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

[practicalm]

I think it's to prevent the PCs from gaming the system.

If you gave increased XP via these guidelines, then the players are incentivized to find hordes to crush as opposed to seeking out threats of an appropriate CR. It's metagaming, sure. But I think that's what they were trying to circumvent.

Not sure how it's gaming the system. If you are rewarding players for overcoming a challenge does it matter if it was 1 giant or 11-12 Hobgoblins? Why shouldn't they get the same XP reward for the same challenge? Or worse why should someone overcoming 12 hobgoblins individually get the same as fighting all 12 at once?

 

[Boarstorm]

Not sure how it's gaming the system. If you are rewarding players for overcoming a challenge does it matter if it was 1 giant or 11-12 Hobgoblins? Why shouldn't they get the same XP reward for the same challenge? Or worse why should someone overcoming 12 hobgoblins individually get the same as fighting all 12 at once?

High level AoEs change the balance significantly. 1 giant can take a couple well placed fireballs. 12 hobgoblins can't. I don't feel like I'm expressing myself well.

I guess the nitty-gritty is that not all encounters of the same XP budget are the same challenge for a higher level party.

 

[Elric]

EDIT: Ohh. Those guidelines look complicated and stupid. I think my real issue is with the update.

That's preposterous! Why would a more difficult encounter not result in a higher XP reward?! "Work in progress," indeed!

I happen to agree that it doesn't make sense to treat an encounter as harder when creating it, but not award extra XP. The original post in this thread is focused on how to accurately determine the difficulty of encounters, which is a different issue than the XP awards. It wouldn't be difficult to add to the OP's system so that it gives XP based on the total difficulty of the encounter (regardless of how many monsters there are).

To avoid the "less XP for facing what is supposedly an equivalently hard fight because there were more monsters" issue in the Basic DM encounter guidelines, you can just actually multiply the XP award by the "encounter XP multiplier." But, as inspired this thread, the "encounter XP multiplier" is flawed and in particular it overestimates the difficulty of encounters where monsters differ substantially in CR (compared to encounters with monsters at the same CR).

 

[Sadras]

I'm sure someone has mentioned this already, if you were using the OP system, why not just multiply the XP as given by the difficulty rating as given by the OP.
For instance 40% of the total monster XPs for easy encounters, 60% of the total monster XPs for medium encounters, 80% of the total monster XPs for hard encounters and 100% of the total monster XP for deadly. I'm actually going to try out the system tonight and offer some feedback of its success/failures.

 

[Gobelure]

I'm not yet to the point where I may advocate how to attribute XP to players according to encounter difficulty. I leave this for the DMG as I will probably use the milestone system for myself.

One word about the last suggestion by [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION]. I'm quite puzzled by the thresholds in the Basic rules to define "easy", "moderate" and "difficult" with respect to "deadly". Levels 1, 2 and 4 apply one formula (25%, 50% and 75%), Level 3 another (18.7%, 37.5%, 56.3%), and all other levels go for (22%,44%,66%). I've no clue where it is coming from, and without any further definition of what "medium" means, I sticked to the (25%,50%,75%) scheme.

The (40%,60%,80%) for PEL I came with in the OP is just the translation of these (25%,50%,75%) for XP. So if you go for XP, you have to use the XP percentages.

I am not sure about whether PEL works well with mismatched groups of monsters (high CR plus low CR) because I have not run much in the way of those mixed monster groups. Although I will be running one next week.

As a suggestion to [MENTION=6780929]Gobelure[/MENTION], is there a way to get the results in the normal XP budget numbers? The thing that really shines in this method is the ramping up of monster difficulty. Since the party is only supposed to get the base (not the multiplied) xp of the monsters could you apply your multiplier to the XP required by the party and the XP given by the monsters (i.e. pull the PEL numbers out)?

Thanks very much for all your suggestions and discussion, it made me improve my own understanding. Of course, the mismatched CR test is the one to be done in order to playtest PEL vs. XP.

You mentioned that my system sets usually an easier difficulty for encounter than the official one. I'm looking out where it is coming from and will come with some answers to that.

Now, you asked for a formula to revert back to encounter XP: this is the reverse process that led from XP to PEL.
XP = (PEL^1.5) * 50
In practice,
1) take the total PEL
2) in the Monster table, look for the CR equivalent of this PEL
3) in the DMG table, get the XP for a monster of that CR, doing any necessary interpolation.

Or use the following table: once you get your total PEL, you can have to the right column the corresponding enounter XP. I only listed those corresponding to an equivalent monster CR, so you still have to guess numbers which fall between 2 rows.

