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]

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.

In Captain America: Civil War, the time from when Ant Man goes Giant Man to when he shrinks again is (IIRC) almost exactly 3 minutes. A five-round 5E combat would be more like the Black Widow's action scene in Winter Soldier where she (wham! wham! ungh! wham!) takes down three or four guys in thirty seconds: i.e. five rounds.

 

[robus]

All this discussion makes me wonder what these guidelines are actually for?

Are they really for a DM running their own campaign? Or are they for adventure creators looking to align their adventure with a particular level in order to making running that adventure easy for a DM at any skill level?

I think these guidelines are really for the latter. An experienced DM running a game for their own players will gain an understanding of what constitutes a suitable challenge for their table. No published guidelines are going to be better than that. But an adventure developer wanting to create something that will be usable for a wide range of possible groups (in size and ability) wants to use something that is pretty standard to guide that encounter building. That's where these guidelines come in I believe.

 

[Pauper]

In Captain America: Civil War, the time from when Ant Man goes Giant Man to when he shrinks again is (IIRC) almost exactly 3 minutes.

Three minutes of screen time, yes, but not necessarily 30 combat rounds -- go back and take a look at how many things Giant-Man gets to do, and I think you'll be surprised that it works out to almost exactly five combat rounds.

--
Pauper

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Three minutes of screen time, yes, but not necessarily 30 combat rounds -- go back and take a look at how many things Giant-Man gets to do, and I think you'll be surprised that it works out to almost exactly five combat rounds.

Doubtful. I counted sixteen things that he does while he is clearly onscreen and visible. Presumably he has the chance to do additional things when he's offscreen, or when only his feet are visible while someone else is fighting in the foreground.

Bottom line: 5E combat doesn't resemble cinematic combat. It's over too quickly.

 

[Tony Vargas]

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

'Amenable?' It certainly isn't robust to it, class balance depending heavily on pacing.

I did find pemerton's insight about player-controlled pacing and 'CaW' interesting. I'm not sure if I'm convinced, but it's interesting.

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

OK, scaling with level, vs Hemlock talking scaling with numbers of foes on one side. Not scaling with level (like BA) means numbers tell more heavily. So, yeah, OK...

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; whereas in other editions, even 5e with its bounded accuracy, this involves greater risk.

Well, numbers tell heavily in 5e, so you should be able to take on a lone enemy of higher CR with healthy chance of success (though maybe, because of the significant damage scaling, not without PCs being dropped). In 3e that wasn't so much an option because basics like AC scaled, while in 4e a lone higher-level enemy could be translated to a solo 9 levels lower.

The rest period is a week.

And it was part of an optional alternative to simply death at 0 hps.

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.

I has more involved encounter building guidelines than 4e did or 3.5/PF does, but AD&D didn't really have such guidelines, at all, at least, not explicit & formulaic enough to be characterized as 'more involved.'
More art than science, certainly... and more Picasso than Rembrandt.

All this discussion makes me wonder what these guidelines are actually for?

Are they really for a DM running their own campaign?

Yes.

Or are they for adventure creators looking to align their adventure with a particular level

Yes. HotDQ could sure have benefited from them.

in order to making running that adventure easy for a DM at any skill level?

I doubt any guidelines could be that good in this context.

I think these guidelines are really for the latter. An experienced DM running a game for their own players will gain an understanding of what constitutes a suitable challenge for their table. No published guidelines are going to be better than that.

True, once that rapport is established, but they can be a useful tool, none the less. They could also be useful to the DM running one-offs or with a varied roster of players, where 'knowing your players' is less of an option.

Encounter guidelines also serve as the foundation that allowed 5e to deliver the promised 'crystal clear guidance' about encounters/day (and, it turns out short rests/day) around which the classes were designed to balance. So there's that, too.

The bottom line is that, like just about everything else in 5e, the DM can use those guidelines as a starting point from which to make the game his own. You're presented with a game that you can make better, rather than one you might fear making worse.

Bottom line: 5E combat doesn't resemble cinematic combat. It's over too quickly.

D&D combat can resemble cinematic combat (or 'have a cinematic feel'), depending on edition, and, particularly upon how you visualize 'hits' and hps (and the restoration of same)... 4e tended to get very cinematic, including in ways that some people reacted very poorly too. 5e 'fast combat,' can be less so, sure, in both senses.

 

[Pauper]

Doubtful. I counted sixteen things that he does while he is clearly onscreen and visible.

