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:

 

[dave2008]

Woah now. I never even used the word optimization and it wasn't what I was talking about either. Moreover "rules mastery" is a bit of a loaded term here. You want people to know the rules of the game right? To know when they apply, when they don't, and what sort of exception exist right? By "get better" all I meant was require rules clarifications less often, understand how game aspects work and generally become a better player. Not an optimizer, not a rules lawyer, but someone who is better at the game and doesn't need to ask which die they need to roll to make an attack.

That is certainly not what you implied. Understanding of dice has nothing to do with how easy an encounter is. You implied that the relationship between monsters and pcs is so out of whack that only idiots would enjoy it. As in so trivially easy to defeat that only and "idiot" would find it a challenge / entertaining.

What I'm saying is: I have a group that understands the rules (we've played D&D for 30 years), we are not idiots (most of us have at least a master degree), and the encounter guidelines and MM work just fine for us and we have a great time. You may not have a great time with our group, and that is OK. But it sure seemed from your post that you were calling my group idiots because we find the game useful and fun straight out of the box. I think maybe you need to realize that everyone plays the game differently (I think you do), and that doesn't make everyone else an idiot because they don't play like you.

 

[Sunseeker]

That is certainly not what you implied. Understanding of dice has nothing to do with how easy an encounter is. You implied that the relationship between monsters and pcs is so out of whack that only idiots would enjoy it. As in so trivially easy to defeat that only and "idiot" would find it a challenge / entertaining.

I didn't mention anything about enjoyment. I spoke of difficulty. The power relationship between players, monsters, the CR system, the encounter building guidelines and the expected encounters per day is out of what. Doesn't mean people might not enjoy but, but mathematically, it's ridiculously easy. Understanding the dice has a lot do with how easy everything in the game in. Less time focused on asking "which dice do I roll for my longsword" means more time spent making meaningful decisions about what you're doing in game. Distractions from in-game decision making, or highly reduced time, lead to bad decisions, which lead to bad events, which lead to lower enjoyment because of regret over having made a stupid decision because the table was distracted by the same guy, asking the same question that he asks every session that is a basic element of play.

What I'm saying is: I have a group that understands the rules (we've played D&D for 30 years), we are not idiots (most of us have at least a master degree), and the encounter guidelines and MM work just fine for us and we have a great time. You may not have a great time with our group, and that is OK. But it sure seemed from your post that you were calling my group idiots because we find the game useful and fun straight out of the box. I think maybe you need to realize that everyone plays the game differently (I think you do), and that doesn't make everyone else an idiot because they don't play like you.

Honestly "better" applies to everything. Rules, dice, role playing, whatever. Knowing how to make a good choice means you spend less time making the choice, which leaves more time for fun of any variety at the table. I had some recent encounters with people who simply would not learn (after almost 2 months of regular sessions and repetition of the same questions every time) and they expected us to drop what we were doing and instruct them. We put up with it right up until we started losing other experienced players we were having fun with because we were trying to be nice, and they were tired of wasting their time coming prepared to play, only to be forced to sit through Remedial D&D.

 

[dave2008]

I didn't mention anything about enjoyment. I spoke of difficulty. The power relationship between players, monsters, the CR system, the encounter building guidelines and the expected encounters per day is out of what. Doesn't mean people might not enjoy but, but mathematically, it's ridiculously easy. Understanding the dice has a lot do with how easy everything in the game in. Less time focused on asking "which dice do I roll for my longsword" means more time spent making meaningful decisions about what you're doing in game. Distractions from in-game decision making, or highly reduced time, lead to bad decisions, which lead to bad events, which lead to lower enjoyment because of regret over having made a stupid decision because the table was distracted by the same guy, asking the same question that he asks every session that is a basic element of play.

Honestly "better" applies to everything. Rules, dice, role playing, whatever. Knowing how to make a good choice means you spend less time making the choice, which leaves more time for fun of any variety at the table. I had some recent encounters with people who simply would not learn (after almost 2 months of regular sessions and repetition of the same questions every time) and they expected us to drop what we were doing and instruct them. We put up with it right up until we started losing other experienced players we were having fun with because we were trying to be nice, and they were tired of wasting their time coming prepared to play, only to be forced to sit through Remedial D&D.

