Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 9827129" data-attributes="member: 7035894">I avoid all of the issues about character power vs. creature power leading to unrealistic results by simply looking at the story narratively and choosing/adjusting the creatures as needed. For me the story always comes ahead of the game.So let's say the party, currently level 8 in my home game, are trying to sneak into an enemy base and have to get past some guards. I want this to be a bit of a challenge - not too hard, but not a walkover either. Because that's a good story, and if the party could just sneeze at the guards and they fall over, then why bother with the guards at all? I could just narrate, "Okay, you easily take out the guards, and then..."So I pick my guards accordingly. I figure CR 2-4 will probably give me an appropriate challenge, so I plug that level range into DDB and restrict the option to humanoids. Knights and archers fit the bill - great! I use those stat blocks for these particular guards.Had this been a level 3 party, the knight might have been a knight. But the party got stronger, so now that's a guard statblock.The last thing I worry about is justifying why a statblock has 18 strength or whatever. I could care less, and neither could my players, not that they would know. The important thing is the challenge: figuring out how to get past these guards.Edit: it's like an Indiana Jones movie - a Nazi soldier is always going to pose a certain level of threat. Indy doesn't "level" past them completely.Edit 2: On occasion, I might want the players to feel how much better their characters are compared to where they started, so I might throw in a really easy challenge. Guards they can one-shot. Locks they can pick in their sleep. Whatever. These typically wind up feeling either like comedic moments and/or a waste of time, so I'm pretty sparing with such trivial story beats.</blockquote>

Verification