D&D 5E 5E Challenge Ratings

[Sword of Spirit]

It's stuff like that that has me worried. I want to run my daughter through LMoP and HotDQ but,
I don't want her to say, " mommy, Daddy TPK'd us!" Granted, 'good DM's check these things', but
that's just it. I work 6 days a week ow and just don't have the time to make sure all the
Encounters are balanced ala 3.x CR! If I've paid for the adventures, I should
be able to run them as is without too much fuss. Yes, I appreciate that the
basic game is free, but the point is I'm not, "getting a box of money from WoTC and
complaining how it's wrapped. I'm paying full price at FLGS to support
the hobby and slaughtering PC's in an intro to RP adventure for kids new to the hobbY
LOL. Not very encouraging for their continued interest in the hobby. Yeah, I could spend
Tons of time figuring it out myself, with contradictory wording with side bars on encounter budgets,
But then that defeats the purpose LOL CRY.

I may have an opportunity to run LMoP (or at least a bit of it) for some young nephews with no RPG experience. Should they die in the first area or two, I'll most likely allow them to "reload from the last saved game," so to speak.

I think that's entirely reasonable with adults too. If they don't have any way of knowing how tough it actually is, and don't play sufficiently cautious--let them TPK, and then just restart with the same characters, letting them know that this restart is a one time thing for those characters. They should have a feel for how hard it is now, and hopefully that won't happen again.

 

[SigmaOne]

@Prism,


Spoilers......








Area 1 - 400xp (Deadly)
Area 2 - 150xp (Medium)
Area 3 - 300xp (Hard)
Area 6 - 600xp (off the scale)
Area 7 - 300xp (Hard)
Area 8 - 700xp (off the scale)


So it does look to me like the adventure starts off very hard for a new group of inexperienced players. No wonder the difficulty some groups have had. I would say that the developer of the adventure was not working to these DM guidelines when writing it.

In the lost mines after area 1 it says 'in the unlikely event the goblins defeats the players...'. The guidelines for a deadly encounter state 'The encounter is potentially lethal for one or more player characters'.

I think those multipliers can overstate the encounter difficulty in some cases; perhaps edge cases. The goblins have 4 HP, so in most instances, they'll go down on a single hit. So their numbers drop quickly. There's no way the ambush with four goblins is beyond hard; and really, I'd say it's between medium and hard. They should expect to have to heal up after the fight and in rare instances, things could go very bad. I think the Area 8 encounter is definitely "deadly" for level 1 PCs. So it seems to me the "add XP values and apply group multiplier" may not always be ideal.

I think with higher CR monsters who don't drop so quickly, this will be less of an issue. They really will make the battle tougher. But I'm not 100% sure I'm sold on this scheme.

And... if an encounter is "treated as x XP for difficult", then why shouldn't I be rewarding x XP for the encounter? I mean, XP rewards are based on encounter difficulty and if we're explicitly calculating "how much more difficult" the encounter is based on the number of enemies... why are the PCs not being rewarded accordingly for overcoming that challenge? Of course, because that would throw off all the monster XP and leveling balance. But. It just seems wrong somehow. I'm feeling like this is the one part of 5e I'm not sold on. Some nice ideas, but it doesn't seem to be coming together for me. I like the CR/XP split, and I think their on to something. But I'm not sold on what they've got here.

Good thing I can just choose when my PCs level and forget about XP rewards entirely! That's becoming a more and more attractive option, for a variety of reasons.

 

[Talaeden_Denthiir]

Comparing two CR6 Humanoid (humans):

Rath Modar (p.92, HotDQ) &
Mage (DM's Basic Rules p.55)
As far as I can tell Rath beats the Mage in every category,
Except having 1 more pt. in Cha. and 1 pt. Of Atk Bonus. Rath has a special reaction, is an 11th level caster compared to the Mage's 9th, has more HP, and even has
Magic Items: Staff of Fire, Scrolls of Dimension Door, Feather Fall, and Fireball.

It even says in the Basic Rules,

"Magic Items. The more powerful an NPC, the more likely it has one or more magic items in its possession. A mage, for example, might have a magic staff or wand, as well as one or more potions and scrolls. Giving an NPC a potent damage-dealing magic item could alter its challenge rating. A few magic items are described in this document."

So, what gives? It makes the dragon size/type argument above, facetious. These two NPCs are the same type, size, and subtype. Yeah, one is named, but so what?

Sorry, not swallowing the, CR is more art than science pill. 4E was able to make balanced monsters. 5E supposed to take the best from all editions. YMMV but, IMHO, one of 3E's strengths was it's PC building, not it's CR system. Although 4E erred with Vanilla PC's, it shined with balanced monsters with unique abilities (MM3 and up, of course).

 

[Scorpio616]

Challenge Rating is actually really interesting this edition. Look at the definition from the DM Basic Guide: "An appropriately equipped and well-rested party of four adventurers should be able to defeat a monster that has a challenge rating equal to its level without suffering any deaths.

Think about that. A party that isn't well-rested coming up against a monster with the same challenge rating? That might cause PC deaths! This is a long way from the 20% of resources that 3E believed CRs stood for!

Thought it was 25% of the Party's resources in 3E, which certainly could be a life of a party member from x3 /x4 critical hits or a basilisk / medusa / bodak.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I had to reread this section in the DM's Basic PDF, but I--and I believe a lot of other people--have been thinking of this wrong. We're still looking at CR is a measure of "How tough is this critter?" as it was in 3e. But that's not what CR is anymore.

XP value is a measure of how tough the creature is. CR is a minimum level guideline. It a monster has a CR of Y, it means "Even though this might fit into the XP budget for an encounter against party of level X, they may not be able to handle it. Only characters of level Y or above are likely to have the necessary resources."

 

[Boarstorm]

XP value is a measure of how tough the creature is. CR is a minimum level guideline.

Except that one sets the other. IE -- all monsters of a certain CR are worth the same XP. So the two are kind-of the same thing ultimately.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Except that one sets the other. IE -- all monsters of a certain CR are worth the same XP. So the two are kind-of the same thing ultimately.

Isn't there a range of XP per CR? Or was I up way too late reading again?

 

[Grazzt]

Isn't there a range of XP per CR? Or was I up way too late reading again?

XP is set based on CR. For example, all CR 1 monsters are worth 200 XP.

 

[Mouseferatu]

XP is set based on CR. For example, all CR 1 monsters are worth 200 XP.

Gah! So what the heck am I thinking of?!

Either way, I need to stop answering questions based on anything read after 2 AM.

 

[jadrax]

Gah! So what the heck am I thinking of?!

Challenge 0 creatures can be worth 0 or 10 XP, maybe you read that and extrapolated. ;o)