Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Fixing Challenge Rating
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="NotAYakk" data-source="post: 9282300" data-attributes="member: 72555"><p>Sure. But 4e's system was a fixed XP rating (that grew exponentially with level, and had level-bands, due to +1 ATK/DEF per level).</p><p></p><p>A level 15 solo was for almost all purposes just 4 times the XP of a level 15 normal. You could balance encounters by just adding up XP.</p><p></p><p>You could also balance encounters by using level deltas. Like, a party level +2 elite, 3 party level-2 normal monsters, would produce a similar encounter.</p><p></p><p>Every elite in 4e could be replaced with a 4 level higher monster - the XP budget would be the same - but you'd go outside of the +/- 4 level band. And every solo could be replaced with an 8 level higher monster, except for the same level band problem.</p><p></p><p>For solos, some attempt was made to also make them more complex and spread their damage out while keeping their threat the same. In my experience, for elites, they didn't do that.</p><p></p><p>Now, in 5e, ATK/DEF doesn't scale at a rate of +1 per level. Monster CR doesn't measure "medium even-count challenge for that level", but rather "medium SOLO challenge against 4 PCs for that level".</p><p></p><p>ATK scales at very roughly +1 every 2 CR (between proficiency and attribute inflation), and defence scales slower (about +1 every 3 CR).</p><p></p><p>In 4e, monster HP scaled linearly with (6-10 depending on role) * (level+3), and monster damage per round scaled with (level+8)*(1.25ish due to encounter powers) roughly. Solos got x4 HP and about x2.5 damage ((4+3+2+1)/4 is 2.5), elites got x2 HP and x1.5 damage ((2+1)/2 is 1.5).</p><p></p><p>So in 4e monster "volume" before accuracy/defence was approximately (3+L)(8+L)*10 = 240 + 110L + 10 L^2</p><p></p><p>As PCs against even-level foes are supposed to hit about 60% and be hit about 40% of the time, each +1 to hit and +1 to defence makes monsters (60/55) * (45/40) = 1.23x more dangerous "volume" wise, and +4 made monsters (60/40) * (60/40) = 2.25x more dangerous.</p><p></p><p>This gives you an accuracy and defence scaled "monster threat volume" of (240 + 110L + 10L^2) * (1.23^L)</p><p></p><p>On the other hand, having 2 monsters with PC focus firing made them 3x more dangerous. In general, having N monsters made them (N)(N+1)/2 = N^2/2 + N/2 times more dangerous (in terms of total damage done). In the range of 1 to 5, this is pretty decently approximated by N^1.6 (1.6 power is 1, 3, 5.8, 9.2, 13.1, the other is 1, 3, 6, 10, 15).</p><p></p><p>If Bob has X Volume (damage times HP scaled by mitigation and accuracy), then XP should take the 1.6th root of Volume to make it add up linearly.</p><p></p><p>[(240 + 110L + 10L^2) * (1.23^L)]^(1/1.6)</p><p></p><p>At low levels this works great. If we take the log of it:</p><p></p><p>lg( [(240 + 110L + 10L^2) * (1.23^L)]^(1/1.6) )</p><p></p><p>lg( 240 + 110L + 10L^2)/1.6 + L lg(1.14)</p><p></p><p>and we graph it from level 5 to 25 we get a curve that slightly more than doubles every 4ish levels (well, is pretty strait on a log-scale).</p><p></p><p>...</p><p></p><p>But that is analysis of 4e and its encounter building math. This should be about 5e.</p><p></p><p>5e monster design is less constrained. By design, you are supposed to make the monster <em>then</em> judge it.</p><p></p><p>If we use the DMG CR-calculator, it claims that a raw brute that has CR*15+60 HP and does 6+CR*6 damage with CR/3+13 AC and 1+CR/6 ATK stat bonus is level-appropriate; you also get a (CR/5) Proficiency bonus to attacks. Using that to feed monster volume equation we get</p><p></p><p>(CR+4)*15 * (CR+1)*6 "raw" HP times damage</p><p>and 1.11^(CR/3) times tougher due to defence, and 1.11^(CR/6+CR/5) = 1.11^(CR/2.8) tougher due to accuracy. Multiplied together they give 1.11^(0.7 * CR) or 1.08^CR scale factor from CR.