D&D 5E Struggling adjust encounter level

[WBruce]

Amazing approach Flamestrike.

Actually the boss is the only one I didn't change anything. I was going for another encounter just for the boss with a one time healing on the PCs side in between. I also eliminated the Priest, changed both HP and damage for the Knights, and completely removed the mage. Since the adventure will continue I would use the mage as a familiar face in the upcoming sessions, but I like your approach better.

My complaint is not that there is no way to do it, but that it is way to much work. And I say that because of FG also. There are two steps, first to plan all that you did, and after that to put all that into FG.

I just think that's too much trouble. One of the reasons we decided to try out the official adventures is because we don't have the time to do all that we were used to when we were younger. To do what you did for every encounter in 3 or 4 official adventures would be a lot of work, and I am considering that maybe I as the GM would have an easier time just keep doing things on my own where I can use my experience to just drag and drop monsters into FG, than trying to do all this balance. Does it make any sense to you?

Unless you want to create a Flamestrike App for me???

 

[Flamestrike]

Amazing approach Flamestrike.

Thats how I tend to structure my encounters mate. A bunch of low CR mooks, with a Boss type, and maybe a Heavy or two.

An Orc encounter is much better with half a dozen low CR Orc ooks, an Eye of Gruumsh (with Bless) to buff those Orcs, an Orog 'heavy' or two (or a caster/ high damage + low HP glass cannon type), and an Orc Warboss (or something similar).

Your players then have options:

1) Target the Mooks. Dangerous in numbers, but they should go down fast.
2) Target the creature buffing the mooks via Bless, the Leadership monster ability or similar effects who provides a nasty force multiplier, making the Mooks deadly.
3) Target the heavy/ spell caster/ glass cannon to get him out of the fight fast
4) Go for the Boss

I dont know how your FG program/ app works sadly, but what I would suggest you do (if you cant manually change gear, and loadouts etc without a lot of work) is to simply swap out or remove monsters from the encounter.

Replacing the (4 Knights, 1 Archer and 1 Mage) with (5 x CR 1/8 Guards and 1 x Veteran), plus the Priest and Boss gets you a lot closer to a reasonable (but still deadly) fight.

Give the Priest Bless instead of Spirit guardians and have him cast it on Turn 1 (using a 3rd level slot) on all 5 Guards, and then spam Guiding bolts (granting allies creatures advantage to hit what they hit). He's now a force multiplier that needs to be taken down fast.

The Boss should basically be a Heavy in this scenario (high HP, big damage attacks, but weak mental saves).

The app should let you do that pretty easy I would think? You're deleting 6 creatures (the Knights, Archer and Mage) and replacing them with 5 Guards and a Veteran, and swapping out a single spell for another one on the Priest.

Youll have:

a) 5 x CR 1/8 Guards
b) 1 x CR 3 Veteran
c) 1 x CR 2 Priest
d) 1 x CR 5 Boss (??)

The Veteran is your 'heavy', the Priest is your 'force multiplier' the mooks are mooks, and the Boss is the scary thing.

 

[S'mon]

With CRs I just eyeball it, but I rarely adjust to make things easier. If PC group is underpowered they can recruit NPC help or get higher level first.

I used the 4e monster/XP system as it was well done, but 5e is a mess and I've never used it as written.

 

[NotAYakk]

Change the 4 Knights and 1 Archer to 4 x Guards (replace Spears and Chain shirt with Chainmail, Shield and Sword, increase Strength to 16, change AC to 18, replace attack with Sword +5 [1d8+3]) Give them multi-attack with those swords (2 attacks). Increase CR to 1/2.

Multi-attack is really strong. +1 ATK/Dam and a bigger die is really strong. Higher AC is really strong. Those are probably CR 1 or better.

Being significantly lower in CR than the parties level, they dont multiply the final XP modifier on account of numbers. Their role is the battle is basic Mooks.

This is why using the XP system is a bad one. 4 CR 1 guards is worth more than 4x their XP. Neglecting it completely doesn't work, mutliplying the CR 5 by the number doesn't work.

But a heavy infantry is a good monster to have on your back pocket.

Heavy Infantry
As Guard, except 16 str, chainmail+shield, longsword, 2 javelins, mulitattack (sword only).

DP3R: 1d8+3 * 3 * 2 = 45
HP: 11
AC: 18
ATK: +5

1/2 defensive CR (1/8 but 5 extra AC).
15 DPR so offensive CR of 2, up to 3 for high ATK.
Average is 1.75. Could be 2 or 1.

Get rid of multiattack and CR is 1/2.

 

[Dausuul]

Instead of trying to scale down the encounters, have you considered leveling up the PCs instead? Or giving them a couple of pets/cohorts to fill out their ranks?

