Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6652837" data-attributes="member: 6787650">If you'll pardon the tangent:This hasn't been my experience. As a DM it would be fairly trivial to game the system and create &quot;Easy&quot; challenges which are actually quite dangerous, or Hard challenges that are easy. I do the latter occasionally as a reward/tutorial to my players: Here, have a Blue Slaad! (officially Hard for 3 6th-ish level PCs) and an allosaur to ride on while you learn the power of ranged kiting.I've also done the former as a way to make drow terrifying: Here, get utterly schooled by an Easy challenge (a handful of drow soldiers) because you're on their home ground. Technically, by DMG standards that made it a Medium challenge, but in any case it actually wound up Deadly: one dead PC, the other one unconscious and rolling death saves while the drow regrouped. It came this close to being a TPK and it scared the players badly. Now they are much smarter about venturing into drow territory, and they feel good about themselves when they e.g. kill 8 drow with no deaths at level 12. Even though that is technically a trivial encounter (not even Easy) by DMG standards, the established emotional context makes it an accomplishment.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="FormerlyHemlock, post: 6652837, member: 6787650"] If you'll pardon the tangent: This hasn't been my experience. As a DM it would be fairly trivial to game the system and create "Easy" challenges which are actually quite dangerous, or Hard challenges that are easy. I do the latter occasionally as a reward/tutorial to my players: Here, have a Blue Slaad! (officially Hard for 3 6th-ish level PCs) and an allosaur to ride on while you learn the power of ranged kiting. I've also done the former as a way to make drow terrifying: Here, get utterly schooled by an Easy challenge (a handful of drow soldiers) because you're on their home ground. Technically, by DMG standards that made it a Medium challenge, but in any case it actually wound up Deadly: one dead PC, the other one unconscious and rolling death saves while the drow regrouped. It came this close to being a TPK and it scared the players badly. Now they are much smarter about venturing into drow territory, and they feel good about themselves when they e.g. kill 8 drow with no deaths at level 12. Even though that is technically a trivial encounter (not even Easy) by DMG standards, the established emotional context makes it an accomplishment. [/QUOTE]

Verification