</p><p></p><p>This results in:</p><p>90(CR^2 + 5 CR + 4) * 1.08^CR</p><p>as our total monster threat volume</p><p></p><p>If we presume linear focus fire this again (like in 4e) it requires a ^(1/1.6) factor, giving us</p><p>(90(CR^2 + 5 CR + 4) * 1.08^CR)^(1/1.6)</p><p></p><p>Now graph this on a log scale:</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]349841[/ATTACH]</p><p>and you'll see an "unfortunate" bend near 5 - the low-CR section isn't very linear on the log graph.</p><p></p><p>(Treating PCs as doing focus fire, as an aside, is roughly equivalent to treating AOE damage as if it did 1x on primary target and 0.5x on any additional targets; this was effectively the math that 4e did to balance AOE vs single target.)</p><p></p><p>But, the idea is that if you use</p><p>(90(CR^2 + 5 CR + 4) * 1.08^CR)^(1/1.6)</p><p>as your threat volume equation, you <em>can</em> add up monsters linearly without any encounter size multipliers. This is basically "better XP" for encounter design in 5e.</p><p></p><p>CR1:~ 75</p><p>CR2:~ 112</p><p>CR3:~ 150</p><p>CR4:~ 200</p><p>CR5:~ 250</p><p>CR10:~ 625</p><p>CR15:~ 1250</p><p>CR20:~ 2150</p><p></p><p>Outside of the CR 1-20 range the equation for monster difficulty stops being nearly as linear by DMG rules; above CR 20, monsters gain 3x the amount of HP and DPR that they do from 1 to 20. Below 1, monster HP and damage scales roughly linearly with CR.</p><p></p><p>0.5 times the HP and Damage reduces threat by a factor of 4; after taking the 0.625 power this is a x2.4 reduction in encounter building value. However, these low values of HP result in a lot of blow-through damage even at low levels, effectively inflating their HP.</p><p></p><p>CR1/8: 8</p><p>CR1/4: 16</p><p>CR1/2: 32</p><p>CR1:~ 75</p><p>CR2:~ 112</p><p>CR3:~ 150</p><p>CR4:~ 200</p><p>CR5:~ 250</p><p>CR10:~ 625</p><p>CR15:~ 1250</p><p>CR20:~ 2150</p><p></p><p>Above 20 we get faster scaling damage and HP, ie:</p><p>((CR-20)*2 + CR+4)*15 * ((CR-20)*2 + CR+1)*6</p><p>which simplifies to</p><p>=(3CR-36)*15 * (3CR-39)*6</p><p>=(9CR^2-225CR+1404)*90</p><p>in addition, AC stops presuming to scale, while ATK and PROF does. This changes the exponentail portion.</p><p>CR 1 to 20: 16.6((CR^2 + 5 CR + 4) * 1.08^CR)^(1/1.6)</p><p>CR 20 to 30: 26.7((9CR^2-225CR+1404) * 1.04^CR)^(1/1.6)</p><p>(they agree at CR 20).</p><p></p><p>Extending our table:</p><p>CR1/8:~ 8</p><p>CR1/4:~16</p><p>CR1/2:~ 32</p><p>CR1:~ 75</p><p>CR2:~ 112</p><p>CR3:~ 150</p><p>CR4:~ 200</p><p>CR5:~ 250</p><p>CR8:~ 450</p><p>CR10:~ 625</p><p>CR12:~ 850</p><p>CR15:~ 1250</p><p>CR17:~ 1500</p><p>CR20:~ 2150</p><p>CR23:~ 3950</p><p>CR25:~ 4600</p><p>CR28:~ 6400</p><p>CR30:~ 7900</p><p></p><p>A party of 4 level X PCs has an medium encounter budget equal to the Threat Volume of a CR X monster.</p><p></p><p>So take a level 17 party. It has a threat capacity of 1500. 6 CR 5s (250*6) or one CR 17 should fill it for a medium encounter.</p><p></p><p>Using DMG rules that would be 18000 XP for the CR 17, or 1800*5 = 9000 XP, scaled x2 for encounter size.</p><p></p><p>Basically, what I did was take the encounter size out of the DMG encounter building equations by deriving an alternative "monster threat volume" from first principles and correcting for the encounter size problem while doing so.</p><p></p><p>To make building certain patterns of encounters easier, we should look into smoothing the resulting table a bit, and looking at where it scales by a factor of 4 - ie, what CR corresponds to 1/4th of the threat volume of a Level X party?