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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FrogReaver" data-source="post: 9782167" data-attributes="member: 6795602">Most battles should be easily winnable (no deaths) even with some bad luck and suboptimal tactics. Most players like encounters where they feel powerful. Not everything has to push them to their limits.  They also like overcoming the really tough encounters, but the nature of the beast is that the closer the tough encounter pushes them to their limits the more unlucky die rolls and suboptimal tactics for PCs or great tactics for NPCs are going to lead to pc death.Keep in mind you have a distinct advantage over your players in that you know exactly what abilities they have. They never know what they are going to walk into and it can take them a few rounds to really figure it out. I think it’s worth reviewing all battles to see if bad/good die rolls or tactics overly affected the outcome. Like if the players missed or a key spell missed or vice versa, or had done X simple thing instead of Y would the encounter have seemed much more difficult or easy?  I think too often people don’t account for such things before they adjust encounter difficulty overall and then players are in over their heads.</blockquote>