D&D 5E CR and Encounter Difficulty: Is It Consistently Wrong?

[Mistwell]

I've read and re-read the DMG pages on encounter difficulty.

You know what's not mentioned in those pages, except in a side-bar?

Challenge Rating.

You know what role Challenge Rating plays in calculating encounter difficult?

Zero.

The sidebar that mentions it, and it's brief, is about how CR is purely a warning light concerning the possibility that powers or abilities may be present which can become deadly to a party, such as immunity to spells of 6th level or lower. That's it, the only purpose of CR is to tell a DM to look closer at something for particular things that may prove deadly to a particular party if they lack something needed for that monster.

The entire encounter difficulty systems is built on XP, not CR.

So why does thread after thread complain about CR as the key to encounter difficulty?

I guess left-over assumptions from prior editions.

 

[Grimstaff]

IME, you have to keep CR very fluid; its very important to take into account the number of enemies and where the party is at in terms of using its resources for the day. Number of enemies makes a huge difference - four 5E PCs deal out a hell of lot more damage than they take against a solo monster in most cases, whereas groups of monsters can really mess up even a strong party. Gangs of ghouls in my last session led to two near-tpks, while the "boss" of the adventure was taken down with little effort.

Resources are huge too, a party with full spells, action surge, second wind, etc is far more deadly than the party that's just doing anything it can to find a safe space for a long rest.

It helps to be willing to flex your DM muscles and modify the occasional encounter on the fly - if your big bad's a pushover, give him a potion of "super-healing" and a couple of lair abilities, etc.

 

[aramis erak]

I've read and re-read the DMG pages on encounter difficulty.

You know what's not mentioned in those pages, except in a side-bar?

Challenge Rating.

You know what role Challenge Rating plays in calculating encounter difficult?

Zero.

The sidebar that mentions it, and it's brief, is about how CR is purely a warning light concerning the possibility that powers or abilities may be present which can become deadly to a party, such as immunity to spells of 6th level or lower. That's it, the only purpose of CR is to tell a DM to look closer at something for particular things that may prove deadly to a particular party if they lack something needed for that monster.

The entire encounter difficulty systems is built on XP, not CR.

So why does thread after thread complain about CR as the key to encounter difficulty?

I guess left-over assumptions from prior editions.

CR is directly linked to XP Value. More so than in any pre-3E Edition. In AD&D, you always had stars for special powers...

 

[Mistwell]

CR is directly linked to XP Value. More so than in any pre-3E Edition. In AD&D, you always had stars for special powers...

It's weakly linked to XP, not strongly linked. It can give you a baseline of XP to start with, and then XP is adjusted based on numerous factors (so many it took pages to detail them all). It's in no way your primary tool to judge or adjust encounter difficulty. There is a reason the entire many-page encounter difficulty section of the DMG only mentions CR in passing in a side-bar.

If a person actually knows how CR is used in 5e from having read the section, and continues to post about CR as being the issue with encounter difficulty, then they're being intentionally deceptive. But I think it's far more likely the people doing it simply have not read the DMG section on encounter difficulty, and are assuming what CR means. The disinformation might also be sourced to the free Basic DM section, which I know at one time was inaccurate (and maybe it still is - I have not checked).

 

[DaveDash]

I've read and re-read the DMG pages on encounter difficulty.

You know what's not mentioned in those pages, except in a side-bar?

Challenge Rating.

You know what role Challenge Rating plays in calculating encounter difficult?

Zero.

The sidebar that mentions it, and it's brief, is about how CR is purely a warning light concerning the possibility that powers or abilities may be present which can become deadly to a party, such as immunity to spells of 6th level or lower. That's it, the only purpose of CR is to tell a DM to look closer at something for particular things that may prove deadly to a particular party if they lack something needed for that monster.

The entire encounter difficulty systems is built on XP, not CR.

So why does thread after thread complain about CR as the key to encounter difficulty?

I guess left-over assumptions from prior editions.

So when I am building NPCs and custom monsters, where's the part in the DMG that let's me assign a XP value? It's based on CR. In fact the entire system is based on CR, despite how you interpret that side bar.

XP *and* proficiency bonus are derived from CR, not the other way around, and there are no guidelines on how to adjust a monsters XP value based on abilities, only its CR.

