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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 1625480" data-attributes="member: 1165">An encounter with EL equal to the party level will take up about 20% of their resources. It's supposed to be easy. (I'd love to use fewer but more powerful encounters, and I think a lot of other DMs are like that, but doing so will make spellcasters more powerful compared to other characters.) There should be about 4 encounters per day, but at lower levels characters may only be able to deal with 2 or 3.The group EL is 4. That's an encounter that would take away about 20% of their resources.I would suggest using several different types of opponents. So, instead of orcs, maybe use a couple of orc barbarians (they can have class levels, after all), a stealthy creature and a spellcasting creature (such as an aranea). Those types of creatures make better encounters than low-level mages.The encounter should still be balanced, but by going against your players' strengths it will be more difficult and (hopefully) more interesting.You can use a single powerful creature (eg one CR 3 or so) and several CR 1/2 or 1 allies. The powerful creature might actually be something dumb and act as hired help or a slave to the other villains. (For instance, you could use a warg or an ogre as a powerful creature, accompanied by goblins.)Martial players have a hard time with DR at low levels. Use this to your advantage <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> There aren't many low CR creatures with DR, however.You can use terrain - for instance, a 50 foot wide river (stream?) with archers on the other side. They have to find a way to lure the players to the river edge, however - perhaps use a grappling underwater creature as well. (That's really nasty... not only do they take damage from improved grab or constrict, but they're also drowning!)</blockquote>

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