Challenge Rating Question

[AelyaShade]

For the DM's out there...

What challenge rating of monsters would you throw at a group of 5 adventurers, all at level 5 (3 with familiars)? So far, our DM has been using the challenge rating out of the DM guide and has found that whatever monsters/enemies he throws our way is not challenging enough. Any help would be appreciated (by the evil DM, not by us as the players ).

 

[Bigwilly]

Start by going up an EL

Have the same problem with a party of 5 (used to be 6 which only made it more difficult). Problem is that recommended encounter level for 4 level 5 PCs would be 5, so for 5 PCs your DM probably needs to go up one EL (6). Even then, he needs to throw 4 or 5 of these encounters at the party to drain their resources. So, if you are only getting one or two EL 5 encounters between rests then you won't be challenged. As a very rough rule of thumb what he needs to do is up the EL by 1 for every encounter less than 5 that he thinks you will have before you get a chance to rest (4 encounters at EL 7, 3 @ EL 8, 2 @ EL 9, 1 @ EL10). Yes, that does mean that if you will only have a single encounter between resting, it should be around EL 10 (equal to about 5 CR 5 opponents or a 50 %chance of a TPK). Of course, he can play around with these numbers, perhaps having a few easier (EL5-6) encounters and one tough one, etc.

Another option is not to look at the EL, but at the AB and AC of the party and make sure that at least some of your opponents have an AC equal to the best fighter's AB+10 and an AB equal to the highest AC-10.

After a few sessions like this you will be glad to have the occasional easy encounter. Oh, and now that I have had a chance to think this through myself, my players are going to suffer.

Bigwilly

 

[Starman]

Is your DM using all of the monster's abilities and using them in an optimum way? That could affect the encounter.

Starman

 

[francisca]

I'm going to give the stone a few rotations, then put this particular axe away for a long, long time, so listen up, you lovable knuckleheads.

CR/EL/etc.. is/was an attempt at providing a mathematical way of reasoning out what a decent encounter should be. It was based on the idea of an encounter with a CR equal to party level should consume 20% of the party's resources. I find a couple of problems with that line of thinking:

1) Party composition varies wildly, so the numbers may not crunch up cleanly. Theoretically, the classes are balanced, so you should be able to take any four characters (yes, 4), and you should get the same results. The CR system is based around a party of 4, which may or may not match your situation. Also, it seems to work best when the party is built in a pre-fab 4 fashion: Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, Rogue. Your mileage may vary depending on party composition.

2) Consuming 20% of a party's resources may or may not constitute a challenge to your group. Unless my 3.5 group is flayed to within an inch of death, those arrogant ding-a-lings think the encounter was a cake-walk! Other groups may find that chewing up 20% is too much. Again, your mileage may vary, offer void where prohibited, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, my point:

Game balance comes from the DM assessing the party and tossing out encounters which challenge them without making them despair or feel they have not even a remote chance of surviving.

It always has been this way, and it always will, with or without the CR system.

Of course, this means that there must exist a certain level of trust between the DM and the party. The DM should be concerned with challenging the party, without mauling them. The Players should trust the DM to not be out to add another notch to his DM screen. Sometimes, the DM will get it wrong. Often this results in character death. It happens. Good thing it's just a game.

Now, the CR system can be a handy tool for the DM to gauge encounters, or it may not be. It is hardly the be-all end-all that many believe it to be, and encounters the DM desgins need to have a sort of sanity check run on them to make sure they meet the goal of the game: Have fun.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

There are a couple of tricks to pull. I have seven players in my group, and constantly have to up the EL ratings to keep 'em challenged. That said, I also give them a few "easy" encounters too, just to kind of even things out.

Increasing the EL of encounters is one of the first things to do. Maybe they should be facing EL 6 or 7 on a more regular basis than EL 5 or lower. I wouldn't go more than 3 ELs above average party level though.

Perhaps less obvious would be hit points. Jack up the hp on the beasties that are faced. An 11d8 creature with 88 hit points is going to be more challenging than one with average (44) hit points. I experienced just this in my game Friday night. The party was going against a Scaled Stalker, and I upped his hit points. It turned a pretty easy encounter into one that was a lot tougher.

