D&D 5E 5e Combat Encounter Cheat Sheet

[Quickleaf]

Something I've been working on for a bit.

This is just my personal approach to designing combat encounters (that aren't just quick random encounters). It's made for an 11x17 printout.

Hopefully some folks find this helpful. I'll gather feedback and playtest, and probably edit it over the winter holiday.

 

[J.Quondam]

This is gold! Honestly, I don't have enough 5e experience to judge it. But just having it laid out in a nice flowchart like this - with lots of points/flags to consider and the tables at the ready - is incredibly helpful. When I get some time, I'll definitely be digging into this and playtesting to see if I can grok it better.
Thanks for posting!

 

[Charlaquin]

That’s awesome! I’d love to see a version that uses the XGtE encounter building guidelines instead of the DMG ones, but the flowchart and the goals and twists table are solid gold!

 

[overgeeked]

That's really cool. Thanks for the share.

I'm not sure about that "approximate %". That suggests that at 1st level a party of four couldn't handle much more than a single encounter worth 300xp. I've thrown buffed up (double hp and double attacks) CR2 creatures at a 1st level party of four that's not optimized at all and they slaughtered it in 3 1/2 rounds with only one character going to zero hp. Nothing weird about the rolls either way. Mostly average, really.