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

[Stalker0]

People keep saying there is some embedded scaling for groups of monsters but I am not seeing it. As far as I can tell, 1 CR = 2, 2 CR 1s = 4, 3 CR 1s = 6. Its a linear progression, there is no adjustment for groups that I can see.

People are saying this one tends to require more monsters for equivalent challenge compared to the base system, to which I respond....yes!! Once you hit 5th PCs are ridiculously hard to kill, I think all of the standard encounters are over CRed in base.

 

[NotAYakk]

People keep saying there is some embedded scaling for groups of monsters but I am not seeing it. As far as I can tell, 1 CR = 2, 2 CR 1s = 4, 3 CR 1s = 6. Its a linear progression, there is no adjustment for groups that I can see.

People are saying this one tends to require more monsters for equivalent challenge compared to the base system, to which I respond....yes!! Once you hit 5th PCs are ridiculously hard to kill, I think all of the standard encounters are over CRed in base.

If you follow the DMG encounter building system, you get 2 CR1s is roughly a CR3, not a CR2.

The OP (and I) deconstructed the DMG XP system and we think we found a different scale than CR. In that scale you can just add.

The big differences is the CR 0 to 3 range.

CR 1/8 is 1/6 of a point
CR 1/4 is 1/3 of a point
CR 1/2 is 2/3 of a point
CR 1 is 1 point
CR 2 is 1.5 points
CR 3 is 2 points

After that, from 4 through 15 or so, you get 1 point per CR. I and the OP disagree how to best fit in a relatively unimportant way.

From 15 to 20 we reach 23ish points. After 20, we get like 5 points per CR.

In this "point" system, adding works.

The difference is that addinc CR will have 5 CR 3 monsters be CR 15, but adding points makes them CR 10ish.

For CR 1 monsters, the results are similar after the first 4 or so (CR will disagree by 1 or so).

For sub-1 CR monsters, there is lots of divergence; adding CRs will result in lower total CR than using points/the DMG guidelines.

 

[Oofta]

Wish I knew how to attach excel spreadsheets directly, here's a link to a simplified spreadsheet. It uses the same basic PEL calculation.

I've been using this since shortly after 5E was released and it works well for me. Given the normal disclaimers of different groups and options.