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:

 

[Prakriti]

High-level encounter guidelines are completely borked, and probably always will be. Recently, I threw four CR 10 monsters at a group of three level 12 characters. They didn't even break a sweat. According to the DMG, this encounter was 3-4x harder than Deadly. No one was knocked unconscious. No one was even badly hurt. The thought of throwing ONE CR 12 monster at a high-level group and expecting a challenge is laughable.

 

[CapnZapp]

They actually have the gall to say it's simple to build a solo encounter. What utter crock.

Once more a pseudo-scientific approach involving tables and numbers that somehow does not take into consideration the party's makeup and individul capabilities. Sigh.

It should be criminal to unload such profoundly unhelpful BS on new players

 

[delericho]

High-level encounter guidelines are completely borked, and probably always will be.

Well, yes. They're now at a point where they face two big problems:

Firstly, during the playtest they chose to focus most of their effort on the low levels, taking the view that they could get the high-level stuff working later. Unfortunately, you can't add quality into a system; you have to design it in, so now that the game is out there it's too late. (On the other hand, it was probably a wise choice - the vast majority of play is, and always will be, at low levels, so better to make those rock solid. A great many people may never get to high levels, and a lot of those who do will simply respond to the problems by just starting a new campaign. Since they didn't have an infinite playtest budget, better to focus where it would do most good.)

Secondly, though, as levels go up, the capabilities of characters become ever more divergent - a high-level party of two Fighters and two Rogues is inevitably very different from one with a Wizard, a Cleric, a Druid, and a Bard (and moreso even than the low-level equivalents). Building encounter guidelines to focus on that is probably a fool's errand anyway.

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.

The article sounded interesting, especially the "terrain, traps, and random events." It's just a shame that the advice on these three items amounts to, "yeah, maybe have some?"

 

[Sacrosanct]

High-level encounter guidelines are completely borked, and probably always will be. Recently, I threw four CR 10 monsters at a group of three level 12 characters. They didn't even break a sweat. According to the DMG, this encounter was 3-4x harder than Deadly. No one was knocked unconscious. No one was even badly hurt. The thought of throwing ONE CR 12 monster at a high-level group and expecting a challenge is laughable.

I'm not saying you've done this (I don't have any details on how you ran this encounter), but most of the times when I've seen arguments like this ("the encounter should have been super deadly but was a cakewalk!!), often the monsters and/or environment were ran by the DM to the benefit of the characters. E.g., many times the monsters were treated like bags of HP that just waltzed into battle without taking into consideration how said monster would normally act if it were a real living being, or they completely ignored any factors of the environment that would have given them an advantage in battle.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Secondly, though, as levels go up, the capabilities of characters become ever more divergent - a high-level party of two Fighters and two Rogues is inevitably very different from one with a Wizard, a Cleric, a Druid, and a Bard (and moreso even than the low-level equivalents). Building encounter guidelines to focus on that is probably a fool's errand anyway.

This is exactly right. It's why encounter guidelines are only just guidelines, and there is no substitute for knowing the game and having the experience to know what feels right for your gaming table. I've never used encounter building rules since I started in 1981. In fact, I don't recall there even being rules until 3e, is that correct?

 

[I'm A Banana]

So, commentary on the new stuff:

• Numbers and Challenge Ratings: A weak element is that they don't tend to define what "deadly" or "appropriate" means - appropriate after 5-7 other encounters have sapped party resources? Appropriate for the only encounter in the day? Deadly in that it is probably going to kill a PC? Deadly in that it might kill a PC? Deadly in that it might be a TPK? So much of encounter design is making sure your rules give DMs something similar to what they expect will happen, but "deadly" might mean very different things to different DMs in different contexts.
• Solo Monsters: I'm glad that they're explicit that you should use a Legendary creature to challenge an entire party, if it's being fought alone. It's also interesting that they're recommending going above-CR, which is counter in some ways to the DMG advice.
• Multiple Monsters: super dang useful. This is like the meat of this article. This brings me back to 4e's easy peasy "1 monster = 1 PC" rules, with more granularity and a broader level range. You can see 5e's preference for MORE MONSTERS pretty clearly here. Yes, go ahead and throw CR 1/8 creatures at a level 10 party.
• Monster Selection / Party Assessment: man, this is a lot of legwork. I get that there's no efficient way to lock down party performance to a number, so this step is always at least a little necessary, but I guess this is where I diverge from the intended audience of the information: I'm totally comfortable not doing this work and letting the dice fall where they may, one-hit-kills and all. Someone more concerned about combat balance might not like that, and so telling them explicitly, "hey, if you want to get granular about this, don't let the CR calcs do all the work for you, get in the weeds and DO this" is probably useful.
• Complications This section is gold, and I'm using it tonight. I love the advice to "consider white might happen in an encounter area if the characters were to never enter it."

 

[timbannock]

This is exactly right. It's why encounter guidelines are only just guidelines, and there is no substitute for knowing the game and having the experience to know what feels right for your gaming table. I've never used encounter building rules since I started in 1981. In fact, I don't recall there even being rules until 3e, is that correct?

Certainly not in any form that even attempted to "mechanize" the process. I recall AD&D 2nd edition having some words on the subject, but it was extremely vague and amounted to a little bit of "comparing hit dice to PC levels" and then a whole lot of "wing it!".

3E was my first experience with a more codified system, and like nearly everything else, I think they want too far in one direction with it, creating expectations on later editions (and in other games) that simply cannot be met. They are called "guidelines" in almost every instance, but they are criticized and pulled apart as if they are supposed to be a science, which is an illogical position.

 

[DEFCON 1]

It should be criminal to unload such profoundly unhelpful BS on new players

If they are new players, they won't have the CharOp and min-max knowledge of the system to necessarily create characters that will cakewalk over the encounters the document presents.

Just because you and your table have played and worked the game to the point where you can slaughter everything in your path in no way means the default or new player can accomplish the same thing. Hell, I have a table of relatively new players that have been playing for a little less than a year and who still forget handfuls of combat abilities they have every combat. So I couldn't assume how they would do in any of these encounter builds if I tried. So let's let actual new players run and play through these guidelines before determining whether they are useless.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

...involving tables and numbers that somehow does not take into consideration the party's makeup and individul capabilities. Sigh.

It is genuinely impossible for the tables and numbers to successfully apply to every party makeup and set of individual capabilities - that's why these tables and numbers are accompanied by an explanation of how to use them successfully, which includes this under Step1: Assess the Characters:

"But though character level is important, you should also take note of each characters' hit point maximum and saving throw modifiers, as well as how much damage the strongest combatants or spellcasters can inflict with a single attack. Even though character level and challenge rating are useful tools for defining the difficulty of an encounter, they don't tell the whole story, and you'll make use of these additional character statistics when you select monsters for an encounter in step 4."

(emphasis mine)

And step 4 tells you, to paraphrase, to make sure the damage to hit point ratios aren't obviously not what you are looking for.