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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 4366861" data-attributes="member: 3146">The key thing is figuring how difficult you want the encounter to be.IME, an EL=party level encounter is a cakewalk. It's expected to eat only 20% of the party's resources and the party can easily handle four or five without being in danger.EL=party level +2 is a pretty standard challenge. It could go south if the players make mistakes, their PCs are poorly balanced, they roll extremely poorly, and you roll extremely well. But realistically, there is very little chance that a PC will die in a EL+2 encounter unless it involves very swingy things like raging orc barbarians with greataxes and you have (sensibly IMO) banned Delay Death.EL=party level +3 is a challenging battle that can feel like the climactic fight of a session, but the PCs will still very rarely lose and will only occasionally die.EL=party level +4 is where you have a good chance for a death in the party and a noticable chance that the party will lose.EL=party level +5 is where you start looking at a 50% chance of a TPK.So, let's say you adopt EL=party level +2 as your standard encounter.If you want one monster per PC at even levels, that's monster CR=party level -2.So for a 15th level party, an equal number of CR 13 monsters. You want it to be challenging? Make them CR 14 monsters. Now it's EL=party level +3. Deadly? Use 15th level monsters and you're at EL=party level +4. The party is likely to lose? Use an equal number of monsters one higher level than the party. EL=party level +5.So that's the fourth edition encounter design conversion in a nutshell. Monster level=CR+2.How do minions figure in? Elites? Solos? Well, third edition doesn't actually have minions (a fact that I rather like myself), but elites and solos are actually pretty easy. Elite monster level=CR. Solo monster level=CR-2 (though you'll want to watch the rough spots of 3.x like blasphemy more closely than usual in this regard).As I said, third edition doesn't have minions, but if you want more goons, you can double the number of monsters by using CR+4=level. This will typically work best with brute style monsters (but they also tend to make good minions storywise so it works out). They will be tougher than a 4th edition minion--usually taking two or three hits to kill at mid-high levels.Another peculiarity of third edition is that the leader style monsters actually work unusually well as minions themselves. For instance, the 4th level orc war party (designed for 5 PCs) of one orc barbarian 4, one orc barbarian two, and four orc barbarian 1s becomes a whole lot more deadly if you trade one of the orc barbarian 1s for a wardrummer (bard). Trading the 4th level barbarian for a 4th level cleric? Not nearly so much.A couple standard encounter templates:1 elite soldier, 1 artillery, 4 minions. (1 CR=plvl, 1 CR=plvl-2, 4 CR=plvl-4)1 elite brute, 2 soldiers, 2 minions (1 brute, 1 leader). 1 CR=plvl, 2 CR=plvl-2, 2 CR=plvl-4).If you're willing to dig into the CR system rather than try for the 4e encounter building conversion, you can also have some interesting encounters by playing with odd numbers. 1 CR=Plvl+1, 3x CR=plvl-2, for instance gives you a fight that is a little more challenging than the standard encounter (EL=party level +2) but not nearly as challenging as the challenging encounter (EL=party level +3). It also manages to get in a monster that straddles the line between elite and solo.</blockquote>

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