First time DMing CR question

[Reprimand]

Alright so for my first encounter in my very first campaign with 4 players starting at level 1, I wanted to run them againist something easy the first time.

A few rules I run in my game is that weapon finesse also adds to damage. Book of Nine swords in banned and so is Chaos Magic and Tome of Magic.

I was thinking House Cats for my first encounter they are CR 1/4 and my party size is 4

So do I run 4 house cats which equals CR 1? Or do I run 16 because their are 4 party members, I'm still unsure about how the CR system works as for xp I have that covered I'm just not sure how many Cats is too much.

How many house Cats for a CR 1 encounter if they're CR is 1/4?

[Moriato]

What you're looking for is not CR, exactly, but EL (Encounter Level). Here's an EL calculator (http://www.penpaperpixel.org/tools/d20encountercalculator.htm) that will help you with that.

In this case you're looking at 4 cats for an EL of 1, which is appropriate for a 1st level party of 4.

P.S. It just so happens that in this instance 4 CR 1/4s add up to an EL 1 encounter for this party. The math wont always be that easy, it depends on the level of the party, the CR of the monsters, how many monsters there are and how many party memebers there are. I really reccomend using the calculator.

[Reprimand]

EDIT: never mind I screwed that up.

[Moriato]

EDIT: never mind I screwed that up.

I think you did something wrong, there. Put in the number of creatures and their CR on the left, and the number of PCs and their average level on the right, then hit calculate and it'll give you the encounter level. Putting in 16 CR 1/4s tells me that the encounter level is 4, and that it should be "Very Difficult" Read: they will probably die.

Edit-ninja'd :smallwink:

[DonEsteban]

You usually don't wanna run 4 level 1 monsters (or 16 housecats) against a party of 4 level 1 characters for the following reason: 4 level 1 against 4 level 1 should be a 50:50 chance of either side surviving. Now, if you plan to have more than one combat encounter during your campaign, this would mean really slim chances that your group reach level 5 (say). The chance of surviving 5 such encounters, for example, would be around 3%.

Therefore, encounters should usually have an encounter level significantly below your party's encounter level or, in other words, if you send 4 monsters against a party of 4, their level should be lower than each player characters' level.