Equivalent Monster CR	Total PEL	Encounter XP
0	1/3	10
1/8	2/3	25
1/4	1	50
1/2	1.5	100
1	2.5	200
2	4	450
3	6	700
4	8	1,100
5	11	1,800
6	13	2,300
7	15	2,900
8	18	3,900
9	21	5,000
10	24	5,900
11	28	7,200
12	32	8,400
13	36	10,000
14	40	11,500
15	44	13,000
16	48	15,000
17	52	18,000
18	56	20,000
19	60	22,000
20	64	25,000
21	76	33,000
22	88	41,000
23	104	50,000
24	120	62,000
25	136	75,000
26	152	90,000
27	168	105,000
28	184	120,000
29	200	135,000
30	216	155,000

 

[Tormyr]

One word about the last suggestion by [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION]. I'm quite puzzled by the thresholds in the Basic rules to define "easy", "moderate" and "difficult" with respect to "deadly". Levels 1, 2 and 4 apply one formula (25%, 50% and 75%), Level 3 another (18.7%, 37.5%, 56.3%), and all other levels go for (22%,44%,66%). I've no clue where it is coming from, and without any further definition of what "medium" means, I sticked to the (25%,50%,75%) scheme.

The (40%,60%,80%) for PEL I came with in the OP is just the translation of these (25%,50%,75%) for XP. So if you go for XP, you have to use the XP percentages.

My guess is the thresholds at the lower levels take into acount the fragility of early PCs. At level 3, the PCs might be at their lowest compared to enemies since they take the ability score increase at level 4 which balances things out a bit.

 

[pemerton]

I think it's to prevent the PCs from gaming the system.

If you gave increased XP via these guidelines, then the players are incentivized to find hordes to crush as opposed to seeking out threats of an appropriate CR.

How would that be "gaming the system"? If the idea of the XP system is to reward the overcoming of challenges and, as per the XP guidelines those encounters are more challenging, then what would be wrong with players having their PCs seek out those challenges?

EDIT: I saw your reply to this upthread. My feeling is that if AoE means being outnumbered isn't as bad as all that, we want that reflected in encounter build guidelines just a much as in XP award guidelines.

 

[Tormyr]

I'm quite puzzled by the thresholds in the Basic rules to define "easy", "moderate" and "difficult" with respect to "deadly". Levels 1, 2 and 4 apply one formula (25%, 50% and 75%), Level 3 another (18.7%, 37.5%, 56.3%), and all other levels go for (22%,44%,66%). I've no clue where it is coming from, and without any further definition of what "medium" means, I sticked to the (25%,50%,75%) scheme.

The (40%,60%,80%) for PEL I came with in the OP is just the translation of these (25%,50%,75%) for XP. So if you go for XP, you have to use the XP percentages.

I have been using this for encounter difficulty, and it seems to be working fairly well. I like that there is not a big jump in adjusted XP between having 6 and 7 enemies.

The new version of the Basic DMG is out, and it bumps up the difficulties for encounter balance. Essentially, the encounter thresholds are at the other end of their respective difficulty range. Where previously everything past the Medium threshold and up to the Hard threshold was Hard, now everything past the Hard threshold and before the Deadly threshold is hard. How would you adjust percentages? Or is it as simple as 0% Trivial, 40% easy, 60% Medium, 80% Hard, and 100% Deadly?

 

[Quickleaf]

You mentioned that my system sets usually an easier difficulty for encounter than the official one. I'm looking out where it is coming from and will come with some answers to that.

I've been comparing your system with the RAW system for the purposes of encounter design and noticed something along these lines. When it comes to large groups of same CR monsters, your system seems to underestimate the encounter challenge by one degree as compared to RAW.

For example, take a party of 4 characters of 8th level.

In your system, the PEL thresholds would be EASY (40%) = 12+ / MEDIUM (60%) = 19+ / HARD (80%) = 25+ / DEADLY (100%) = 32+

Whereas in the RAW system, the XP thresholds would be EASY =1,800+ / MEDIUM = 3,600+ / HARD = 5,600+ / DEADLY = 8,400+

First, they face a pack of 8 dire wolves. In your system this would be just an EASY encounter (PEL 16), whereas in the RAW system this would be a MEDIUM encounter (8 * 200 * 2.5 = 4,000 XP). Probably not a big deal, since the key difference between an EASY and MEDIUM encounter is the expenditure of healing resources.

Next, they face a pack of 14 dire wolves. In your system this would be a HARD encounter (PEL 28), whereas in the RAW system this would be a DEADLY encounter (14 * 200 * 3 = 8,400). And if it were 15 dire wolves it would clearly be a DEADLY encounter thanks to the monster multiplier. This is a more significant discrepancy because the difference between a HARD and a DEADLY encounter could be the difference between few / no PC deaths and multiple deaths / a TPK.

Which is the more accurate guideline? I don't know. I suspect for a well-equipped fully rested party of 4+ PCs with powerful area spells that your system is a bit more accurate. However, if the party is under-equipped, not fully rested, is of small size (thus with diminished force multiplier capacity), or lacks a caster with area spells, then I suspect the RAW system is a bit more accurate.

 

[Chocolategravy]

Better but still a few problems. You need a "don't be a jerk" rule because 12 flying snakes (easy to medium) are going to annihilate a 2nd level party.

Since this lets you have multiple monsters more easily it lets a DM, intentionally or accidentally, mass a large number of under CRed creatures (and boy there are a lot of them in the MM).

Also without the multiplier I think you'll find larger parties, like 6, are going to be facing significantly tougher fights under your system.