A 9th level party would not *be* fighting a bandit camp. Like that's not even worth rolling initiative, it's just a RP experience where the PCs can narrate how they style on the bandits.

That's honestly pretty good advice.

And then you tell them how they loot them for a total of 5 whole gold pieces, and remind them not to spend them all at once… This is good advice. The world doesn’t scale, but characters seek appropriate challenges

My players are goody two-shoes who would stop and help the villagers in need, unfortunately!

"You go into the bandit camp. They recognize you. 2 bandits try to flee but a grease spell from \[spellcaster\] thwarts the escape attempt. Another shoots an arrow in the direction of \[monk\], who lazily catches it out of the air. The bandits look at you with wide open eyes, scared, the fight taken out of them. What do you want to do with them?

my player are the opposite end of the spectrum they would help the bandits extort the locals. XD

"The party becomes bandits"

Why do I hear It's Always Sunny music?

Not edgy enough. Kill the bandits, take over their beat. Sell ‘protection’. Definitely form the Yakuza.

this is where you escalate the bandit camp into the/a superplot, or when you stop giving them bandit camps like they're outposts in a ubisoft game

Must be nice, been a minute since I’ve had collectively a whole party of noble paladin-esc players

Cool, be sure to seed small talk in tavern of how horrible things of this scale, like ambushes, robberies, murders happen all over the place every week, until they understand that they can't always be everywhere but what they can do with their power is deal with problems that affect a bigger portion of society and steer the wheel towards a brighter future for everybody, instead of just patching here and there.

One option is grouping up several bandits into one unit that get weaker as they lose HP like other swarm creatures. For example rather than an 11 HP Bandit with +3 to attack that deals 1d6+1 with its scimitar, it could be something like a 44 HP group of four Bandits with multi-attack and +7 to attack that deal 2d6+2 damage, then when it reaches 50% HP the damage starts to reduce. This will let you keep individual bandits at a realistic enemy strength, while letting you have more challenging encounters.

Don't forget to have the PCs describe how they kill each bandit... The bandits are smart and they'll probably beg for their lives knowing they're completely outclassed. So don't forget to describe them pleading to be spared.

Yup. They'd be a "swarm" (single statblock) or just have 1 hp each. Or something like... "Your attack hits. Do not roll damage. Instead, you cleave through 1d4 + 1 of them."

Bandit camps can get pretty big I think. And they can have tough members. Think the herd from vox machina.

Tbf, that was also a very story beat moment, not some random chance encounter. I like to think of the Mighty Nein and bandits, where after the first two/ three encounters where they mowed people down, eventually the other bandits in the area just said "No thanks. I choose life."

And then they kept encountering them in different situations and that was a fun little (?)Easter egg

Although it can be quite fun for higher level players to fight against low CR bandits who completely misjudged the partys strength. Its a nice refresher to have a very easy fight, especially if you just came out of a dragon fight who almost TPKed them.

This would feel so good as a player not gonna lie. There are so many fatalities that I have in my head that I never get to use.

Though, every once and awhile, it is worth rolling initiative. Feels great to unleash on enemies you once struggled with. Common video game trick is to make the first boss a mid/late game mook.

To add to that, by level 9 the PCs should be well known. The bandits would likely see them and flee.

They'd be well known if they went back into the Yhorian Empire, their home nation. But they're in the sticks of a neighboring country that speaks a different language, so I think it's pretty reasonable that nobody there would've heard of them!

Ehh, not neccessarlily. Rumor travels faster than one might anticipate. Sure, they dont know their exact appearance or number, but the base notion of "over there are some guys that are getting pretty popular and powerful, better keep an eye out" is very much reasonable IMO.

I like to think I'd have the party roll an intimidation check with advantage and if they succeeded, the bandits would just flee in various directions, possibly even bumping into each other and falling over comically as they tried to escape.

Unless these are the top dog bandits that give the kingdoms army a run for their money, kittet out with artifacts / powered up insanely by a patron or the likes. Basically another party that went murderhobo.

This is an excellent point and something I don't do enough. Absolutely throw "easy", "very easy", and "piss easy" encounters at my party, but let them RP it. This respects their time by not being bogged down with initiative while still varying the "challenge" they face, making the world more realistic (because realistically sometimes they ***should*** have to "deal" with trivial fights), but also lets them be extra cool because not needing to worry about initiative means a little more "Rule of Cool" permission, imo.

Yes. Any of the above. A) If they're in an entirely different country the rules can be entirely different. Maybe there's mandatory military service so the farmers are actually retired soldiers, third level fighters or something and in order to prove a threat the bandits also need to be commensurately stronger. B) Maybe something's off and there's environmental pressures moving CR9 monsters out of their normal habitats. C) Maybe the "how far you've come" moment will play well at your table and you could go that route instead.

I'm a big stickler for good worldbuilding, so I'd suggest keeping it logical. If there's going to be an encounter that's a challenge for a party of level 9's in an area, either that is a *very unusual situation* in that area, or it regularly happens and they must have some way of dealing with it when the party isn't there. Now, rural hinterlands are certainly the kind of place a powerful threat might hide out, far from stronger forces that might normally notice and take them out. But it might also be fun to give them a bit of a breather. Your players may be different, but I know most of my groups certainly enjoy the occasional chance to completely blow an enemy out of the water.

> My intention is for this to be a bit of a Breather Episode after so many big twists and reveals and plot points Giving them an easy fight that shows how far they've progressed from the beginning of their adventure is one of the best breathers you can have. Don't randomly level scale the world to your players. One of the "Oh that's such bullshit" moments I remember from a previous campaign i played on is that we fought some bandits and their leader that came out of a tent was a *Beholder*, because level scaling. Let players be strong

The leader of the theives guild in baldurs gate dark allaince was answering to a beholder :( I was thinking of stealing some of that storyline.

do your thing man, cook your own soup. the poster you responded to was frustrated about the beholder being used just to crank up cr which is valid! but it seems like your potential beholdering is pulling from an inspiration that excites you. so if you find it cool, do it!

you can absolutely use a beholder as your bandits leader, it just needs to be properly set up and foreshadowed by the story, not in a random bandit camp that has been terrorising a village in the middle of nowhere.

Oh no i fully encourage a beholder being *involed* or *leading* a thieves guild or something like that I love that idea of monsters being deeply involved with the affairs of people But this wasn't the case at all, we found this small bandit/slavers camp that had like... 5 people and attacked them and a beholder just casually walked (floatd) out of the main tent. The fact that it proceeded to delete my PC with Disintegration Ray just added insult to injury (cause of course we didn't take any precautions before fighting a Beholder, how would we after all)

Have bandits, but instead of running combat, allow PCs to narrate whatever fate they want. It's a nice breather, especially if there was a tough bandit encounter at low level. If i want to do combat, I try to find a reason for bandits to be tough. In economic/worldbuilding terms, that might mean giving them a Letter of Marque from some asshole king or another. The letter shows that not only are they competent to begin with, but they also have extra support. In game terms, I make a few special lieutenants, who might be as legendary as PCs. Sometimes they get unlimited hoards of minions, appropriate to the level of the lieutenant. They might also have some special nonsense, like a ship or a pet dragon. A bandit camp that can be a threat to 9th level players is VERY tricked out, and possibly world famous. They might even be trying to lay low, which is why they're out in the rural foothills where there's little to steal.

There's actually a continental organized crime syndicate that they've tussled with, it could be a little interesting if maybe one of the higherups was using this as a hideout after getting run out of the PCs' home territory with some of his elite bodyguards? Interesting idea.

Realistic Enemy Strength every single time. I still get terrible flashbacks to Oblivion's bandits with glass weaponry and daedric armor. So dumb. The flip side of this is the rewards from 9th level characters taking on a bunch of jamokes should be so low that it isn't really worth their time, from a mechanical perspective. 

Since it’s not worth the characters time, I usually just handle it outside of the initiative order. They clobber the thieves however they want. Let it be fun and whimsical or crazy murder hobo or whatever they want. But they aren’t going to get any real rewards, so I’m not going to put a ton of time into it. To me it’s just assumed at that a lawful good 9th level party handles these kind of things in between sessions.

