D&D 5E Encounter difficulty: how to fix it.

[Psikerlord#]

I believe the best way to balance encounters is not to balance them at all - use whatever feels appropriate - BUT you must have a good "flee" mechanic (that stands apart from the combat rules), so that PCs have an option to retreat/flee etc.

The 5e chase mechanic is ... ok. It is too hard to improvise however, which is fundamental to a practical flee mechanic.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I believe the best way to balance encounters is not to balance them at all - use whatever feels appropriate - BUT you must have a good "flee" mechanic (that stands apart from the combat rules), so that PCs have an option to retreat/flee etc.

13th Age's "Campaign Loss" option was an interesting take on that. It's very abstract though. The players just kinda go "OK, we can't handle this, we give up." They automatically get away, but suffer a significant story stet-back. Maybe a little meh unless the DM handles it well.

 

[Psikerlord#]

13th Age's "Campaign Loss" option was an interesting take on that. It's very abstract though. The players just kinda go "OK, we can't handle this, we give up." They automatically get away, but suffer a significant story stet-back. Maybe a little meh unless the DM handles it well.

Yep that was exactly what I had in mind - the 13th Age mechanic, or something similar. Then the DM can let loose with monsters, and allow the game world to feel more wild/alive/less "balance" driven.

edit: sorry yeah i agree the auto flee might be a bit too easy/meh, but something along those lines. I think some kind of check, and/or a chase scene (depending on the circumstances), would work better.

 

[ThirdWizard]

13th Age's "Campaign Loss" option was an interesting take on that. It's very abstract though. The players just kinda go "OK, we can't handle this, we give up." They automatically get away, but suffer a significant story stet-back. Maybe a little meh unless the DM handles it well.

Interesting! That reminds me of the FATE system where you can concede an encounter, which basically does the same thing you described except instead it's on a character instead of party level. In FATE, it is basically an action to concede, so you have to do it before things get too bad. If you get taken out between turns, then you lose the opportunity to escape. Of course, in FATE, you also get Fate Points for conceding (to help prepare for next time) and the GM can take advantage of it as well with an NPC (or more) can concede and the GM can bank some Fate Points.

 

[Tony Vargas]

edit: sorry yeah i agree the auto flee might be a bit too easy/meh, but something along those lines. I think some kind of check, and/or a chase scene (depending on the circumstances), would work better.

It all depends on the group & style. For a story-oriented set, it might be great, the DM could do a 'cut scene' that shows the campaign loss, even if technically the characters aren't aware of it, or at least not so directly aware of it - other groups would hate that. On the 'gamist' side, it might be OK, or some mechanics to escape with a different 'loss' depending on how you do escaping might make more sense - depending on the tone of the campaign, such a 'loss' could still include the possibility of a TPK...

 

[Psikerlord#]

Interesting! That reminds me of the FATE system where you can concede an encounter, which basically does the same thing you described except instead it's on a character instead of party level. In FATE, it is basically an action to concede, so you have to do it before things get too bad. If you get taken out between turns, then you lose the opportunity to escape. Of course, in FATE, you also get Fate Points for conceding (to help prepare for next time) and the GM can take advantage of it as well with an NPC (or more) can concede and the GM can bank some Fate Points.

Ahhhh so Fate has something similar too. I will have to check that out!

 

[Illbegotten]

Encounter Fast Build Chart

View attachment Encounter Fast Build Chart.xlsx

I made this to figure encounters on the fly with a computer handy based on the formulas proposed in this post. I hope this helps.

 

[NotAYakk]

So I independently worked out similar math for 5e over here, but the differences make me think one of us has made an error (and I hope it was you!)

4 level 1 heros should find a CR 1 monster to be a moderate challenge. your math makes it half way to easy.

When I graphed monster stats, I got:

CR
1	1
2	1.5
3	2
4	3
5	4
6	5
7	6
8	7
9	8
10	9
11	10
12	11
13	12
14	13
15	14
16	15.5
17	17
18	18.5
19	20
20	23

Which differs a bit from yours.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Have you considered throwing Necromancers at the party? They can raise an army of undead (and threads too!),

 

[Larnievc]

First, I would like to stress that I love the way 5E is going up to now. A lot of effort was put to provide a game that is both rich in possibilities and at the same time simple to run. Well done ! However, when it comes to encounter building, there is a huge level of complexity which gets added and it is almost impossible to handle it without a computer. Even if there are really usefull apps already available, I want to be able to run a game offline, just with pencil and paper. The game is easy to run, and encounter building should be as easy. Fortunately, after some thought I came with a simple way to implement this.