You might want to re-look at this -- keep in mind, if you're using 5e rules to model the reality of the scene, that any time Giant-Man moves, that's not an action, and anything that counts as 'interacting with an object' can be done in addition to an action in a round. Also, high level characters get multiple 'attacks' per Attack action, and the Avengers are likely higher level characters. Again, I'll say you'll find the entire scene resolves in about five rounds.

Presumably he has the chance to do additional things when he's offscreen, or when only his feet are visible while someone else is fighting in the foreground.

People in cinema only get actions when the camera is on them -- it's one of the assumptions of the genre. In effect, when the camera moves, it's showing what other people are doing during the round that the previous shot covered.

Keep in mind, you're talking to the guy who went through the final lightsaber battle in The Phantom Menace, from the opening attack against Darth Maul until Maul's defeat, discovering that the entire thing takes 18 rounds (every combatant is statted out in Star Wars d20 and gets multiple attacks per round) and requires Obi-Wan's last two attacks to both be critical hits.

--
Pauper

 

[Sunseeker]

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

My average combats last about 15 minutes. There's usually a "bad guy" several grunts and some other things people have to deal with that isn't fighting (disable the mcguffin etc..)

 

[Uchawi]

All this discussion makes me wonder what these guidelines are actually for?

Are they really for a DM running their own campaign? Or are they for adventure creators looking to align their adventure with a particular level in order to making running that adventure easy for a DM at any skill level?

I think these guidelines are really for the latter. An experienced DM running a game for their own players will gain an understanding of what constitutes a suitable challenge for their table. No published guidelines are going to be better than that. But an adventure developer wanting to create something that will be usable for a wide range of possible groups (in size and ability) wants to use something that is pretty standard to guide that encounter building. That's where these guidelines come in I believe.

I believe it would be for the novice DM. An experienced DM is going to know better based on system mastery and a adventure writer is interested in capturing the audience with a good story; knowing a DM will modify it to address any gaps.

And the end of the day it is better to build in the guidelines at the beginning so certain assumption are met before the first monster hits the page, afterwards it is a little more dicey.

 

[robus]

I believe it would be for the novice DM. An experienced DM is going to know better based on system mastery and a adventure writer is interested in capturing the audience with a good story; knowing a DM will modify it to address any gaps.

And the end of the day it is better to build in the guidelines at the beginning so certain assumption are met before the first monster hits the page, afterwards it is a little more dicey.

Sure - new DMs too, though I think most of them (like myself) will prefer to stick with the published adventures for the most part. At least until we comfortable with how the system is supposed to work.

 

[pemerton]

You're arguing that AD&D was more forgiving than 5E

I think you are misunderstanding my point.

I am not talking about whether or not it is more forgiving for players. (Obviously in many ways it is not: more safe or die, more brutal when a PC drops below zero hp, etc).

I am saying that it is more forgiving when it comes to encounter design.

For instance, 5e says this about challenge rating (SRD p 258, DM's PDF p 57):

A monster’s challenge rating tells you how great a threat the monster is. An appropriately equipped and well-­rested party of four adventurers should be able to defeat a monster that has a challenge rating equal to its level without suffering any deaths. . . .

When putting together an encounter or adventure, especially at lower levels, exercise caution when using monsters whose
challenge rating is higher than the party’s average level. Such a creature might deal enough damage with a single action to
take out adventurers of a lower level.​

The need for encounter guidelines in 5e is, at least in part, a consequence of the relatively steep level scaling of monster damage. (In 3E and 4e there is also scaling of to-hit and defence numbers.)

In AD&D there is very little level-scaling of anything but to-hit numbers. Damage and AC don't scale very much with HD at all.

AD&D therefore doesn't need encounter-building guidelines. (Other than very basic stuff like "don't put high HD devils on your 1st dungeon level.) What it needs is rules and guidelines that will permit the players to control pacing and the number of foes they confront simultaneously. Which it has. (Wandering monster rules, expectations around placed encounters and the way dungeon scouting and mapping work, morale rules, rules for evasion of pursuit, etc.)

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

But if this is literally true, then AD&D breaks down, because a typical group of 1st level PCs can't defeat 20 kobolds in open combat.

AD&D assumes that the players will not have to be swarmed by the kobolds, but rather are able to control the terms on which they encounter them (eg by successfully scouting; by bribing or otherwise influencing sentries - hence the reaction roll mechanic as an alternative to "everything automatically attacks"; etc).

Once AD&D scenarios began to be written which eschewed these rules and guidelines favouring player control of pacing and encounter numbers, and assuming that the GM would exercise control over these things, the game started to break down, because it didn't have encounter building guidelines; and the solution the system offered GMs was to fudge dice rolls.