D&D 5E Solving the 5MWD

[Garthanos]

One can say the 4e guidelines were pretty solid at low levels. (notice there is an unspoken but... in there) So I will speak it the but is that if players are interested in optimizing or just use some of the feat tax feats you will need to make things harder than the guidelines suggest, as your characters level and the best advice on the latter is... wing it. The Guidelines working generally meant the DM kind of knew better when he was hitting them hard, and I heard from quite a few DMs that they killed more PCS in 4e than previous editions because they felt less like it was random chance but rather actual choices involved.

 

[Garthanos]

I well remember my DM in a long-running 3e game at the time swearing a blue streak sometimes at 3e's encounter guidelines, largely because of a combination of two factors:

I had a DM who was constantly nose in book during my exposure to that edition and I cannot be sure if that was swearing or him speaking goblin.

 

[Uller]

I have found the 5e encounter guidelines to be very useful, not for "designing" adventures...I dont design adventures. I place monsters and NPCs in a local, give some of them motivations that are in conflict with the PCs and the adventure is what happens based on the actions taken by the PCs, the reactions of the NPCs and the dice...

For me the encounter guidelines help me predict where and when the PCs are likely to start looking for a way to rest so I can think about in advance what that opportunity might look like snd what costs, if any, that might entail.

If your players are resting after every encounter it is either because they think the must or they think they can.

 

[Maxperson]

Were I to find myself training up a new DM, somehting I'd advise would be to ignore and chuck out any sort of baked-in encounter guidelines, and to instead learn by trial and error what your particular party can handle and what it can't. Sure you might crush a few parties during that learning process, but as long as they have an option to run away it's on them if they don't.

I chucked out the 3e encounter guidelines, because they were useless. CR was so borked due to the incredibly varied power levels and weaknesses the zillions of classes the players picked, that I had to just know the PCs well and gauge monsters vs what I knew of the party. I got pretty good at it.

 

[Oofta]

I use a slight variation of the encounter guidelines that don't take into account the number of opponents - it just adds up the total XP budget. It works reasonably well, although there's never any guarantee based on strategy and dice randomness.

I also regularly figure out what monsters are likely to appear and then determine medium, hard and deadly versions of those encounters (we generally just narrate easy encounters) so I can throw the appropriate level based on how the group is doing overall or what approach they decide to take.