D&D 5E Creating combat encounters: looking for tips

[Skyscraper]

Hi, I've read the section on creating encounters, but I'm left wondering how much the XP budget and CR guides are actually useful in practice. I'm looking for comments and tips from those that have designed enough combat encounters to comment. For instance, are the easy medium hard deadly encounter ratings indicative of actual difficulty levels in practice? Do monsters with a higher CR than the party level actually pose a significantly higher threat? Do the XP multipliers for the number of monsters encountered make sense?

thanks for any tips.

 

[robus]

This series is an excellent read if you're open to his over the top style: http://theangrygm.com/the-angry-guide-to-akicking-combats-part-1-picking-your-enemies/

 

[Bigkahuna]

The general rule of thumb with 5th edition as far as I could tell (as was the case with previous editions )is that if you use the CR rules as written, you are safe. Another words, you wont create an encounter that will accidentally kill your entire party as long as you are within the guidelines. As for challenge, its my experience that the term is miss used and misunderstood by players which I think it WotC's fault because they call the balancing variable of the system "challenge rating". Its very confusing but the CR does not determine how challenging an encounter will be, it defines the level of the encounter so you have a rough idea of what level characters can face it.

Actual "challenge" of an encounter depends on oh so many factors from the environment the encounter takes place in, weather or not you surprise the characters, what equipment they have gathered, what spells and resources they have remaining and that's just a short list. Not to mention the tactical difficulty the GM decides to add, I mean are you just throwing the enemies at the PC's or are you actually trying to win the fight as the GM using the monsters to the best of your tactical ability? Even the dice themselves... how well you roll can determine how challenging an encounter is.

I guess my point is that I think a lot of people look at the CR system and are disappointed to find that its not reliable, and of course they would be right, its not reliable and its physically impossible to create a system that is. You can calculate odds of dice but you can't predict how well or poorly a GM or players will roll dice. You can predict how much damage a monster can do, but you can't predict how well a GM will leverage that damage (will he take out the wizard first?, Does he knock out the healer to diminish the parties longevity in a fight? .. So much goes into it that in the end the CR is ultimately useless without the experience of the GM.

The only thing the CR system is good for is to let you know if you are far off or if your in the ball park. If you exceed the CR regularly, you will eventually kill your PC's on accident or you will end up having to cheapen the encounters by going easy on them, fudging dice etc. If you throw a "easy" or "average" encounter at them you should be able to go completely out of your way to try to kill the group and still fail, another words, at those levels the monsters are at a pretty big disadvantage no matter what circumstances you put them in (usually... not always). Unless your players are inept, they should be able to overcome the challenges.

There are exceptions to all of these sort of generalities, case in point, I nearly KO'ed a party of 5th level characters with a single Kobold. You would be surprise what an imaginative GM can do when he knows his players.

 

[wedgeski]

Use CR in the way it is intended, i.e. as a high water-mark for what you should be sending against the PC's. Start with the XP guidelines but be prepared to tweak heavily on the fly based on your party and players. My personal experience is that the guidelines shoot too low; in other words, you can send more against your party than the DMG would seem to recommend.

 

[Azurewraith]

It depends what you are looking for if you want PC's to steam roll every encounter the dmg guidelines are great. If you want to challenge the PC's the dmg guidelines are not so great. I find the best way to roll is rock the dmg guidelines and slowly turn up the pressure until the PC's are sweating and you will have a good idea on what they can handle.

Monsters on there own or "solos" if you will straight from the mm will get creamed unless they are way over the PC's level, think a ancient dragon with 20levels dragon sorcerer against level 1pcs. For a solo to work you need to stack the deck by either putting the monster in some seriously favoured terrain or by finding ways to break the action economy via reactions and legendary actions.

Another thing to be aware of is the 6-8 encounter balancing point(personally I despise this guideline and struggle to adhere to it). As well as more monsters as opposed to bigger monsters.

 

[Imaculata]

I always assume that the CR's are just a guideline, to make sure that you don't accidentally murder your own players. But you and you alone know your players and the strength of their characters. So it is up to you to gradually boost the difficulty as you see fit. If you follow the CR rules by the numbers, then you shouldn't expect a particularly difficult fight at higher levels.

 

[iserith]

Hi, I've read the section on creating encounters, but I'm left wondering how much the XP budget and CR guides are actually useful in practice. I'm looking for comments and tips from those that have designed enough combat encounters to comment. For instance, are the easy medium hard deadly encounter ratings indicative of actual difficulty levels in practice? Do monsters with a higher CR than the party level actually pose a significantly higher threat? Do the XP multipliers for the number of monsters encountered make sense?

thanks for any tips.