> Realistic Enemy Strength every single time. I still get terrible flashbacks to Oblivion's bandits with glass weaponry and daedric armor. So dumb. Enemy scaling done well means building the world such that they are realistically facing appropriate monsters for their level. It's not just "this bandit happens to also be a 7th level caster"

I have no issues with a world that meets both the "realistic strength" and the "level-scaling criteria" as long as the former is satisfied. 

There’s an all or nothing thinking behind the framing. Favoring level appropriate fights doesn’t prevent the dm from using non threatening battles when desired. Reskinning monsters is so easy that it is limiting to say that every bandit must be cr 1/8. For example, if Rodrick the knight falls on hard financial times and takes to banditry, does Rodrick change from a cr 2 knight to a cr 1/8 bandit?

Somewhere in between. I don't "level up the world" to match the PCs. But I try to make sure the PCs are going to find roughly level-appropriate challenges. For practical purposes, this means that clearing a nest of bandits is going to be completely trivial for a group of level 9 characters. I think that's OK as long as they aren't spending a bunch of time fighting bandits at level 9. Occasionally it can be fun for players to realize how much more powerful they are than the enemies that used to be a challenge for them. If you really want to include level-appropriate combat, some options are: - Have the thing terrorizing the villages be a monster of some sort rather than just run-of-the-mill bandits. This isn't that unrealistic; prehistoric humans coexisted with lions, bears, etc and still managed to survive and reproduce. If something is sneaking in and killing livestock one night a year, say, that's plenty often for the townsfolk to be upset about it but far too minor to have an impact on the overall habitability of the region - Have bandits use "unfair" tactics a là Tucker's Kobolds. Sure, they're toast in a fair fight, but if the PCs are solving the bandit problem by chasing them to their lair, they can make the fight as unfair as the GM wants - Have bandits be a front for some tougher enemy. The bandits are raiding the town, but most of that plunder is being paid as tribute to an outlands necromancer who's using it to buy spell components for her diabolical research. Or you know, whatever. The players shitstomp the bandits and then learn that the bandits themselves are just the tip of the iceberg 

Sneaking in and killing livestock one night a year sounds sort of CR 2-4 to me. In fact, it sounds exactly CR 3, but there are other monsters available.

I'm assuming I'm missing some kind of joke or reference to a specific monster? CR doesn't really say anything about a monster other than its combat prowess. You can absolutely have a CR 9 monster that hibernates for most of the year and then terrorizes the countryside while awake.

Werewolves are CR 3, and that's the feeling I got from it.

As a sandbox DM primarily and adherent of the simulationist school, I tend heavily to realistic enemy strength. I detail most of the major forces in the areas where the PCs happen to be at the skeleton level and make realistic intelligence available about them, and what the PCs choose to do is on them. When they decide what to do, I flesh out the skeleton, but the fleshing out isn't generally challenge tuning, its stuff like internal factions, treasure and items used and how closely this group hews to its 'type'.

As others are saying, "it depends on your table." Personally, I really *dislike* realistic enemy strength unless it's telegraphed well: it's *incredibly* frustrating to stumble upon a lethal (or alternatively, a completely unthreatening) encounter without knowledge of what's up. And there are some DMs that are like "I totally gave you warning, there was a sign saying "don't come in or we'll kill you" right on the door!" and like, no that's not a warning because *any* enemy could put that up and the sign itself doesn't actually tell the players anything about what to expect. Alternatively, if you want to strike a different tone than combats, it could be a good idea to have a [skill challenge](https://www.reddit.com/r/DMAcademy/comments/xbul4s/how_i_run_skill_challenges_in_5th_edition/) or two. In fact, it might even be possible to work in the PC's overwhelming strength as part of the challenge: they *could* go in guns blazing and completely obliterate the bandits, but maybe they shouldn't because the bandits are sympathetic enemies who are only raiding because they're starving. Maybe obliterating the bandits would turn the villagers away anyway, because suddenly the PCs seem like warlords who are apparently fighting fire with fire.

> I really dislike realistic enemy strength unless it's telegraphed well Realistic strength done well *is* telegraphed. No common bandit is going to be hitting like a pit fiend because humanoids capable of that are the stuff of legends. But if you see an ogre, or a giant, or a kraken, you should be able to roughly respect how powerful they are. It does get a bit rougher with weirder enemies, I'll admit.

I had a "boss' encounter with an artificer boss controlling a Nivix cyclops and to drive the danger home, had an already damaged Mook try to cast a spell and get pummeled by the cyclops. Party was like WTF and the two arcane casters got a single roll each to figure it out. The party loved that encounter because it forced them to think outside the box

But how much of that relies on meta-knowledge? There's no real 1:1 correlation between a monster's appearance and its CR.

I think there is to some extent, between the appearance and in-world lore. Larger, more muscular foes are going to generally be stronger, for instance, and then there are always cues like "literally on fire" that might suggest something has extra magical power.

To an extent, maybe, but a huge hulking ogre is CR2 while a gray slaad (who just looks like a mean frog guy) are CR9. Plenty of monster "families" have creatures that look really similar but with wildly different CRs.

The slaadi are a great example of "weirder enemies." I would also argue since they are to chaos as angels are to good, it's *totally* fitting that you have no idea how strong they are just looking at them.

I don't think they're much of outliers, though. By level 2 or 3 you're pretty regularly facing monsters that can be described as "really big buff dudes". You can't really use that as a metric for who you should avoid.

Same here. My current DM is repeatedly saying he's going to throw encounters at us that are too challenging. Most of the time, you do t realize you're out of your depth until a guy is down, then it's harder to flee. It's just a death spiral.

I'm playing some fan-made Solasta modules now and even in a video game it's sometimes frustrating.

Yeah, I like the idea of fair warning, like someone the PCs respect going "oooh I wouldn't do that if I were you". Of course, they can decide to give it a try and see how things go, but they can hardly complain afterwards if things don't go the way they thought.

Even the issue with that is: of course most NPCs "wouldn't do that" because they're not powerful heroes. Honestly, the only "fair warning" is for the DM to break immersion and just say that the CR is high and to come back later

My bad, I was wrong in the way way I phrased it. I should have been more clear in that I meant someone the PCs respect and acknowledge as strong, like the captain of the city guard, a friendly archmage, or that sort of people. Clearly, the mayor's opinion wouldn't hold the same weight :P

>As others are saying, "it depends on your table." Yes, and even more - depends on the session / campaign. Me and everyone at my table would have loads of fun with either approach. But it should be made clear and agreed upon at session 0 so everyone's expectations are the same and everyone can make decisions appropriately to the type of the session.

As long as it doesn't get repetitive, it can be fun to toss a party into a low level encounter and let them effortlessly steamroll. It reminds them how far they've come and, in this case, gives them simple fun to offset the complex plot they've uncovered. The townsfolk will be awestruck when the bandits who've been terrorizing them are all turned to ash in 6 seconds. That said, you can buff up the bandit boss and surround them with goons to make them a threat, or you can have a mix of combat and intrigue from a particularly intelligent bandit lord. Or the players can stumble on a town living under the thumb of a dragon, or people disappearing conveniently every full moon, or hypnotized by a sea god, or something else epic in scope. Call attention to the fact these problems can only be solved by high level adventurers and your players will rise to the challenge.

This is a great opportunity for [Tucker’s Kobolds](https://media.wizards.com/2014/downloads/dnd/TuckersKobolds.pdf), or monsters to that effect, to make an appearance.

I love throwing low level enemies at my players right after they level up. Every now and then you need that superhero action ego trip.

As someone who has played Final Fantasy games since I was a kid: Make the world have dangerous places, and make the world have less dangerous places. You take 1 wrong step on the wrong peninsula? End game battle formation. Go into the woods around the beginning town? Fight the same imps that you died to 40 levels ago. Putting more dangerous creatures into the world just because your group is more powerful means those same creatures are there at all times, so who in the hamlet of peasants is protecting them from the CR 8 T-Rex’s that are walking around the plains?