But first, an important disclaimer : already with previous versions, encounter balancing was more an art than a science. My impression is that with 5E it is even more true: depending on the PCs tactics and on the monster synergies, a single number representing the encounter challenge can at best be indicative. CR is not the ultimate truth, so please don't complain if on a given encounter for a given group you find it way too easy or too hard. That's just 5E life !


In the following, I will assume that the DMG Basic rules for encounter building are providing the best guess, and I only will tweak the math to achieve two goals. The first one is to make it simpler. The second is to cure the "3 rats and a lich" bug, which basically says that a CR21 lich in company of 3 rats is as tough as a CR24-25 monster. So, for pack of monsters of almost the same level, my system will retrieve the difficulty rating of official rules, where it will improve it for wildly different CR mix. Plus: you forget forever about encounter XP mutipliers.


The simple way to compute encounters challenge


Philosophy of the method is :
1. Forget XP for encounter building, only use power equivalent levels (or PELs)
2. Compare PELs for PCs and PELs for monsters and deduce the lethality of the enounter.


Player Characters PEL :
PC equivalent level is almost player level, with only a few exceptions. Use the table below

Player level	PEL
1	1
2	1.5
3	2.5
4	3
5	5
6	6
7	7
8	8
9	9
10	10
11	11
12	12
13	13
14	14
15	16
16	18
17	20
18	22
19	24
20	26

Monsters PEL :

Convert each individual monster CR to it's EL using the following table

Monster CR	PEL
0	1/3
1/8	2/3
1/4	1
1/2	1.5
1	2
2	4
3	6
4	8
5	11
6	13
7	15
8	18
9	21
10	24
11	28
12	32
13	36
14	40
15	44
16	48
17	52
18	56
19	60
20	64
21	76
22	88
23	104
24	120
25	136
26	152
27	168
28	184
29	200
30	216

Encounter challenge :

a. Sum up all PCs PELs get the Total Party Equivalent Levels (TPEL)
b. Sum up all monsters PELs to get the Total Monster Equivalent Levels (TMEL)

Encounter is easy(*) if TMEL ~ 40% to TPEL
Encounter is medium if TMEL ~ 60% to TPEL
Encounter is difficult if TMEL ~ 80% to TPEL
Encounter is deadly if TMEL ~ 100% to TPEL​

(*) Assuming Easy is 25% of XP with respect to deadly… The table provided in the DMG preview has however an inconsistent definition of easy across levels. Not a big deal, you can just ignore it. What matters is to have a TML lower than the TPL. The lowest, the easiest.

Summary PDF

Dnddungeoneer made an awesome PDF out of these table. Check it out !
Player Level Charts.pdf

Example :

A CR21 lich and 3 rats is PEL 76 + (1/3)*3 = 77, so basically… a lich !



The math behind the scene :

This section is only meant for math-oriented people.
[sblock]
What did I do here ?


First, I realized that the Encounter XP scales as the number of monsters to the power 3/2.
Indeed, XP for 4 monsters is 4 times the base XP, times 2 for 4 monsters. Total : 8 times the XP, which is 4^3/2. It also works approximatively for other numbers of monsters.


Second, I checked that the strength of a PC group scales with the number of PCs to the power 3/2.
If I have a deadly encounter opposing 4 PCs and 4 monsters, it means than the individual monster XP is half that of the PC deadly scale (4 times deadly scale divided by 8, see above).
Then, a deadly encounter for 2 PCs will be 2 such monsters. It seems just logical, but let's check : 2 monsters is twice individual monster XP, and the multiplier is 2 as I have only 2 PCs : total multiplier is x4, which makes the encounter deadly for 2 PCs. Hurrah, the system is consistent.
As PCs strengh with number scales as monster strength, it is fair to assume that the power of PCs scale as their number to the power 3/2.


At the same time, it means that the XP value for a PC is the half the deadly encounter XP !


Now, is is just a matter of rescaling: saying that A N^3/2 = B M^3/2, is equivalent to state that A^2/3 N = B^2/3 M. In other words : instead of taking some crazy math according to monster numbers relative to PCs numbers, just do simple addition, and precompute the corrected XP scale to make it fit.


The formula I used for my tables above is thus PEL = (XP/49)^(2/3), approximated up to 10% to get numbers easy to remember.
[/sblock]

That seems like a lot of hard work.

What I do is ask if the attack routine will kill the tank in four rounds and can it render powerless party members.

Given all that, if the dpr guys can’t kill it in four rounds it’s probably too tough.

That’s seen me right for ages.