Since I burried a comment I was actually serious about in a thread of doom, just lifting it out:
Is there any chance AL could be inspired by the excelent work done in Ashes of Athas and start listing an an intended difficulty with encounters?
More information about an encounters intent is always a boon for a DM. And we all know that what ends up in the statblocks is a bad gauge for the designers intent.
That might work for Expeditions, but Encounters are done by Wizards (et al) for publication, and it's unlikely that they'll change their methods. Even though it would be a good idea. 
Never having seen an Ashes of Athas adventure, I can't really say.
Can you provide an example, imaginaryfriend?
--
Pauper
@ImaginaryFriend -- I'll talk to the other Admins, but I'm not sure we need to to move that way. The adventure design structure is already including instructions on how to scale encounters. There are some upsides to it, but after running a bunch of Athas (then) and 5e (now; AL as well as homebrew) the 'intended difficulty' section just feels superfluous - thoroughly reading the adventure should give a solid indication of how deadly an encounter should or should not be.
Just my opinion, in this case. Thanks for bringing it up!
warfteiner wrote:
I love the idea, and it seem very usefull and I would love to see it implemented, but what I'm wondering is HOW do you do it. how do you describe your intent to the DM? How do you create a system to explain the intent to the DM while taking into account the composition of the team, the experience of the team, the experience of the DM (Tiamat controled by a new DM is easy to beat, compare to the SAME Tiamat controled by an experience DM trying to kill his player)
So how do you take all that into account, in a simple manner that every DM will be able to understand and applied at there table, without much extra work.
TL;DR Based on all my though I think the current implementation (calculate the APL then add or subtract monster as shown in the module (for Expedition) is the best way to do this, is it perfect? no it's not, a party of 7 level 4 controled by new players might be weaker then a party of 3 level 2 controlled by 3 experiences players, but a good DM can easy judge that the 7 new player, should be consider medium difficulty, while the 2 level 2 should be consider as very hard.
If you want to add a intended dificulty scale you need to describe this scale.
So something like:
Easy: the party use less then 10% of their ressources (Ressource include, HP, short rest abilities, long rest abilities
Medium: the party use between 10% and 25% of their ressources
Hard: the party use between 25% and 50%.
Deadly: the party use between 50% and 100%.
Impossible: the party use 100% of there ressources (if you 100% of your HP the entire group is at 0HP)
And even with such a description, some DM will scale medium to 25%, other will scale it to 40% and other to 50%. so what the solution? more scalable entry?Very easy, easy, easy medium, medium, medium hard, hard, very hard, almost impossible, impossibe, inconceivable? and even with those 10 entries, some DM will scale the medium difficulty to 10% other to 19%
Then how do you count those ressource? My sorcerer who got 4 spell level 1, 3 spell level 2, 2 spell level 3 and 1 spell level 4. He use 4 spell level 1 and 2 spell level 3. How much ressource did my sorcerer use? Ok let's ssay we'll count it that for spell slot we convert spell to there spell level (so 4 spell level 1 = 4, 3 spell level 2= 6, 3 spell level 3 =6, 1 spell level 4= 4 for a total of 20 ressource points. my sorcerer used 10 ressource point. so he used half of his spell ressources, then we need to count his HP ressource, then his spell point ressource etc...
Once we determined how to calculate the ressource of every class, this would become a VERY complex system.
Without making those definition or that calculation method, saying this is suppose to be an hard encounter means nothing. One DM will consider an Hard encounter as being something that will force the player to take a short rest after, while an other DM will consider it require a long rest after a hard encounter, so it would not solve anything.
Then different party will consider the same encounter with a different level of difficulty.
Here 2 extrems example to show the point.
Team 1: this team is compose of 4 barbarian. They rage then run toward into melee range with the ennemy, killing them quickly and reducing damage by half.
Team2: 4 wizard. This team will stay at range, casting 4 fireball on the first round, killing everything before they reach them.
Ok so in my campaign, the first encounter is composed ok 10 flying kobolt, droping rock on the enemies.
Team 1: they pick up the rock and throw them back dealing minimal damage, unable to use there rage in an efficient way. This fight will deal a lot of damage on the barbarian and will be consider as being hard by the barbarian.
Team 2: the wizard, the first wizard spot the kobolt, cast fireball and the kobolt all die. This was the easiest thing ever, the encounter could have had 20 kobolt and it would have been just as easy.
Encounter 2: at a distance the party hear the howling, by listening more closely the teams realize those are demonic howls. By the time the team realize what happen they can see a pack of Hellhound running toward them. Then barbarian rage, and run toward the hellhound, with advantage against the breath weapon and the bear totem, they dispatch those hellhound taking minimal damage.
The Wizard, see the Hellhound and start casting magic missile (since Hellhound are IMMUNE to fire. Once the surviving hellhound reach the wizards, the wizard take heavy damage, failing many dex save and having a small HP pool. This fight costed a lot of ressource to the wizard.
(Please do not start dissecting the encounter by saying the wizard could kite the hellhound and minimise damage, this is NOT the point of this exercise.) In this exercise I wanted to show that the difficulty of a single encounter can vary based on the team composition. The sorcerer in your team never learn Magic missile (he took chromatic orb instead). your cleric don'T want to turn undead, he prefer to keep his channel divinity for preserve life after the fight. your barbarian didn't took the longsword +1 because he use a greatsword, but when you face some incorporeal creature, he deal only half damage from non magical weapon.
So how can you say that encounter number 1 in the adventure is meat to be difficult, when with your team composition that encounter would be a joke. At my table, we got very experience players who sould solo the DDEX expedition (as written) with their optimized character and something it feel almost like they read the module, because they can foresee most trap and they know how to deal with most obstacle (but I know they didn't read them, they proove it to me). On the other hand we got player who are just learning that everytime you want to do something you roll the D20 and who made a sorcerer without shield, without magic missile, dragon sorcerer with mage armor (becasue they wanted to cast it on the rogue and on the druid) who cast their max level spell on a easy encounter, and when they reach the difficult encounter they only have cantrip left. So if I make the encounter hard enought to challenge my experience player, the new player will be overwhelm, if I scale down the encounter for the new player, then my experience player are going to ROFLOL throught the adventure (without using Tasha's hideous laughter).
So the idea is good but you need to find a way to implement it in a way that will be effective, will encompass for the team composition and experience, and in a way that will be easy to excecute by the DM (without the need to count ressource points for the 5 player)
QwertyAzerty wrote:
It really doesn't need a techically underpinned scale or ratios.
A designer can simply write something like "this is intended as the final encounter of this adventure and it is meant to seriously challenge the party." or even simpler "intended difficulty of this encounter: deadly". That should be enough for a DM to work with. If a DM does not feel comfortable adjusting based on that intent, that is fine. Its not meant to be a catchall. They can just use the encounters built in guidance. Or experiment, carefully, and get comfortable.
We tried the overly mathematical approach in the previous edition. I was fine with it. For now I am equally, or even a little more, fine with just leaving it up to the DM within the limits provided by the AL rules. Sure, that leaves variance. But I do not see that as a weakness or a problem.