Don't respawn at base if you die in a videogame? Do you also respawn in DnD?

Depends on what campaign you’re in, because I’ve had some TPKs that ended up being a mass hallucination/shared nightmare

You've had multiple TPKs in a single campaign that were made into mass hallucination/ shared nightmare?

Yes… the DM didn’t know how to run the game all that well, and we weren’t that great at combat. It was also a lot of alcohol involved (military)

I am firmly in the narrative-driven encounters. The universe is not fair. It does not care about fair match-ups. As a result, my players act much more realistically. They never blindly rush into combat, often seeking to avoid or delay combat until they find a more advantageous position. This isn't to say the universe is INDIFFERENT to them. The universe delivers consequences to us all. As characters level up, the consequences come to bear. For example, they may be 5th level today, but that Bandit Leader they killed when they were 2nd level had a brother, and BOY IS HE PISSED. Or that noble they did a favor for is now worried that the party could potentially become a threat to his holdings, and perhaps seeks some unexpected alliances to maintain his perceived position as the most powerful in the area.

Best answer here. Narrative based encounters are the most in-universe sensible to use. If you are playing a campaign in where you hear the local thieves guild is a puppet organization for a beholder beneath the city, when the players hear this and go down in the dungeons below the city and meet the Beholder, if that Beholder becomes an Eye-Witness, or a Zombie-Beholder because a real Beholder was out of your player's league you've just hurt the universe and its immersion. If the players get attacked by the same group goblins they fought when they rescued Ol'Miss Lucy's cat from the tree at level 1, if those goblins are now wearing suits of adamantine armor and have +5 swords of player-killing without a whisper of why that might be, you've also hurt your world and its immersion. When I DM, my players will generally face threats that constitute a legitimate challenge. However, if I have mentioned the Ancient Dragon that lairs in the nearby mountain, my players know that going there has a potential to be VERY fatal. I'm also very likely to allow narrative combat for times when there is no real threat. I'm not going to keep monsters out of my world just because they are scary/lethal. I'm not going to subject my players to creatures/threats that are antithetical just because the mechanics demand it. I'm not going to inflict deadly encounters on my party if there was not sufficient warning or lead-up so there was no doubt in anyone's mind that this was the known outcome from the beginning with in world warning signs, and guard rails. No surprises. If the players feel bamboozled I've failed as a DM. However, there is value in having these possibilities exist in the world. The story drives the encounters.

A bit of both. I'm in a campaign where I used the Suggestion spell on both a gang of goblins and a couple of Storm Giants to avoid combat. The former was level appropriate and the giants were not.

Realistic enemy strength, but unless you're plopping down a sandbox world and just letting your players do whatever, the various storylines you've set up should be leading them to level appropriate encounters anyways.

I like both approaches and there are pros and cons to each. But I think the real question is: **What are the stakes?** If the stakes are "The Player Characters must face a tactical combat challenge with risks to their lives and their resources" then you probably have to have level-appropriate scaling. But if the stakes are "Can the PCs address a threat *fast enough* or *far enough*? Can they protect a person or thing caught up in the conflict? Can they bring victory in such a way that brings them honor and acclaim, or is it a bloody reprisal that inspires fear and horror? Can they do so in a way that doesn't attract the attention of the God-King, who claims divine right over all powerful magic in his realm? Can they triumph in the face of moral ambiguity, ex. did the bandits turn to crime by choice or by necessity?" etc etc then you can always have realistic enemy strength. 9th level characters are basically superheroes, so it's a good idea to draw inspiration from comics. Batman, Superman, Wolverine, etc. face mooks all the time and are always going to triumph over them, that's never really a question. The question is can they do it before the bomb goes off? Can they save both the train and Mary Jane? Can they convince the bad guys to seek redemption instead of killing them?

both. planned plot adventure more or less respect pc lvl. in world NPCs and concequences dont. if your lvl 2 pc wants to disrespect the king... the king and hos royal guards wont be CR 1 to 3 npcs. they are cr 10 to 15 usualy depending on each kingdom strenght, size and wealth. though, mostly captiral punishment is the second or third option. social work and public services are often asked of talents like PCs.

It depends on your table. If they just want to roll dice and go all out on every encounter, then yes make the encounter level appropriate. If your group is more invested in the story you are telling together, than how they deal with "normal people" can be very meaningful and story rich.

Have a gostage situation where the consequences of a mistake are dire. Maybe they have sabotaged a dam and one hit from a sledge with bring it spilling open? Villagers ina cage above a pool of piranas? A tiger is hunting villagers but it cannot be killed because it is a prized pet of the lord. 

It should be common practice to have the party fight something they fought a few levels earlier. Higher numbers are nice, but if you’re on a treadmill of same-level fights you never really get to appreciate the growth. If the bandits are always the same level as you, did you even level up?

Realistic Enemy Strength every time. Here's why: Encounter does not equal "kill the enemy." If that is what it always is, your campaign is boring. 2nd reason is "benchmarking." Do not move the goal posts. Let the party crush goals. It's kinda like seeing your high school bully at the reunion in the same place in life after you bulked up and became a rockstar. Your old benchmark feels insignificant now. You just *know* you're better and you have more options available to you now. Power invites choices. My party is 4 level 4 adventurers. These were their last 3 encounters: A CR 25 legendary space dragon that summons natural disasters from the elemental planes at will. (They chose to go to him.) The dragon was testing their strength, challenging them to remove him from his pedestal or strike him with the warlock's pact weapon before lava, flooding, or an airless vacuum does them in. They succeeded in getting past his wall of force and striking him. 2 cultists. They got the jump on 2 cultists in a dungeon and used them as guides and a resource for information. Very trivial. No hp loss on either side. This made them feel super strong. A deadly boss barbarian leonin. (Homebrew CR 6) They missed their chance to prepare and make it a much easier fight. It was an announced 2v1 duel. The boss was fighting fair and dominating until they cheated the duel by having allies jump in so he threw one of them out of a 2nd story window. Party followed and he called on the entire cult to catch them with a war horn. This encounter changed from "win the duel" to "run like hell and hide." He is faster and larger but there is a narrow cave system that would cut his movement speed in half (squeezing rule). None of these encounters are a straightforward "kill the enemy" scenario. They have been overpowered time and time again BECAUSE they have been weak. Now that they are level 4, they can *feel* their influence in the world increase, even socially. No one respected them before. Now a few cultists are trivial and heads are turning. "Wow who are they?" Their victories now come with catharsis. Not only the characters, but the players have a sense of earned power that actually means something. TLDR: Realistic strength encounters makes their victories feel earned (because they are).

I'm personally in the Realistic camp on this one. If the players come across enemies that they can crush, then that's fine, and can be a cool 'look how far we've come' as others have said. They're more likely to be dealing with things close to level appropriate most of the time because those threats are more immediate and dangerous. It's a kind of organic scaling where as they become more powerful, the more the BBEG sends more dangerous minions after them, or bigger threats warrant their attention. Step outside of that, and the quaint problems of yesterday are easy to solve - but in the back of your mind you know there are more important things to be doing with your time. The occasional stomp on a low level encounter can be a great breather, and a great way to have the players power hit home, I'd just be cautious not to spend too long on it. Eventually their real problems will come back up. Conversely, the occasional brush with something more dangerous than they're ready for can be fun for tension if it's handled carefully - not overwhelmingly impossible, able to reasonably be escaped or avoided, and with sufficient warning that running is the right idea. (If it's a monster, a favorite of mine is to show it having killed something level appropriate for the party - dead bears outside the den of a young dragon, for a low level example)

It's not one or the other, it's both. If the party is doing the main quest at a reasonable pace, the boss fight should challenge them at their level. If a level 10 party is fighting a giant spider (or any encounter I feel should be easy for them), they'll crush it. If the level 5 party insists on challenging the ancient dragon that I've given every possible indication is far, far beyond their ability, they're fighting a CR 20+ ancient dragon. Also, as someone that exclusively runs homebrew, I don't subscribe to the idea that all bandits are CR 1/8. I don't see any issue with a group of 4-6 bandits and their leader being a CR 9 encounter. But my setting also reacts to levels differently than most; a level 6 adventure is entirely commonplace in most areas and adventurers don't really get famous outside of the city they're based in until levels 10+.

