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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kalani" data-source="post: 6735265" data-attributes="member: 88085">When it comes to judging party power - I tend to make adjustments to the encounter difficulty on the fly. For the most part, I make such adjustments in respect to NPC tactics, and whether they are ruthless with their various abilities, or on the opposite extreme, whether I play them "overconfident" and have them provoke more opportunity attacks.An example on the difficult end: I had an encounter with 4 assassins in a sewer. Rather than take the predictable path whereby each assassin tried to sneak attack each round, I instead opted for them to focus fire on a single individual, making liberal use of ready and dodge actions. They also focused on splitting the party, which they did successfully when severely injured PCs fled to the outskirts of the encounter. At that point, I had them disengage, and pursue the injured PC - cornering them and KOing them in the process. They then took readied actions to attack any PCs that came to assist their unconscious ally. I had no intention of TPKing the party (but was willing to let one or two PCs die if the party failed to adjust to the assassin's tactics), and was paying very close attention to the ebb and flow of combat. My goal was to make it a very tough encounter, but ultimately let the party prevail. To that end, I adjusted my tactics to be just slightly in the PCs favor while still making them sweat. By the end of the encounter, I had KO'd 3 of the 5 PCs at least once each (with one PC being KO'd three separate times).</blockquote>

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