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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The_Furious_Puffin" data-source="post: 6842062" data-attributes="member: 11831">That's not the part that takes me significant time. The time consuming part (for me) is encounter design. The 5E framework (as is the 4E and 3.5E!) for this is complex. We're expected to do the following:A) Cross reference the pair of tables that tells you the XP budget and XP multiplier. The bit I find tricky here is that getting the value of encounters right is tricky because adding a new monster changes two things and you need to do a lot of fiddling.B) The internal balance of monsters in 5E is worth discussing. I think there is a lot of variance around damage which means encounter design needs a careful eye to make sure you don't overuse monsters with high alpha or create padded sumo. For example, the centaur who can quite plausibly 1 shot a PC at level 3, has excellent standoff capability with 2 longbow attacks for reasonable damage, high movement speed, and the encounter design guidelines call for using 3 centaurs vs a party of 5 level 3 PCs. At the other end of the table you have a bunch of sacks of low damage attacks with HP and resistances which don't make for fun. 5 suits of animated Armour have more than twice the effective HP and less than half the DPR which leads to a very slow fight as the players whittle away the sack of HP (Animated armour have another problem in that they don't actually do anything interesting other than 'I attack' for what rates to be a protracted fight) C) The framework for designing and rescaling monsters is not fast. There are a number of blog posts about the multi step process that walk through the complexity of the steps.This is why I personally have a huge preference for running canned modules in D&D - the last 3 editions place huge reliance on the combat subgame, but it is a lot of work to design robust balance encounters. You can just 'wing it' or fudge a lot when you realise you've screwed up, but I buy into the school that this sucks the drama out.</blockquote>

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