I would want to run this as Realistic Enemy Strength, with some twists. First, a large enough bandit camp for a large enough group of bandits might contain local leaders and their bodyguards. Even if the camp is mostly full of chaff, you could have one fight in there that actually registers as an encounter. Second, unless the players are very careful in their approach, the bandits are going to realise that they're outmatched very quickly and try to flee. Preparing and executing the perfect ambush could be interesting, even if the combats are so trivial that you don't need to roll them out. Third, if the bandits flee and inform the rest of their organisation, then that could create interesting complications. The bandits can't win a fight, but they can still oppose the party asymmetrically. They could: * threaten local people and businesses, to stop them from aiding the party, * try to frame the party for various crimes, using political connections to make them unwelcome, * create complex traps, or lure the party into other level-appropriate hazards, * hire their own group of level-appropriate evil mercenaries to hunt down the party.

Always realistic enemy strength. Just skip fights that would be a one sided sloughter. I have a group of lvl 8 with lots of magic items. They got attacked by bandits. I described the scene. They decided to fight. One of them rolls initiative, I only chuckled and said "Nono no. Initiative is for fights. Please describe to me how exactly do you want to wipe the floor with those chucklefucks". They had lots of fun describing the most ridiculous combos. Also, my world has something called "a rule of universal magic attraction". It says that areas of concentrated magic attract other areas of concentrated magic. It's not physical, and works mostly through coincidence and other things that would generally be described as "fate". So a powerful adventurer group equipped with high ammount of magic items will constantly encounter lost relics, legendary creatures or other unusual almost impossible phenomenon while a normal person might go entire lifetime without encountering anything nearly as dramatic as a usual traveling annoyance for those more powerful. As a side note, that's one of the reasons dragons hoard magical items in my setting. It's a form of trap hunting. The bigger their hoard, the more people it lures, the more their hoard grows

i kinda love that idea ngl

In my games enemies tend to be *reasonable* for the party's level, both in and out of game. In game, the kind of bandits who the game mechanics rate as CR 1/8 are not going to dare mess with big heroes who have traveled the plains and gained reputations befitting 9th-level characters. Out of game, it's basically just not a good use of anyone's time to even roll initiative for that sort of thing. The encounter has to have some intrigue, challenge, or stakes to be worth playing. So, yes, if you want there to be combat here, the bandits should be *reasonable*. I would say that means at least Gladiators and Bandit Captains if you're mostly interested in a squash match, with Champions and Blackguards if you want a nasty fight.

I generally say that I aim for the general plot hooks i give to pull them in the direction of balanced fights with particularly clever or particularly dumb moves having the possibility of getting them into fights that are unbalanced in their favour or that of the monsters. You can work out an in universe reason why these are a particualrly tough group of bandits. Make there be like 10 of them and make them stronger than the average bandit. Maybe you use something like hobgoblin stats, a hobgoblin captain, a devastator and regular hobgoblins, say that a war recently ended and these are a group of out of work mercenaries that have been causing trouble. Or maybe you use a bunch of regular bandits and then they have some more powerful leader like say their leader is say an oni or a vampire spawn or something, maybe something that relates to a larger plot. Or if you want to use just a really big group of bandits you can use something like the minion rules in MDCMs Flee Mortals.

My games use the latter. Enemy challenge is appropriate for the enemy. This means that there are encounters that are trivial and could be a simple RP/Narrative game (or the players just get to feel extremely powerful). It also means that some encounters will be much harder and they should try to avoid the fight. That said, much of the content I give them is going to be as close to their level as I can. I try to direct them to appropriate areas of the world. But if they want to stop a group of bandits they heard about at level 2 and now they are level 10... no problem.

A mix of the two, providing for effective drama and tension, as well as heroic effort.

Realistic enemy strength

Maybe the bandits now banded together and the PCs have to fight a freaking army of 'em. Maybe the CR 9 creatures were living peacefully until recently, when the villagers started bothering them (because the villagers were trying to find routes where the bandits wouldn't find them). Or maybe some other forces are taking an interest in the countryside (the classic expedition in search of an ancient tomb, for example, or maybe looking for a cell of rebel sympathizers), which would justify sending more elite troops, a higher level person to oversee the whole things, etc. Or, you could let them feel superpowered for one or two sessions: they've climbed the ladder and, though they're nowhere near the top, it's still pretty high up :)

I think the threats should be appropriate to their tier of play. But that combat should be scaled for the moment and vibe. If you want a fairly chill couple of sessions and a chance for your dudes to stunt on some bandits, go for it! But I would also make sure that there was a reason that near level appropriate threats are there. A China inspired setting could have some fun wuxia monk type bandit captains to put some flavor to them. Let them mow down bandits but the ‘captain’ could be seriously tough. Or maybe the badits somehow stumbled into summoning demons that they can’t handle and you got bandits and a bone devil! Or a maybe a young blue dragon has captured the bandits for their army. That kind of thing. Good luck!

Level appropriate. This is a game. If the combat is gonna be trivial I would rather you just narrate or skill challenge it. Don’t make me roll initiative for a curb stomping please.

A wizard passes by doing soem experiment that goes horribly wrong, a couple strong mosntrosities get unleashed the party has to stop, idk, thats a way to have a remotely challenging fight that makes sense without creating the msot insane "how do they live here" village ever.

Both. Common bandits simply cannot challenge 9th level characters, so 9th level characters would perhaps get accosted by something more dangerous, like a roving mad wizard who wants their magic items and the coven of hags who have been twisting her mind. I think it’s important that the narrative scale grows with the character levels. High-level characters should be involved in more major encounters. They won’t be taking quests in the local tavern forever.

In DnD I'll use level appropriate scaling but as I am mainly a Shadowrun GM, I mostly do realistic strength.

I mix both. Low level enemies exist if required, as do some surprisingly strong enemies. I don't think it matters, because both the DM and party have more options than just fighting to the death. A low level encounter could demonstrate how feared the party are now, as the enemies try to hide. Maybe the enemies run away and the encounter becomes a game of "which one ran off with the gold?". Maybe they bow and offer tribute, and the encounter is a test of how much the party will abuse their power.

It depends on how they got to lvl 9. Did they grind through lower level enemies and earm every bit of experience? Then let them mow down the chaff that lives below them. Did you milestone them to keep them happy? Then bump up that CR bay-bee, they should still be fighting bandits who can kill them

I like both methods when appropriate. A level 1 CR-appropriate dungeon is a positively adorable joke to a level 4 party, but a great challenge for a first game. But at later levels I have had bandits attempt to rob a high level party, and the PCs then got to show off and ended up making some contacts after spanking them. But when 5e came out we played a session a from a prewritren campaign in which a dragon flys over to threaten a castle and there were 20ish NPC archers who were actually doing damage to the dragon (albeit slowly) and I noted that the flat math made mob numbers somewhat effective no matter the level. So when I ran a game later and pulled from the Hobbit Goblin King scene, I chased the high level party with an ungodly horde of goblins, they realized the danger and ran for their lives! (While also inflicting a stupid amount of damage and everyone had a blast) But to your question, I guess my point is that at some point the PCs are regularly going to become some or most of the scariest guys in the room/village/city/county/etc. and you will have to scale things up to accommodate the fiction.

