D&D (2024) New DMG Encounter Building Math vs 2014

[Stormonu]

"Deadly" is still in there. It'd just be anything in excess of the top of the Hard range.

The encounter budget is just there for the DM to gauge how difficult a fight may be and still be winnable within a certain boundary of danger. Nothing stops the DM from going over the top end if they want a real risk of TPK for the party, or wants to create an encounter that's "unwinnable" - they'll just go into it with that foreknowledge.

The WotC modules aren't easy. I've seen plenty of encounters within the books that are straight up TPKs waiting to happen if a party screws around thinking they're invincible. I just think with 10 years of experience with 5E they've got a better handle on what a 9th+ level party is capable of actually dishing out and accounting for that.

 

[Retros_x]

I've always and exclusively seen the numbers in the 2014 DMG as lower thresholds - mainly since using the XP multiplier meant that you would almost always end up at some random number between the difficulty levels.

I would bet my left nut that you are an exception then. Most DMs have a target difficulty level and add monsters until the adjusted XP (multiplier incl) hits the lower threshold - especially when using digital encounter builders.

 

[dave2008]

Uh OK, here is what you claimed it said:

And here is what that section says:

Point me to anything in there that even vaguely supports your claim?

I agree, my impression of the part you quoted is almost the opposite of Micah Sweet's it seems. IT seems to support playing and good faith more than anything. I think we bring our own baggage into our interpretations.

 

[dave2008]

I would bet my left nut that you are an exception then. Most DMs have a target difficulty level and add monsters until the adjusted XP (multiplier incl) hits the lower threshold - especially when using digital encounter builders.

Who knows what the real numbers are, but it has been discussed on these forums for years that the 2014 encounter guideline thresholds were the lower end of the challenge spectrum, not the high end.

 

[Retros_x]

Who knows what the real numbers are, but it has been discussed on these forums for years that the 2014 encounter guideline thresholds were the lower end of the challenge spectrum, not the high end.

That was not what I was arguing, but the number DMs target when they build an encounter. These forums are also not really a good representative of the average DM. I played with a lot of DM who did not really participate in online communities besides some local facebook group to find players.

As I said already, how the 2014 guidelines were phrased they can be easily understood as hitting the lower threshold is the goal while the 2024 guidelines are phrased the opposite.

edit: I just opened op kobold fight club a very popular encounter builder. They have as target numbers the lower thresholds, as I suspected. Its just an example but I think thats the logic of most 2014 DMs and digital tools. I expect it to change over the next years.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Whilst I'm glad the encounter budgets have been increased, as the old ones were pathetic pushovers, I am worried about the removal of the multiplier for multiple monster. In my experience even with old guidelines, it was the encounters with several monsters that tended to work better, whilst solos were often way easier. And this skews things even more against the solos, in some case massively so. I have hard time seeing how this could work...

 

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

Teos Abadia did a good breakdown of the math of the encounter building system in D&D 2024 versus D&D 2014:


I've also been digging into it, as have some fine members of the Sly Flourish Discord server.

I've mainly been comparing it to my own Lazy Encounter Benchmark. This should come as no surprise, but I still like my benchmark better. I am happy, however, to see that the two systems overlap a fair bit so its not like one is totally out of whack from the others.

However, in my look at the two systems and other shared observations, the D&D 2024 DMG encounter building rules

• allow for a larger number of low CR monsters (eight CR 1s versus four level 3 PCs)
• don't allow for a larger number of high CR monsters (you're basically facing a single monster at 150% of the characters' average level with no room for any support monsters).

Here's a table that shows how many monsters at what challenge rating you can find for a hard battle against a certain number of characters at a given level. This table is similar to the way the xanathars rules worked:

View attachment 385066

The system is far improved from the D&D 2014 one since you only have to match up the budget. There's no goofy multiplier that has this sort of hidden connection to your encounter math that you can never really calculate. Add a stirge and suddenly you go from normal to deadly.

You can see a preview of my analysis here:

2024 DMG Versus the Lazy Encounter Benchmark

This article compares the encounter building rules in the new D&D 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG) to the Lazy Encounter Benchmark – my tool for helping GMs quickly benchmark 5e encounters to determi...

slyflourish.com

Hi Mike, thanks for responding!

I am looking forward to your full analysis on this. My gut feeling is that it is generally going to be an improvement over 2014 but I'm worried about the new math undervaluing large groups of low CR monsters. While The Multiplier certainly was overkill, I am worried removing it entirely is going to make certain encounters look far easier than they will be in reality.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I agree, my impression of the part you quoted is almost the opposite of Micah Sweet's it seems. IT seems to support playing and good faith more than anything. I think we bring our own baggage into our interpretations.

No doubt, but I can't see that passage as anything but a blatant attack on simulationist play. Not that WotC 5e supported such very well earlier, but as I've said they've become quite outspoken about it in 5.5. IMO Reducing the importance of setting and worldbuilding (which I feel these "rules" accomplish) leaves the game's purpose to be facilitating the PCs crazy adventures and showing off their cool powers, especially when you figure in the multiple warnings in the encounter building section against making things too dangerous for the players, and the general increase in said powers player-side in the PH.

That's my conclusion as to WotC's design goals. I don't expect a lot of folks to agree, and I'm sure it will make a lot of money for WotC. It reads to me as more player-centric than it has ever been, but that appears to be what people want.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

No doubt, but I can't see that passage as anything but a blatant attack on simulationist play. Not that WotC 5e supported such very well earlier, but as I've said they've become quite outspoken about it in 5.5. IMO Reducing the importance of setting and worldbuilding (which I feel these "rules" accomplish) leaves the game's purpose to be facilitating the PCs crazy adventures and showing off their cool powers, especially when you figure in the multiple warnings in the encounter building section against making things too dangerous for the players, and the general increase in said powers player-side in the PH.

That's my conclusion as to WotC's design goals. I don't expect a lot of folks to agree, and I'm sure it will make a lot of money for WotC. It reads to me as more player-centric than it has ever been, but that appears to be what people want.

I think, what you see as an attack in simulationist play is your own bias at play because I doubt that anyone in WoTC D&D design over the last 20 years has had sim play in mind at all. To attack sim play presupposes that they actually care about it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think, what you see as an attack in simulationist play is your own bias at play because I doubt that anyone in WoTC D&D design over the last 20 years has had sim play in mind at all. To attack sim play presupposes that they actually care about it.

2004 (so twenty years ago) was right in the middle of 3e, which is as sim a system as D&D ever had mechanically.