Determining Challenge

[GreyICE]

Well, how does a DM (especially a new one) learn to do that? What guidance (aside from general advice) should the game give? Or do you think general advice should be enough for anyone?

If you read the DMG, it has quite a bit about creating encounters. Page 58 has some encounter types, and sample encounters. For instance, under commander and troops they write:

Commander and Troops
One commander monster in charge (a controller or soldier, but a lurker or skirmisher could also serve) leads a number of troops. The troops are usually melee focused (brutes and soldiers), but more challenging Commander and Troops encounters can feature some strategic artillery support.


They also have some examples, for instance:
Hard Example for 8th-level PCs: 1 war troll, 3 trolls, and 2 destrachans.



This is much better than laying out specific encounters, and gives some very good advice on how to make cool encounters.

They also discuss how to create interesting areas and terrain.

Overall, I think that section should stay pretty much exactly the same in 5E. It's completely brilliant.

 

[Thaumaturge]

Crazy idea WotC is unlikely to do, but is still fun to think about:

They should allow a DM to label groups of characters in the DDi as a 'party'. Once they do that, they could have an encounter builder that analyzes that group and generates encounters. The DM could toggle level of difficulty, creature type, or any number of options.

This way they fancy algorithms they've developed in house can be used directly in home games. They would know the party composition, weaknesses, and strengths, so there wouldn't be the rogues versus golems and zombies problem or a low attack versus high AC problem.

Yes, there are problems with a system like this beyond the expense of creating it. I like DM agency in my encounter creation, but this wouldn't obviate the need for a DM.

Thaumaturge.

 

[FireLance]

You know, I haven't actually given it a lot of thought before, but if I were to give rules of thumb for encounter balance, I'd suggest the following:

1. Eyeball the math. Generally, you'd want most of the PCs to hit the monsters at least 40% of the time, if not higher.

2. Walk through the encounter in your head. What's likely to happen? Do the monsters or the PCs have specific defenses or vulnerabilities that could make the encounter significantly easier or harder?

3. Watch out for swingy abilities. Abilities that could deal large amounts of damage to or disable multiple monsters or PCs could wreck the balance of the fight. Think of a back-up plan should the worst happen.

4. Watch out for "gotcha" abilities. Abilities that run contrary to the players' expectations or experiences, or which require them to realize something about the monster in the middle of the fight, can cause an encounter to go south if the players are being particularly obtuse. If you want to prevent a TPK, think about how to drop liberal hints about the nature of the monster should the fight get to that stage.

5. Most importantly, run your fights and learn from them. Nothing beats actual experience.

 

[JoesephBear]

Why must killing monsters give xp?

If monster xp is removed, how does this change the monsters with respect to their role in the game?

If I entertain these two questions, I come to a few self-realizations.

If monsters do not have xp, what does one gain by killing a monster? Treasure? Monsters usually guard treasure rather than carry it on them. Players could come up with a plan to steal it from under their noses instead of charging in with swords drawn.

Without xp, monsters go from being a check-box that players need to kill in order to advance and become mobile death-inflicting bags of hp. In a sense, they are just another type of obstacle, like a trap or a puzzle.

I like this. By becoming an obstacle, the expectation that they must be balanced against the players is greatly lessened. If faced with a deadly high-level puzzle, low-level characters would have to either think creatively to get past it or perhaps research how to solve it and come back later. If faced with high-level monsters, low-level players would be encouraged to bypass them or neutralize them by other means. The players don't lose out by not killing them.

 

[FireLance]

Without xp, monsters go from being a check-box that players need to kill in order to advance and become mobile death-inflicting bags of hp. In a sense, they are just another type of obstacle, like a trap or a puzzle.

I like this. By becoming an obstacle, the expectation that they must be balanced against the players is greatly lessened. If faced with a deadly high-level puzzle, low-level characters would have to either think creatively to get past it or perhaps research how to solve it and come back later. If faced with high-level monsters, low-level players would be encouraged to bypass them or neutralize them by other means. The players don't lose out by not killing them.

Midway through 3e and all the way through 4e, my gaming group pretty much adopted a "you gain a level after every adventure" convention. It was mostly because we wanted to scrap the micro-tracking of XP and just focus on the more macro tracking of levels. Anyway, in our view, we lost nothing by deciding not to track experience (or, incidentally, treasure - but that's a post for another thread).

 

[amerigoV]

Why must killing monsters give xp?

If monster xp is removed, how does this change the monsters with respect to their role in the game?

If I entertain these two questions, I come to a few self-realizations.

If monsters do not have xp, what does one gain by killing a monster? Treasure? Monsters usually guard treasure rather than carry it on them. Players could come up with a plan to steal it from under their noses instead of charging in with swords drawn.

Without xp, monsters go from being a check-box that players need to kill in order to advance and become mobile death-inflicting bags of hp. In a sense, they are just another type of obstacle, like a trap or a puzzle.

