D&D 5E Encounter Building: Revised XP Threshold by Character Level Table

[dave2008]

PS. I forgot

d. It also assumes parties of a certain level of efficiency. Not necessarily supertricked out builds with highly optimal tactics, but at least that the lowest levels of disorganisation and ineffective builds has been polished off by not-entirely-green players

e. It also assumes (in my case) a 4 player party composed of a fighter, wizard, cleric, and rogue. At least I think there needs to be an assumption of party composition and size as well.

 

[dave2008]

Well... my point is that easy, medium and hard all come across as "easy", but with varying levels of resource expenditure.

Which is why I would prefer not using those labels.

Well how you see it, but I don't know that your view point is particularly pervasive among players and DMs on this subject. Of course I have no idea if any viewpoint has any amount of traction for that matter!

Instead of "hard" (say), perhaps it should be called "taxing", since it isn't really percieved to be hard. It just so happens that after the fight, the players realize they've used up some resources.

As for difficulty there is only "non-challenging" (I like "trivial" myself) and "challenging" (and perhaps "deadly" if that is reserved for something much more deadly than 10% risk of single player death*)

Labelling resource expenditure is really what it is about, and there I'm arguing we should use more appropriate labels. Not easy and hard, but low and high (resource expenditure). Or "taxing" as I suggested earlier. Or whatever that can't be confused for a label on difficulty.

I agree to some extent, but as I said before it all seems like semantics. Your replacing a word you don't like with one you do like. I guess my preference would be to keep the terms used in the DMG and instead define them differently.

A rough example:

• Instead of "easy" we could... well, actually I want us to drop this completely trivial and uninteresting category. This isn't even an encounter, it's a speed-bump. (meaning it might still be an explore or social encounter, just not a combat encounter)
• Instead of "medium" let's use "non-challenging with low to no resource expenditure".
• Instead of "hard" let's use "non-challenging with medium resource expenditure".
• Instead of "deadly" let's use "non-challenging with high to nova resource expenditure; challenging with low to medium resource expenditure".
• Instead of "double deadly" let's use "challenging with medium to high resource expenditure".
• Instead of "triple deadly or more" let's use "ensured challenging at any level of resource expenditure".

Or we could say:
Easy. An easy encounter is non-challenging with little to no resource expenditure.
Medium. A medium encounter is non-challenging with minor resource expenditure. The characters may expect to loose some hit points and spend a few short or long rest resources, but they should emerge victorious with no casualties or major resource use.
Hard. A hard encounter is challenging with minor resource use, refer to medium, or non-challenging with major resource expenditure. The characters can expect to loose significant health resources (hit points and/or healing) and spend up to a quarter (spit-balling here) of there short or long rest resources.
Deadly. A deadly encounter is challenging with major resource expenditure, refer to hard, and can result in character deaths. Characters can expect to loose a majority of their health, long rest, and short rest resources to escape with their lives.

The actual XP budgets would then be modified based on the table assumptions (mine are lower than yours) versus the actual part size, composition, skill, and/or play style.

 

[CapnZapp]

Sure, tomato and tomato and all that.

Still, having a category labelled "hard" makes me assume the encounter will actually be hard. But it will only ever be even a little hard (for experienced groups) if the party somehow finishes it without any resource expenditure. This isn't merely unlikely, it tells me the entire guideline is coming at it wrong.

That is why I feel it's more than semantics or a matter of words. But I'll leave you to it.

 

[dave2008]

Sure, tomato and tomato and all that.

Still, having a category labelled "hard" makes me assume the encounter will actually be hard. But it will only ever be even a little hard (for experienced groups) if the party somehow finishes it without any resource expenditure. This isn't merely unlikely, it tells me the entire guideline is coming at it wrong.

That is why I feel it's more than semantics or a matter of words. But I'll leave you to it.

The only difference to me is how we define "hard." If the party is forced to spend "Y" amount of resources to complete the task, and Y is greater than X (medium), but less than Z (deadly). Then it is hard. The only other factor I can see would be time, as in how many rounds it takes to complete the task that could quantifiable relate to difficulty. Since I don't think you can quantify tactics (but maybe I'm wrong).

 

[Flamestrike]

I have one group of players who isn't very tactical at all, although they are wildly creative (e.g. solo monk using Stunning Fist + Bag of Devouring to kill a huge CR 12 Chain Wyrm that the monk in question probably could not have survived otherwise; they also like manipulating falling damage).

How did it fit a Huge creature inside the 2' wide mouth of the bag? Surely it gets stuck on the way in?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

How did it fit a Huge creature inside the 2' wide mouth of the bag? Surely it gets stuck on the way in?

Re-read the description of Bag of Devouring. It works (with 50% probability each round) when a creature's appendage is stuck inside the bag. The PC didn't stick the whole Chain Wyrm in the bag--he just stunned it with some lucky dice, stuck one of its limbs in the bag, and prayed for more lucky stunning dice every round until the bag woke up and ate it. (It took two rounds? Three? I do remember that on the round the bag finally ate it, the beast had just broken out of stun and would have stunned the monk right back if it had won the initiative contest. Very close call.)

