D&D 5E Encounter Building

[fjw70]

I am trying to wrap my mind around and internalize the 5e encounter building guidelines. The guidelines are broken down into three pieces, adventuring day, encounters, and waves, with an encounter implied to be everything that happens from one rest to another.Also the guidelines seem to say that two short rests per day is the normal adventure pacing.


So using four 1st level PCs as an example, the group should encounter 1,200 XP of monsters in a normal day and should take a short rest after around every 400 XP. Obviously these are just guidelines and not hard and fast rules.


Looking at the starter set adventure let's see how this pans out with the four 1st level PCs (warning spoilers ahead).


The ambush the party runs into is worth 200 XP. Even though it is much less than the 400 XP short rest threshold a short rest can easily be taken after this (single wave) encounter.


If the group goes right to the goblins caves and starts going into it they can take out the two goblins at the entrance, the one on the bridge, and the three in the flood room (total of 300 XP) before starting to get close to the 400 XP threshold. Assuming they went right this way and avoided the wolves and other goblin room then the next thing to do is take on the boss (the bugbear) and his cronies. The boss room is worth 350 XP (a 700 XP difficulty due to the number of monsters) alone and the PCs may or not need a short rest to tackle this room.


This is where I am trying to wrap my mind around things. I hate interrupting an interesting play session so that the PCs can retreat to a safe place and rest.


On the other hand it could be an interesting decision for the PCs to make. Press on and risk a TPK or retreat and return later to a more well prepared goblin group.


I may think of a way to allow a short rest without spending the hour but I don't want to make it easy enough to rest between each wave.


Maybe certain XP thresholds can trigger the opportunity for a quick short rest. Something like if you defeat 25% of the normal day's worth of XP you can take a quick short rest in just a few minutes. In the example above after the flood room encounter a quick rest could refresh the PCs and encourage them press on with a better chance of success.


Just some thoughts I am having right now. I am sure the DMG will explore this in more detail

Thought? Corrections?.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I am trying to wrap my mind around and internalize the 5e encounter building guidelines. The guidelines are broken down into three pieces, adventuring day, encounters, and waves,

That doesn't quite sound right, to me. I'm not sure why. Waves are presented as a way of breaking up an encounter so it's less of a threat and lasts a bit longer, for one thing.

with an encounter implied to be everything that happens from one rest to another.Also the guidelines seem to say that two short rests per day is the normal adventure pacing.

I missed both those implications. I'm very curious where any sort of intended short rests/day might be stated or implied, as a it makes a big difference to some classes.

Maybe certain XP thresholds can trigger the opportunity for a quick short rest. Something like if you defeat 25% of the normal day's worth of XP you can take a quick short rest in just a few minutes.

Just some thoughts I am having right now. I am sure the DMG will explore this in more detail

Thought? Corrections?.

Pegging 'rests' (recharges, really) to exp of encounters faced would be a good way of locking in the pacing at which the game is balanced. 13A does basically that, and it seems (in my limited experience with that system) to work fine. It's not suitable for certain playstyles, obviously, but then, neither is 5e suitable for those styles, unless you /want/ imbalanced classes. ;P

 

[Prism]

One thing I noted in another thread. Most of these encounters in the starter set are classed as deadly or worse. So I am not sure this will play as planned anyway

 

[fjw70]

That doesn't quite sound right, to me. I'm not sure why. Waves are presented as a way of breaking up an encounter so it's less of a threat and lasts a bit longer, for one thing.

I missed both those implications. I'm very curious where any sort of intended short rests/day might be stated or implied, as a it makes a big difference to some classes.


Pegging 'rests' (recharges, really) to exp of encounters faced would be a good way of locking in the pacing at which the game is balanced. 13A does basically that, and it seems (in my limited experience with that system) to work fine. It's not suitable for certain playstyles, obviously, but then, neither is 5e suitable for those styles, unless you /want/ imbalanced classes. ;P

The short rest implication is comes from the second paragraph of the multi-part encounters section where is says something like if the total XP of the various waves exceeds 1/3 of the daily XP budget then the parts may be tougher than the whole. Granted it's not a lot to go on but that's my assumption for now.


Recharge, I like it.

 

[fjw70]

One thing I noted in another thread. Most of these encounters in the starter set are classed as deadly or worse. So I am not sure this will play as planned anyway

I noticed that too.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The short rest implication is comes from the second paragraph of the multi-part encounters section where is says something like if the total XP of the various waves exceeds 1/3 of the daily XP budget then the parts may be tougher than the whole. Granted it's not a lot to go on but that's my assumption for now.


Recharge, I like it.

I see... that is an interesting way of looking at it.

Not exactly 'crystal clear,' but it's something to go on until we see the DMG.


Something else to go on is the structure of the early encounters in HotDQ: the party has an obligatory encounter and possible random encounters, then decides over the ensuing 7 hours whether to venture out on a mission or take a short rest /each hour/.

So they could go 8 encounters & no short rests. Or have one or more, but each short rest eliminates an encounter (the 'mission' goes off or fails without them).

 

[I'm A Banana]

I am trying to wrap my mind around and internalize the 5e encounter building guidelines.

Yeah, they don't get explicit, which is weird, but whatevs. Also, is mine the only copy with the repeated example, one in and one out of the text box?

The guidelines are broken down into three pieces, adventuring day, encounters, and waves, with an encounter implied to be everything that happens from one rest to another.Also the guidelines seem to say that two short rests per day is the normal adventure pacing.

3 encounters / day with one short rest between each encounter could make sense, but they're pretty explicit that the party could handle six to eight medium or hard encounters in a day, so 3/day seems light.

