FitzTheRuke
Legend
There's a lot on non-combat encounters and on more exciting things for combat like elevation and hazards, but the basics on Combat look like this:
Combat Encounter Difficulty. Use the following guidelines to create a combat encounter of a desired level of difficulty.
Step 1: Choose a Difficulty. Three categories describe the range of encounter difficulty:
Low Difficulty. An encounter of low difficulty is likely to have one or two scary moments for the players, but their characters should emerge victorious with no casualties. One or more of them might need to use healing resources, however. As a rough guideline, a single monster generally presents a low-difficulty challenge for a party of four characters whose level equals the monster’s CR.
Moderate Difficulty. Absent healing and other resources, an encounter of moderate difficulty could go badly for the adventurers. Weaker characters might get taken out of the fight, and there’s a slim chance that one or more characters might die.
High Difficulty. A high-difficulty encounter could be lethal for one or more characters. To survive it, the characters will need smart tactics, quick thinking, and maybe even a little luck.
Step 2: Determine Your XP Budget. Using the XP Budget per Character table, cross-reference the party’s level with the desired encounter difficulty. Multiply the number in the table by the number of characters in the party to get your XP budget for the encounter.
(And a table, we can talk about the table in another post if you need it, just ask)
Step 3: Spend Your Budget. Every creature has an XP value in its stat block. When you add a creature to your combat encounter, deduct its XP from your XP budget to determine how many XP you have left to spend. Spend as much of your XP budget as you can without going over. It’s OK if you have a few unspent XP left over. Examples are given below:
Troubleshooting. When creating and running combat encounters, keep the following in mind.
Many Creatures. The more creatures in an encounter, the higher the risk that a lucky streak on their part could deal more damage to the characters than you expect. If your encounter includes more than two creatures per character, include fragile creatures that can be defeated quickly. This guideline is especially important for characters of level 1 or 2.
Adjustments. A player’s absence might warrant removing creatures from an encounter to keep it at the intended difficulty. Also, die rolls and other factors can result in an encounter being easier or harder than intended. You can adjust an encounter on the fly, such as by having creatures flee (making the encounter easier) or adding reinforcements (making the encounter harder).
CR 0 Creatures. Creatures that have a CR of 0, particularly ones that are worth 0 XP, should be used sparingly. If you want to include many CR 0 critters in an encounter, use swarms from the Monster Manual instead.
Number of Stat Blocks. The best combat encounters often pair one kind of creature with another, such as fire giants paired with hell hounds. Be mindful of the number of stat blocks you need to run the encounter. Referencing more than two or three stat blocks for a single encounter can be daunting, particularly if the creatures are complex.
Powerful Creatures. If your combat encounter includes a creature whose CR is higher than the party’s level, be aware that such a creature might deal enough damage with a single action to take out one or more characters. For example, an Ogre (CR 2) can kill a level 1 Wizard with a single blow.
Unusual Features. If a monster has a feature that lower-level characters can’t easily overcome, consider not adding that monster to an encounter for characters whose level is lower than the monster’s Challenge Rating.
Encounter Pace and Tension. A good story hooks you in with an interesting introduction, builds tension steadily throughout the story, then reaches a climactic conclusion. It’s not always easy to mimic that structure in an adventure where the players control their characters’ actions, but you can use the encounters you plan to build tension toward a climax. Each encounter in an adventure is an opportunity to make the characters’ situation more complex and urgent, with more significant consequences. Successive encounters raise the tension in an adventure naturally, as characters spend their limited resources. Variety also contributes to a sense of escalating tension. Build variety into your encounters in three ways:
Vary Encounter Type. Use a mix of social interaction, exploration, and combat encounters. Different types of encounters provide different amounts of tension (generally, combat encounters offer the most), but they also feel very different and can have drastically different stakes.
Vary Encounter Difficulty. Include encounters that offer low, moderate, and high difficulty. A mix of low- and moderate-difficulty encounters early in the adventure can lead to a climactic high-difficulty fight, perhaps against the adventure’s primary villain or another threat.
Vary Threats. Build encounters using different threats. If the characters are delving into a kuo-toa temple and therefore expect many encounters to include various kuo-toa, look for opportunities to include different monsters that might serve as guards, pets, or allies to the kuo-toa. Include a variety of hazards, environmental dangers, and traps in exploration encounters, and use NPCs with different personalities and different goals in social interaction encounters.
Urgency and Rests. While successive encounters increase tension, taking a Short Rest relaxes the tension somewhat, as characters have a chance to replenish some of their resources. In many adventures, though, the characters and their players have a sense that they need to act quickly to deal with the situation presented by the adventure. This creates tension between the need to rest and the sense that things are getting worse while the characters are resting. You can influence the pace and tension of your adventure by determining where and when the characters can rest. If the characters are exploring a vast dungeon, consider scattering a few small rooms with only one door, where the characters can bar the door and reasonably expect to spend an hour or even a night resting in safety. On the flip side, cautious characters might try to take a Short Rest between every encounter, never really straining their resources. It’s OK to interrupt those rests once in a while to maintain a sense of tension or to heighten the urgency, making it clear that even an hour spent resting could jeopardize their chances of success.
Easing Up. It is possible to dial up the urgency to the point that the players feel they don’t have time to investigate the interesting details they encounter in the world. When this happens, consider using a helpful NPC to take some of the pressure off. A wise elder might advise them that the situation is not as urgent as they fear, a whimsical Fey being might use magical mischief to force them to slow down, or a kindly Celestial could tell them they’re taking the concerns of the mortal world just a bit too seriously.
Random Encounters. Mysterious lights glimmer in a remote mountain lake, drawing adventurers to explore
Random encounters are randomly determined encounters that don’t occur in a fixed location. The options are often presented in a table. When a random encounter occurs, you roll a die and consult the table to determine what the party encounters. Sample random encounter tables appear in the adventure examples later in this chapter. Similar tables appear in many published adventures and rulebooks, and you can easily create your own by following these examples. Handled well, random encounters can serve a variety of useful purposes.
Create Urgency. Wandering monsters encourage characters to keep moving and to find a safe place to rest. (Sometimes you can create a sense of danger and urgency by rolling dice behind your DM screen, even without an actual encounter!)
Drain Character Resources. By draining the party’s Hit Points and spell slots, leaving the adventurers feeling underpowered and vulnerable, random encounters can build tension in an adventure.
