nbsp; This is more or less what I do.&nbsp; I do try to make sure to soften the PCs up a bit before a final boss fight, but beyond that, I don't worry about it too much, and the players are fine with that because they're mostly there for the story, and they're happy if it makes sense.Speaking purely for myself, I'm also not the sort of DM, and my players are not the sort of players, who lose interest in the game if they're not afraid of their characters dying.&nbsp; I know there are many DMs who insist that the game is completely void of interest if the players don't fear for their characters' lives, and I believe that's really true for them, but it's pretty low on the list of concerns at my table.shrug</blockquote>

[QUOTE="jayoungr, post: 7923800, member: 6702445"] If that's your players' attitude, you can fix it. There are multiple ways to do that. In the first place, if you think your players are bored with the combats they're getting, you can make them harder or more interesting in some way! I firmly believe that keeping things interesting for the players is what a DM's job [i]is,[/i] and blaming it on the system is (IMO) a cop-out. You just have to figure out what would hold your players' attention. Anyway, the difficulty of 5E encounters can't be calculated as finely as in 4E. Some abilities are really swingy, and the luck of initiative or a random crit can turn an encounter from deadly to trivial or back again. For example, I instakilled a level 5 PC with a zombie beholder's disintegration ray in Ravenloft last year. No death saves. Neither the DM nor the players should assume an encounter is going to be predictable. Or if you have a different sort of players, you could just do what the story seems to require, and to heck with the daily encounter budget. This is more or less what I do. I do try to make sure to soften the PCs up a bit before a final boss fight, but beyond that, I don't worry about it too much, and the players are fine with that because they're mostly there for the story, and they're happy if it makes sense. Speaking purely for myself, I'm also not the sort of DM, and my players are not the sort of players, who lose interest in the game if they're not afraid of their characters dying. I know there are many DMs who insist that the game is completely void of interest if the players don't fear for their characters' lives, and I believe that's really true for them, but it's pretty low on the list of concerns at my table. [I]shrug[/I] [/QUOTE]

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