</p><p></p><p>In addition, you have to look at non-medium encounters. In the XP system, each step is +/- 50% XP (0.5 for easy, 1.0 for medium, 1.5 for hard, and 2.0 for deadly). This threat volume doesn't scale the same way XP does (and cannot to compensate for the wish to have linear encounter building), so the multipliers will be different.</p><p></p><p>In addition there is lots of "false precision" here. We can smooth the curve without losing much. It also would be nice if our values divided by 4 better (to get individual PC threat volume capacities).</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Sure. But if threat volume scales linearly, I think we can do /4 or *4 in our head right?</p><p></p><p>And if the curve is predictable, knowing that monters 1/2 of the party level make good sets of 4 monsters to attack them would also work.</p><p></p><p>I don't want to have to rewrite the entire monster manual. I'd like to be able to take existing monsters with existing CR and use them.</p><p></p><p>Having a single table that takes CR and gives me a <strong>more useful</strong> threat volume than XP that can be added up is good.</p><p></p><p>Mapping CR to Monster Levels is another approach, where a monster of level X matched up with a PC of level X generates a presumed level of threat, is another approach I have looked at.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Sure! The wizard has a pile of daily power that it can dump into encounters, and the fewer encounters the more it can dump.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, the Rogue has next to none - just a steady ability to reduce enemy threat.</p><p></p><p>We can do a class by class or character by character rescaling. But I suspect that a DM will tend to use a similar number of encounters per rest as a habit (either 1-3, or 6+), and PCs will vary in power themselves. I suspect that the variation in PC power is at least as great as the variation in oomph due to being able to dump daily power in 5e.</p><p></p><p>So we can throw this in with compensating for over or under powered PCs. As a bonus, if the DM suspects specific PCs are over or under powered for their adventure style, they can choose to compensate - stuff like provide a really nice weapon for the rogue who is outshone due to the tendency to do 5 minute adventuring days.</p><p></p><p>However, building between-short rest Scenes and between-long-rest Chapters is a good plan. 5e is balanced by the threat you fight between long rests, not nearly as tightly on individual encounters.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="NotAYakk, post: 9282300, member: 72555"] Sure. But 4e's system was a fixed XP rating (that grew exponentially with level, and had level-bands, due to +1 ATK/DEF per level). A level 15 solo was for almost all purposes just 4 times the XP of a level 15 normal. You could balance encounters by just adding up XP. You could also balance encounters by using level deltas. Like, a party level +2 elite, 3 party level-2 normal monsters, would produce a similar encounter. Every elite in 4e could be replaced with a 4 level higher monster - the XP budget would be the same - but you'd go outside of the +/- 4 level band. And every solo could be replaced with an 8 level higher monster, except for the same level band problem. For solos, some attempt was made to also make them more complex and spread their damage out while keeping their threat the same. In my experience, for elites, they didn't do that. Now, in 5e, ATK/DEF doesn't scale at a rate of +1 per level. Monster CR doesn't measure "medium even-count challenge for that level", but rather "medium SOLO challenge against 4 PCs for that level". ATK scales at very roughly +1 every 2 CR (between proficiency and attribute inflation), and defence scales slower (about +1 every 3 CR). In 4e, monster HP scaled linearly with (6-10 