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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Geron Raveneye" data-source="post: 3875770" data-attributes="member: 2268">Yep, and yet encounters with that difficulty should make up roughly 15% of the encounters a group should have should be of that level, which means of 7 encounters, one should be of EL +1-4. So, to turn the question back at you, is an encounter with a very high probability of death for at least one PC a good encounter? According to the DMG, it is.So the CR system works...it just has the wrong numbers?The funny part about an EL=CR encounter is that it still is supposed to "seriously threaten at least one member of the group in some way". To me, seriously threaten still means there is a good probability of that PC being killed, if the dice roll the wrong way. Remember, the CR system is a pretty abstract system. An encounter that should take the standard group 25% of their resources to overcome might as well cost one character his life while the rest doesn't lose anything at all, since one character out of four comprises 25% of the group's resources. A case where a group meets a bodak, the rogue bites the dust and the other three kill the bodak with eyes closed would be such an encounter as well. Ideally, the resources lost are distributed across all members of the group, of course, but sometimes it simply happens differently.To get the details back, you quoted that number as a chance to kill a 20th level character with 5 creatures when you brought it up. I assume you're talking about bodaks again, correct me of I'm wrong. Dr. Awkward cited 65% as the limit the probability to roll a 1 on XdN approaches for N > 10 and X => infinite (which assumes a 5% chance of death from 20 bodaks or so). For 5d20, the chance on a 1 is more like 1-[(20-1)/20]^5, which is around 23%, if my math hasn't left me completely. So no, 66% is not the minimum. And unless you roam the Abyss, or a Bodak lair, you shouldn't meet that many of them in one encounter anyway. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /> To me, if all monsters conform to a relatively narrow spectrum of usability, then the design is boring and uninspiring. I'd rather have some monsters that come with an outrageously dangerous ability to make the players use their characters' abilities to their best before they meet the enemy in order to prepare for it, and reward that behaviour by actually making the preparations pay off. The challenge in those cases is not in surviving a toe-to-toe battle with the monster, but in finding its weakness and exploit that, so the monster is not a threat anymore.Obviously, we all are playing the game long enough that, for the player, rumors of a beast that kills with its gaze in a tomb or a veiled woman with a creepy taste for screaming garden ornaments is nothing but a blip on the radar. I can assure you that it still captures the attention of new players who are not as steeped in D&D lore (and sometimes not even in myth and legend) as most of us more experienced players are.Because I don't want the game to cater only to those who think every challenge has to be a combat that stretches on for rounds and rounds, even if the characters prepared themselves. I WANT some monsters to be glass cannons once their weakness has been exploited. If a group researches a bodak and prepares for it with Death Ward or a blindsight ability, they should reap the rewards of having cheated death, literally. It's the same as being clever enough to prepare and successfully cast Silence on a wizard and then clubbing him to death in 2 rounds. Preparation should lead to combats being over QUICKLY, that's why people prepare for it.And I want some monsters to have an ability that simply awes those who have not been jaded by years and years of play, who come into the game fresh and have to meet the challenge of a medusa's gaze, a banshee's wail or a cockatrice's tail for the first time, and who usually get a special thrill from having overcome death in a more tangible sense that loss of all hit points.I'm pretty sure you (and others) either don't agree to all this, or will tell me now that exchanging these abilities with other effects will produce the same effect. All  can say is that I don't think so, that a "save or be unconscious" gaze will never have the same impact on a player as a "save or death" gaze...but tastes vary, and can't be argued with. But I'd say taking out this option of the game simply robs it of a tool for the DM to create something special now and then (with some handholding in the DMG/MM for beginning DMs, etc...was all already mentioned in this discussion).</blockquote>

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