Another option is lower CR, but higher EL. By this, I mean that, say, four CR 3 creatures are going to be a little tougher to beat than one CR 7 creature. Why? Because the party almost has to split their resources up. When two fighters have to face two separate creatures, it makes it more challenging than if they both have to whack away at the same creature. If the creatures spread out, one fireball can't take 'em all out. Tactics definitely play a part here.

 

[Voadam]

If the EL of current combats seems too low to him he should try just upping it by one and seeing how that adjusts the feel of the combats.

 

[AelyaShade]

Thank you all!

My evil DM has been informed of your many helpful hints to make my group's adventures more challenging. Many, many thanks!

One more question, if it's not too much trouble. Should he take into consideration the group's 3 familiars when deciding upon a specific CR or EL?
(The familiars are a druid's wolf, a wizard's fox, and a sorceror's owl.)

Once again, thanks to all!

 

[Janx]

CR is a useful function in guesstimating how tough an encounter is, it's got to be understood and used the right way.

For one thing, your GM's match-up of CR to the party of 5 fifth level PCs is a weak one.

Knowing that CR assumes a 4 member party, the best way to compare is to calculate the party's CR and use that as your comparison.

Thus, add up the total party level and divide by FOUR. This recalculates the party's level as if they were a standard party of 4 PCs at equal levels.

In you're case, you get 25/4=6.25

This proves, as another poster said, you need to jack up the CR/EL a notch.

Otherwise, you had CR5 encounter versus a CR6.25 party. Definitely a piece of cake.

From what I've seen, a REAL challenge is double the party's effective CR. Thus, pitting them against a 12.5 CR encounter would be very tough. Somebody's gonna die or nearly so (they usually pull out some trick to save somebody's life). But it makes for a very tense encounter.

Janx

 

[the Jester]

One more thing worth noting is that more creatures of low CR is usually easier on a party than a higher CR monster because the high-CR creature can usually dish out extreme amounts of damage. For instance, compare two ogres (CR 3, EL 5) with a troll (CR 5, EL 5)- the troll is much harder for lower-level adventurers, because it can dish out 54 points of damage in one round with its attack and rend. Thus, it's usually worth taking this into account when planning encounters. I'd generally recommend using more low-CR monsters at least until the party is able to put a suite of magical damage-reducing effects into play (protection from elements, stoneskin, etc). Of course, a high-CR monster can make for a great challenge, and using an obviously powerful creature sometimes can lead to great roleplaying opportunities too ("a fire giant?? We can't kill him, we have to get through that cave- let's parlay!").

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Fun with CR/EL math...

Five characters throws things off, and it's made worse by the fact that WOTC's EL system is more arcane than it needs to be.

So forget EL.

Let me introduce you to a new concept we'll call POWER.

A group's POWER is equal to the sum of all individual CR's squared.

When POWER is equal between two groups, you have an even fight, quite literally a coin-toss: a VERY difficult fight that will use up 100% of resources and net the party only a 50/50 survival rate.

Five 5th level adventurers have a POWER of (5^2)+(5^2)+(5^2)+(5^2)+(5^2) = 125.

Here are the CR's of opponents that would be very difficult:

1 opponent = CR11 (Power 121)
2 opponents = CR8 + CR8 (Power 128)
3 opponents = CR7 + CR6 + CR6 (Power 121)
4 opponents = CR6 + CR6 + CR5 + CR5 (Power 122)

and so on.

You probably don't want to throw the party up against Very Difficult encounters all the time, however. In this case, you'll want to divide the POWER by successive factors of 2:

VERY DIFFICULT = Power
DIFFICULT = Power/2
MODERATE = Power/4
EASY = Power/8

For reference, a MODERATE encounter is what the DMG considers the standard encounter (one where party EL = encounter EL). A MODERATE encounter uses 25% of party resources and has about an 87% survival rate.

Wulf