Shidaku, I think we are not understanding each other. My point is simply that my group of experienced, non-idiotic, players has no issue playing, and enjoying, the game as written. For them, the system works as-is. That is my only point. The system works for some non-idiotic and experienced players right out of the box, It works for one of my groups and from what I can tell on these forums it works for some others as well. Thus, though your original statement may be true for you, it is not a universal truth.

I know you didn't say it was universal, but you definitely implied one would have to be mentally challenged to find the official monsters and encounter guidelines useful. That is not the case. It simply works for some and not others. To be honest it works for one group I run and probably wouldn't for the other (not sure because we are running a heavily modified 5e from the get go).

 

[Sunseeker]

Shidaku, I think we are not understanding each other. My point is simply that my group of experienced, non-idiotic, players has no issue playing, and enjoying, the game as written. For them, the system works as-is.

You've also mentioned your group really doesn't do combat. So really a discussion about encounter building guidelines seems....out of place for you. You're not really playing the game as written any more than I am. I'm rewriting a major portion of the system to better suit my needs, and you're ignoring a major portion of the game to suit your needs.

That is my only point. The system works for some non-idiotic and experienced players right out of the box, It works for one of my groups and from what I can tell on these forums it works for some others as well. Thus, though your original statement may be true for you, it is not a universal truth.

I don't really recall stating that it was. However, there were several posters before me who expressed similar sentiments that the encounter building system doesn't work and this forum has has numerous threads from multiple posters feeling as much.

So, while you may take issue with my original language, for which I apologize, I feel like your current line of reasoning seems flawed, I'm hardly the only one fielding complaints about the encounter building system.

 

[Jhaelen]

Alternative explanation: they did learn the lessons from 3E and 4E, and the super fuzzy guidelines are the result.

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.

 

[dave2008]

You've also mentioned your group really doesn't do combat. So really a discussion about encounter building guidelines seems....out of place for you. You're not really playing the game as written any more than I am. I'm rewriting a major portion of the system to better suit my needs, and you're ignoring a major portion of the game to suit your needs.

I don't feel that is what I said, and it was definitely not what I intended. Both groups I run do combat, the one that runs it more or less RAW actually does more combat because we more closely follow the encounters per day suggestion. My statement wasn't that they don't "do" combat, it was that there goal in playing isn't to improve there player abilities in combat only their character abilities (larger bonuses, better equipment, new abilities, etc.), And for them RAW works.

I don't really recall stating that it was. However, there were several posters before me who expressed similar sentiments that the encounter building system doesn't work and this forum has has numerous threads from multiple posters feeling as much.

So, while you may take issue with my original language, for which I apologize, I feel like your current line of reasoning seems flawed, I'm hardly the only one fielding complaints about the encounter building system.

I specifically stated you didn't say it was universal. I agree that the system is a problem for some people (could even be most). I even admitted that one of my groups it doesn't work for. But there have been some in this very thread (an others - this is not a new topic) that basically share some of my experience as well. The issue I have is you claiming only "idiots" would find RAW useful or that it works. Just refrain from calling people who enjoy a play style different from yours idiots and we are all good.

 

[Pauper]

Are you saying that most of the older adventures and modules do this?

That's pretty much exactly what I'm saying, but you can confirm it for yourself by downloading some older classic mods from the DMs Guild.

I don't recall a lot of that in 3rd or 4th edition adventures I will relent, but it's pretty common again nowadays, at least.

Site-based adventures got slowly phased out in favor of encounter-based adventuring starting around the time of the 3.5 update. About the last site-based adventure I can remember running, ironically, is Mike Mearls's "Three Faces of Evil" from the Age of Worms adventure path in Dragon magazine, which ironically points up the dangers of a heavily-coordinated site. Mearls's Temple of Hextor in that adventure was set up so that, unless the party knew what was coming and took steps to prevent it, the party would encounter three to four regular encounters worth of monsters in series before being trapped in a final 'boss fight', all without a chance to rest or heal up between battles. It was, as you might expect, deadly.

With that said, I can't say I've seen any specific site-based directions in 5e outside of Storm King's Thunder. Lost Mine of Phandelver has a few notes about what rooms monsters will try to escape to if they decide to run, but my experience is that such advice is seldom useful, as by the time the monsters would decide to run, it's too late to escape from a competent party. Neither the Tyranny of Dragons hardcovers nor the Elemental Evil hardcover had any real site-based advice for the DM, despite being set in a number of actual adventuring sites; about the only advice I recall is that, if certain boss-level opponents become aware of nearby combats, they cannot be surprised by the party. Out of the Abyss had fewer sites and was more about wilderness adventuring, but I don't recall any obvious site-based design in that module, either. Curse of Strahd had one big site, but Castle Ravenloft generally wasn't run as a site-based adventure in classic D&D, and so it makes sense that it wouldn't be designed as one in 5e, either.