If you're asking how the creature inside manages to shlurrrp creatures that are bigger than its mouth, I'll point you to anacondas and the way their jaws unhinge.

 

[cooperjer]

This makes me realize the issue is that the guidelines doesn't seem to take into account which "gear" the PCs go into.

...

Cat I: it's immediately apparent (to the players) this encounter need no "effort" to remain undeadly
Cat II: there is some initial tension that might make a player (or three) expend some effort, before the tension evaporates and it's clear the encounter really needed no effort
Cat III: this encounter will need some effort, or there is a risk of losing a character (however briefly) by death or other incapacitation (more severe than round-by-round paralyzation that is).
Cat IV: this encounter has all the trappings of a challenging encounter, and the most prudent course of action is either to retreat immediately (possibly using spells to cover that retreat) or to go all-out.

You see? The actual difficulty isn't really the important metric here. If for no other reason than most encounters can be transformed into less than "deadly" encounters by player decisions. (At least my highly tuned party would generally require triple-deadly encounters to ensure they actually stay deadly, even if the players do everything they can to manage and minimize that risk).

...

This is why I feel the DMG guidelines to be so hopelessly useless and directly counterproductive to new DMs.

After each game I distribute a poste game note telling the players what the encounter difficulty was for each encounter. Most of the time the response was "Really? That didn't feel deadly." I think on one occasion they were surprised that the encounter was rated Hard because it felt deadly. In the dungeons coming up I've started setting the encounter based on the Daily XP (DRXP) values listed in the DMG. My current estimate is that I want an encounter with a DRXP minimum of 8%. I feel a DRXP of 30% is probably the maximum I want to use. What I've observed from reviewing two game sessions worth of data is the following:

1. Resource consumption in a party is not equally distributed. One character will use more resources than a different character in the party.
2. 50% consumption of the parties resources may mean 70% to 80% of one characters resources and 30% to 20% of another characters resources. This results in one player saying they need a long rest and a different player saying they need no rest.
3. 80% consumption or resources feels like the party is completely drained of resources and need a long rest. Or when a player is looking at only 20% health remaining, 20% of spell slots remaining, and 20% of a character resource (Lay on Hands, Sorc Points, etc.) they are thinking it's time to leave a combat or avoid a combat at all costs.

I would like to propose that instead of using the labels of Easy, Medium, Hard, Deadly, let's look at the percent of Daily XP for that encounter. What have you seen as Deadly and what have you seen as Easy based on player feed back?

 

[dave2008]

After each game I distribute a poste game note telling the players what the encounter difficulty was for each encounter. Most of the time the response was "Really? That didn't feel deadly." I think on one occasion they were surprised that the encounter was rated Hard because it felt deadly. In the dungeons coming up I've started setting the encounter based on the Daily XP (DRXP) values listed in the DMG. My current estimate is that I want an encounter with a DRXP minimum of 8%. I feel a DRXP of 30% is probably the maximum I want to use. What I've observed from reviewing two game sessions worth of data is the following:

1. Resource consumption in a party is not equally distributed. One character will use more resources than a different character in the party.
2. 50% consumption of the parties resources may mean 70% to 80% of one characters resources and 30% to 20% of another characters resources. This results in one player saying they need a long rest and a different player saying they need no rest.
3. 80% consumption or resources feels like the party is completely drained of resources and need a long rest. Or when a player is looking at only 20% health remaining, 20% of spell slots remaining, and 20% of a character resource (Lay on Hands, Sorc Points, etc.) they are thinking it's time to leave a combat or avoid a combat at all costs.

I would like to propose that instead of using the labels of Easy, Medium, Hard, Deadly, let's look at the percent of Daily XP for that encounter. What have you seen as Deadly and what have you seen as Easy based on player feed back?

Thank you for the input. I don't currently plan to change the easy, medium, hard, deadly titles (that could change), but linmking them into the daily XP budget makes sense. This would also work with the encounters per day guideline.

 

[CapnZapp]

I agree with [MENTION=6862150]cooperjer[/MENTION] the labels of Easy, Hard etc doesn't make much sense, precisely because they so seldom meet with practical results (and specifically make the entire game feel like running on easy mode)

Compare
- "what do you mean that was a deadly encounter, we barely took a scratch?! Who in their right mind would call that a deadly encounter - is this game kid's play?"
to
- "oh, you said a taxing encounter. Yes, once we unloaded our big guns it became rather easy, but sure, we used up quite a lot of gunpowder, didn't we?"

On the other hand, I can't say I feel the suggestion to tie the calculations to daily XP is an easy solution either. Different groups level up at different rates. It would be a shame to hard-code any expectation of level-up to this effort. I mean, if a group wants to have a dozen Double-deadly encounters each level that's their business.

 

[dave2008]

On the other hand, I can't say I feel the suggestion to tie the calculations to daily XP is an easy solution either. Different groups level up at different rates. It would be a shame to hard-code any expectation of level-up to this effort. I mean, if a group wants to have a dozen Double-deadly encounters each level that's their business.

Maybe I missed something, but what does the daily XP budget have to do with leveling up? I typical use milestone leveling and I didn't realize there was a relationship.