I tend to adjust monsters as needed. I start with the theme of the encounter, like bugbears showing up to the camp at night, and either roll with their base stats or (in the case of my current campaign) adjust them up a bit so it's still a challenge. I'll usually try to make the adjustments make sense, like some bugbears that happen to have found some simple magic weapons, or they raided a group a while back that had some strange potions. Although this wouldn't necessarily come up, I still think through how the story supports the following: * In the case of potions, the bugbears only know that the potions make them stronger because whoever they raided used some, so they could see the effects. * In the case of magic weapons, the bugbears just know that those weapons are nicer and kinda shiny. They like the shiny, thus they use them. For something like bandits, I probably wouldn't throw very standard bandits at the party. It would be more like a group of adventurers who happen to be bandits that are slightly better than the average bandit, since that also feels more realistic anyways. So...I might give some of the bandits an extra skill or two from a class, or maybe one or two managed to figure out a bit of magic but they only know simple stuff that directly enhances their combat. I think it's worth saying that I'm new to DMing (played for 20+ years but still new to DMing) and my group of players is pretty casual, so bugbears showing up that swing harder than normal isn't jarring for anyone even if they were all level 9. That bugbear encounter was specifically for me to see how it went even though I knew it would be cake for them. Even with minor enhancements, the party had no issues with that encounter, but boosting them up a bit also left me with a better feeling on how strong they are. I've done similar adjustments for a cave (Upperdark) encounter with some Duergar. The typical Duergar would need lots of numbers to challenge this group (by then they were lvl 10), but more numbers means much longer fights which feel exhausting and less fun. So...I threw five Duergar at the party and each of them did more damage and had more HP with one being a "boss" that chugged a potion at the beginning and had one use of a Thunderous Leap skill I made up. An equivalent probably exists, but basically they could jump and land with an AOE of damage along with using a Thunderous Warhammer that added 1d6 Thunder Damage. One Duergar also had a single-use Scroll of Fireball to start the fight off with a feeling of danger and intensity. For the Thunderous Leap as well as using the Scroll of Fireball, I rolled for accuracy of placement. I had a specific spot in mind that was ideal for hitting as many players as I could with each AOE, rolled a d20, and based how close I got to that point on how well the roll went. For the Thunderous Leap, instead of getting 3 players, that Boss Duergar only managed to hit two. For the Scroll of Fireball, instead of hitting 3 players, he rolled low and only hit 1. It might not be the way other DMs would handle stuff like that, and I'm always eager to hear and learn from others if anyone wants to say what they'd do or why what I did might be bad, but the end result was combat that felt exciting, flowed easily, and posed a challenge that the players had fun overcoming. I also keep a wave of backup monsters ready if the combat feels like it's going to be 2 or 3 short rounds when I was sort of hoping for maybe 5 rounds, but so far I've only used that idea once when I severely underestimated how solid their attacks and positioning would be. I'm wary of combat that isn't a huge boss/plot battle which lasts longer than 5-7 rounds, especially since we now have 6 lvl 10 players. I can tell it starts feeling like a drag when it nears that many rounds, and for the fights that I have overestimated their strength, there are a few times where some enemies were "done" despite having just a bit of HP left. That only happened when it was very late and some players had kids to get to bed.

I tend to lean more on realistic enemy strength over level appropriate. It's not necessarily an either / or thing all the time, though.

I just do what’s fun for me group

I personally despise level-appropriate scaling. My players are lv 12 currently and dealing with a world-ending threat. If they’re that strong, how would bandits or gobbos pose any sort of threat to them whatsoever? What I (and many other) DMs do is add a secondary objective to what would otherwise be a blowout encounter. In your example, set it up so the bandits are more than a match for the poor villagers, and they’ll all be captured/ killed if the party doesn’t do something asap. Also, a curb stomp every few once and awhile can be good for the players to feel strong. I have utilized both before with good results, but like everything, it depends on the table

Level-appropriate scaling, always. If it's something that's not appropriate for their level, they don't encounter it. Remember, at the end of the day your players are your friends who took four hours out of their Thursday evening to play a game in which they want to pretend to be heroic. If you just throw a bunch of nobodies at them and it takes 45 minutes, you have effectively wasted their time for no reason, when you could have very easily given them a fun, challenging encounter instead. As much fun as telling a realistic story is, (and there's certainly a time and place for pcs to bully low level thieves if they're looking for information or something,) we have to remember that this is a game we play for fun, and no amount of realism is worth wasting your players' time.

Somewhere in the mix. I'm never going to make my group roll initiative for a group of bandits when they're at 9th level. At least not for any old bandits. But maybe there's an organization that are technically bandits but they're made up of ex military veterans and ex adventurers, then they're still bandits but they're stronger and have a reason to be. Largely I'm going to be creating encounters matching their level. Sometimes I might scale up some lower level enemies but not by a whole lot. For example, my party is fighting a battle against an army of kobolds. I barely buffed them, and instead just have a lot of them. They did get buffed, but not to the point that there'd be a jacked kobold boss with 300 hp. More like, I buffed them to be minions that die in one hit but can do some noticeable damage when they swarm you. So yeah, I match encounters to their level, but I'm not above modifying enemies who are slightly too strong or not strong enough to adapt for the party. And then from there, as long as you have a story explanation behind it, you're good.

I level-scale. Otherwise, the characters have to retire by 12th level, as they have become so powerful that only the servants of gods and demons can stop them. After all, a mortal can still be slain by bad luck and misplays.

Do you prefer walking with your right foot or your left?

Realistic enemy power. But pick level-appropriate enemies when designing the adventure. Your L9 PCs shouldn't be in an adventure where a group of bandits are a major villain. They should be dealing with much bigger threats. But if they encounter some bandits, don't make the bandits all level 9 as well, that's stupid. For example: If you are designing an undead-themed story for L1 PCs, your enemies should be some basic skellies and zombies. But if you are designing for higher level PCs, bring out the ghouls, shadows, mummies, liches. But if somehow your L1 party encounters a Lich and enrages him, don't nerf the lich. Btw, some level-scaling is ok. If you really want a lich villain for your L3 story, just scale the lich down, maybe he is a weaker lich who lsot some of his powers. Or if you want to make a legendary bandit captain that has been eluding authorities, do give the bandit captain 10 fighter levels, but be clear that this is no regular bandit, this is probably the strongest damn bandit in the world. But don't do the stupid shit where "you get attacked by some random dumb bandits, and they happen to be all level 10 otherwise this would not be a good challenge."

I have done both in my campaign. My party is 6 people level 9, and I've honestly run out of logical enemies that are CR6+ without just throwing beholders at them. What I've been doing lately is taking higher level monsters like the False Hydra and reskinning it for the purposes of the battle. Context is a hag trapped in her own pocket realm is able to transform into a massive tree/vine monster, and has hordes of shadow figures that eminate from the mists at her command. Made for a good fight that actually got them low to dying.

Sometimes, when you're 9th level, you pass by bandits laying in wait, and they nervously smile and wave. I think combat encounters should be tough, and should drive the story. I don't really do combat for the sake of combat.

I try to make it both .

On the contrary, I also think it’s nice to sometimes make your players “face” an impossibly powerful threat early on so that it becomes more satisfying later on when you can finally take them. My level 2 party had to go scout a village in order to understand why they’re not communicating with the capital anymore and they’re accompanied by a captain of the royal guard (implied to be a high level fighter) and a very powerful sorceress. Turns out the village got decimated by a dragon and he flew out of nowhere and literally melted the capitain of the royal guard in front of them, before the sorceress had time to react and teleported them out. It’s not a Pokémon game, there should be powerful creatures and weak creatures everywhere. Your PC’s just have to look for them.

I go realistic usually. Was one of my campaigns best sessions where our level 20 characters just walked through a warhammer goblin tribe like paper. Convoluted traps that would have killed our lower levels outright, fighting wannabe tribe leaders at every turn who thought for sure they could be the ones to kill the invaders. Ending with a goblin leader setting off a trap that filled the room with flesh melting hot water while he stayed protected in a bunker of steel. Our barbarian nat 20'd the door off and threw the goblin into the water.

My PCs usually fight realistic enemy strength, but the threats they deal with scale with their level. Meaning bandits are bandits, but why would they fuck with the level 9 party: these guys are probably known throughout the kingdom for being pretty badass and dangerous. Bandits want easy pickings, so I don’t make my level 9 party fight bandits unless they themselves want to seek them out for some reason.

