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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(Psi)SeveredHead" data-source="post: 6233751" data-attributes="member: 1165">I think that's group-dependent. IME, both as a player and a DM, facing a much higher-level opponent meant having trouble hitting them. The exact "okay" level variance would of course depend on optimization and how much content you allow.Before 4e even came out I playtested the pre-release version of Raiders of Oakhurst. Needless to say, there were no expertise feats! I don't blame the writers of the adventure for this. We didn't have monster generation rules and very few examples. The PCs faced level 4 jumping spiders and level 5 kobold swashbucklers (it was a reskinned hman that never got officially published) without too much problem. The end of the adventure involved a level 4 solo black dragon (effectively level 6 in terms of defenses, because of old solo math). Between high hit points (solos were x5 hp at the time) and high defenses, the fight got boring and grindy.Keep on the Shadowfell did something similar. The boss was an 8th-level elite (PCs were supposed to be 4th at the time, but mine were 3rd, against a defense-equivalent level 10 enemy!) and ... it ended in lameness. It didn't help that the opponent had a single encounter ability, and behind the scenes I just cut the boss's hit points in half to cut the fight short.A couple of new DMs with my non-regular group also thought it was a good idea to use enemies of level +3 or +4, or whole (non-boss) encounters of level +2 enemies. Not fun! (At level 3, we faced a level 6 shadar-kai skirmisher. The DM was excited about Dance of Death, and I agree, that's exciting for me too, but a level 3 elite skirmisher would have been just as tough and less frustrating to deal with. Same with the level 7 or 8 giant spider controller we faced at level 4. An elite probably would have hurt us more, but without the grind.)For my own group, I've avoided this (I learned my lesson after Keep on the Shadowfell). I found paragon PCs roll over standard enemies of level +4, but players of heroic PCs will complain if the level difference is more than +2. (One time, I ran a hard encounter with my 7th-level PCs, which included a named level 11 standard and an elite 8th-level enemy as a test. The PCs didn't even notice the level difference, but unanimously called out the 8th-level guy as being more dangerous. They also killed Mr. Eleven very quickly. You get a lot stronger at level 7!) Now when I make bosses, I always make them at least elites of the PCs' level, or a tad higher.If I'm looking for a hard encounter, I just build a level +4 encounter with twice as many bad guys (or make them all elite). If I use the same level I don't even have to calculate XP. For my last campaign, the last two encounters were level +4. The second last had an elite monster version of each PC (not a magic mirror example, but they "just happened" to run into enemies with the same classes) and boy does healing NPCs change the dynamic of the fight. It was so close, an enemy missing by 1 in the last round finally put the PCs over the top. (The attack was a Healing Strike-like power.) And the last one had a solo plus a bunch of enemies of the same level, and again it was close. I think that's more entertaining than a nearly-unhittable opponent.</blockquote>

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