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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Petrosian" data-source="post: 90039" data-attributes="member: 1149">A lot of your party's strength will vary with items and gear. 10th level PCs should have around 49k of stuff each... do yours? As for El... in addition to the "does it always play to their strength" and such above, you must consider the overall pattern.How many of these encounters are of the "one fight a day" type as opposed to many fights in a day leading to a finale?How many of these fights involve surprise or prep time for the party? In my games i tend to see encounters running about 10% the enemy has real surprise, about 20% the enemy has a slight prep advantage, 40% both sides are even, and 20% the party has a slight prep advantage and 10% the party has total surprise.I can tell you that given the availability of spells like the bulls strength etc, haste, energy protectionsm etc... the difference between a party starting even and a party with 18 seconds (3 rounds) to prepare is tremendous. Similarly, my party is guilty of overkill... since they can haste the wiz and the sor and because they can dimension door 1/day using a ring, they tend to do so. Last series of encounters they were going in to rescue this village. Way before the village they encountered two displacers blocking their way. So the sor used his once a day ring, two improved invis, his once a day fly, a haste several magic missiles and... well he and the one PC managed to kill one displacer beast outright in 1 round and the other ran for the hills lit up by a faerie fire.As an 8th level sorcerers tho, he was not down a significant number of spells and several key items had been used and they were hardly out the door on their mission which was time sensitive.When they finally started hitting the village, the first few encounters, which were tougher than a pair of hungry displacers, were done using "no spells" because they were low already and needed them for later.Just vary the encounters perhaps more than you have been. Gradually up the PARTY level +X level of your encounters and finales until you find a good break point.In terms of worry about one level making a huge difference... "i cannot throw 15th level wiz cuz with 8th level spells" type of worry... use multiclassed villains... a Wiz13/Cleric-3 will be significantly tougher than a wiz 13 but wont have the AWESOME CRUSHIN POWER of 8th level spells that a wiz-16 would. A cleric-10/fighter-4 wont have HARM but will be real tough. MC allows you to up the versatility and endurance a little without necessarily upping the gross power.</blockquote>

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