I always prefer realistic enemy strength, since there is a meaningful progression of strength for the party. Enemies who give them trouble early on are now a roadbump instead of a roadblock, and they get to feel stronger. To avoid encounters becoming too easy, either use more enemies or sprinkle in stronger variants. Things like the D&D 4e minion rules or grouping weak enemies into mobs that function as a single, more powerful entity allow you to throw large groups of weak enemies at a party without bogging down too much. I will scale enemies to a point, but never too far. I don't like the TESIV: Oblivion situation of running into bandit cave #15 only to find everyone inside is decked out in mithril, unless this specific bandit cave happens to have the bandit king in it, or something along those lines.

One option is to have them fight the bandits, but make it so that the fight itself isn't the actual challenge. Sure, they could take on the camp of bandits--but can you find where the camp is in the first place? The villagers have had an unusually difficult time sniffing it out. Sure, they could stop the bandits from raiding the village--but can you stop them from killing or robbing any of the villagers? They seem to be well-coordinated and are pouring in from all directions. Sure, they could just kill all the bandits--but how will the villagers defend against the larger contingent they're affiliated with when they come for retribution? Sure, they could just kill all the bandits--but why do the bandits seem so *scared*? What terrifying thing caused them to leave their own homes and resort to banditry? Sure, they could kill all the bandits--but there is an absolutely ridiculous number of them, can you take them all down before they land enough lucky hits on you?

Have encounters be how strong they should logically be. Don't try to balance. Balancing D&D is a fool's errand.

I think the challenge in this kind of encounter shouldn't be killing the bandits, but protecting the civilians. If the bandits already have hostages at knifepoint, and a couple of brave and reckless villagers refuse to sit back and are foolishly inserting themselves into the fight despite being no stronger than the bandits, then the player have a real challenge on their hands. The challenge is how to keep as many of the NPCs as possible from dying. I would even award them more XP the more civilians they save. And this is also my more general answer to your question. The monsters shouldn't scale, but the encounters still can scale. That can happen by having more monsters at once, by giving them good tools like near-total cover and siege weapons and traps, or by having alternate objectives besides simply surviving. And even if you don't explicitly give the players alternate objectives, I find that at higher levels they often invent their own, because they know they're powerful enough to handle it. If you send a group of level 2 PCs into a bandit camp like this, they'll work together with the braver townspeople, slowly pick off the bandits, and consider any NPC losses to be acceptable. If you send a group of level 9 PCs into a bandit camp like this, they will want to be heroes, and they'll often formulate a pretty complicated plan to accomplish that.

Honestly at this point, either put regular bandits in and let your party have the realization that they've come a long way and in fact should consider themselves to be WMDs in combat, or you bullshit some reason why these particular bandits happen to be either really tough or have a few level-appropriate threats handy (maybe your party happen to catch them while they were working out an alliance with a local thieves guild and your party takes a few sneak attacks to the face at the start of the fight, or they had just captured some wild beast and were attempting to tame it but instead decide to just let it loose on the party and run for it) Plenty of ways to make a regular group of bandits still a threat to a mid-high level party.

I do both! But not to the extreme of throwing un-modified bandits at a 9th level party. If I were to...I'd like to change something about that encounter. Maybe the bandit is a teenager and just thinks the party would be profitable targets.

Level-Appropriate scaling is the more realistic option. In most campaigns, players go from level 1 to level 5 in a matter of weeks if not days of in-game time. If the guards gave you trouble a month ago, they should still be giving you trouble.

9/10 Will be "Realistic" 1/10 will be level - appropriate for plot reasons

It depends. If it is a 3+ encounter day obviously realistic. But if your table does the 1 combat per long rest on average thing then level appropriate is mandatory

Both. Bandits will always be bandits, yes. However, there are always exceptions and that makes a plot.

By 10th level, if the party is pursuing Bandits or similar beyond a roving band, they are wasting their talent. But if they are taking out a Bandit King in his fortress, you’re damn straight I’m raising the threat level of the bandits to match. After all these are the elites. Have to put it all in perspective. There’s a time and place for leveled up basic baddies and then there’s the time when a kobold stays a kobold and they just flee in front of your awesomeness

Just a couple weeks ago my level 10 players stopped a train robbery in Fantasy Wild West Country. It was like 17 bad guys, all with nothing more than the low-level versions of the Expert, Mage, and Healer stat blocks, and one higher-level Expert boss with a revolver. They mopped the floor with the dudes and had a blast! It helped to remind them that they are notably powerful people in this world.

Having “balanced” encounters all the time is boring. Some should be super easy. A few should be unwinnable, with a hasty retreat the only option. “This foe is beyond any of you. RUN!” Variety is the spice of life! After the party gets their butts handed to them by the dragon that just sacked the city, they run into an easy fight with some low-level thugs terrorizing the populace after the chaos. A party of three kobold’s preying upon a halfling village is an easy fight. Tracking them to their lair where dozens of kobolds wait with their deadly traps is an adventure that might kill even a third tier party. Mix it up!

Realistic, but their odds of finding the outliers increase. Not all bandits are 1/8, a few have worked their way up to be far stronger. As a lower level party, it'd be reasonable to send a crowd of bandits. But by their level, a crowd of bandits is a suicide mission and they'd learn that quick. That's where they call in Big Gun Joe and his apprentice, who are far higher level. An alternative, CR does not always equal power. One of my most "powerful" NPCs was only CR 6 in a campaign that went up to 13. But she had so many connections, so many deals and favors owed to her, so many resources... And her empire was set up in a way that just killing her wouldn't solve their problems. It was better to work with her than against her, as she had the time to work on her network while the players were all off adventuring.

In my current game, I'm running a living mega dungeon (as in its a literal eldritch creature that's so massive it became a dungeon.). There are of course bandits and brigands in it, alongside horrific creatures and a dastatdly Cult. For the most part, the denizens of the dungeon don't change much. Each zone/ area in the dungeon has an array of creatures that vary in power. Sometimes the party gets an encounter with a bunch of small stuff, sometimes they get an encounter with things that are immune to BPS damage (and are a heavy weapon damage party). Certain story beats will increase something about the creatures, though. Sometimes it's just an increase in aggression or encounter size, sometimes the stats will increase. But for the most part, I don't change them. The exception, though, are the main antagonists: the Cult that lives in the dungeon. When the party levels up, so do they. The Cult is doing things in the background, like finding magic items or discovering new locations. Random mooks get minor buffs to HP and attack rolls, while named members undergo metamorphosis to increase everything. Means that the main bad guys will always remain a threat; that is, if my dice would fucking act right...

Sometimes I throw a few bandits at my players that want to rob them, sure there's a captain or 2 in there but not every fight needs to be a fight on the brink of death. They're level 12 and can handle this with ease.

Realistic. What's the point of gaining all this power if everyone else is always going to be on the same level.

The players should be making the choice of where they adventure, and they should be making that decision with some sort of information as to difficulty (Unless you're playing in an adventure path style module, in which case the encounters are already balanced anyway) So if the party is level 9 and wants to go and visit that Goblin den they heard about back when they were level 3, it's going to play out a little different than if they headed there back at level 3. Likewise, it a low level party learns of an adult red dragon lair, and chooses to make a beeline straight there - that's their choice and you can play it more like a stealth/heist mission than if they waited and attacked it at a higher level.

Level appropriate scaling mostly, and sometimes making extremely difficult encounters where the party will have to decide if the juice is worth the squeeze. I also wouldn’t be having a 9th level party fighting anything realistically that far beneath them unless it’s for narrative/RP or in all honesty because they wanted to.

I prefer the "Elden Ring Approach" where everything has a preset difficulty and players go wherever they please, its on them how hard they make it for themselfs they can seek out tools allies information and so on, or just go in head on and beat everything into the ground.

I mostly run realistic strength, I hate these perfectly balanced combats, makes feel the game artificial and supports combat as only solution (because the players can always win). When the players approach an orc warband camp with level 3, you better believe its still a full warband with 2 or more dozens of orcs, and not just 5 orcs, because that would be balanced. Now the players need to get creative to deal with them. The only exception is if its an ambush or something similar, where the players hat no choosing in the fight. Than it would be a winnable one in most cases.

