I must be reading the encounter table wrong

[Solunaris]

So, my DM isn't great at making good combats. I don't think we've had a close call since the early days of the campaign when we had barely any HP. For reference at level 9 we destroyed a Young Red Dragon like it was nothing (well, I say that but it did manage to get off a scary breath weapon, every character just has the ability to gain elemental resistance to fire) despite my Sorcerer only knowing Fire spells. Our most recent encounter, also at level 9, pitted us against 15 Dragonborn warriors of some sort. They had around 60 HP each and an AC of 16, but we felled them like paper in a Firestorm.

With the Dragon, it was a cage death-match set up by some very powerful casters and the Dragonborn fight was totally our bad. Instead of taking out the patrols separately our Warlock demanded a short rest while in the enemy keep giving them a chance to group up and prepare for us. Luckily we're mostly casters and the combination of wooden barricades, Fireball, and creative use of minor illusion allowed us to work the situation to our advantage but according to the encounter generator each of the encounters should have been way out of our league. The Dragon should have been beyond deadly for us but lasted 2 rounds while the second fight was an adjusted 66k exp for the purposes of determining difficulty. (15 CR 4 creatures) Honestly, I assume that it was so easy because we are much higher level than the enemy group and got the drop on them but these just serve as examples.

The point is, are we doing combat wrong? Is it normal for a group of 5 un-optimised characters to defeat encounters beyond themselves so easily? Or am I just a dummy and reading the encounter table wrong here?

[Zejety]

The 5th edition encounter table (and the whole system to a lesser degree) are build on the assumption that the group will have multiple resource-draining encounter per day (not necessarily combat). A single encounter will rarely be risky to the party unless it is balanced hyper-offensively, with monsters being able to threaten PC's life with very few hits.

[Strill]

The DMG recommends 6-8 medium to hard encounters between each long rest. If you're not getting that many fights, you're never going to be challenged, especially in a caster-heavy group, unless the DM throws ambushes or super-high-damage enemies at you.

Basically, those powerful fireballs you're using on all the enemies are not meant to just win you the game every time. They're meant to be your trump card to get you through difficult fights without taking too much damage, so that your group can make it to the final fight in good health with a spell or two left to finish the day off.

[Tanarii]

The DMG recommends 6-8 medium to hard encounters between each long rest. it says that in the text, but the table actually has the number as 4.5-5 per day if you average Medium/Hard, or about 4 Hard to 6.5 Medium encounters. (It varies from level to level.)

It's a forum myth that the 6-8 is something left over from play testing, and that's why it doesn't match the table.

[Malifice]

So, my DM isn't great

There you go, you answered your own question. In addition to being tactically incompetent and probably reading the monsters wrong, and setting his encounters up poorly, he is probably not giving you enough per adventuring day.

How many encounters do you get her adventuring day (the time between long rests)?

I'll hazard a guess and say never more than two or three.

[Malifice]

it says that in the text, but the table actually has the number as 4.5-5 per day if you average Medium/Hard, or about 4 Hard to 6.5 Medium encounters. (It varies from level to level.)

It's a forum myth that the 6-8 is something left over from play testing, and that's why it doesn't match the table.

Do note two things though. The text preceding the table refers to the base XP per day. The table refers to the adjusted XP per day. Or vice versa I don't remember.

Also the figures provided are averages. Some days you will only get one or two encounters that adventuring day. Getting more then 6 to 8 would be much rarer.

[mgshamster]

it says that in the text, but the table actually has the number as 4.5-5 per day if you average Medium/Hard, or about 4 Hard to 6.5 Medium encounters. (It varies from level to level.)

It's a forum myth that the 6-8 is something left over from play testing, and that's why it doesn't match the table.

I thought it was somewhere around 3-18 encounters per day, depending on if you go easy, hard, or anywhere in between.

[Zalabim]

It means what the text says. Which I'll try to paraphrase as:
This is how many encounters we think PCs can probably handle. It can be more or less than this if the encounters are easier or harder. Here's how much XP an adventurer is expected to earn in a day. This is also the total adjusted XP value of encounters we think an adventurer can handle before needing a long rest. You can use this number to estimate how much your party can do in a day.

