Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana Presents Alternative Encounter Building Guidelines

WotC's Mike Mearls has posted the latest Unearthed Arcana, presenting an alternate set of encounter-building guidelines for D&D. "Though this approach uses the same basic math underlying the encounter system presented in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, it makes a few adjustments to how it presents that math to produce a more flexible system. These guidelines will be of interest to DMs who want to emphasize combat in their games, who want to ensure that a foe isn’t too deadly for a specific group of characters, and who want to understand the relationship between a character’s level and a monster’s challenge rating."

It's four pages, and includes various tables divided into a series of five steps - Assess the Characters, Encounter Size, Determine Numbers and Challenge Ratings, Select Monsters, and Add Complications. The latter step includes d8 monster personalities, d6 monster relationships, terrain, traps, and random events. Find it here.

At the D&D website:

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I think a much better start would be to ask questions about the party.

Oh wait, that's exactly what every encounter building guideline refuse to do, thereby dooming itself into worthlessness.

Knowing the monsters would also be more useful.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Knowing the monsters would also be more useful.

Step four.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Step four.

For the question I am asking to the person I am asking. No it's step one. I want to know what four CR 10 monsters his party effortlessly beat.

Here are the CR 10 monsters

Aboleth
Death slaad
Deva
Guardian naga
Stone golem
Yochlol
Young gold dragon
Young red dragon

 

[skotothalamos]

"For example, for a party of five 9th-level characters, a CR 12 legendary creature makes an appropriate encounter."

Ah, how... intuitive. I love how the numbers don't actually interact with one another. Makes me miss 4e in a big way.

Curse of Strahd griping below:
[sblock]I'd love to see the math on unleashing six CR5 Vampire Spawn on a level-5 party[/sblock]

 

[I'm A Banana]

For the question I am asking to the person I am asking. No it's step one. I want to know what four CR 10 monsters his party effortlessly beat.

Here are the CR 10 monsters

Aboleth
Death slaad
Deva
Guardian naga
Stone golem
Yochlol
Young gold dragon
Young red dragon

Ah, sorry, misunderstood. Yes, this would be important info.

 

[unknowable]

"For example, for a party of five 9th-level characters, a CR 12 legendary creature makes an appropriate encounter."

Ah, how... intuitive. I love how the numbers don't actually interact with one another. Makes me miss 4e in a big way.

Curse of Strahd griping below:
[sblock]I'd love to see the math on unleashing six CR5 Vampire Spawn on a level-5 party[/sblock]

What math? it is a horror adventure that is meant to be crushing and overwhelming. That is the whole point of it... I mean the party can come across 3 level 5 night hags at level 3. And that isn't counting the three Dretch that can join the fight.

The entire adventure is like that, intentionally.

Also numbers interact with each other hugely, CR doesn't. But that makes sense because of optimisation curves and how it just throws CR off or CR means something completely different depending on what equipment a party has, what classes, what races, what saves or even what spells they have access to.

It has always been a really meaningless vague guideline number in nearly all editions.

4e had it work, but then 4e had really predictable cookie cutter encounters that any experienced party knew by rote.

 

[ad_hoc]

I'm not saying you've done this (I don't have any details on how you ran this encounter), but most of the times when I've seen arguments like this ("the encounter should have been super deadly but was a cakewalk!!), often the monsters and/or environment were ran by the DM to the benefit of the characters. E.g., many times the monsters were treated like bags of HP that just waltzed into battle without taking into consideration how said monster would normally act if it were a real living being, or they completely ignored any factors of the environment that would have given them an advantage in battle.

Agreed.

It's a compliment to 5e that decisions in play matter much more than numbers on the sheet or stat blocks.

My favourite anecdote on the matter is when someone said that the start to OotA was broken because the PCs can easily just destroy all of the drow and Quaggoths. When I asked for details it involved a lot of allowing the PCs to attack without reprisal. One example given was the commander of the drow casting levitate instead of a spell that would wipe out all of the PCs (with or without save). The levitate, of course, set her up for an easy one hit kill when she fell to her doom.

 

[ad_hoc]

Curse of Strahd griping below:
[sblock]I'd love to see the math on unleashing six CR5 Vampire Spawn on a level-5 party[/sblock]

The party knows they are there and can ambush them. If they want to, they can just burn the house down. They really aren't much of a challenge. Most of that CR 5 is defensive in nature. Their offensive CR isn't very high.

CoS is not an adventure based around slug fests.

 

[The_Gneech]

Honestly, I think Sly Flourish did it better:

https://twitter.com/SlyFlourish/status/785609563999535108

That said, the DMG guidelines work fairly well as long as you keep in mind that what used to be a "standard" encounter in 3E/4E is considered "hard" in 5E, and what was "hard" in the older editions is considered "deadly" now.

This isn't because 5E is "going easy" on players, it's because 5E is balanced around the "adventuring day" and not the single encounter. By having a larger number of easier encounters, you don't have as big a problem with the wizards blowing everything in the first encounter (because they have to) and wanting to rest immediately.

The DMG guidelines can be quickly and easily calculated here: http://dhmholley.co.uk/encounter-calculator-5th/

-The Gneech

 

[slightlyprime]

interesting that 6 lvl 10 chars are equivalent to a cr 10 monster but if you get a pc and calculate the challenge rating for them to fight a party a barbarian or fighter level 10 can be a cr 10 monster. I also wish they addressed challenge rating for monsters with higher ac.