CR for group of 6th level players

[Degwerks]

What's the CR for a group of four, 6th level players & CR for five, 6th level players? What page can I locate the tables for determining safe encounter levels for these groups? Thanks.

[Markoff Chainey]

good place to start: http://www.clevermovegames.com/2015/02/11/10-online-tools-every-dd-5e-dungeon-master-should-try/
there are 10 online tools, if you look under "encounter generator", you will find what you are looking for.

[Malifice]

What's the CR for a group of four, 6th level players & CR for five, 6th level players? What page can I locate the tables for determining safe encounter levels for these groups? Thanks.

The DMG. Page 82.

Forget level. Forget CR.

The table on p82 sets the encounter difficulty for your group depending on the difficulty of the encounter you want to set. Lets go with a 'hard' encounter.

According to the table, a 'hard' encounter for 1 x 6th level PC is 900xp. For 4 of them? 3,600xp. For 5? 4,500xp.

Lets assume you have 5 x 6th level PC's and want to design a 'hard' encounter. You have (5 x 900) xp to spend (or 4,500 XP). 'Deadly' (the next level up) kicks in at 1,400 xp per 6th level PC (or for 5 of them, 7,000 XP). So we know we want an encounter of around 4,500 XP (and not more than 7,000 XP).

Now flick to the monster manual and find enough monsters to fill that encounter budget. A displacer beast (for example) is worth 700 XP. Four of them would be worth (4 x 700) = 2,800 XP (so we are under our 4,500 XP budget).

However when you look at the DMG again (same page) it tells us to multiply the XP total of the monsters to account for more than one monster (and the action economy). For 3-6 monsters we have to double the Xp value (now called the adjusted Xp value). 2,800XP (for 4 x displacer beasts) X 2 = 5,600 XP. (Above 'hard' but not yet into 'deadly').

Thus 4 x displacer beasts would be quite a hard encounter for 5 x 6th level PC's. If they defeated them, they would be awarded 2,800 (not 4,600) XP.

Finally none of the monsters are significantly higher in CR that the party, so we know we should be OK throwing those monsters at them. For a solo encounter you could throw a single CR 9 monster at them as a 'hard' encounter (CR 9's are worth 5,000 xp, and the PC's have a 'hard' encounter budget of 4,500 xp), but as its CR is 3 more than their average level, they might find some of its abilities overwhelming due to the disparity so be a bit careful (a single failed save v a decent damage roll with its breath weapon and its a good chance of death for one or more PCs in a single action)

Over the course of an Adventuring day (before you let your players long rest) they should encounter 6-8 medium to hard encounters, with about 2 short rests allowed in that space of time.

Get it? Have a good read of P82 of the DMG and forget everything you know about 3.P.

[Degwerks]

Thanks a ton everybody!