My conjecture: they expect 6/day, with 2 encounters per short rest. The 6/day number is remarkably consistent with 4e, which means that basically one 5e encounter is 1/2 of a 4e encounter.

(aside: if I were to steal 4e's milestone mechanic, I'd key it to short rests based on this. One milestone if you do 3 encounters before a short rest.)

The "no more XP than 1/3 of a party's total for the day in a multipart encounter" is really just "don't expect the party to tackle more than three encounters before they short rest."

The flow would be:

"Good Morning!"
- Encounter 1 -
- Encounter 2 -
"Guys lets rest a bit, okay?"
- Encounter 3 -
- Encounter 4 -
"Hey, look, a treasure room! We can rest here a bit."
- Encounter 5 -
- Encounter 6 -
"All right. We're spent. Long rest."

A skilled party might wedge two more encounters in there (enough for a side-quest!).

This is where I am trying to wrap my mind around things. I hate interrupting an interesting play session so that the PCs can retreat to a safe place and rest.

Pacing is your friend in this case. Sounds like you could use milestones, escalation dice, three-act structures, and other pacing tools to ensure that these line up pretty snugly.

Though "retreat to a safe place and rest" needn't be very interrupting, either.

Party: "We retreat to a safe place and rest"
DM: "Cool, that'll be outside of the dungeon. After your rest, how do you go in?"

On the other hand it could be an interesting decision for the PCs to make. Press on and risk a TPK or retreat and return later to a more well prepared goblin group.

I may think of a way to allow a short rest without spending the hour but I don't want to make it easy enough to rest between each wave.

Make short rests easier and characters will have more novas and encounters will be easier. Might be fine if that's what you're looking for, but you will lose some of that dyanmic you're talking about if that's all you do.

But what might work well is carrots for continuing rather than sticks to prevent retreating.

What you might do is say, put short rests at 5 minutes and introduce 4e's milestone mechanic: if you accomplish 3 encounters before a short rest, you earn an action point that goes away if you take a short rest.

An escalation or chain die works well for this, too. A d6 sits on the table at "1" and goes up by 1 every time you complete an encounter, and the party gets to add this value to all its rolls. A short rest resets the die. Short rests might be instantaneous for all it matters, it's a trade-off you'll have to make.

Another possibility that I'm kind of fond of (but that works better with longer rests) is to give the enemy forces some sort of reaction if the party takes a short rest. Sure, take 15 minutes, a half hour, but the enemy does, too, and each rest you take brings them closer to completing their nefarious goal.

Maybe certain XP thresholds can trigger the opportunity for a quick short rest. Something like if you defeat 25% of the normal day's worth of XP you can take a quick short rest in just a few minutes. In the example above after the flood room encounter a quick rest could refresh the PCs and encourage them press on with a better chance of success.

SUPER meta-game...and it's mostly going to just reduce that tension that you're looking for. But perhaps combined with a carrot method, if you don't mind the meta.

 

[fjw70]

The meta mechanic doesn't bother me. It is a game after all.


The pacing I am going for is that I think that adventure sites like the goblin caves, the Redbrand hideout, and Cragmaw Castle from the starter set should be handled without stopping for more than a few minutes at a time.


Milestone is a good name for when a quick recharge can happen. Instead of counting XP maybe I should just go with 2-3 encounters (depending on the difficulty of the encounters). I will try it out tomorrow night.

 

[fanboy2000]

I'm going to go ahead and quote [MENTION=9501]Prism[/MENTION] from the other thread:

Since there has been plenty of debate over the Lost Mine of Phandelver and its difficulty I thought I would use the new DM encounter guidelines to see if they shed any light.

Assuming a party of 5

Spoilers......








Area 1 - 400xp (Deadly)
Area 2 - 150xp (Medium)
Area 3 - 300xp (Hard)
Area 6 - 600xp (off the scale)
Area 7 - 300xp (Hard)
Area 8 - 700xp (off the scale)


So it does look to me like the adventure starts off very hard for a new group of inexperienced players. No wonder the difficulty some groups have had. I would say that the developer of the adventure was not working to these DM guidelines when writing it.

In the lost mines after area 1 it says 'in the unlikely event the goblins defeats the players...'. The guidelines for a deadly encounter state 'The encounter is potentially lethal for one or more player characters'.

I strongly suspect that "Lost Mine of Phandelver" and "Horde of the Dragon Queen" were written before the developers understood how deadly multiple NPCs/monsters were in this edition. Especially for low level PCs. If you look at the table in the L&L article that came out after the Starter Set was first available to WPN stores, there are some interesting differences between that and what's in the DM Basic Rules.

First, under the L&L article's guidelines, a 500xp encounter is 'Challenging' for a five level party. Under the just released DM Basic, a 500xp encounter is 'Deadly'. Also, Mearls suggests multiplying the xp of a group of monsters by 1.5 if they outnumber the PCs by 2 to 1. Under the DM Basic Rules, they suggest multiplying the xp for encounter building purposes based on the raw number of monsters, regardless of how many PCs are in the party. That's a significant change.

The Kobald encounters in the HotDQ suggest that it was written without a complete understanding of how large numbers of monsters/NPCs work. The very first episode (which is designed for four 1st lvl PCs) has multiple encounters with fairly large groups of Kobalds. The first encounter is 8 Kobalds. Under the new guidelines, that's a 500xp encounter for a group of four PCs, and is deadly under the guidelines.

I think part of what happened is that Kobalds have a CR of 1/8, and that was supposed to be 8 Kobalds = 1 CR 1 encounter. But that's clearly not what happened. And, let me tell you, having a horde of Koblands with advantage on all there attacks does in fact suck.