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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Markh3rd" data-source="post: 7854532" data-attributes="member: 6782417">It has been my experience that the 5e monsters are balanced against a party of 4 characters. It's when you have 5-7 players at the table that running an encounter as written becomes trivial.  It is therefore incumbent upon the DM to raise the challenge of the encounter to match his players. I also feel that the environment is another "challenge " that isn't utilized as much as it should be to make a battle interesting. Also, certain combinations of monsters can elevate the difficulty and raise the threatening tone to the players. For example a froghemoth can be very scary to a party of 4 players as more than likely at least one player will be quickly swallowed, reducing their effectiveness by 1/4 in combat.  Combined with say a ghast that had been in the froghemoths stomach prior to the party arriving and suddenly the person in the stomach realizes they could get paralyzed while in the froghemoths stomach causing them and the other players to panic.Combine all that with the pond of the froghemoth being obscure (casters can't see it to target it, fireball would be resisted due to water) and difficult terrain (lake weed overgrowth) and you turned a straight up beatdown encounter into something much scarier.</blockquote>