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Encounter Building - It's not Deadly, its Epic!
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<blockquote data-quote="dave2008" data-source="post: 8389320" data-attributes="member: 83242"><p>This probably old news to some, but today I stumbled across this article from DMDave: <a href="https://dmdave.com/epic-encounters-for-5e/?" target="_blank">How to Create Epic Encounters</a> 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:</p><p></p><p><strong>Epic Solo Monster Challenge Rating</strong></p><p>[ATTACH=full]143158[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>Interesting notes:</p><ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A CR 24 Ancient Red Dragon is an Epic encounter for (4) 14-15th lvl PCs</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">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.</li> </ul></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="dave2008, post: 8389320, member: 83242"] This probably old news to some, but today I stumbled across this article from DMDave: [URL='https://dmdave.com/epic-encounters-for-5e/?']How to Create Epic Encounters[/URL] 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: [B]Epic Solo Monster Challenge Rating[/B] [ATTACH type="full" alt="1630529654896.png"]143158[/ATTACH] 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: [LIST] [*]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. [/LIST] [/QUOTE]
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