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Message: <blockquote data-quote="cooperjer" data-source="post: 7283917" data-attributes="member: 6862150">The way I approach this would be to look at the daily XP for each character.  That value is 9000 each per the DMG, p 84.  Through experiment with my home group and the Adventures League game I've found that 10% to 15% of that total makes for an interesting encounter that I would consider easy to medium.  Three CR 3 creatures is 5400 XP which falls in line with that estimate.  The group would use about 10% to 15% of their resources on this encounter.  Five CR 3 creatures is 20% of their daily total (9000 x 5) and I would consider this a medium to hard challenge.  Ten CR 3 creatures is 40% of the groups daily total.  If you hit them with this encounter at the start of the day they should complete it without a death. The twenty CR 3 creatures is 80% of their daily total and you should have at least one character death.  Using this system, I've found that resource utilization is not evenly distributed among the characters.  The barbarian is going to use more resources (HP) early, depending on how many fireballs the wizards throws out.  Some players will be looking to have a long rest before other players because they used about 75% to 80% of their resources (HP, spell slots, rage, battle dice, ki, lay on hands, etc.).  I feel that targeting 75% usage of team resources makes for an interesting combat game.  This means targeting the 15% to 20% of daily XP 6 to 4 times per day, respectively.To hit those targets of XP use I remind the players of about what time of day it is for the characters.  Typically I'll say something like, "It's about 10:00 or so.  Early morning but after breakfast."  If the characters have used about 20% to 30% of their resources by the "It's about lunch time" reminder and one character has taken the brunt of the resource drain, I've had them indicate they are taking a long rest.  Depending on their tactic to hide themselves during the long rest, they may succeed, but most likely a wondering monster group or two, worth about 15% of their daily XP will find them during the long rest.Another thing to consider is how long do you want your combat to last?  I typically target a monster count equal to the number of characters +/- 2.  I've found that having more NPCs for me to manage allows the players to check out of the game while I throw dice.  I've also found that combats which last more than 1.5 hours of real time becomes a drain and the players are looking to move on in the story.  Because of this, consider how much damage your characters are going to do.  My PCs are doing between 25 and 45 points of damage per turn, paladin with no smites to barbarian respectively.  I think it would be safe to assume an average of 30 to 35 points of damage per character per turn.  If you assume each turn last 3 to 7 minutes then you should be able to determine how much real time you want to spend on any single combat encounter.  To hit the 1.5 hour mark, a quick calc. indicates about 600 HP in the encounter.  This agrees with the last encounter I had.</blockquote>

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