Li Shenron
Legend
I would not bother changing monsters, instead I would wait until the PCs have levelled up to 6th before running this adventure.
D&D 5E Struggling adjust encounter level
No, the multiplier exists because adding up XP doesn't measure challenge because of non-linarities.
If you have monsters with 10x the HP and Damage, they are worth something like 100x the XP. But 100 of the smaller monsters are insanely more dangerous than one big monster, because they collectively have 10x the HP and 10x the DPR.
Now they aren't 100x as dangerous, because AOEs can chew up the smaller ones, and even without AOEs at half way through their HP, the smaller ones are half dead and deal half damage.
The encounter size multiplier is a ham fisted way to fix that.
There are other ways that give the same result on hordes of same level monsters but also scale reasonably when you have one big and some small.
The easiest is to literally add up CR. It isn't that accurate, but it isn't that bad either. There are a few fudge tricks to make it better (CR above 20 and under 3 especially), or you can use a "EBP" system based off CR that factors those in.
If you have monsters with 10x the HP and Damage, they are worth something like 100x the XP. But 100 of the smaller monsters are insanely more dangerous than one big monster, because they collectively have 10x the HP and 10x the DPR.
Now they aren't 100x as dangerous, because AOEs can chew up the smaller ones, and even without AOEs at half way through their HP, the smaller ones are half dead and deal half damage.
The encounter size multiplier is a ham fisted way to fix that.
There are other ways that give the same result on hordes of same level monsters but also scale reasonably when you have one big and some small.
The easiest is to literally add up CR. It isn't that accurate, but it isn't that bad either. There are a few fudge tricks to make it better (CR above 20 and under 3 especially), or you can use a "EBP" system based off CR that factors those in.
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Flamestrike
Legend
No, that's not what Im saying.
Im saying the formula of:
''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.''
Leads to some ridiculous results.
Do you have 20 Kobolds and 1 CR 5 monster? You multiply XP by x 1 to determine difficulty because Kobolds CR 1/8 is 'significantly below the CR' of the CR 5 monster (by a factor of 40). We effectively ignore the Kobolds when determining multiplication for multiple monsters because the much more powerful CR 5 monster is in the encounter.
Do you have 20 Kobolds and 1 CR 2 monster? You multiply the XP by x 4 to determine difficulty because those Kobold CRs are not significantly below the threshold of CR 2. Suddenly we are factoring the Kobolds back into the multiplication stage for multiple monsters, and increasing that multiplier even though we reduced the threat of the bigger scarier monster!
It's absurd.
I find the maths works better when the above formula is used to compare the weaker 'mook' monsters to the average level of the PCs (and not compared to the CR of other monsters in the encounter).
If the mooks are significantly lower in CR than the average level of the PCs, then we dont count them for multiplication purposes. If not, they get counted.
It makes more sense, avoids a lot of absurdities, and leads to much more balanced results overall.
Angry GM has a pretty good alternate CR system that has some useful math behind it and a decent set of tiers and wobble. I'm actually using it as we speak.
Yes, you are taking one flaw with the XP system and replacing it with another.
If you have 20 Kobolds (CR 1/8), they all by themselves generate a CR 3-4 encounter roughly. Those weak monsters significantly contribute to the difficulty of the encounter. But multiplying the XP of the CR 5 monster by the 21 monsters is equally stupid.
Hence things like F$&% CR, There’s a Better Way (Part 2) -- where you can deconstruct the system so that it generates nearly the same results when you have X monsters of CR Y compared to one monster of CR Z, but also doesn't break down when you have 20 Kobolds and a CR 5.
Now you can do more math than the angryGM did and work out that a CR 5 monster and 20 CR 1/8 monsters comes to an encounter level of around 8 (this is napkin math from memory; actual result will be +/-1) for a 4 person party. Which disagrees with the XP math.
But if you just add up XP you get XP equal to a CR 6 encounter. If you use the multiplier, you get a ridiculous result, because most of the XP comes from the CR 5 which then upscales way too high. And you get that funny jump once you switch from no multiplier to multiplier.
For about 80% accuracy, do this:
1) Map CR 1/8, 1/4 and 1/2 to 1/3, 1/2 and 2/3. (footnote 1)
2) Map CR above 20 to (Original - 20)*2.5 + 20. So a CR 30 is mapped to 50. (footnote 2)
Now add up the CR you get.
Sum of PC levels/5 or higher: Easy
Sum of PC levels/4 or higher: Medium
Sum of PC levels/3 or higher: Hard
Sum of PC levels/2.5 or higher: Deadly
Party of 3 level 5 PCs? Sum is 15, so Easy is 3+, Medium is 3.75+, Hard is 5+, Deadly is 6+.
Party of 5 level 5 PCs? Sum is 25, so easy is 5+, Medium is 6.25+, Hard is 8.3+, Deadly is 10+.