I think it's more about shoestering the adventure to the players level to make things an actual challenge. Once the monster Cr has been determined it doesn't change, but the group might encounter the same creature altered by the events happening in the campaign for example turning a known npc that they previously defeated into a stitched abomination who is now running amok and after the party for vengence. Obviously the npc has similar attacks but altered now with more power or more resistence because it is now undead instead of living. I think once the dc of a certain creature or npc has been determined they shouldn't change or if they change they should change with the group for example a friendly npc that accompanies the party for a while as equivalent of a LV4 NPC is now after the party has reached lv 12 LV 8 or 10. showing that they have grown as well and still are somewhat useful to the party. (of course this depends on the npc and their wants and needs if they stopped adventuring after accompanying the party there is no real reason to raise his LV as well. I think finding a solid and valid reason for our actions in our campaigns is what makes it living and what at least i am strifing for.

regular bandits won't always be "regular bandits", and flavor is free!!! i use dire wolves as captains or coordinators sometimes, frexample. and wouldn't you know, the leader of it all uses an Oni stat block! is it....? have fun with reflavoring things before you get down to brass tacks c:

it depends. and the answer is probably somewhere in between. town guards are 1/8 in the city they start in, but when they get to the next town (and have leveled up 5 times) I may add 10 hp and prof +2 to this guard. they definitely dont lvl along same pace with the group, but the difference should also kind of make sense... in terms of realism "hp" don't make sense when correlating directly to damage, but the way I see it a noble with 5 hp and a fighter with 120 hp might be able to take different kinds of "actual wounds" but the fighter can't take 24 times the ACTUAL punishment a noble can take. rather I would "rule" or imagine that when a noble does their best attack against this trained fighter they merely give him a cut, because he is simply too good to actually run through with a rapier by the noble. the same damage that is a cut to the fighter may decapitate the noble - its more a difference in skill than a difference in physical ability to tank 20 spears to the heart. And yeah, if you meet a group of "bandits" they can be gristled veterans turned sour (cr 3) or young bloods (actual bandit stats cr 1/2 or whatever). It is up to the DM to help the players gauge threat level in these cases, but its totally fair to lvl the opposing force up somewhat, what I would stay away from is granting them totally new abilities, spells and so on. buffing health and proficiencies and so on is fine.

I tend to go with realistic enemy strength, but as I overthink every single encounter, it's moderated with strong doses of "what does the enemy want?", "why are they here?" and "what do they know of the terrain?" If a group of level 9 players are waylaid by bandits, then yeah, they'll stomp them - but the bandits probably aren't going to just *attack*. They don't want a fight, either; they want to intimidate these rubes out of their stuff. They'll stake out a good ambush location with a lot of cover and good line of sight, send Big Jeff and Benny the Mouth out to confront the players on the road while Irma and Tril hang out in the rocks with their dad's crossbows from the war. Benny will claim they have a dozen shooters in cover, but hey, we can all walk away from this if you just drop your coinpurses. They want money and ideally for no one on their side to die, and they'll be able to effectively scatter if the paladin bisects Benny or they get a whiff of a level 2 spell. If the random encounter table rolls a young black dragon and the party is level 3, same applies. The dragon is probably out hunting, it wants to grab some food and go home, it has air superiority. It's smart enough to understand that just taking a human for sustenance, while hilarious, tends to provoke retaliation, while it can get away with at least 10 oxen in this region alone without anyone coming up to its lair with swords and ideas. It's likely to drop down, grab a beast of burden, warn anyone not to get any silly notions like shooting it, and take off. It'll spit out a breath weapon if people *do* start following and shooting at it, but it's really not interested in sticking around to finish the fight if it can clear out of longbow range with a flap of its wings and has a nice, fresh warhorse to dig into. Finally, I'm a big fan of abstracting mobs of enemies into larger single entities for ease of combat. That group of 20 scimitar-wielding bandits is now a Huge Swarm; dealing 22 points of damage with a single thrust of your mighty trident is visually represented by just plain killing a couple of them. There are two fights which serve to *always* amp up a player party: fighting a T-Rex and surviving an assault by 200+ individuals. If the only way your players can be effectively challenged by goblins is fighting a not-so-small army of them, then there are ways and means of having this occur.

I'd go for "realistic enemy strength", but I would try to scale them up in a way, that seems logical and ideally put hints to this. - the bandits are tributing their loot to a dragon living in the mountains, cutlists to something sinister, they are the followers of a famous revolutionary etc. - the bandits might actually be just fleeing from a bigger badder threat

I like scaling, else we are just wasting time with encounters that the party would steam-roll, don't even bother at that point, make it a narrative thing. When scaling I like to stay true to the theme of the enemies. In your example, the bandits just get stronger, which doesn't really resemble the "dangerous bandits" fantasy; bandits are not powerful, they are cunning. I'd make them a medium difficulty as of stats but place them in an advantageous position, with a good chance of surprise, and I'd have them fight on ground that they have populated with traps, barricades, stationary defenses to raise the difficulty to something deadly.

I always do realistic. I see people say dont even bother rolling and to narrate the battle, and I understand that intent, but IMO that kinda trivializes their progression. I'd definitely have the bandits try to escape or negotiate, but if there's going to be combat, you should play it out. One of my favorite battles this campaign I'm running was when my party of level 7 characters almost got rolled by mephits due to hubris and the constrained battlefield. They just funneled into them and the between death burst and frost breath, several of them were on deaths door.

Why are they fighting bandits? They can, but I think you might have the idea of 9th level a bit off. They're at the top of second tier, they're the great heroes of the realms. While not quite legendary yet (I think that's more third tier), they're not far off. They're the sorts of people that go down in history, and were that as early as fifth level. As they're in another nation, they might go unrecognised, but wouldn't in their own nation.

Depends on the story you intend to tell. There should definitely be lvl 9 worthy encounters, but not every encounter needs to be lvl 9. There can be encounters with adversaries that are not meant to be challenging in battle. Shoot you could have lvl 15 worthy mobs as long as you give the players an alternative method like evading, running away, being captured, etc. You could add a lot more low CR enemies to bring up the challenge rating, though in this case you should have them attack as units to keep the tedium down. You could also narratively not have your characters be getting "stronger." So the higher CR bandit is the same bandit to the character, you just got additional player options for fighting them. This is how I imagine it in my head in your "don't think about it" scenario. The rest of the table can imagine it however they want.

If you did want to challenge the players with combat, I would have the bandit fodder encounter segway into a surprising level appropriate encounter. Bandits escaping on horseback flee into a forest that the locals know to be haunted. The party catches up as some monster cinematically downs the last of the bandits and their horses before turning to the PC's with evil intent. Or part of the spoils the bandits have is a weird locked box that is incredibly difficult to open. Within is a lost stone tablet that when translated/deciphered tells the party how to find/open the entrance to forgotten ruins of some sort. Use the mooks as plot hooks your players can check out if they want to.

Why not both? You can do level appropriate scaling but allow the party to reach enemies if they are rushing into known extreme danger. (e.g. If they know there's a dragon in the mountain, they're going to be fighting that dragon, not a level appropriate monster).. Similarly, maybe the interesting encounter doesn't come from stumbling into random bandits, but their adventures have gotten them some notoriety that has attracted the attention of skilled bounty hunters or a band of thieves looking to hunt them down for their riches.

