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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7290004" data-attributes="member: 6775031">If you look at the NPC mage in the MM, it's a CR 6 monster that has 9d8 hit points and casts level 5 spells. If you compare it to a standard level 6 wizard, it has a few less hit points and its spell save DC is slightly lower, but it makes up for that with greater invisibility and cone of cold. We don't have a full suite of NPCs for every role and CR, but if we did have a CR 6 archer and a CR 6 barbarian and a CR 6 druid to round out the NPC group, then I would expect it to fare about as well against a CR 6 dragon as a level 6 party would - which is to say, they would stomp all over it.You want me to admit that an optimized group of PCs is effectively higher level, and should be fighting correspondingly tougher monsters, and there are two problems with that:1) That's not how the game works. The game says that the strength of a party is measured by its level, and challenges should be measured relative to that level. Moreover, it would be terrible if you did make the monsters stronger to compensate for the competence of the party, because it would render player choice meaningless. If the high-Charisma barbarian with low Strength only has to fight one kobold, but the high-Strength barbarian with low Charisma has to fight four kobolds, then there's no point in playing a competent character.2) Even if you don't care about invalidated player choice, there's nowhere left to escalate at high levels. Monsters can only get so tough. Ability scores only go up to 30. We know how strong the Tarrasque is supposed to be within the world, and we know the numbers associated with that, and anything that could threaten a high-level party (numerically) would melt the planet in half (narratively). Maybe if we got some stats for some actual gods, then we might have some context to provide a real challenge, but unless the PCs are the only high level adventurers in the entire setting...</blockquote>

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