Quote Originally Posted by MaxWilson View Post
An enemy equivalent to yourself (e.g. your evil clone who can beat you as easily as you can beat him, 50/50%) is Deadly by definition, since 5E defines "Deadly" as "could be lethal for one or more player characters. Survival often requires good tactics and quick thinking, and the party risks defeat." If the PCs could conceivably lose, it gets labelled Deadly. If there's a 50% chance (!) the party will lose without good tactics and quick thinking, that's very "Deadly."

It's certainly not impossible for a first-level fighter to defeat two orcs, but it's also not impossible for the orcs to defeat the fighter.

Anyway, in this thread I think we're talking about capabilities (how many orcs/mind flayers/etc. can a given party handle, for some given value of "handle"), not DMG guidelines.
DMG guidelines are how the game is structured.

If you want to have combats thrown at you where it's "not impossible" to win, then I suppose you enjoy rolling up new character concepts.