depending on role) * (level+3), and monster damage per round scaled with (level+8)*(1.25ish due to encounter powers) roughly. Solos got x4 HP and about x2.5 damage ((4+3+2+1)/4 is 2.5), elites got x2 HP and x1.5 damage ((2+1)/2 is 1.5). So in 4e monster "volume" before accuracy/defence was approximately (3+L)(8+L)*10 = 240 + 110L + 10 L^2 As PCs against even-level foes are supposed to hit about 60% and be hit about 40% of the time, each +1 to hit and +1 to defence makes monsters (60/55) * (45/40) = 1.23x more dangerous "volume" wise, and +4 made monsters (60/40) * (60/40) = 2.25x more dangerous. This gives you an accuracy and defence scaled "monster threat volume" of (240 + 110L + 10L^2) * (1.23^L) On the other hand, having 2 monsters with PC focus firing made them 3x more dangerous. In general, having N monsters made them (N)(N+1)/2 = N^2/2 + N/2 times more dangerous (in terms of total damage done). In the range of 1 to 5, this is pretty decently approximated by N^1.6 (1.6 power is 1, 3, 5.8, 9.2, 13.1, the other is 1, 3, 6, 10, 15). If Bob has X Volume (damage times HP scaled by mitigation and accuracy), then XP should take the 1.6th root of Volume to make it add up linearly. [(240 + 110L + 10L^2) * (1.23^L)]^(1/1.6) At low levels this works great. If we take the log of it: lg( [(240 + 110L + 10L^2) * (1.23^L)]^(1/1.6) ) lg( 240 + 110L + 10L^2)/1.6 + L lg(1.14) and we graph it from level 5 to 25 we get a curve that slightly more than doubles every 4ish levels (well, is pretty strait on a log-scale). ... But that is analysis of 4e and its encounter building math. This should be about 5e. 5e monster design is less constrained. By design, you are supposed to make the monster [I]then[/I] judge it. If we use the DMG CR-calculator, it claims that a raw brute that has CR*15+60 HP and does 6+CR*6 damage with CR/3+13 AC and 1+CR/6 ATK stat bonus is level-appropriate; you also get a (CR/5) Proficiency bonus to attacks. Using that to feed monster volume equation we get (CR+4)*15 * (CR+1)*6 "raw" HP times damage and 1.11^(CR/3) times tougher due to defence, and 1.11^(CR/6+CR/5) = 1.11^(CR/2.8) tougher due to accuracy. Multiplied together they give 1.11^(0.7 * CR) or 1.08^CR scale factor from CR. This results in: 90(CR^2 + 5 CR + 4) * 1.08^CR as our total monster threat volume If we presume linear focus fire this again (like in 4e) it requires a ^(1/1.6) factor, giving us (90(CR^2 + 5 CR + 4) * 1.08^CR)^(1/1.6) Now graph this on a log scale: [ATTACH type="full"]349841[/ATTACH] and you'll see an "unfortunate" bend near 5 - the low-CR section isn't very linear on the log graph. (Treating PCs as doing focus fire, as an aside, is roughly equivalent to treating AOE damage as if it did 1x on primary target and 0.5x on any additional targets; this was effectively the math that 4e did to balance AOE vs single target.) But, the idea is that if you use (90(CR^2 + 5 CR + 4) * 1.08^CR)^(1/1.6) as your threat volume equation, you [I]can[/I] add up monsters linearly without any encounter size multipliers. This is basically "better XP" for encounter design in 5e. CR1:~ 75 CR2:~ 112 CR3:~ 150 CR4:~ 200 CR5:~ 250 CR10:~ 625 CR15:~ 1250 CR20:~ 2150 Outside of the CR 1-20 range the equation for monster difficulty stops being nearly as linear by DMG rules; above CR 20, monsters gain 3x the amount of HP and DPR that they do from 1 to 20. Below 1, monster HP and damage scales roughly linearly with CR. 0.5 times the HP and Damage reduces threat by a factor of 4; after taking the 0.625 power this is a x2.4 reduction in encounter building value. However, these low values of HP result in a lot of blow-through damage even at low levels, effectively inflating their HP. CR1/8: 8 CR1/4: 16 CR1/2: 32 CR1:~ 75 CR2:~ 112 CR3:~ 150 CR4:~ 200 CR5:~ 250 CR10:~ 625 CR15:~ 1250 