Also, the party will likely need two short rests during a full adventuring day.

It's worth reading the whole thing from page 81, but the bit about the adventure day is on page 84.

[Leith]

The dragonborn I got nothing on, but a young red dragon is, according to the chart, a hard challenge for a 9th level party. In spite of that it should not be used as a solo monster because it has no legendary actions. The 5e action economy means that it will only act once or twice before you kill it.
For a solo at level 9 I would recommend a cr 13, or higher, and definitely some legendary actions.
In general the charts are a guide. They work best with 2-10 monsters and 4 PCs. Even then there is a reason why the game has a DM.

[Tanarii]

Do note two things though. The text preceding the table refers to the base XP per day. The table refers to the adjusted XP per day. Or vice versa I don't remember.That approach is either wrong, or if right makes the adventuring day table worthless.

Take your pick.


I thought it was somewhere around 3-18 encounters per day, depending on if you go easy, hard, or anywhere in between.
It does. But if you divide adventuring day / medium encounters, you end up with 5.5-6.5 encounters (approximately) one day. So the 6-8 text is wrong.

Or, as I just said to Malifice, if you assume that the number of creatures multiplier isn't involved in the adventuring day table, it's just worthless and the 6-8 statement is meaningless anyway.

Edit: BtW it's also worth noting that Kryx based his adventuring day DPR numbers, which are regularly referenced, on the assumption that the adventuring day table is based off the encounter table, not XP without creature multipliers. If you use those spreadsheets for balancing hopefully you take that into account if you don't think that's the correct way to baseline an adventuring day.

[mephnick]

Solo monsters are trash in D&D and barely get better with Legendary actions. You need to break the game and use Angry's Paragon system or something to make one monster a good fight. Even then it barely works. 5 PC's of level 9-11 can probably kill anything in the MM with a bit of luck and preparation. DM needs to add lower CR mooks (though 3-5 average CR monsters is almost always a better fight than either).

[Malifice]

Solo monsters are trash in D&D and barely get better with Legendary actions. You need to break the game and use Angry's Paragon system or something to make one monster a good fight. Even then it barely works. 5 PC's of level 9-11 can probably kill anything in the MM with a bit of luck and preparation. DM needs to add lower CR mooks (though 3-5 average CR monsters is almost always a better fight than either).

A Young Red dragon is CR 10. (5,900 XP).

Against 5 x 9th level PCs, it only barely scrapes into 'Medium' difficulty (It it was worth 401 XP less, it would be an 'Easy' encounter.

For a Deadly encounter (which is appropriate for a single encounter adventuring day) it would need to be 12,000 XP+

CR 15 just scrapes into Deadly at 13,000 XP (and note this is still a fraction of the expected adventuring day XP.

Instead of a Young Red, It should have been an Adult Green.

AC 19 (instead of 18). HP 207 intsead of 178, saves Dex +6, Con +10, Wis +7, Cha +8 instead of Dex +4, Con +9, Wis +4, Cha +8, 3/ legendary resistances, and the following actions:


Actions
Multiattack: The dragon can use its Frightful Presence. It then makes three attacks: one with its bite and two with its claws.

Bite: Melee Weapon Attack: +11 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 17 (2d10 + 6) piercing damage plus 7 (2d6) poison damage.

Claw: Melee Weapon Attack: +11 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 13 (2d6 + 6) slashing damage.

Tail: Melee Weapon Attack: +11 to hit, reach 15 ft., one target. Hit: 15 (2d8 + 6) bludgeoning damage.

Frightful Presence: Each creature of the dragon's choice that is within 120 feet of the dragon and aware of it must succeed on a DC 16 Wisdom saving throw or become Frightened for 1 minute. A creature can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the effect on itself on a success. If a creature's saving throw is successful or the effect ends for it, the creature is immune to the dragon's Frightful Presence for the next 24 hours .

