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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 6599945" data-attributes="member: 2011">True.However, in my experience, fights with equal level foes (Mirror of Opposition, evil adventuring party) are not deadly. Tough, but not deadly. I throw a same level evil adventuring party at my players once or twice a year. The reason I like doing that is that it gives me a rationale for handing out multiple magic items, and it's fun to throw PC abilities and tactics at the PCs.I've been doing this for a long time and I have never once seen the NPCs win. It's usually a tough fight, but not deadly. The reasons, IMO, are:1) PCs do not die at zero hit points. This is number 1. The healers get unconscious PCs back up.2) The DM is controlling multiple unfamiliar NPCs, the players are each controlling one very familiar PC. In other words, the players have had many encounters to find out what works and what does not work.3) The NPCs almost always have a lot less magic items (I sometimes up the level of the NPCs a bit to handle this).4) The NPCs are fairly well designed, but the PCs are often significantly optimized (even if that is just spell selection).5) Over time, the players often fill in party weaknesses in some way whereas the DM has not necessarily done this for the NPCs. He might not be aware of some of the NPC weaknesses.So the DMG might consider such an encounter deadly (the Druid in the MM is 450 XP, for a 4th level PC, that is 50 XP shy of deadly; the Mage in the MM is 2300 XP, for a 9th level PC, that is 100 XP shy of deadly), but in actual practice, the player advantages win out every single time (at least at my table). Now, someone might think that this is because I try to go easy on the PCs (which I really do not) or because as a DM, I suck at tactics (which may be true in some cases, but generally not). I typically do not, however, let either side have surprise because that's just too lopsided IMO. But my experience is that PCs win because they have these types of advantages. This is also the reason as a DM, I can throw tough or deadly encounters at players and I almost never get a TPK (the last one I remember is the first night with Irontooth in 4E when everyone was just learning the system, i.e. they did not have advantages 3, 4, or 5 and part of 2 above).</blockquote>

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