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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ondath" data-source="post: 8622990" data-attributes="member: 7031770">To me, balance is less science and more art. An encounter feels balanced when it poses sufficient difficulty compared to its stakes. With that said, I don't balance my encounters around the party's abilities, but around the world's expectations. Each "leg" of a challenge exists at its own tier, where each tier's encounters are balanced around challenging a 4-person party of a specific level. The first tier was balanced around 4 players of Level 2, the second was around 4 players of Level 4, the next one was 4 players of Level 7, and so on. Changing to this style from trying to balance everything around my own party has had a few benefits:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The world feels a bit more believable, with a Gygaxian naturalism-like evolution hierarchy of monster and faction strengths. If the party messes up and angers a dragon that's 2 tiers above them, that's their problem. But I do try and telegraph the danger in these cases before the party would inevitably lose. But if the party makes up their mind to tackle the bigger threat and somehow still win, they get much bigger rewards.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The fact that I don't balance around the party's current level but specific levels also had the effect of giving encounter difficulty some ebb-and-flow in each tier. If the party is dealing with an evil group that's a Tier 3 (balanced around Level 7) threat when they're Level 6, the encounters first feel a bit difficult. When they get to Level 7, they feel like they're a match to the enemies, When the party hits Level 8, they can really flex on their enemies and get to feel cool. When they hit Level 9 and search for new adventures, new threats are balanced around level 10, so the flow of difficulty starts anew.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A5E's Challenge Rating system is insanely easy with this system. When I want to create a Tier 3 encounter, I know I'll make a Medium encounter for 4 Level 7 PCs. That means the monsters in that encounter should have a total CR of 9 or 10. I grab whichever monsters fit that bill and my encounter is ready. It's super simple.</li> </ul>This is not a perfect system, and my party does clown on some encounters that I was hoping would challenge them sometimes. But they get to do that because they played smart, and I'd be a bad DM if I didn't let them get the rewards for their good play.</blockquote>

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