 

[WBruce]

I sure did. There are a number of reasons why I don't want to do that beyond the scope of this discussion.

More than to fix this particular encounter I am looking into the future plans of my group/campaign x the amount time to prepare x Fantasy Grounds Learning Curve + FG homebrew content.

We will play a number of official adventures , but none of them will probably match encounter level x party level, so I will have to adjust all of them. I have limited time and FG demands an extra step or two.

The party is almost lvl 6 and we will play a short homebrewed adventure followed by The Yawning Portal and Lost Mine of Phandelver in the sequence. So as you can see there is a lot of adjustments to make. If you ask me 5e designers completely lost sight of this issue. The scaling CR system from 4E should never be replaced ( although almost everything else should), to be able to take an official adventure and scale it to your like easily seems a huge marketing potential more than anything else, more than any fun/game thing. To not be able to easily do so is a major flaw.

Come here and see how people tackle this is a good way to either change my own way with adjustments or keep doing it.

Not sure it is possible but maybe someday someone will create an app for that. Take a look at the first link in my OP and you will see someone already did the other way around. If that app can calculate the CR and XP of a monster between the parameters we input, its just a next step to go the other way. A more complex step I admit, but I can keep my hope.....

 

[Flamestrike]

This is why using the XP system is a bad one. 4 CR 1 guards is worth more than 4x their XP. Neglecting it completely doesn't work, mutliplying the CR 5 by the number doesn't work.

But the XP system expressly contemplates just this. It tells you NOT to multiply the XP value for multiple creatures if they're weak (low CR) compared to the PCs. It's not a hard science, you've kind of gotta eyeball it and use your best judgement.

A handfull of fractional CR creatures against a party of T2s+ should not count their numbers towards the overall encounter difficulty on account of numbers.

Personally I would add those guys XP values up into a single sum, and then treat them as 1 single monster for the overall XP difficulty modifier. In practice, this seems to work just fine.

So a bunch of low level mooks = 1 monster (with a value of the sum of their entire XP total). You might then add a Heavy and a Boss into the encounter and you mulitply as if there were 3 creatures present (not 8).

Example:

5 Orcs (CR 1/2) 100xp ea
1 Orc Boss (CR 4) 1100xp
1 Eye of Gruumsh (CR 2) 450xp

Would have a total XP budget of (1100 for the Boss) + (450 for the Eye) + (500 for the 5 Orcs) x 2 (for '3' monsters - the 5 warriors are treated as a single monster) = 4100 adjusted XP.

That encounter is a Hard encounter for 4 x 5th level PCs (Hard: 3000-4399xp), a Deadly encounter for 4 x 4th level PCs (2000xp+) and a Medium encounter for 4 x 7th level Pcs (3000-4399xp) which looks about right at an eyeball.

You should (at 5th level) have sufficient AoE attacks (or multiattacks and cleave) to wipe out the mooks in a single round, using only the actions of 1-2 of the 4 PCs. At 4th level those options are not available yet (meaning you're likely in a world of hurt), and by 7th level you're all but guaranteed of wiping them out in a few rounds.

 

[NotAYakk]

No, it says don't multiply if they are trivial compared to the "boss" monsters in the fight, not teh PCs.

The 15 monster multiplier is useless unless you can use it on fractional CR monsters. And large numbers of those are an outscale threat (they can volley and kill high level PCs, and burn AOE spellslots, or take forever to melee down).

That ratio; how big is big; the DMG does not define.

 

[Flamestrike]

No, it says don't multiply if they are trivial compared to the "boss" monsters in the fight, not teh PCs.

An Orc is CR 1/2. That is literally trivial compared to the Boss' CR 4. The Boss is literally 800 percent more effective and higher CR.

A CR 4 monster wouldnt break a sweat taking down a CR 1/2. Multiple CR 1/2s even. With one hand tied behind its back.

It's not a precise science; you've just gotta use your best judgement.

 

[Flamestrike]

''When making this calculation, don’t count any monsters whose challenge rating is significantly below the average challenge rating of the other monsters in the group unless you think the weak monsters significantly contribute to the difficulty of the encounter.''

That's a judgement call of course, but I would certainly rule CR 1/2 is significatly lower than the challenge rating of the other monsters in that group (the Boss and the Eye).

For the record, I hate that passage. It creates an absurdity whereby adjusted XP goes down if you include a single tough monster (and a bunch of mooks) - because then you can ignore the multiplication based on the mook horde - instead of a single weaker 'meh' monster and a bunch of mooks in which case you cant ignore the multiplication based on the horde of mooks, resulting in a perversely higher adjusted XP value on account of the weaker monster.

It makes a lot more sense when you're comparing the CR of the monsters to the level of the Party, becuase you avoid this problem, and it's a better metric to use when determining relative difficulty for the PCs (which is the whole point of the exersize!).