Poison Breath (Recharge 5-6): The dragon exhales poisonous gas in a 60-foot cone. Each creature in that area must make a DC 18 Constitution saving throw, taking 56 (16d6) poison damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.

Legendary Actions
Can take 3 Legendary Actions, choosing from the options below. Only one legendary action can be used at a time, and only at the end of another creature's turn. Spent legendary actions are regained at the start of each turn.

Detect: The dragon makes a Wisdom (Perception) check.

Tail Attack: The dragon makes a tail Attack.

Wing Attack (Costs 2 Actions): The dragon beats its wings. Each creature within 10 ft. of the dragon must succeed on a DC 19 Dexterity saving throw or take 13 (2d6 + 6) bludgeoning damage and be knocked prone. The dragon can then fly up to half its flying speed.

I would have made it a spell-caster as well personally, giving it 3 spell slots of 5th level as per the MM. Counterspell, Banishing Smite and Mirror Image would have been my options if I was gunning for a TPK.

Sounds like you had time to prepare being an arena fight, so It'll probably start with Mirror image pre-cast. I would counterspell if I failed to win initiative and was targeted by a nasty spell (relying on legendary resistances otherwise).

When my action came up, I would breathe dealing 56 points of poison damage to everyone, cast banishing smite as a bonus action and fly adjacent to the nearest PC (again relying on my legendary resistances, AC 19, counterspell and mirror image to protect me during the next PCs turn). I would land next to a PC who rolled low on initiative (heavy armored types who are likely to have dumped Dex and be slow on the draw work best).

After the next PC had his turn, I would use my first legendary action to tail slap this adjacent PC dealing 2d8+6+5d10 damage and (if I reduce the PCs HP to 50 or less) banishing that PC for a minute.

I would rely on mirror image, counterspell, legendary resistances and AC 19 while waiting for the PC who acts immediately before my next action on turn 2 to act (im saving my legendary action so I can use it, and then immediately full attack as my action). If sorely pressed before this (reduced to half HP or less), I would use this legendary action sooner (flying out of melee range, and knocking everyone prone).

Presuming I make it to the final PCs turn (immediately before my next turn) with half or more of my HP left, I wing buffet, knocking everyone prone and dealing damage.

Id then use my flight to position myself near a vulnerable (wizard looking) target, use frightful presence and full attack/ multi-attack the prone caster at advantage. Even if reduced to 0 HP, I would continue to maul the PC inflicting auto crits (and 2 failed death saves).

After the next PC had a turn, I would then tail slap the prone Wizard if he wasnt already dead. Otherwise I would wing buffet again (knocking everyone prone again and dealing more damage) and use the movement to fly adjacent to another soft target.

After the next PC had his turn I would use my legendary action on turn 2 to either wing buffet (if I tail slapped) or tail slap (if I wing buffetted). If I use the wing attack, I would take to the sky after the attack.

On the next round (assuming my breath weapon has recharged) I nuke the PCs again, ensuring I catch any PCs on 0 HP in the blast.

The PCs should be well dead by now.

[Malifice]

That approach is either wrong, or if right makes the adventuring day table worthless.

Take your pick.

Hey man, don't blame me, blame the DMG!

Another thing many DMs screw up on (in addition to not understanding about the 5 minute adventuring day, and its effect on class balance and encounter difficulty, which is vital to DMing 5E) is they assume CR means 'appropriate challenge' (and dont understand the encounter building guidelines) and they multiply difficulty for all creatures regardless of party level and composition.

The rules are specific not to multiply difficulty for critters that do not substantially increase the challenge.

At an eyeball, but for 5 x 9th level PCs, I as a general rule wouldn't multiply difficulty for a handful of critters of CR 1-2 or less. I'd just add it as normal. A CR12 Archmage and 6 x CR1 Thugs for example would be a 9,000 XP encounter (barely a 'hard' encounter for a party of 5 x 9th level PCs).

Assuming the PCs had magic items, this probably pushes their effective level up by 1 each also (magic gear gives them an advantage worth a level or two depending on the amount and power of those items). Assuming the OPs party had access to 1-2 magic items each, the above Archmage + Thugs encounter would be a Medium difficulty encounter.