I like this. By becoming an obstacle, the expectation that they must be balanced against the players is greatly lessened. If faced with a deadly high-level puzzle, low-level characters would have to either think creatively to get past it or perhaps research how to solve it and come back later. If faced with high-level monsters, low-level players would be encouraged to bypass them or neutralize them by other means. The players don't lose out by not killing them.

QFT. Monsters = XP was a LOGICAL change from older editions, but in reality it leads to players feeling they have to kill everything, and thus the expectation that every fight must be true.

I play Savage Worlds now. XP is given every session regardless of what is going on (you can give a bit more if a significant accomplishment occurs). I still remember vividly the first time the players realized they did not HAVE to fight something and bypassed the fight vs. the same players a few years before finding an arch that if you touched it a Grell was gated in - the first words out of their mouth was "XP generator!!".

 

[Hussar]

But... but... but... killing stuff is FUN!

Really, if you're going to give DM advice, you're going to have to baseline it somewhere. I mean, you can't give the same advice for designing a solo adventure as the 10 PC adventure. So, like Crazy J said, define the upper and lower reaches and work from there.

I think probably the most important thing is transparency. What are the baseline assumptions and specifically call them out. Spend some time explaining what happens if you shift those assumptions. Or at least what will probably happen based on experience.

Spend some time talking about how the DM wants to approach the encounter. Is the DM there to bring his A game? Or is the encounter more relaxed? What happens if you really drill home the tactics vs a more casual approach. How do the various bits fit together?

Once you've laid all that out, then you can show what the baseline assumptions give you. And, because it's so out in the open, it should be fairly obvious what happens if you vary those assumptions.

And, heck, you could probably spend a few pages on the high end and low end. Most of the advice is for a "typical group" - 4 or 5 players, mixed bag of classes/races. Now, here's a few more examples of atypical groups and how they interact - less or more players, less or more classes, less or more power in chargen, that sort of thing.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Once you've laid all that out, then you can show what the baseline assumptions give you. And, because it's so out in the open, it should be fairly obvious what happens if you vary those assumptions.

See, as far as I can tell, 3e tried this, and the result was the rather justly-criticized CR system. It hard-coded things like the fly spell, magic items, and whatnot, right into the baseline assumption. And those aren't exceptional assumptions to make: most parties probably have magic items, and probably fit the four main roles in a party. But then you get expected wealth-by-level guidelines and CR changes if you're off. And if you change the amount of magic in the world, the CR changes. And if you just lack a wizard, or a rogue, the CR changes.

4e tried to address that with roles, lower overall power, and a more granular XP budget, so that the assumptions were more easily met, but 4e also has pretty stringent requirements for "balance": 5 monsters. 5 characters. Solos with action-recovery powers. Open terrain. Etc. And some of the trade-offs that 4e made (roles, low-powered noncombat magic) aren't very well accepted.

I like the idea of leaving it a little more free and open, and maybe [MENTION=6684526]GreyICE[/MENTION] is onto something with the idea of just making it broad guidelines. If you combine that with [MENTION=28243]Joseph[/MENTION]Bear 's idea of making it the players' job to figure out how to overcome a challenge, you might have something that's robust enough for a lot of games.

Still, there's a price though. You can't account for which encounters will be climactic and which will be simple very easily. Your ability to plan out a 4e-style mega-battle is constrained, since your only tools are relatively blunt instruments until you just learn what your party can take.

Maybe that's fine, though? I dunno. D&D has always been a weird game with regards to "challenge" and "victory." Maybe weakening the game-style requirement of having a precise mathematical challenge will be fine. I'm not sure it'll make those who love 4e's precision very happy, though...

And, unlike with many places in the rules, I'm not sure this can be easily adjusted to be different for different groups. But perhaps there's a way I'm not seeing...hmm..

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Base xp for monsters. More or less depending on the challenge.

This, however, depends, if the monster could chose its terrain advantage, or if the players were clever and picked an enemy, when he was at disadvantage. Players should not be penalized for beeing clever.

[MENTION=6674266]Ba[/MENTION]lanced encounters:
balanced encounters are boring. Usually one party choses when to fight. The other party should try to get an edge too. So no, the DM is not solely responsible for making monsters worth their xp. Usually he tries to make them worth more. PCs try to make them less challenging.

 

[Hussar]

I know that when I tried creating adventures for Savage Worlds, I had a heck of a time trying to gauge what the PC's could face in a fight. I was too unfamiliar with the system to eyeball it, and SW doesn't give you a lot of detail on what makes an "average" encounter, for a given value of average.

My very first encounter, I TPK'd the party, not through any fault of theirs, but, because I totally misjudged how strong encounters are.

So, while I might not know how to write a determining challenge document, I most definitely WANT one there.

3e's CR system gets criticised because the baseline is too narrow. And, it's not transparent enough. There's very little advice on what effects moving from that baseline has. A 35 point buy party is significantly more powerful than a 25 point buy party, yet, that's never talked about in the DMG, AFAIK. If they had spent a page or two discussing what actually goes into the CR calculation, and what effects changing the baseline has, they would have gone a long way towards improving the system.

As it is, the 3e CR system isn't bad. It's not perfect by any stretch, but, it at least gives DM's a starting point.