---
When rebuilding existing encounters for a party of X, what you care about is the scale factor more than anything. So you just apply above, then scale for party size.
---
Footnote 1: Doing this for sub-1 is important, becuase you often have large masses of these. And error adds up. There is also error from 1-5, but it is smaller (it should go 1, 1.8, 2.6, 3.2, 4 or so, but that is within the 80% accuracy bound, so skip it).
Footnote 2: Basically, above-20 is 2.5 "real" CR per CR.
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Quickleaf
Legend
My approach is much more holistic, but I'll start by explaining the maths/metrics first...
When it's a single big encounter – for example, the only encounter of that day – then the Easy/Hard/Medium/Deadly designations don't really apply. Those designations assume 6-8 encounters in a day, so resource attrition is built into those Easy/Hard/Medium/Deadly designations. With one big encounter, you don't have any resource attrition. Therefor, it's much better to use the Daily Adventuring Budget table (also in the DMG, but many overlook it). My experience is that this is a more accurate value than CR or the Easy/Hard/Medium/Deadly encounter designations. For example, your three-person 5th level party would have a Daily Adventuring Budget of 10,500 XP.
You might be looking at the "Deadly" value which is 3,300, and triple that is 9,900 which is just within the Daily Adventuring Budget. So could be a pretty good one big encounter.
However, there's a few other things to consider if you have the time and inclination:
- If you're using monsters with a CR significantly higher than the party (at level 5 that would be +4 to +7 CR, roughly), you need to look out for their ability to either (a) kill a PC with max hit points outright in one turn (i.e. can deal 2x average HP), or (b) knock out the entire party in one turn. If either of those is true, you may be dealing with an overpowered encounter because the players can lose without being given a fair recourse. However, there are still ways to pull this off, but require more DM effort.
- If you're using monsters that circumvent HP entirely, such as a basilisk or shadows or intellect devourers, you need to look at what defenses/cures the PCs have immediate access to. Generally, these are monsters that merit more foreshadowing.
- If you're using monsters that have a movement mode or environmental adaptation that gives them a huge advantage in the encounter over the PCs, then you need to dig into the guts of the encounter design a bit more to find a good way to handle that.
Level 5+ rule of thumb is total enemy CRs should not add up to more than total party levels if you want pcs to have a hope. So 3×5 = 15 CRs to play with. Eg cr 6 mage and 3 3 cr 3 veterans would work.
Below level 5 halve that, so for 3 level 4 up to 6 crs, which is not much - 1 mage or 2 veterans.
Below level 5 halve that, so for 3 level 4 up to 6 crs, which is not much - 1 mage or 2 veterans.
Ath-kethin
Elder Thing
I'm a bit surprised no one has suggested Kobold Fight Club yet. It automates all the math, multipliers, and variables to give you an encounter rating based on the number/level of PCs and the CRs of all the monsters. It's super easy to bump monster numbers up and down to adjust the difficulty of the encounter.
Now, this won't necessarily help with changing the monsters themselves, just their quantities, but I find it to be an invaluable tool.
Now, this won't necessarily help with changing the monsters themselves, just their quantities, but I find it to be an invaluable tool.
Var
Explorer
A timeless classic remains adding NPCs to balance out opposing NPCs.
For the suggested encounter you could get your party a few disgruntled knights to join them for the final encounter. They'd mostly be there to offset the CR difference if you want to keep the final encounter as is, tie up the knights on the other side so your party can have their epic showdown against the fully guarded BBEG.
As long as the additions aren't stealing the show (offensive casters/disablers) it's fairly easy to keep the (boss-)fight epic, if you don't mind it taking a bit longer.
For the suggested encounter you could get your party a few disgruntled knights to join them for the final encounter. They'd mostly be there to offset the CR difference if you want to keep the final encounter as is, tie up the knights on the other side so your party can have their epic showdown against the fully guarded BBEG.
As long as the additions aren't stealing the show (offensive casters/disablers) it's fairly easy to keep the (boss-)fight epic, if you don't mind it taking a bit longer.
Take an encounter with 14 CR 1/4 monsters and one Ancient Red Dragon.I'm a bit surprised no one has suggested Kobold Fight Club yet. It automates all the math, multipliers, and variables to give you an encounter rating based on the number/level of PCs and the CRs of all the monsters. It's super easy to bump monster numbers up and down to adjust the difficulty of the encounter.
Now, this won't necessarily help with changing the monsters themselves, just their quantities, but I find it to be an invaluable tool.
Remove 1 CR 1/4 monster. Watch the XP fall by 25%.
Do you really think 1 CR 1/4 monster made that encounter 33% harder? Do you think the 14 CR 1/4 monsters should have any impact at all?
This is because it is applying the full monster count multiplier even though we have a pile of trivial monsters and one really big one.
You are responsible to tweak the encounter size multiplier, which is half of the difficulty of making complex balanced 5e encounters.
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