Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana Presents Alternative Encounter Building Guidelines

WotC's Mike Mearls has posted the latest Unearthed Arcana, presenting an alternate set of encounter-building guidelines for D&D. "Though this approach uses the same basic math underlying the encounter system presented in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, it makes a few adjustments to how it presents that math to produce a more flexible system. These guidelines will be of interest to DMs who want to emphasize combat in their games, who want to ensure that a foe isn’t too deadly for a specific group of characters, and who want to understand the relationship between a character’s level and a monster’s challenge rating."

It's four pages, and includes various tables divided into a series of five steps - Assess the Characters, Encounter Size, Determine Numbers and Challenge Ratings, Select Monsters, and Add Complications. The latter step includes d8 monster personalities, d6 monster relationships, terrain, traps, and random events. Find it here.

At the D&D website:

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

In AD&D, the decoupling takes the form I described already: the same dungeon set-up might be workable for both a 3rd level and a 6th level party. But the pacing required to make it work will be different: the 6th level PCs might be able to take on 10 bugbears all at once, but the 3rd level PCs might need to find a way to split it up into a sequence of smaller, hence less threatening, confrontations. Because the scaling of everything but monster hit points is so mild in AD&D, you don't really need encounter building guidelines to make this work. Rather, you need to have rules or table conventions that allow the players, via their PCs, to exercise the appropriate control over pacing. (What is sometimes, in my view misleadlingly, called "combat as war".)

I think it's telling that in the 2nd ed era, as AD&D moved from an approach where the players control pacing to an approach where the GM is assumed to control pacing, it likewise moved to a much greater encouragement of GM fudging as the tool for handling encounter balancing. (Eg rather than allow the story to be "trivialised" by letting the PCs beat the bugbears one-by-one, we have a dramatic confrontatin between the PCs and a wave of bugbears, but the GM manipulates the dice rolls so that the PCs win.)

I question the idea that scaling in AD&D is mild. AD&D scales with Lanchester's Squared Law in the exact same way 5E does; a dozen orcs are four times as deadly as half a dozen orcs. Furthermore, AD&D is extremely harsh when it comes to hitting zero HP; it wipes your memorized spells and renders you incapable of further combat until you've had (a day? a week? I forget) of bed rest. In 5E, hitting zero HP just means someone needs to spend a first-level spell (or 5sp of healer's kit supplies) to get you back on your feet immediately; otherwise you have to wait 1-4 hours.

5E is far more forgiving than AD&D was. Fortunately, it's also equally amenable to Combat As War and player-controlled pacing.

 

[pemerton]

I question the idea that scaling in AD&D is mild. AD&D scales with Lanchester's Squared Law in the exact same way 5E does; a dozen orcs are four times as deadly as half a dozen orcs.

This is no different in 3E or 4e either, given that all of them use non-abstracted positioning rules. And subject to the usual caveats about missile weapons, AoEs, etc.

The scaling I am referring to is of mechanical scaling that goes to the basics of action resolution. In AD&D, AC and damage per hit do not vary very much with level; though the chance to hit does increase fairly significantly. In 3E and 4e there is significant level-scaling of AC, damage per hit and chance to hit. In 5e there is significant scaling of damage per hit.

As far as AD&D is concerned, the significance of this is that the stand-out difference between a bugbear, an ogre and a hill-giant is the number of hit points it can take before dropping; but not so much you chance to hit it (not hopeless even at 1st level) and not so much it's chance to kill you in a single hit (for most fighters of 2nd level or higher, the chance will be not all that great). The average damage from an AD&D hill giant is 9, and the maximum 16. Even the maximum won't kill an average 1st level fighter with a CON bonus to hp (with 7 hp, that character will be at -9 hp and still able to be saved). Whereas the 18 damage from a 5e hill giant will knock unconscious even an average 2nd level fighter with 12 CON (18 hp). And if the GM is rolling damage, there's a good chance of killing a 1st level fighter outright.

What this means is that, in AD&D, a player-side approach of trying to manage the pacing of events so that even high HD foes can be taken down in ones and twos is viable, because the threat posed to the party from a single opponent is manageable; whereas in other editions, even 5e with its bounded accuracy, this involves greater risk (unless ranged attacks are being used vs opponents who lack them).

AD&D is extremely harsh when it comes to hitting zero HP; it wipes your memorized spells and renders you incapable of further combat until you've had (a day? a week? I forget) of bed rest.

The rest period is a week.

That produces retreats, but not necessarily wipe-outs.

5E is far more forgiving than AD&D was. Fortunately, it's also equally amenable to Combat As War and player-controlled pacing.

