D&D 5E CRs and what is going on?

[Barantor]

Pretty good article by "Sly Fourish" aka Michael E. Shea that I've used and had good results from.

http://slyflourish.com/5e_encounter_building.html

 

[AriochQ]

So long as everyone had fun, no worries. Treat it as a live and learn moment. Sounds like the Balor et al. could have fought a better fight which would have changed the outcome.

A couple of sessions ago I put an airship up against my party. The concept was that a gem that had been used to levitate a cloud giant keep was stolen and broken into shards. One of the shards was placed in the keel of a sailing ship, which then went out to drop rocks on the parties ship. Of course, someone makes a perception roll to notice the shard. The ranger archer makes an excellent shot to hit it. After looking up damaging items in the DMG, turns out she obliterated the gem shard in one shot. Down came the airship.

Did the battle go as expected? Nope! Does the party STILL talk about that encounter with big grins on their faces? Yup! (Do the bad guys now encase the gem fragments in a protective cover? You know it!)

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Yeah. adding in more PC really makes CR calc tricky. I'm running a party of 7 though a WOTC module. The module is really designed for 4-5 PC that should be L7 at this point. My group is a L5 Sorcerer, L5 Fighter (BM), L5 Fighter (EW), L4 Barbarian, L5 Rogue, L4 Druid. Well CR9 solo challenges are nothing to them, there is a CR 9 cloud giant with 200 HP that they were able to isolate and before he got a single attack he was at half HP. He got in 2 hits before he started to flee only to be destroyed with magic weapons and spells before he could get very far. He was the #2 "big bad" and ended up being a joke. Now there is a CR 13 200 HP white dragon to be faced and I'm thinking I either need to give him closer to max HP or add in minions of some sort, maybe a young white dragon or a few wyrmlings, or he is not going to be an epic fight. But it depends, foes with legendary actions throw a wrench in the mix. Really its up to me as a DM to know my party and set up foes to challenge them accordingly. I've got a larger than average group and it complicates things slightly.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Equal or slightly higher level. Remember, CR is calibrated to a party of four.

IIRC 5E challenges are based on a party of five. The information for XP adjustments to determine encounter difficulty are based on a 5 person party with adjustments for more or fewer party members. The 3E CR system was designed for a party of four- or more specifically, for Tordek, Jozan, Mialee, & Lidda with the gear they were assigned at various levels.

Usually, any single big opponent will get taken down easier than a handful of semi-power opponents due to concentrated fire unless the big bad has some means of healing significant damage, or is especially resistant to much of the incoming damage. That, and most 5E parties can tackle things far above their level if it is a single combat scenario and they are not very resource depleted.

 

[MontyKC1974]

Yeah I played in a game, pathfinder, where the DM was throwing the regular stuff at us. But our characters were REALLY powerful.

So the encounters, if we played tactically sound, which we did most of the time, were beyond easy.

One such encounter though made me laugh, and was the first and only time I was ever "Hungry Hippoed" to death.

So we encounter some lizardfolk on the river hunting hippos. They see us and taunt a hippo to attack us. My wizard kills the three lizard guys with a fireball and my synthesist friend wrecks the hippos day. We get xp and were like, wheres the rest of those hippos!!

I finally taunt them into attack us, they charge and surround my synthesist friend. I got hit and was really low on health, and so decided to help my synthesist friend out by casting Ironskin on him.

Well...imagine my synthesist surrounded by hippos, imagine flying over friend, in the air over the hippos and they all bite me at the same time. We ended that campaign but still have that memory in my head.

 

[Iosue]

IIRC 5E challenges are based on a party of five.

Party of four, per the MM. A CR 1 monster is worth 200 XP. A Medium Encounter for Level 1 is 50 XP per party member.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Equal or slightly higher level. Remember, CR is calibrated to a party of four.

Party of four, per the MM. A CR 1 monster is worth 200 XP. A Medium Encounter for Level 1 is 50 XP per party member.

In the Basic rules document, the adjustments for party size range from less than three to more than five. Thats where I got five, not as the default but as the upper limit before modifying XP based on party size. My bad.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

I can get my players to roll for your players. That'll easily swing things in your favour. They just loooove those single digit numbers. It's got so bad I'm tempted to let them flip a coin instead.

 

[Celtavian]

5E is a very easy game. Players do far more damage as a group, especially if you are including feats, than monsters. Creatures like Balors don't have a bunch of spells with high DCs for challenging parties. They don't have ACs so high level 7 characters can't hit them. Nothing is like 3E. This game is built to play fast and easy with everything decided by damage in combat. No save or die spells. Multiple saves for save or lose spells like petrification. So damage is king. Characters always have the damage advantage against solo creatures unless you specifically build the creature to be otherwise.

I'd start by boosting ACs on creatures like Balors. It's a bit ridiculous that level 7 PCs can beat a balor. Not sure why the game designers at WotC thought it was cool to make the balor as weak as it is. It's not CR 19 in this game.