D&D 5E Struggling adjust encounter level

[TwoSix]

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.

I think the math discussion is missing the salient point here, which is "Is it worth it to run published adventures if the party is outside the level and party size bounds?"

If you've been running your adventures for decades (which is also my play style), I would argue "No". The only real time saving I've seen from running pre-published adventures is having the encounters already created in the app; if you have to change that, what's the point? Much easier to just make up the adventure as you're used to.

 

[WBruce]

I am coming to the same conclusion. Unfortunately, I already bought a few, and now I can assure you I will squeeze all I can from it

At first it seemed like a good change of pace, and a time saver. We are also feeling a bit old and wondered if we were not left aside on that, if we were not loosing something. Second thoughts now.

 

[WBruce]

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.

Kobold Fight Club: The first rule of KFC is 'Yip yip!'

kobold.club

I have being using KFC for a while now.
My question was not about how to build a proper adjusted level for my party, but how to tweak already created ones in official adventures. To do that we have to change "something" and in doing so we completely alter the xp measurement to which we rely to have a grasp if we are gonna screw the characters or bore them to death.

Another thing is that Fantasy Grounds takes a toll. I am not sitting in a table with a Shield Master screen. If the players attacks the bad guy and defeat him I can't "hide" from them since the computer will show them the creature is gone. Also I can't fake a miss because they will see that the creature attack landed.
So, within FG I have to reshape each monster, I know how to that, just not as fast and streamlined that would make sense to do it.

First I have to use one of the links I posted in the op to create the monster stat block, but since that wont give me the xp value of that new monster, than I have to run it through the first app link I posted on OP to figure out how much xp it is worth. Only after that, I can take the info into FG. That is madness. to do that for an encounter with 6 creatures would take me 1-2 hours. No way I am gonna do that for every encounter in every official adventure.

Now take the 4e method and just scale it with arrows up and down and I would be able to do it in 10 minutes.

Anyway, the Angry GM method was kind of what I always did eyeballing. His work is solid, and he actually took the time and effort to create a table out of it and explain things in a clear way. It's no small job.

What I am inclined to do, is either create all the encounters myself (a shame because if it's an official adventure I would want to play it as close to the "official" part as I could), or I will end up tweaking the monsters direct inside FG to the best of my knowledge and hope for the best ( Probably will go with that). Now think for a moment how much of failure is this design concept from a marketing point of view. I really can't think this was carefully thought. The Angry GM method is so logic I can even see the app letting me click arrows up and down to make any encounter as I wish.

 

[NotAYakk]

Well, plot can be useful. As can encounter ideas and maps.

 

[GMMichael]

. . . Another thing is that Fantasy Grounds takes a toll. I am not sitting in a table with a Shield Master screen. If the players attacks the bad guy and defeat him I can't "hide" from them since the computer will show them the creature is gone. Also I can't fake a miss because they will see that the creature attack landed.
So, within FG I have to reshape each monster, I know how to that, just not as fast and streamlined that would make sense to do it. . .

. . .So I am down to take the lazy path and make things simple, I just don't know how to make it better. I am looking for a way to streamline the prrocess.

I have 3 players in this adventure, all lvl 5. The encounter is almost 3x harder (using DMG encounter build rules), but if I take out enough monsters (they are just 4 Knights, a cleric, a mage and the main enemy) to adjust the battle I end up with only 2 enemies. What I did is tailor each one of them to make them nerfed. It works, but it's a lot of work, considering everything else.

Yup. Stat blocks are a lot of work. That's implied in their less-than-exciting name: stat block.

So go around them. Two words to help you streamline the process: reinforcements and flight. FG might make it hard to adjust stats and/or hide numbers, but I bet FG makes it easy to add creatures or make them run away.

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.

Why all this when you nailed it in one word with your earlier post: fudge?

First I have to use one of the links I posted in the op to create the monster stat block, but since that wont give me the xp value of that new monster, than I have to run it through the first app link I posted on OP to figure out how much xp it is worth. Only after that, I can take the info into FG. That is madness.

One does not simply adjust the CRs in adventure modules. Not with ten-thousand minutes could you do this. It is folly.

 

[NotAYakk]

Why all this when you nailed it in one word with your earlier post: fudge?

Ok, so there are 3 different "easy" ways to build encounters.

1. You are rescaling encounters. Just add up player levels intended, and what you have, and that is your scale factor. Add up CR of encounter, multiply by scale factor. Reduce/increase monsters by theme, and/remove monsters, to hit the target.

2. You aren't rescaling encounters, but building your own. Then fudging under CR 1 and over 20, then adding up levels and doing a bit of math gets you 80% of the way to duplicating the XP system when the XP system mostly works, and does pretty good in mixed encounters.

3. You want better than that. Then you have to do some kind of EBP (encounter building points) that is better than the above fudging. You can hit 90%+ accuracy with XP based building on uniform encounters, and handle mixed encounters really well.

For 2 and 3, you need to know how hard each encounter is, because per-scene (time between short rests) and per-day budgets have to work a bit differently than in XP based budgeting.