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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4250289" data-attributes="member: 4937">In 3rd edition you had the limitation that monsters that had a CR more than 4 above or below the party's average character level being problimatic opponents.   At 4 above party CR, the monster easily overwhelmed a single character's defences so even if the monster could be defeated there was a high risk of 'unfair' death occurring.  At 4 below party CR, and particularly if CR was consequently low, you were reaching the point where a character's defences likely overwhelmed the monsters attacks to the point that it presented no real threat.  For example, even though you could in theory have a EL 13 encounter with only 1st level orc warriors, in practice such an encounter was was a push over for 13th level characters not really deserving the XP it was in theory worth.In 4th edition you have the limitation that monsters with a level more than about 5 different from the party's average character level are problimatic opponents for much the same reasons.  Even though in theory the XP might work out, if the level of the creature is more than about 5 from the party's average the encounter will be swingy in some fashion and you'd be hard pressed to craft one that was really interesting.</blockquote>