| Sir Jerden |
I feel that the main reason I enjoy Pathfinder is because I occasionally fear for my character's life. All of the most memorable and exciting battles are the ones in which we came close to a TPK.
It's not even about CR (although that helps). Recently my group of level 12s was half killed by http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/devil/nihil. We did some poor planning but half the party dying to a CR 13 monster was very surprising for the GM.
I clearly love the high difficulty fights, and I probably wouldn't mind if every fight was like that, but it would make it impossible to tell much of a story. I feel that I'd probably be a bad GM because I'd be likely to escalate the difficulty until everyone dies. I'm just wondering, what level of difficulty do people prefer?