D&D 5E Encounter Building - It's not Deadly, its Epic!

[dave2008]

This probably old news to some, but today I stumbled across this article from DMDave: How to Create Epic Encounters and I thought some people might find it useful. It begins with a short rant / description of how "Deadly" encounter are not intended to actually be Deadly (neither the description nor the numbers suggest they are truly deadly) as they only account for roughly 1/3 of your daily XP budget. He then goes on to describe "Epic" encounters as ones that use 50-100% of the daily XP budget - serious battles that could be a TPK if your not on your game. He then provides a great table to wraps this idea of Epic Encounters with solo monsters:

Epic Solo Monster Challenge Rating

I think this table is great and clearly shows that a creature of much higher CR than the party's level is needed to make a truly deadly solo battle in 5e. I have kinda know this for a while (I've often said once you hit 10-12th level you need a monster with a +10 CR to be a solo challenge), but it is nice to see it backed by some numbers analysis and put into a table.

Interesting notes:

• A CR 24 Ancient Red Dragon is an Epic encounter for (4) 14-15th lvl PCs
• There is no CR appropriate solo monster for a group larger the (4) PCs at level 20 - I imagine we need some mythic monsters then! Maybe Fizban's can fix that.

 

[el-remmen]

Hmmm . . . I should incorporate this idea in my on-going "All My Encounters are Deadly!" thread (which I hope to be updating after my next session on the 11th) - since most haven't really been "deadly" at all.

 

[BookTenTiger]

That's a really good guide to keep on hand! Thanks for sharing!

I've been giving all my "solo" monsters legendary and / or lair actions. Since most characters are going to target a big solo monster (since it's fun to do so), giving them extra actions or lair effects really increases the amount they get to do, and thus makes the fight a lot more memorable.

One easy way to get some lair action ideas is just to steal from Spells. A giant otyugh in an ancient library (he's been eating the books) used two lair actions: creating a tornado of old pages (fog cloud), and jumping really hard to knock shelves down on people.

The otyugh only lasted two rounds (the big guy was a magnet for critical hits), but it was a very fun fight!

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Yes, that tracks with my experience.

 

[robus]

It’s my understanding that the difficulty levels in the DMG are floors rather than ceilings and this is why things generally seem easier than expected.

 

[dave2008]

It’s my understanding that the difficulty levels in the DMG are floors rather than ceilings and this is why things generally seem easier than expected.

The larger problem, as I see it, is the encounter builder gives poor guidance on how to adjust the encounter for different size parties or what the difficult rating means in relationship to the adventuring day. A combat that barely reaches the "deadly" rating will not feel so at the beginning of the adventuring day; however, it could if it arrives after 2-4 other fights.

 

[Asisreo]

It should also be noted that benefits and drawbacks are situational, not universal, and they adjust the difficulty setting of the encounter.

For example, if the game starts with ogres 300ft away against a party completely of sharpshooters and spellcasters, even if the ogres count as a "hard" encounter, the difficulty will be lowered to "medium" because the players get free shots.

Same for drawbacks. A party of all melee characters fighting a fast flyby-type creature goes from medium to hard or hard to deadly.

Having easier fights but with situational drawbacks are fun for me because its less swingy yet it requires strategy to avoid taking more damage than needed.

 

[Stalker0]

This actually looks about right. My party of 6 12th level characters took on an effective CR 30 and survived, but it was a seriously harrowing encounter with all resources used, so about right.

 

[toucanbuzz]

Last session my group of 5 5th level characters nearly defeated a solo CR16 Mummy Lord that it accidentally summoned using a bag of beans. So that chart is dead on. They should have won, but I rolled (on table where they can see) absurdly high damage on one spell that did a couple characters in. Had it been average damage, PC victory that round.

 

[Quartz]

Last session my group of 5 5th level characters nearly defeated a solo CR16 Mummy Lord that it accidentally summoned using a bag of beans

Yes but you mentioned that your PCs had major magic items.