CR20:~ 2150 Above 20 we get faster scaling damage and HP, ie: ((CR-20)*2 + CR+4)*15 * ((CR-20)*2 + CR+1)*6 which simplifies to =(3CR-36)*15 * (3CR-39)*6 =(9CR^2-225CR+1404)*90 in addition, AC stops presuming to scale, while ATK and PROF does. This changes the exponentail portion. CR 1 to 20: 16.6((CR^2 + 5 CR + 4) * 1.08^CR)^(1/1.6) CR 20 to 30: 26.7((9CR^2-225CR+1404) * 1.04^CR)^(1/1.6) (they agree at CR 20). Extending our table: CR1/8:~ 8 CR1/4:~16 CR1/2:~ 32 CR1:~ 75 CR2:~ 112 CR3:~ 150 CR4:~ 200 CR5:~ 250 CR8:~ 450 CR10:~ 625 CR12:~ 850 CR15:~ 1250 CR17:~ 1500 CR20:~ 2150 CR23:~ 3950 CR25:~ 4600 CR28:~ 6400 CR30:~ 7900 A party of 4 level X PCs has an medium encounter budget equal to the Threat Volume of a CR X monster. So take a level 17 party. It has a threat capacity of 1500. 6 CR 5s (250*6) or one CR 17 should fill it for a medium encounter. Using DMG rules that would be 18000 XP for the CR 17, or 1800*5 = 9000 XP, scaled x2 for encounter size. Basically, what I did was take the encounter size out of the DMG encounter building equations by deriving an alternative "monster threat volume" from first principles and correcting for the encounter size problem while doing so. To make building certain patterns of encounters easier, we should look into smoothing the resulting table a bit, and looking at where it scales by a factor of 4 - ie, what CR corresponds to 1/4th of the threat volume of a Level X party? In addition, you have to look at non-medium encounters. In the XP system, each step is +/- 50% XP (0.5 for easy, 1.0 for medium, 1.5 for hard, and 2.0 for deadly). This threat volume doesn't scale the same way XP does (and cannot to compensate for the wish to have linear encounter building), so the multipliers will be different. In addition there is lots of "false precision" here. We can smooth the curve without losing much. It also would be nice if our values divided by 4 better (to get individual PC threat volume capacities). Sure. But if threat volume scales linearly, I think we can do /4 or *4 in our head right? And if the curve is predictable, knowing that monters 1/2 of the party level make good sets of 4 monsters to attack them would also work. I don't want to have to rewrite the entire monster manual. I'd like to be able to take existing monsters with existing CR and use them. Having a single table that takes CR and gives me a [b]more useful[/b] threat volume than XP that can be added up is good. Mapping CR to Monster Levels is another approach, where a monster of level X matched up with a PC of level X generates a presumed level of threat, is another approach I have looked at. Sure! The wizard has a pile of daily power that it can dump into encounters, and the fewer encounters the more it can dump. Meanwhile, the Rogue has next to none - just a steady ability to reduce enemy threat. We can do a class by class or character by character rescaling. But I suspect that a DM will tend to use a similar number of encounters per rest as a habit (either 1-3, or 6+), and PCs will vary in power themselves. I suspect that the variation in PC power is at least as great as the variation in oomph due to being able to dump daily power in 5e. So we can throw this in with compensating for over or under powered PCs. As a bonus, if the DM suspects specific PCs are over or under powered for their adventure style, they can choose to compensate - stuff like provide a really nice weapon for the rogue who is outshone due to the tendency to do 5 minute adventuring days. However, building between-short rest Scenes and between-long-rest Chapters is a good plan. 5e is balanced by the threat you fight between long rests, not nearly as tightly on individual encounters. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Fixing Challenge Rating
Top