D&D 5E Real XP, Building XP and Actual Play

[mips42]

In designing an encounter for 5e, using the CR's presented for the monsters, I built what I figured would be a Medium to slightly above encounter.
However, according to the Building An Encounter rules, this would have been a Deadly Encounter (mostly due to the number of creatures) and stated that I should allot 2 1/2x the XP for the daily total.
In PLAYING the encounter, it was moderately difficult (as planned).
Using the CR to build the encounter gave me the type of encounter I wanted (kudos there) but, if I'm reading the RAW properly (not saying I am), it's saying to give out 2.5x MORE than what the monsters were technically worth.
So, my question is: What exactly is the relationship of Encounter Building xp and Monster XP/CR? Am I reading this right or no?

 

[Jester David]

What were the monsters and CRs?

 

[koga305]

The current EB guidelines are kind of borked. For example, the encounters in the first part of Lost Mine of Phandelver come out as "Deadly, "Hard," "Beyond Deadly (1.5x Deadly)," "Hard," and "Beyond Deadly (1.75x Deadly)." Yet my group of 4 PCs made it through without any casualties, although two members of the party did get KO'd in the final encounter.

 

[Quickleaf]

Two things.

First, the XP multiplier only applies to *building* encounters NOT to awarding actual XP. It's meant to help you estimate encounter difficulty. That's it. A bit non-intuitive but there it is.

Second, we (the ENWorld community) have established that combining a high CR monster with lots of low CR monsters leads to an exaggerated estimate of the encounter's difficulty using the current XP multiplier guidelines in the Basic D&D DM rules. For monsters around the same CR the current guidelines work ok.

 

[mips42]

[MENTION=37579]Jester Canuck[/MENTION]http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?37579-Jester-Canuck The monsters were all sub 1 CR.

Spoiler

6 kobolds (cr 1/8 each) and a Lizardkin (cr 1/2) for a total CR of 1.25, 250 actual XP, builder assigned 600+

[MENTION=20323]Quickleaf[/MENTION] Good to know that. Thanks.

Sad to hear that the Encounter builder guidelines are not more accurate than they are, but there ya go.
For now, I'll stick with building encounters by CR. At least so far, that seems to give expected results.