Quick Help: Judge the CR

[Volomon]

What would the adjusted CR be for a Bandit Captain who is reduced by 1/2 HP and no Multiattack or Parry?

Then using it as a "new" minion. 4 Bandit Captains vs 3 lvl 3 players.

What's the CR of this encounter?

[MrStabby]

It doesn't look like there are any unusual or special abilities that would change it's difficulty by much away from the book value. I would say calculate it as per the DMG and you will be fine. CR by calculation isn't usually a good measure of difficulty but in this case it should be ok.

[Volomon]

That's just it I'm not 100% sure I'm doing it correctly. I believe like you said it doesn't lower the CR by much and it probably ends up rounding up to 2 CR. I'm curious if anyone else comes to that conclusion. If that's the case then this encounter is deadly.

If I'm doing it right the Encounter is 7 CR (if the bandit captains are unadjusted).

[The Shadowdove]

Yeah without multiattack and at 30+ HP instead of 60+, it still has decent HP and 15 AC.

Parry would have made it pretty hard to hit, but 15 is an average die roll for a 3rd level party with a 50/50 chance of hit.

One 1d6+3 attack isn't very fearsome for an entire party.

I'd say it's an upper tier CR1 or low tier CR2, just barely making it.

Whereas standard bandit captain is appropriately CR2.

Two of the nerfed Bandit captains would be stronger than the one bandit captain. So I'd say upper CR 2, lower CR 3. Action economy makes it tougher than just the standard bandit.

Three of them is probably CR 4 at moderate to hard threat difficulty.

Four of them is going to be a deadly encounter for a third level party at CR 6 or so.

It is all roll dependant from there. The bandit captain doesn't do much damage without multiattack. It's like a tanky ORC.

If your party is fighting them on open ground the player composition will have a lot to do with this. The main concern being the relatively high health per bandit. Will your players be able to win in 1v1 fights against one each, are the bandits going to fight side by side, is your player mage going to go down early and make it an impossible fight for the others?

With one melee player and a half caster and a mage, for example, the melee is hard pressed to keep all four bandits from getting to the middle and back line. Even if they hit harder, they're outnumbered and only have one attack/action per turn.

At level 1-3 parties are easy to TPK. 3 is not as harsh if your players manage to roll well on HP, but even a non deadly encounter can turn into a death depending on terrain and whether or not the monsters roll critical or are hitting more often than not.

That said, part of the fun is giving players opportunities to be strategic. A difficult fight that makes them really choose their actions carefully can leave a very satisfied party afterward. The threat of defeat, in my opinion, makes this game even more fun. When I dm the players seem to appreciate the possibility of being defeated.