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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7288334" data-attributes="member: 6775031">So, the topic at hand is how to challenge a party without using monsters that are way above the level of the party. Nobody's arguing that an adult red dragon isn't impressive or scary against a level 5 party.Just because we can try to mitigate some of the problems with high level games through judicious content generation and throwing the CR guidelines out the window, that doesn't mean the designers didn't drop the ball. They definitely did. They don't get a free pass, just because we can do some extra work to make up for their shortcomings.There is an issue with creating super-powerful monsters, though, which is where they fit into the world. I shouldn't need every ancient wyrm to be imbued with the Power Cosmic before it can burn down one lakeside town. But if I just give everything better stats, and pretend that it's the same thing, then I'm not even playing in that world anymore. Why did I buy the Monster Manual if I have to change all of the numbers in order for the monsters to be usable? (The previous edition of Exalted had a similar problem, where difficulties would theoretically range from 1-5, but starting characters could average 10+ successes on every check; as the ST, you're forced into the dilemma of either letting the PCs stomp over the entire setting with no opposition, or making everyone else equally impossibly competent in order to provide a slight challenge.)And unless I want to completely throw the XP rules out the window along with the CR guidelines, the first super-dragon that the party does manage to defeat will give them an entire level or more. You don't want to know how much XP the level 17 party in my game gained when they beat that Archmage-Lich-AncientBlackDragon-DoubleKraken.</blockquote>

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