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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wyvernhand" data-source="post: 5416810" data-attributes="member: 97681">More foes and stronger foes both increase Encounter Level (EL). The issue is, things get really deadly really really fast. If you have higher CR creatures, on top of having more HP, they have MUCH better abilities. Those much better abilities might have a good chance of 1-shotting a PC, and unless you want a high turnover rate, thats probably not a good thing. A low chance to kill is inevitable in the game, but if most PCs need a 20 to save vs your bad guys abilities, its probably too high of CR.  Sure, 10 PCs might kill it in a round or 2, but it'll probably take out 1-2 of them with it.  And each combat would be like this, a roll of the Wheel of Fortune to see who's not coming home for dinner. The other route, adding additional combatants, is also danagerous. 1 kobold Adept 4 is CR2 = EL2. 2 of them is EL4. 4 of them is EL6. 8 of them is EL8. 16 of them is EL10. Even going with the 8 example and throwing an EL8 challenge at 10 level 5s, there's the potiential for 8 Scorching Rays in the first round of combat. Thats 32d6 damage, 112 damage average, with only touch attacks needed to hit. Even spread out, you'll probably torch 3 level 5 PCs in the opening round. If you send an EL10 group of kobolds, it'll probably be a TPK if the kobolds get a surprise round or win intiative.' D&D just isn't designed to handle and challenge 10 player parties. About the best thing you could do is to solve it like Diablo2 does. Extra PCs mean extra HP for bad guys, but then this still causes problems with things like save vs disables and other issues with status effects. If you boost saves too high to fix this, your caster PCs (and anyone with a save, like a Standstill using fighter or Staggering Strike rogue) will complain about how worthless their abilities are because the don't work. So in reality, this just further discourages PCs from direct HP attacks (because the base rules already reward such behavior).</blockquote>

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