How D&D 5e (XGtE) encounters succeed and fail at the same time

A small addendum to yesterday's post.

I used this table as an example:

This is only one the "swamp" tables in XGtE.  

There are always three: for low, mid and high-level encounters. Overall, I find them easy and decent enough if combined, and that is how they "succeed" - encounters are varied and appropriate for each terrain.

The first one contains, for example, "2d4 lizardfolk".

The table above is for high-level encounters, containing black dragons and yuan-ti instead.

But I noticed there is something missing in that high-level table...

A lizardfolk army!

Or a large group of orcs, a horde of zombies, etc.

Because this was the promise of 5e and bounded accuracy: "Low-level monsters would continue to be usable at higher level, as their attack bonus and AC would allow them to remain meaningful threats to player characters".

But these tables tell a different story: low level PCs fight goblins, high-level PCs fight adult dragons, and that is it.

This is a bad choice for a number of reasons:

- Makes the world feel fake as it revolves around the PCs.

- Robs the PCs of the opportunity to realize how stronger they got (remember when we had a hard time fighting goblins? Now we are fighting armies of them!).

- Feels unnatural and forced for the GM to have to introduce stronger and stronger monsters.

- Makes the PCs think that violence is always an option, as they'll seldom find monsters that are too tough for their current level.

- Robs the players of the opportunity of feeling overwhelmed and yearning for something they cannot get without effort - "we cannot face them now, but one day we'll get revenge against the goblin horde!".

I think it is conceivable to run a battle against an army in 5e, even if it would be much harder than OSR games, because the monsters are much more complex. The DMG even has a few suggestions to do that, which XGtE improves... but apparently doesn't fully use.

Now, I have never played 5e at such high levels - only three campaigns that ended on levels 5 to 10 and a few shorter ones. So please correct me if I'm wrong here.

My PCs did fight about a hundred skeletons once, but only about six at once (they were in a narrow spot). It went reasonably well.

I don't know why 5e gave up on this promise, betting instead in the repetitive process of fighting a dozen zombies at level 5 and a dozen revenants by level 15.

I think a world in which there are ALWAYS black dragons and zombies to be found in the swamps, and the PCs have to deal with them differently as they gain levels, is much more coherent, organic and fun.