 

[Pickles JG]

It's weakly linked to XP, not strongly linked. It can give you a baseline of XP to start with, and then XP is adjusted based on numerous factors (so many it took pages to detail them all). It's in no way your primary tool to judge or adjust encounter difficulty. There is a reason the entire many-page encounter difficulty section of the DMG only mentions CR in passing in a side-bar.

If a person actually knows how CR is used in 5e from having read the section, and continues to post about CR as being the issue with encounter difficulty, then they're being intentionally deceptive. But I think it's far more likely the people doing it simply have not read the DMG section on encounter difficulty, and are assuming what CR means. The disinformation might also be sourced to the free Basic DM section, which I know at one time was inaccurate (and maybe it still is - I have not checked).

It's very strongly linked to CR as CR determines a monster's XP value.

OTOH I think you are saying that the issue is not that the CR values are wrong but that the XP budgets are (perhaps) wrong.

Anyway I think that people are using "CR" loosely to mean "encounter balancing" guidelines. Whether that is because the CRs are wrong or the budgets are wrong is interesting but not needed to say whether the system as a whole works.

My impression is that it is very much a guideline & subject to huge variance - surprise is massive in a 3 rounds fight or the ability to get in a round of missile fire before you can be attacked. The variance is enough to say I do not have a handle on the raw values - I have only run modules so far & have not done my own stuff, that is next week.

 

[I'm A Banana]

So why does thread after thread complain about CR as the key to encounter difficulty?

I guess left-over assumptions from prior editions.

Another left-over assumption: that there is supposed to be one encounter per long rest.

A "deadly" encounter that turns not-so-deadly is largely because the party is nova-ing, spending their most precious and powerful resources to curb the deadliness.

But 5e is not an encounter-based game -- the resources you can bring to bear in one encounter are not the same resources you can bring in the next one, or the third one, or the sixth one, or the eighth one.

Some of this I think is the choice of naming convention -- a "deadly" encounter isn't always exactly "deadly" in practice if it's the first thing the party is doing after a hearty breakfast and a daily-resource recharge. But it is going to suck up a LOT of your party's resources for the day as they turn it from deadly. And if that's all you do in every day, it'll seem like everything deadly is really not so deadly.

If you actually use the daily XP budget for all its worth, you're going to get a much different experience. Part and parcel of the challenge of an encounter is the other encounters you've been having that day. Ignoring that aspect of challenge is going to distort the experience.

Part of this is why I want WotC to address different encounter rates (perhaps as part of their Unearthed Arcana series). Folks who are having one encounter per day should not really be using the existing XP guidelines to determine how much their party can take. There's probably plenty of DMs looking to hurl one random encounter as part of an overland travel at the party and wondering how to make it risky and memorable, and the current RAW doesn't go much into how do to that well.

 

[DaveDash]

Another left-over assumption: that there is supposed to be one encounter per long rest.

A "deadly" encounter that turns not-so-deadly is largely because the party is nova-ing, spending their most precious and powerful resources to curb the deadliness.

But 5e is not an encounter-based game -- the resources you can bring to bear in one encounter are not the same resources you can bring in the next one, or the third one, or the sixth one, or the eighth one.

Some of this I think is the choice of naming convention -- a "deadly" encounter isn't always exactly "deadly" in practice if it's the first thing the party is doing after a hearty breakfast and a daily-resource recharge. But it is going to suck up a LOT of your party's resources for the day as they turn it from deadly. And if that's all you do in every day, it'll seem like everything deadly is really not so deadly.

If you actually use the daily XP budget for all its worth, you're going to get a much different experience. Part and parcel of the challenge of an encounter is the other encounters you've been having that day. Ignoring that aspect of challenge is going to distort the experience.

Part of this is why I want WotC to address different encounter rates (perhaps as part of their Unearthed Arcana series). Folks who are having one encounter per day should not really be using the existing XP guidelines to determine how much their party can take. There's probably plenty of DMs looking to hurl one random encounter as part of an overland travel at the party and wondering how to make it risky and memorable, and the current RAW doesn't go much into how do to that well.

While I strongly disagree with you that CR is just an assumption from prior editions, I strongly agree with you that the game lacks the ability to provide those single per day powerful encounters.