But I don't think that 5e is as forgiving in the respect that I was referring to, namely, the ability of even low level PCs to take down a high-HD foe if they are able to ensure they engage in a piecemeal fashion.

A 5e ogre has 59 hp, compared to an average of 19 for an AD&D ogre (ie 3 times as many), but the 5e ogre's AC is also lower (11 rather than AC 5), so a 1st level fighter (let's say +5 to hit) is hitting 75% of the time rather than little more than 25% of the time: so the tripling of hit points is compensated for by a tripling of the prospects of hitting (though in AD&D positioning, eg for rear attacks or backstab that give a bonus to hit, will generate relatively more payoff than in 5e, which means for some playstyles the 5e ogre is overall more resilient than the AD&D one). The 5e ogre has a bonus to hit of +6, meaning around a 50% chance to hit a 1st level fighter; and this is similar to the AD&D ogre's chance to hit a 1st level fighter's AC 3 or 4. But the 5e ogre does damage of 13 on a hit, meaning that unconsciousness is almost guaranteed on a hit, and there is a real chance of killing an injured or non-fighter-type outright on a hit; whereas the AD&D ogre does d10 damage, which a 1st level fighter may well survive without being knocked out, and which is unable to outright kill a character even on 1 hp.

I assume this is why a 5e ogre is labelled as a level 2 challenge; whereas, despite its 4 HD, a single AD&D ogre is a viable foe for 1st level AD&D PCs to take on.

This is not any sort of criticism of 5e. But I think it contributes to the explanation of why 5e is thought to need more involved encounter-building guidelines than AD&D does.

 

[flametitan]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] Just a clarification before I get involved in this: Where are you getting negative HP? Was this from the 2e era, or Unearthed Arcana? All of my readings (70's- pre UA 80's) indicates that you hit 0, your character dies. It's passed on; it's no more. It has ceased to be... (you get the point)

The nature of this question changes a lot of how "forgiving" AD&D is or isn't. Additionally: Do monsters have their attack rate scaling? from my dealings with OD&D, this changes the deadliness of high hit dice monsters a lot.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] Just a clarification before I get involved in this: Where are you getting negative HP?

AD&D DMG (author: Gary Gygax; date: 1979), p 82.

Here is the text:

When any creature is brought to 0 hit poinis (optionally as low as -3 hit points if from the same blow which brought the total to 0), it is unconscious. In each of the next succeeding rounds 1 additional (negative) point will be lost until -10 is reached and the creature dies. Such loss and death are caused from bleeding, shock, convulsions, non-respiration, and similar causes. It ceases immediately on any round a friendly creature administers aid to the unconscious one. Aid consists of binding wounds, starting
respiration, administering a draught (spirits, healing potion, etc.), or otherwise doing whatever is necessary to restore life.

Any character brought to 0 (or fewer) hit points and then revived will remain in a corna far 1-6 turns. Thereafter, he or she must rest for a full week, minimum. He or she will be incapable of any activity other than that necessary to move slowly to a place of rest and eat and sleep when there. The character cannot attack, defend, cast spells, use magic devices, carry burdens, run, study, research, or do anything else. This is true even if cure spells and/or healing potions are given to him or her, although if a heal spell is bestowed the prohibition no longer applies.

If any creature reaches a state of -6 or greater negative paints before being revived, this could indicate scarring or the loss of some member, if you so choose. For example, a character struck by a fireball and then treated when at -9 might have horrible scar tissue on exposed areas of flesh - hands, arms, neck, face.​

Rereading it does require one correction to my earlier post, though (and I'll flag this to [MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] too): the ogre can kill if it drops you below 0/-3 in a single blow, so it is dangerous to 1 hp PCs, though still not as dangerous as the 5e one (assuming use of the -3 option, a hit from the ogre when on 1 hp has a 40% chance not to kill).

All of my readings (70's- pre UA 80's) indicates that you hit 0, your character dies.

I'm not sure what you've read. Maybe Basic, or the original books. But I'm assuming not Gygax's DMG.

The nature of this question changes a lot of how "forgiving" AD&D is or isn't.

I am not saying that AD&D is especially forgiving to players - it is full of save-or-die, for instance. My point is that it is forgiving to GMs from the point of view of encounter building. Because monster damage does not scale significantly, and because monster AC does not scale significantly, it does not matter a great deal whether you run 2nd or 4th level PCs through your dungeon. (1st levels are especially vulnerable because of their low hp, but even a group of 1st level PCs has a good chance vs an ogre without suffering a death, unlike in 5e.)

