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<blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 6847921" data-attributes="member: 996">Past a certain point, a low-level monster ceased to be a threat (nothing new/strange there, really).&nbsp; Thus the 'feeling of advancement' PoV.&nbsp;&nbsp; But, no, guidelines aren't 'insistence,' not in any of the editions that've had them, not even when they've worked dependably.Sure, that's the point.&nbsp; You could increment a bunch of numbers in a kobold stat block by n, or give a band of kobolds n Warrior levels, so the band of kobolds who were a threat at 1st are still a threat n levels later, but they're still kobolds, all you'd've been doing is disguising that the party has advanced.&nbsp; Or you can let them casually beat down kobolds from the band that previously gave them a hard time, and let them feel that advancement, at the price of not providing a 'challenging encounter' (albeit, where no challenging encounter was logically called for).Or you could just fight more and more of them, and the occasional exceptional individual.&nbsp; In classic D&amp;D very large groups of much-weaker individuals became problematic, even comical, and even 'chieftain' types were quickly outclassed.&nbsp;&nbsp; In 3e, too, though eventually you could just bundle them into a mob (swarm) and applying levels could make exceptional individuals as tough as needed, and in 4e from standard to minion to throng (swarm) for many lesser enemies, and level-up formulas for exceptional individuals.&nbsp; 5e bounded accuracy makes very large groups problematic in a different way, but you can use increasingly large groups of very low-level enemies for quite a while thanks to Bounded Accuracy, you just have to be careful with how many in what circumstances...</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Tony Vargas, post: 6847921, member: 996"] Past a certain point, a low-level monster ceased to be a threat (nothing new/strange there, really). Thus the 'feeling of advancement' PoV. But, no, guidelines aren't 'insistence,' not in any of the editions that've had them, not even when they've worked dependably. Sure, that's the point. You could increment a bunch of numbers in a kobold stat block by [i]n[/i], or give a band of kobolds [i]n[/i] Warrior levels, so the band of kobolds who were a threat at 1st are still a threat [i]n[/i] levels later, but they're still kobolds, all you'd've been doing is disguising that the party has advanced. Or you can let them casually beat down kobolds from the band that previously gave them a hard time, and let them feel that advancement, at the price of not providing a 'challenging encounter' (albeit, where no challenging encounter was logically called for). Or you could just fight more and more of them, and the occasional exceptional individual. In classic D&D very large groups of much-weaker individuals became problematic, even comical, and even 'chieftain' types were quickly outclassed. In 3e, too, though eventually you could just bundle them into a mob (swarm) and applying levels could make exceptional individuals as tough as needed, and in 4e from standard to minion to throng (swarm) for many lesser enemies, and level-up formulas for exceptional individuals. 5e bounded accuracy makes very large groups problematic in a different way, but you can use increasingly large groups of very low-level enemies for quite a while thanks to Bounded Accuracy, you just have to be careful with how many in what circumstances... [/QUOTE]

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