D&D 5E L&L for 7/7

[Rydac]

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20140707

Looks like I'm the night owl this week. Mike's article on encounter design

 

[Melfast]

Looks Like a Good Starting Place

The table in the L&L article looks like a good place to start. Factor in terrain, any odd circumstances and such, and you're off.

As Mike says, experienced DM's tend to eyeball this stuff, but while I consider myself an experienced DM it's nice to have a starting point when beginning a new game/edition.

I noticed that the adventuring day is based on the experience value of two hard encounters, not four encounters per day as I had gathered from the playtest. I like this as it allows create a range of encounters and some variety. So you could have a series of small encounters when first engaging the adventure, and then after a long rest move into fewer, tougher encounters in the conclusion of an adventure while facing the main villain.

 

[Kobold Stew]

Kudos to Mearls for owning the hobgoblin preview. They made a choice, and are sticking to it.

I do wish that fractional CRs were addressed in this article, though.

 

[drjones]

I'm not entirely sure why they went with CR instead of Level since in the end as with 4th you are looking for the monster level to be similar to the player level. But it does not matter really, the system described sounds pretty straight forward.

I just hope the combat runs fast enough to get through several encounters a game without getting bored. So far it sounds like it will.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

new L&L up 7/7/14

I didn't see a thread

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20140707

Well, we've heard a number of calls from DMs for a preview of the guidelines for designing and balancing encounters, so let's take a look at those rules this week. You can use these guidelines with the monsters in appendix B of Lost Mine of Phandelver to continue your campaign or create new adventures.

some cool and expected stuff

As a general rule, monsters with a CR higher than a party's level pose a significant threat.

multiply the XP value of an encounter by 1.5 if the monsters outnumber the adventurers by two-to-one. If the monsters outnumber the characters by three-to-one, multiply the XP total by 2. For a four-to-one advantage, multiply the XP total by 2.5, and so on.

 

[caudor]

What should we expect from a 'challenging' encounter (assuming no CR is greater than party level and PC are not outnumbered)? Is it likely that one or more PCs will die in this encounter? In order words, what type of encounter should be the most commonly used? Thanks.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

What should we expect from a 'challenging' encounter (assuming no CR is greater than party level and PC are not outnumbered)? Is it likely that one or more PCs will die in this encounter? In order words, what type of encounter should be the most commonly used? Thanks.

They don't say, but they do note that PCs can likely only survive 2 hard encounters worth of XP per day before being entirely out-of-resources (i.e. "needing" to take a long rest). So it would presumably depend on how many encounters/day you expected the PCs to hit. Approximate figures - 2 hard = 3 challenging = 6 moderate = 9+ easy (varies a lot by level). Thus I think it's safe to say moderate is the expected default.

 

[BryonD]

Interesting to note that a 350 XP encounter is listed as easy for levels 18-20, moderate for level 8, challenging for level 4 to 5 (300 and 400 XP), and hard for level 3 (330 XP).

Obviously they have stated this as a goal for a long time. But it is still interesting to see a firm (firm-ish, this is "preview", no foul for evolving/improving the system ) statement that a climactic encounter for L3 remains non-trivial for the balance of the levels through 20.

I like.

 

[Patrick McGill]

I like the using CR to gauge monsters individually and then using the budget to build the encounter with those monsters. Seems like a good solution for balancing experience within the monster list.

 

[am181d]

They don't say, but they do note that PCs can likely only survive 2 hard encounters worth of XP per day before being entirely out-of-resources (i.e. "needing" to take a long rest). So it would presumably depend on how many encounters/day you expected the PCs to hit. Approximate figures - 2 hard = 3 challenging = 6 moderate = 9+ easy (varies a lot by level). Thus I think it's safe to say moderate is the expected default.

I believe that Mearls is using "hard" and "challenging" interchangeably here.