The reason WoTC haven't provided that is simply because the game can't really provide that at all, due to bounded accuracy. The players will always have a chance of steamrolling those higher level encounters. I've seen it happen when they've had basically zero resources as well, due to good rolling and tactics.

In 3rd edition if you threw a "deadly" encounter at a group on low resources bounded accuracy wasn't there to save them.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

It's weakly linked to XP, not strongly linked. It can give you a baseline of XP to start with, and then XP is adjusted based on numerous factors (so many it took pages to detail them all). It's in no way your primary tool to judge or adjust encounter difficulty. There is a reason the entire many-page encounter difficulty section of the DMG only mentions CR in passing in a side-bar.

If a person actually knows how CR is used in 5e from having read the section, and continues to post about CR as being the issue with encounter difficulty, then they're being intentionally deceptive. But I think it's far more likely the people doing it simply have not read the DMG section on encounter difficulty, and are assuming what CR means. The disinformation might also be sourced to the free Basic DM section, which I know at one time was inaccurate (and maybe it still is - I have not checked).

I don't think this ("weakly linked") is true. They are 1:1 coupled. DMG guidelines include adjusting the effective HP/damage in order to adjust the CR, and also include abilities where you adjust the output CR directly. Then you calculate XP from that CR--just like in AD&D. Can you find a single example of a monster whose CR and XP value don't match?

Another left-over assumption: that there is supposed to be one encounter per long rest.


A "deadly" encounter that turns not-so-deadly is largely because the party is nova-ing, spending their most precious and powerful resources to curb the deadliness.

In my experience, this observation is not true. A deadly encounter that turns out not-so-deadly is because the party manipulates the tactical situation to expend fewer resources. Sometimes this means that the difficulty gets brought down to the point that the party still has to expend resources to triumph, but sometimes the deadly encounter is trivialized (via surprise or mobility) to the point where the party expends nothing but a few arrows and first- or second-level spell slots. I've never yet had a case where I made a party fight two deadlydeadly encounters in one day (my evil brain here says, "Hmmmm, from a pacing standpoing that sounds like fun" and now begins to construct plausible scenarios) but usually the main resource expended is tempo, which is infinitely rechargeable.

For example, I had a party of four 4th level and one 3rd level character raid a hobgoblin base for war plans and accidentally stumble on the hobgoblin warlord and staff (CR 10-ish; 6400 XP which is approximately Deadly x3) instead of on the plans. Due to entry tactics they achieved surprise and got to control the initial conditions, which let them ensure that the fight occurred in a narrow corridor 5' wide, which let them ensure that the hobgoblin warlord didn't get martial advantage, which went most of the way toward ensuring that not many HP were lost in the killing of all the leadership. A Web spell from the 3rd level wizard was also expended, as well as both beast shapes from the moon druid (who was on duty against everyone except the warlord, ensuring that no one could run off down the tunnels to get help) and possibly-but-not-necessarily some HP from the tank (who spent most of his time Dodging while the sniper shot the warlord full of arrows and the bard mocked him to death). After that fight the party declared "mission accomplished" and scrammed (after rummaging quickly through the warlord's paperwork and also casting some Disguise Selfs), not because all their resources had been expended (they hadn't been) but because they were afraid their surprise had been expended and they didn't want to wind up fighting a whole base full of 80 hobgoblins with armor on and bows in their hands.

Come to think of it, I believe the party had actually expended more resources on intelligence and stealth than they expended tactically in the fight with the hobgoblin. One of the main reasons they were so nervous during the exit, I believe, was that the druid was low on Pass Without Trace spells. I can't remember if he was fresh out or not, but the concern was that if all 80 hobgoblins did catch on to the intruders, they might not be able to disengage successfully.

TLDR; if a single Deadly encounter leaves you so weak that you'd be unable to beat multiple Medium threats, you are (in my opinion) doing it wrong.

 

[DaveDash]

[MENTION=6787650]emdw45[/MENTION] your post is true. In fact the most resource "taxing" encounters I have ran and been in as a player have been purely about numbers, not rating.

For example I have played in an encounter with 16 skeletons, 3 winter wolves, 1 vampire, 1 vampire spawn, and 1 wraith. This encounter was very taxing on resources, despite being an easy/medium encounter for a level 17 party.