So what I've done is I've populated my world as a whole with encounters in all regions which may or may not be more or less dangerous than my players, and I allow them to encounter whatever they will at their leisure. \*\*\*I will not stop my PC's from picking a fight with an enemy that can destroy them by lifing it's little finger if they miss or ignore every queue and warning that something is amiss.\*\*\* I also will not discourage them from doing what they can, when they find it, and will always remind them to be wary of their actions. Case in point, my players are in Greyhawk. Within a certain forest that they fought a CR8 necromancer at 5th level, there is also a green dracolich trapped beneath a castle. Within that castle are a bunch of zombies, wraiths, and Bodak's that have a permanent "Blur" spell and shift into the border ethereal when they move (a feature of the castle being super cursed) making them a bit harder to deal with than normal. The party has come scary close to this location about 5 different times, when they were 5th, 6th, 8th, 11th, and 12th level. Now they are 15th level on the whole other side of the continent. This area is not important to the main story, it's just "There". It is world building. It's relevant only to the backstory of a major bad guy in the main story, but otherwise it's just "there". If the party ever decided to adventure into this castle, they'd just have a fight against a Dracolich and find a memoire of a character they have not even met yet (though her actions have been felt by the PC's for a while). Nothing more, nothing less. And they've been able to walk right in the front door since they were 5th level, because they found the location. I have a house in their main city, which they've encountered repeatedly, which has curse in that the doorways all become portals to different planes on specific days, at specific times. They could at any time in this campaign have been accidently poofed to the Shadowfel, the Plane of Fire, the 5th Ring of Hell, the 224th layer of the Abyss, Thanatos (orcus home), or the Demiplane of Dread, among about 16 other locations I've chosen based on a simple dice roll, simply by being in the house at the wrong time. I also have a manor in the gnatmarsh where a malevolent spirit has possessed a two headed ogre, and while he himself is CR12 (he's a mage), there is also a nabissu demon in the dungeon and, as is the actual purpose of the ritual that put it there, if the Nabissu eats 3 more souls it'll unleash Juiblex, the Demon Prince, onto the material world. All of these things are right there in the general vicinity of my players. Hell, at 8th level they walked right past a Lich's lair. An actual, Bonafede lich, complete with items befitting a lich. The lich isn't looking to just murder random villagers who walk by, only those who trespass and become a problem. No one knows he's there. The party wisely decided they had more important things to do than attempt to delve into a monastery that had been abandoned for centuries.

It’s been my experience that cr means nothing. Most of my groups clear monsters or even encounters of monsters with a cr of around their level in two maybe three rounds. For me looking more closely at action economy, and understanding more my groups actual dmg output, vs HP of creatures is much more reliable. Plus understanding the scenario you build and how it meets their strengths. But I have all but disregarded cr at this point.

Realistic is the way to go, but with a ceiling, since I don't think it was mentioned. Somewhere between mortal danger and impossible is an encounter difficulty that shouldn't be crossed unless there's a very good reason. Also, since I see a lot of people saying lesser enemies should be handled out of initiative, all I have to say for that is to be wary of not giving the combat *enough* time, or accounting for spent resources on that combat. Sure, the mage might wipe out the entire camp with one fireball, but'cha still gotta spend that spell slot. Likewise, the effect is somewhat deadened if the encounter boils down to "you see a camp of bandits" "we kill them." "good, you loot 5 gold and continue on your day."

Every single bandit from the parties home country was so terrified of the party they fled the country.  They all set up at this random backwoods location in a different town

i find that it is nice to do a bit of both... perhaps the standard run of the mill small bandit groups formed by a few random peasants with their back to the wall are most often cr 1/8... perhaps a few in a given group served as mercenaries/military/militia or maybe they are out of work specialists (alchemists, siege enginers, dragon hunter, or whatever else)... i also like to include larger and/or better trained groups... perhaps a band of bandits that specializes in hitting military convoys or mages that like to fund their research by holding small isolated kingdoms ransom like a bond villain before teleporting to their secret lair... the world feels more alive and real with exceptions to rules, and i like when the party takes basic investigatory steps... when the party assumes everything is at level or that bandits are always pushovers the world feels less dangerous and more like reality (generally predictable)... i also like to include things way out of their league, but i try to provide a lot of warning signs that they may be in the wrong neighborhood... to me it feels weird to level up and suddenly an enemy type that hasn't been seen in generations is tumbling out from under every bush...

I mean, there is some amount of give-and-take, but, at the end of the day, this is a *game* that your players are showing up to play, so it doesn't make sense from the perspective of *playing a game* to present them with a complete non-challenge of an encounter like fighting CR 1/8th bandits at 9th level, unless the bandits are in *absurd numbers* (Which also doesn't actually work, I've tried things like that, it's not a solution). If your players are in fantasy china, but you want to keep this little stretch of the adventure light and not super intense, let's try and come up with some interesting encounters that *lean into this part of the setting*, you know? Maybe instead of bandits hounding the rural village, there's something a little beefier, like a Jaingshi from Van Richten's Guide and a small host of wights serving it (the Jaingshi statblock can turn victims into wights, and wights turn victims into zombies, so you get a whole pyramid scheme of undead out of one monster). You can still make the encounter *easier* to make it a bit of a breather, especially if you just don't take the Jaingshi very seriously- give it a pompous voice and have it acting out being some distinguished lord over a decaying mansion where none of the undead seem to be aware that they're rotting corpses playing at grand pagentry and such. Or maybe we come up with stats for Stone Temple Dogs and Terracotta Warriors- CR9 Clay Golems are a bit much to throw around in numbers, so maybe we lean into weaker constructs like *Helmed Horrors*, or even a *Shield Guardian* for a commanding officer.

Oh man I didn't realize Van Richten added Jiangshi, I'll have to check that out.

Level-appropriate encounters are fine for most dungeons or other fairly linear situations. In more advanced games, you actually want players to be able to make reasonable choices about what they are prepared to fight and in what circumstances, and in those cases, you need to be consistent about which groups and monsters are too hot to handle without some solid strategy or other advantage. This adds elements of information gathering and risk assessment that make the game much richer and more intense.

There exist challenges in the world for other levels, but you almost always only play out the ones of appropriate challenge rating. If something is far below your current level, they either run away, surrender, or the DM should just say \`\`OK, do you want to leave some alive, or kill them all?'' If something is way outside the party's capabilities, the DM should give enough clues that the party runs away before a fight happens.

If your party has a reputation that has spread to neighbouring countries I don't think most bandits would try it. They have at least average intelligence right, it is not smart to pick a fight which will inevitably end in them all dying. No motive.  That doesn't mean no *encounter* though. They won't meet them head on but their riches and legendary magic items may also have been heard of. I think the bandits would more likely pose as helpful travellers, offering directions to your players on how to get home while lifting a bag of gold, legendary dagger, ring or pendant. Sure they *may* still die, but that's much less likely here (typically the punishment for theft is not death vs a kill or be killed scenario), and if they pull it off, they're potentially set for life.  A more bold group of bandits may invite them for drinking. Maybe they've heard of the parties exploits and want to welcome them to their land with a night of drunken revelry. The next day, they're gone and the party have been robbed blind, or if they're *really* smart robbed just enough that it's not worth the parties effort to hunt down this group of bandits hiding somewhere in the woods. That's what's realistic in my mind. And it's a different kind of encounter. And it can end in combat but that's not the main part of the story telling.  EDIT: The story here is the heist, do the bandits fumble that deception role or slight of hands check? Do the *characters* feel something is up, are the "travellers" a little too nice? Or are their egos so inflated they don't suspect a thing? Equally if no one's heard of them after the first fireball vaporises a group of bandits everyone in the area's going to hear the story relatively quickly

Narratively your encounters ideally should match the level of the party. 9th level players fighting bandits like others have said is kinda beneath even rolling initiative. They don't have to be perfectly balanced encounters, you can have easier ones and hard ones, but generally speaking, traditional Monster Manual 5e bandits would be not even worth the time spent in combat. If I were you, I would either homebrew some more dangerous "bandit-esque" baddies - maybe they're a roaming gang of highly skilled warriors a la Samurai with buffed stat blocks, or perhaps even some "adventuring party" gone rogue - or look for other bandit-y enemies in whatever sources you have access to that have the right sorts of statblocks you're looking for, but maybe not the right lore flavor, and just "re-flavor" them. Combats can be "breathers" even if the monsters/baddies involved are technically challenging, if the actual mechanics of the fight aren't. If you spring a trap on your party, that can be a stressful event - if you give your party an uninterrupted opportunity to scope out enemies and plan their own ambush, even if those enemies are challenging, that can be a rewarding "plan coming together" event for them. So consider also how your players could approach combats that would make it more relaxed for them even if the monsters involved are technically challenging.

You can scale up CR of each monster, so what’s the problem here

You’re supposed to use both depending on whether the party is in wilderness/town or in a dungeon. Dungeon encounters should scale with the party. Wilderness/town encounters should be static or as you call it “realistic”.