As long as the players take steps ("combat as war") to engage the bugbears, or ogres, or whatever they are piecemeal rather than en masse, their prospects of being killed are modest. (Because of the relatively low and static monster damage.)

Hence the game doesn't need encounter building guidelines. (Beyond "don't put the really tough stuff on the 1st level".) What it does need is rules and guidelines for allowing players to control the pacing - which it does have, via the wandering monster vs placed monster rules, the approach to adventure planning and mapping and the like set out by Gygax in his PHB, the rules for fleeing and distracting/disabling pursuit, etc. With these rules in place, players of low level PCs can tackle a given dungeon at their pace, and players of mid level PCs can tackle the same dungeon at a more rapid or careless pace, and the GM doesn't need to worry that the encounters will be too tough.

If you depart from these methods - eg all monsters pursue, or fight to the death, or the GM shifts placed monsters willy-nilly so scouting and mapping cease to be reliable sources of information about the dungeon - then the players can't control the pacing, and hence low-level PCs will be creamed by bugbears or ogres en masse, and then the game won't be forgiving in the way I was referring to. 2nd ed AD&D took the game in this direction, but instead of encounter building guidelines it recommended that GMs fudge dice rolls to avoid TPKs and the like.

Do monsters have their attack rate scaling? from my dealings with OD&D, this changes the deadliness of high hit dice monsters a lot.

In AD&D monsters have a listed attack rate. For most monsters it is 1, perhaps 2. An odd side-effect of this is that many animals/beasts - which are frequently statted with claw/claw/bite attacks or some similar multiple attack routine - are very dangerous compared to humanoids: eg in 5e a lion is quite a bit less dangerous than an ogre (26 hp and +5 to hit for 7 damage, with 1 better AC at 12 rather than 11), whereas in AD&D not only does it have more hp (5+2 HD, rather than 4+1) but it does effectively double damage (claw/claw/bite for d4/d4/d10, plus two bonus attacks if both claws hit for d6+1/d6+1; compared to the ogre's single attack for d10).

 

[happyhermit]

Half the fun of D&D, are the magic items in my group. There needs to be a good way to have them in a campaign without making encounters trivial.

If you are saying half the fun of D&D for your group is coming from the pluses on magical items I kind of find that hard to believe . The amount of fun that I can conceive of being derived from a +1 on a regular basis is... not very much. Still, I don't actually see that there is any issue having them in a campaign without them making encounters trivial, it might take a bit of thought and strategy by the GM, but it is easily achieved for most people IMO.

If you mean magical items that are unique or coursing with some sort of magical energy granting it certain properties, then I fully understand how fun those can be, but that is not likely to cause much in way of "encounter building" calculations.

 

[flametitan]

Huh, so it does. I've never noticed that. That said, I do spend more time reading about OD&D than AD&D, so I might be carrying conceptions from that. Carry on.

 

[Pauper]

Because it doesn't feel cinematic enough for my tastes.

Not sure why five rounds isn't enough time to raise stakes to the degree you'd like; cinematic action sequences aren't necessarily improved by lasting half-an-hour rather than five minutes.

With that said, given that fantasy films of the early D&D era included "Hawk the Slayer" and "Zardoz", I'd argue that early D&D was cinematic, for its era at least.

--
Pauper

 

[Parmandur]

I don't think I'm prepared to consider giving up on a topic to be an improvement. Otherwise I could just as well burn all of my RPG books and simply play make-believe.

Difference between "giving up" and admitting that one path didn't work out as hoped, and trying something else.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Oh, I agree. I just limit the +x magic weapons and +x magic armor. There are plenty of clever and insteresting magic items in the DMG that can prove useful for a group. In my game, it is my job to make them interesting and mysterious.

A rusty sword that becomes a +1 blade when in the effect radius of a purify food and water spell. Its transformation lasts for 1 hour.

A pommel of a broken sword of which the blade appears when wet. It doesn't have a bonus, but clever players, such as a rogue, might find it interesting.

A staff of swarming insects that causes the bearer to regurgitate his food like a fly each time he eats.

A player whose character is an awakened panther (monk; I know it sounds weird, but I endulged) recently found out that he is really an unique figurine of wondrous power.

Even a magic weapon (without a +x bonus), once owned by a brave knight, which grants an advantage against being frightened is an interesting find that might intrigue players.

Buffs are great, but shouldn't be the mainstay or a requirement. For instance, I have two 2-weapon fighters in my group and they recently found an animated shield - it has no magic buffs, but still extremely useful for either character.