So having one module out of the entire run of 5th edition make use of site-based adventure design doesn't really count as 'common' in my book.

--
Pauper

 

[Pauper]

My point is simply that my group of experienced, non-idiotic, players has no issue playing, and enjoying, the game as written.

I'll agree with this point, with the caveat that 'the game as written' also includes either the hard-cover published adventures or Adventurer's League material as the source of the campaign's adventuring content.

I think the point a lot of people are trying to make in this thread is that, if a DM attempts to run her own game and design her own adventures and encounters, she quickly finds that the provided advice in the DMG (and now in Unearthed Arcana) is not anywhere near adequate for her needs and comes up with her own method of designing adventures and encounters or simply gives up and goes back to published sources.

In an odd way, though, the inability of an inexperienced DM to use the provided advice to generate her own adventures is valuable to WotC, in that it helps sell their published adventure content, which traditionally is not considered very lucrative by large game companies. A conspiracy-minded player might suggest that this state is intentional, meant to drive sales, though personally I find that the open-ended design of 5e (and the 3e system before it) are sufficient to explain the relative lack of utility of encounter design advice compared to the more detailed design of 4e, where encounter design advice was generally useful.

--
Pauper

 

[Tony Vargas]

I think, however, D&D is marketed by a company wishing to maintain the illusion it is simple and straightforward to create balanced encounters. Because that is all encounter building guidelines are - they're an unwelcome layer of obfuscation that just hides the truth:

That you are much better off learning the players, their characters, the monsters, and how they interact.

OK, but...

But since that pretty much reveals that encounter building is an art, not a science, and that you need experience to be good at it, that doesn't sell as many units....

Except it is selling plenty of units, more (to all appearances) than it did when the encounter guidelines really were simple & dependable. Thing is, D&D doesn't just primarily sell to grognards who expect that encounter building will be more art than science (and are already accomplished artists thankyouverymuch), it also sells to new players who are brought into the game by those grognards, not prospective new players who glance through the DMG on their own impulse, see encounter-building guidelines with multiple tables, cross-referencing number of PCs vs number of monsters & multiplying by a factor, and think "well that looks simple! think I'll by this 320 page rulebook... oh, and this other 320 page rulebook, and this 352 page one..."

 

[pemerton]

For decades, encounters were built without balance in mind. At least not as the top priority of that encounter. They were designed for what fit that particular area and story of the adventure.

I just don't think this is true.

Moldvay Basic had advice about balancing encounters relative to dungeon level. Gygax's DMG had similar advice. Modules had level ranges printed on the front cover. No one thought that you could run 1st level adventurers through (say) The Lost Shrine of Tamoachan and have them survive.

I think it's worth pointing out that in those modules, they were designed for "4-6 PCs of level 3-6." That right there tells you that there is a LARGE band of party power level. 4 level 3 PCs is much different than 6 level 6 PCs from a party power perspective.

<snip>

AD&D wasn't built for balance at all.

What it tells you is that AD&D was very forgiving. And that, because (once MUs got out of low levels) it permitted nova-ing, that part of its forgiving character was that pacing could be varied. (So the larger party might need fewer rests to get through the modlue, while the smaller party would need more rests.)

And from Gygax's Preface to the AD&D PHB:

ADVANCED DUNGEONS 8 DRAGONS is a game. Because it is a game, certain things which seem "unrealistic" or simply unnecessary are integral to the system. Classes have restrictions in order to give a varied and unique approach to each class when they play, as well as to
provide play balance.​

The next page continues:

The characters and races from which the players select are carefully thought out and balanced to give each a distinct and different approach to the challenges posed by the game.​

So either Gygax was confused about his own game, or AD&D absolutely was built for balance.

4e might be the pinnacle of balance, but balance brings predictability. And IMO, predictability breeds boredom.

If your 4e games were boring and predictable, you need to lift your game as GM. I haven't had that problem.

my advice to anyone looking for help in creating encounters is to a) get really familiar with the mechanics and monsters

Why? If balance is irrelevant, why can't a GM just put together encounters based on "what makes sense for the story"?