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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9806065" data-attributes="member: 6790260">One of 5e's greatest problems is overcorrection. (Which, in fairness, one can argue that that was a great problem of 4e as well. Not of 3e though.)In this particular case, they wanted to correct for both 3e's ridiculous height of bonuses (e.g. CL stacking) and 4e's breadth of bonuses (which, I admit, was an issue)...but they produced something where, as you say, there is nearly no scaling in the first place, which robs things of the feeling of progression. It turns out, those alleged "treadmills" actually did serve a function, and trying to destroy them utterly wasn't necessarily the wisest design option. Nor was having your weapon of first resort also be your weapon of last resort (Advantage/Disadvantage) when it doesn't stack.Personally, what I think this means is that we need to drill down on how to demonstrate to the players that they have, in fact, "scaled up". Break the treadmill, not by removing the slope, but by making it so players can SEE that they're on a higher point now than they used to be. I don't think 5e's approach is quite right, but it has (again) a kernel of a good idea that can be teased out. Namely: We need monsters that are distinctive to tiers of play. Things that you genuinely "grow out of", and things you genuinely "grow into". Stuff that really, truly is too hard to fight when you're level 3 or 4, unless you've got some miracle--both because that's realistic (there are almost always things too strong for any given combatant!), and because that sets signposts.Something like 2/3 of 4e's scaling, rather than half, plus progression signposts like this. Clear, identifiable, graspable things that you can say "Look! We did it! We beat <X>!" or "Wow, we just cleared out a room full of <Y> without breaking a sweat, we really have gone far." Non-combat signposts should also get attention, but they're best handled by advising GMs on how to construct them well, rather than trying to artificially create universal ones, which wouldn't fly.</blockquote>

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