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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 5314602" data-attributes="member: 51942">That's why you don't do this for random encounters, but for encounters the players recognize.  The whole point is that the encounter is recognized; it works when your campaign lasts for a broad level range fighting the same threat.A normal combat that's easier than it looks is something different entirely; that's asking for minions.  (Usually, I think PC's should know in advance roughly how hard a combat is going to be, but that's another discussion). Have you tried it?  Indeed YMMV, but in my experience this really works well.Different kind of combat.  You're not talking about a combat against a respected threat that you've simply surpassed, you're talking about a pointless cake-walk.  That's not the same thing at all.  And timing matters - you'd just levelled, there was only one combat in the session, and you probably were in the main-body of the story arc, working toward resolution and not in the summary; i.e. you're itching to get the job done, not to finish things up.As you say, YMMV, but in my experience some perspective granting combats are great.  That doesn't mean every combat that's way too hard or way too easy is good, it means you can use a select few such occasions to put things in perspective.You said all encounters outside a limited range are pointless.  I'm saying that it depends on what the encounter is for.  The range you listed (+5/-5) is too broad for those encounters that are supposed to be challenging and tactically fun, and it's unnecessarily limiting for combats that are supposed to be fast and story-oriented (even though a level-5 combat is already pretty much only a story event, not a challenge).Anyhow, I know what I experienced: these things work for me. They were great fun for all players.  I don't want to suggest DM's sprinkle unnecessary trivial combats throughout the campaign, though - salt to taste <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile    :-)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" />.</blockquote>

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