I do a lot of stuff like this too. I really like to give magic items some personality and uniqueness. To impart some of the creator's personality into the item. For example, a dwarven smith whose family banner is the boar will create items with a boar motif implemented in both design and possibly function. Instead of a shield+1, it's a thick yet smallish square shield with a 3d relief of a boar's head in brass, and the wielder gains the following: +10ft movement, if at least 20ft have been covered when charging an opponent, take an action to make a melee attack roll with the shield. If the shield hits, inflict 1d8 bludgeoning damage and the target must make a DC 14 Con save or suffer an additional 2d8 slashing damage from tusks that magically appear during the charge and be knocked prone. The movement is a passive bonus, but the tusks can only be used once per short rest.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

This is no different in 3E or 4e either, given that all of them use non-abstracted positioning rules. And subject to the usual caveats about missile weapons, AoEs, etc.

The scaling I am referring to is of mechanical scaling that goes to the basics of action resolution. In AD&D, AC and damage per hit do not vary very much with level; though the chance to hit does increase fairly significantly. In 3E and 4e there is significant level-scaling of AC, damage per hit and chance to hit. In 5e there is significant scaling of damage per hit.

As far as AD&D is concerned, the significance of this is that the stand-out difference between a bugbear, an ogre and a hill-giant is the number of hit points it can take before dropping; but not so much you chance to hit it (not hopeless even at 1st level) and not so much it's chance to kill you in a single hit (for most fighters of 2nd level or higher, the chance will be not all that great). The average damage from an AD&D hill giant is 9, and the maximum 16. Even the maximum won't kill an average 1st level fighter with a CON bonus to hp (with 7 hp, that character will be at -9 hp and still able to be saved). Whereas the 18 damage from a 5e hill giant will knock unconscious even an average 2nd level fighter with 12 CON (18 hp). And if the GM is rolling damage, there's a good chance of killing a 1st level fighter outright.

What this means is that, in AD&D, a player-side approach of trying to manage the pacing of events so that even high HD foes can be taken down in ones and twos is viable, because the threat posed to the party from a single opponent is manageable; whereas in other editions, even 5e with its bounded accuracy, this involves greater risk (unless ranged attacks are being used vs opponents who lack them).

You're arguing that AD&D was more forgiving than 5E (and 3E and 4E, I suppose, but I have no opinion about those because I don't play them) on the basis of solo monsters doing more damage in 5E. Leaving aside the fact that AD&D would also do things like swamp you with the aforementioned horde of twenty or so kobolds at first level, let's just check this claim about hill giants.

A 2nd edition Hill Giant does 2d6+7 (14) damage on a hit. A 3rd level fighter has about 3d10+3 HP (sometimes more, sometimes less, but more likely less than more). The hill giant is doing (14/18.5) = 75% of the fighter's HP on each hit. If you go down to zero HP, you're dying and definitely out of the fight for the next week. Severe penallty, easy to get to; it is not improbable that the hill giant will simply kill you outright on the second hit.

A 2nd edition fighter in chain mail and shield (AC 4) could expect to last about 2.5 rounds at third level against a hill giant (THAC0 9) before dying messily, or at least getting mission-killed.

A 5E Hill Giant does 3d8+5 (18.5) damage, twice. A 3rd level fighter in 5E has about (12+8+8=28 HP). The hill giant is doing 67% of the fighter's HP on each hit, but he gets two attacks, so he can potentially put you down in one round, although it probably won't kill you because a simple Healing Word will get you back on your feet.

A 5E fighter in chain mail and shield (AC 19 w/ Defense) could expect to last about 1.5 rounds at third level against a hill giant (+8 to hit) if he expends no resources except HP, which puts him out of it until someone takes an action to get him back on his feet; if he Shields twice and uses Second Wind he can expect to last four rounds; five rounds if he Action Surges a Dodge. (If he gets low on HP he should probably switch entirely to Dodging instead of Attacking, but let's ignore that.)

Even in this scenario you've picked, it doesn't appear to me that the 5E fighter is facing a more unforgiving environment than the AD&D fighter. This matches my anecdotal play experience. At third level, my players took on an 18th-20th level Medium challenge (eleven or so umber hulks, eight or so neogi, and an 8th level neogi wizard) with the help of fifteen or so NPC guards that they recruited, and came out victorious. It was dicey but possible, thanks in part to the fact that they got to prepare the ground and set up an ambush for when the neogi were dispersed (checking their hatchlings). If 5E were as hostile as you imply to the good old-school Combat As War paradigm, that probably wouldn't have been possible.