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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8310126" data-attributes="member: 6790260">This! This exactly. The scope of your storytelling changes.A 4e game (for example, since it has a higher top level) could go from &quot;village protectors&quot; to &quot;the baron's favorite heroes&quot; to &quot;the king's trusted agents&quot; to &quot;saving the world from the lich king and riding off into the sunset and eternal glory.&quot; Or it could go from &quot;expert agents&quot; to &quot;power brokers between kingdoms&quot; to &quot;world-saving heroes&quot; to &quot;god-slaying saviors of all existence.&quot; In either case, the scope evolves over time, and things that were terrible challenges either become condensed into more-abstracted, higher-level challenges, or simply overlooked as no longer relevant.For that first group, a squad of kobolds is a serious threat at level 1. By level 10, a squad of kobolds is an obstacle on your way to dealing with the kobold warren. By level 20, a squad of kobolds is no longer even an obstacle, and even dealing with a kobold warren is pretty well beneath you, unless they're the advance force of some nastier threat, like an adult dragon. By level 30, adult dragons and their armies of kobolds are collectively a concern, but not a primary one, you have a world-ending superboss to defeat.As the scale telescopes out, you begin to lose focus on the lowest-level things, because they're just...not important enough anymore. They may, occasionally, reappear in the story, but only to emphasize how things have changed, how you just don't perceive the world the way you did back then. The mechanics themselves recognize (and adjust for, within discrete limits) this sliding scale of difficulty and relevance.Perhaps 5th edition's principle that monsters should remain a threat across a huge range of levels is acting detrimentally here? That is, it encourages DMs to think that the scope should remain more-or-less fixed, which means the difference between 5th level and 15th level kind of becomes just &quot;you roll a bigger fistful of dice.&quot; If so, I'd find that...well, rather ironic, given that 5e's &quot;it has the same mechanics always&quot; was meant to reduce the &quot;treadmill&quot; feeling and increase the realism and impact of the game.Hadn't thought of it that way, but yeah, I can definitely see it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 8310126, member: 6790260"] This! This exactly. The [I]scope[/I] of your storytelling changes. A 4e game (for example, since it has a higher top level) could go from "village protectors" to "the baron's favorite heroes" to "the king's trusted agents" to "saving the world from the lich king and riding off into the sunset and eternal glory." Or it could go from "expert agents" to "power brokers between kingdoms" to "world-saving heroes" to "god-slaying saviors of all existence." In either case, the scope evolves over time, and things that were terrible challenges either become condensed into more-abstracted, higher-level challenges, or simply [I]overlooked[/I] as no longer relevant. For that first group, a squad of kobolds is a serious threat at level 1. By level 10, a squad of kobolds is an obstacle on your way to dealing with the kobold warren. By level 20, a squad of kobolds is no longer even an obstacle, and even dealing with a kobold warren is pretty well beneath you, unless they're the advance force of some nastier threat, like an adult dragon. By level 30, adult dragons [I]and their armies of kobolds[/I] are [I]collectively[/I] a concern, but not a primary one, you have a world-ending superboss to defeat. As the scale telescopes out, you begin to lose focus on the lowest-level things, because they're just...not important enough anymore. They may, occasionally, reappear in the story, but only to emphasize how things have changed, how you just don't perceive the world the way you did back then. The mechanics themselves recognize (and adjust for, within discrete limits) this sliding scale of difficulty and relevance. Perhaps 5th edition's principle that monsters should remain a threat across a huge range of levels is acting detrimentally here? That is, it encourages DMs to think that the scope should remain more-or-less [I]fixed[/I], which means the difference between 5th level and 15th level kind of becomes just "you roll a bigger fistful of dice." If so, I'd find that...well, rather ironic, given that 5e's "it has the same mechanics always" was meant to [I]reduce[/I] the "treadmill" feeling and [I]increase[/I] the realism and impact of the game. Hadn't thought of it that way, but yeah, I can definitely see it. [/QUOTE]

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