Yes, they are reliable - but not perfect - in my experience, given certain expectations. Chief among those expectations is that the players will do things to modify the difficulty of the challenge. So whereas you might start with a Deadly encounter "by the numbers," the players will start making decisions to turn the Deadly encounter into an easier one pretty much right away. While there is no guarantee they will be successful at this, it is the sign of a well-crafted challenge that the players' decisions have an impact on difficulty.

I think it's also important to note exactly what is meant by Easy, Medium, Hard, and Deadly (see DMG 82). As well, I believe you cannot discount the importance of the environment in which the encounter takes place. A monster in a white room is almost always going to be easier than the numbers suggest. But in a reasonable environment appropriate to the monsters being faced, difficulty is more in line with the DMG's predictions.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Hi, I've read the section on creating encounters, but I'm left wondering how much the XP budget and CR guides are actually useful in practice. I'm looking for comments and tips from those that have designed enough combat encounters to comment. For instance, are the easy medium hard deadly encounter ratings indicative of actual difficulty levels in practice? Do monsters with a higher CR than the party level actually pose a significantly higher threat? Do the XP multipliers for the number of monsters encountered make sense?

thanks for any tips.

It really depends on your DMing style. I roleplay combats, which means my monsters have goals that may include "staying alive" as a higher priority than "force PCs to expend some healing spells" and sometimes make poor decisions when given only six seconds to react (e.g. it's sometimes possible to get into a situation where you ambush a large group of monsters, and after the surprise round, half of them charge the ambushers while the other half retreat, instead of all doing the same thing). Perhaps partly due to this, I've had no problems whatsoever completely ignoring the CR guidelines and putting whatever monsters I feel like in play.

From this thread (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?483553-Dungeon-Difficulty-post-your-dungeon-stats) here's what I put in a dungeon designed for 3-4 PCs of levels 2-3:

3 CR 1/8 Slaad Tadpoles
1 CR 1/4 Mud Mephit
1 CR 1/2 Magma Mephit
1 CR 1/2 Ice Mephit
1 CR 1/2 Dust Mephit
1 CR 6 Medusa
1 CR 3 Basilisk
1 CR 2 Mimic
1 CR 10 Stone Golem

I am fully confident that the PCs could, if they wanted to, kill every monster in this dungeon. I am equally hopeful that they will choose to do something other than slaughter their way through. My current campaign gives out more XP for treasure-finding than monster-killing, so for example I hope that instead of killing the Medusa they give her a reason to help them uncover more of the treasure. (Note to self: I just realized I don't have any ideas in mind for what the Medusa's goals are, so the PCs might have trouble negotiating successful cooperation out of her. I need to fix that before Wednesday...)

 

[Skyscraper]

Cool stuff here, and thank you for these posts. Relevant info here, although some observations remain a bit general. I.e. I have a lot of experience in DM-ing multiple systems and D&D editions over decades. I am familiar with many concepts that revolve around encounters having variable difficulty depending on environment, specific situations, party compositions, and the like. I understand that the combat encounter guidelines are just that, guidelines.

I'm in my 5E beginnings however. I've only DMed 2 sessions, one-shots. Now, we're shortly starting a campaign and I'm looking at the baddies that I'm going to pit against the PCs and wondering if they're not too strong. E.g. they will likely start at level 5 to move towards level 7 by the end; and i'll be opposing slaads, including a death slaad who's the BBEG (CR 10); and a bunch of opponents that have CRs between 5 and 9, and of course weaker ones too. In planning some encounters, I realive that by including a single high CR monster I'm sometimes already busting my "hard" or even "deadly" difficulty XP budget.

So my more specific quesiont is: have you designed, for your party in the game that you are DM for, combat encounters where you regularly spent XP budgets in the hard or deadly, or even above deadly, difficulty rating? And what about CRs, do you sometimes, or even often, use monsters that have CRs over the party's level without killing everyone? And finally, have you found that the number of creature multipliers are indeed quite accurate?

Some posts answer these questions, some do only partly, so I wanted to clarify what my inquiry is.

 

[iserith]

So my more specific quesiont is: have you designed, for your party in the game that you are DM for, combat encounters where you regularly spent XP budgets in the hard or deadly, or even above deadly, difficulty rating?

Yes.

And what about CRs, do you sometimes, or even often, use monsters that have CRs over the party's level without killing everyone?

Yes.

And finally, have you found that the number of creature multipliers are indeed quite accurate?

In the ballpark.

I will say, however, that I don't design combats - I design challenges. Combat is just one solution the players can choose to employ to overcome a challenge. So I don't feel too bad about using high CR creatures or setting difficulty to Deadly or higher. Fighting is not the only way to win.