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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hawkeyefan" data-source="post: 6790862" data-attributes="member: 6785785">[MENTION=1288]Mouseferatu[/MENTION] I don't adhere to any prescribed set of guidelines when it comes to encounters. I generally trust my judgement when it comes to encounter building. So far, I've been mostly successful. I use a variety of encounters and creatures and terrain and combinations of each, which I think is important. Beyond that, the best advice I can give is:- ignore all of the encounter building guidelines and XP budgets and all of that in favor of finding your own style. Use the Challenge rating of a monster as only the barest of indications of a creature's power level. Don't be afraid to use lower challenge monsters against the party, especially in large groups supported by a few tougher elite types. But also don't be afraid to throw very high challenge monsters at the PCs from time to time. - Watch your party. See what they are doing that makes them so potent. You've said they're not power gamer type of players, so they must be pretty tactful. So watch what works for them and then do a couple of things; first take it away from them. Design an encounter that removes their strength. Second, use their effective tactics against them. If they excel at range attacks and that allows them to keep enemies at bay, then have their foes be similarly ranged-focused. - I think you said that your players are not veteran players, but if they are, or if they are very knowledgable, then mess with their expectations. I have a player with an encyclopic level of knowledge of monsters and their abilities and so forth. So when his character meets monster x, as a player he already knows everything about it. So I vary the monsters up a bit, by boosting stats at times or by decreasing at others. I describe the monsters instead of naming them, and then I throw in a random feature that makes him unsure if it's a hobgoblin or a bugbear or what. Take away te advantage of meta knowledge.- Finally, I also use encounters that are both very easy, and also impossible. The very easy ones are there to remind them that they are in fact badass heroes. Couple of guards need to be taken out so that the PCs can hunker down in this tower? I let them take them out real easy....granting advantage for any decent idea, setting stealth DCs low, etc. but on the other end of the spectrum, I sometimes give them a situation where they simply cannot win. A lot of folks shy away from this and I think that's a bad thing. It only encourages players to always resort to fighting if they act with the knowledge that this is a game and therefore any encounter is designed to be fair. No...better to make them worry about fights, and the best way to do that is to put them against an obviously superior foe. Don't have these encounters be deadly at first...use them to remind the PCs that although they're badasses, there are other badasses out in the world. I had my party of level 5 characters run into a Marilith, who simply toyed with them when they attacked her. Then, when one of them scored a crit, she got enraged and the kid gloves were off. I think within two rounds, she had the whole party at death's door. Then I had something break up the confrontation, allowing the PCs to flee. I think the best thing you can do is find your own way. I think that one of the strengths of 5E is that it's not as codified as the last couple of editions. Encounter design and all those rules are not as effective in this edition as a result, so you're better off ignoring them and going with your gut. Tweak things a bit, surprise your players, throw all manner of encounters and monsters at them, take away their strengths, play upon their weaknesses, keep tem on their toes. Do all that, and take note of what works and what doesn't, and then you won't have to worry about the number of encounters and how many creatures per encounter and all that. You'll find that you just know how many. And you'll still err from time to time, but it will be fewer and farther between.</blockquote>

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