Compilations of "CR _" encounters

[Willie the Duck]

I am considering getting back into DMing after playing for many years. Does anyone know of any compilations of well designed, fair and challenging encounters for a given CR?

[Beheld]

I am considering getting back into DMing after playing for many years. Does anyone know of any compilations of well designed, fair and challenging encounters for a given CR?

Problem 1: If your party is a Wizard, a Cleric, a Rogue and a Druid/Fighter, an encounter might work, that would never work for a party of Fighter, Barbarian, Warlock, Binder.

Aside from that, you can mostly just pull any monster of their CR out and it should usually be fine for the first type of party.

I've never found a good compilation of encounters, which is why I write my own instead.

If you party is specifically level 5/10/15 the SGT has a list of encounters, many of them are more interesting than the standard encounters you would expect at that level.

[Bucky]

I don't know of any. But given the Playground's resources, we could make one. We probably have enough leftover DM notes to make a good, varied list for every CR

This would be a major project, however; we'd need to set up a wiki and get a couple dozen of us to chip in encounters. And implement wiki plumbing to make them accessible by CR and environment.

Are any of you interested in helping this project?

[inuyasha]

I'm very INTERESTED in this, but I don't think I could actually help out... all of the encounters I design are specifically built for groups of 8-12 people... and I've learned that most people don't DM that many players :smallredface:.

[Beheld]

I don't know of any. But given the Playground's resources, we could make one. We probably have enough leftover DM notes to make a good, varied list for every CR

This would be a major project, however; we'd need to set up a wiki and get a couple dozen of us to chip in encounters. And implement wiki plumbing to make them accessible by CR and environment.

Are any of you interested in helping this project?

I would be, I have a fair few, and I'd make more if I knew they were going to be used, and that I could come back and find them in a few years if needed.

[Korahir]

Sounds like a fun idea.
An already immense source are all the challenges running in this forum: Iron Chef has so many entries and most of the dishes have sweet spots way before level 20. Many of the chefs are frequents here, so it shouldn't be hard to get their approval to use the dishes. Anyone can freely use the few builds I have submitted. There are also spring offs of this competitions like junkyard wars, Zinc saucier and villainous competition.

Are you planning to include Pathfinder? Since I DM almost exclusively Pathfinder, I have a lot of unused Characters, monsters and encounters lying around.

[Thurbane]

I came across this the other day, trying to help out my fiance for her first attempt at DMing a campaign (not in any particular CR order): Random Encounters Archive (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/arch/re)

[Willie the Duck]

Problem 1: If your party is a Wizard, a Cleric, a Rogue and a Druid/Fighter, an encounter might work, that would never work for a party of Fighter, Barbarian, Warlock, Binder.

Aside from that, you can mostly just pull any monster of their CR out and it should usually be fine for the first type of party.


The first part is going to be true no matter what. Given the way my friends play, even if they played optimal classes, their play style can get them into trouble. I disagree with the second part. The book given CR values are questionable at best. Also, I am looking for scenarios, not just creature listings.


Are any of you interested in helping this project?

Certainly, but I'll stipulate that I haven't DMed in 10 years.


Are you planning to include Pathfinder? Since I DM almost exclusively Pathfinder, I have a lot of unused Characters, monsters and encounters lying around.

I don't know who 'you' is, but I for one think it's a good idea, so long as we also include non-PF material for those who don't use it.

[Beheld]

The first part is going to be true no matter what. Given the way my friends play, even if they played optimal classes, their play style can get them into trouble. I disagree with the second part. The book given CR values are questionable at best. Also, I am looking for scenarios, not just creature listings..

Well... if your players can't play a party of Wizard/Cleric/Rogue/Druid in a way that makes that party better than a party of 4 fighters, and in your experience the CR values in books are questionable, you think those might be related?

Most monsters come with either explicit or implicit encounters in their entries. But I can understand wanting more explicit encounters.

[Alistaroc]

I'd be happy to help in this endeavor, although I must say it seems that any index would also benefit greatly from a "group size," sort option, and maybe a function that allows "Search all encounters that happened with these character classes.

Even without a searchable wiki type of page, a simple thread with spoilers containing CR X encounters could be nice.

A sample post could be something along the lines of
Encounter Name:
CR:
Environment:
Party:
Description:
Stat Blocks: