Home made npc combat rating

[Doomwhispo]

Hello
How do I go about determining the challenge rating of a npc?
My players consist of a group of 5.people all lvl 5. There deadly fight threshold is 5500. But they can easily defeat encounters with around 7000 exp.this is due to there magic items and there better than average stats I assume.
What level character would rappresen a 7000 exp fight more or less? And 8000?
And what about a challenge rating of about 6-7 what lvl character would be at about that cr?
And any tips on how I can calculate this on my own?
Thanks a lot for any help!

[DragonSorcererX]

Hello
How do I go about determining the challenge rating of a npc?
My players consist of a group of 5.people all lvl 5. There deadly fight threshold is 5500. But they can easily defeat encounters with around 7000 exp.this is due to there magic items and there better than average stats I assume.
What level character would rappresen a 7000 exp fight more or less? And 8000?
And what about a challenge rating of about 6-7 what lvl character would be at about that cr?
And any tips on how I can calculate this on my own?
Thanks a lot for any help!

I would suggest to pick your players character sheets and simulate the battle, playing the pcs the way you think they would fight, if 2 or 3 of them get dropped but they manage to defeat the enemies, you are doing it right!

[MrStabby]

Yeah, CR is correlated somewhat with fight difficulty but it is very dependant on party composition. So yes, the simulation approach is solid.

For example if you have a cleric they are likely to enjoy spirit guardians - so enemy wisdom saves become important. At the same level the sorcerer might enjoy fireball making dex saves more important to the NPCs.

Likewise some abilities are more important than others. With a party of warlocks and rangers and wizards flying is not that relevant. With barbarians and paladins being more of the characters the ability to fly out of melee range is kind of a big deal for damage reduction.

Even more obviously - which side has darkvision? Kind of important at night but an irrelevant buff outside during the daytime.

A catch all calculation that was actually useful would have to be so complex that it would take years to piece together properly.