In other words, they would be expected to deal with around 6 such encounters before getting a long rest (but could factor in 2 short rests in there along the way).

[Zalabim]

The caveat I want to add is that Malifice's advice is in no way reflective of what the DMG advises. It should result in riskier battles and more challenging adventures.

However I don't hear about Malifice's party finding things too easy, imbalanced, or unfairly TPK'd. The advice does work. 5E's encounters are pretty flexible.

[mgshamster]

Or, as I just said to Malifice, if you assume that the number of creatures multiplier isn't involved in the adventuring day table, it's just worthless and the 6-8 statement is meaningless anyway.

I'm not sure I understand your statement. Are you saying that if you do not use the creature multiplier factor, then the XP Encounter chart is worthless?


Edit: BtW it's also worth noting that Kryx based his adventuring day DPR numbers, which are regularly referenced, on the assumption that the adventuring day table is based off the encounter table, not XP without creature multipliers. If you use those spreadsheets for balancing hopefully you take that into account if you don't think that's the correct way to baseline an adventuring day.

So he used the adventuring day as exactly recommended by the DMG, with the XP chart including multipliers for multiple enemies? Or he didn't? I don't know why, but my reading comprehension seems to be off this morning.

[Malifice]

The caveat I want to add is that Malifice's advice is in no way reflective of what the DMG advises.

Which bit? Please be specific.

Im running it straight from the DMG.

[Zalabim]

Which bit? Please be specific.

Briefly, you use higher CR creatures than the recommendation, increase the power of creatures without adjusting their CR accordingly, and plan a number of encounters in a day that goes well over the expectations. There's no guideline in the book for a value, but you probably cut off creatures from the XP multiplier while they're still relevant to the fight.

This is all just guidelines though. You're welcome to ignore them at your leisure.

[Malifice]

Briefly, you use higher CR creatures than the recommendation,

No I dont. CR is only a rough guideline to relative critter strengths compared to the party. Its used as a rough eyeball measure and nothing more. The only thing the DMG says about CR is to 'exersize caution when using a higher CR critter than the average party level'.

Encounter difficulty is assessed independently of CR (or to more correctly, assessed obliquely of CR via the XP sum).


increase the power of creatures without adjusting their CR accordingly,

In what way? I gave that dragon 3 spells/ day in accordance with MM (which provides no guidance on how to increase CR for spellcasting).

Id happily increase the Dragons CR by 1 though to account for it. 3 Spells day/ is roughly in line with a magic item or two.

Like I said however, the PCs in question likely have magic items, inflating their level by about the same, so its a wash.


and plan a number of encounters in a day that goes well over the expectations.

Only true if you assume XP per adventuring day is a fixed number per day.

Its the average XP over a PCs career by level. Many (30 percent) days will feature less XP (and fewer encounters) than the recommendation. Most (60 percent) days will feature days around this level. Some (10 percent) days will feature more.

Thats not going well above the expectations; thats sticking to the median. Under it in fact.

Which is important to do in 5E seeing as not all classes are solely short rest, or solely long rest (or even really rest dependent that much at all). By mixing up the number and frequencies of encounters in your adventuring days, you move the spotlight from the fighters to the wizards to the warlocks to the paladins to the rogues.


There's no guideline in the book for a value, but you probably cut off creatures from the XP multiplier while they're still relevant to the fight.

They're relevant and the XP is added. The Book tells me not to multiply if they dont contribute significantly to the fight.

Its a judgement call, but I dont rate half a dozen CR 1 critters as contributing to a fight against 5 x 9th level PCs. One fireball and they're pretty much toast. If that doesnt do it, the spirit guardians will. The GWM Barbarian should be chewing through them like butter otherwise.

[mephnick]

And Low level monsters aren't as relevant as everyone seems to think they are. Bounded Accuracy only goes so far. 5 level 9 PC's will absolutely wipe the floor with 20 CR 1 monsters, even though it's technically a "deadly" encounter. Like already said, be careful of counting mooks towards encounter modifiers. 1 strong npc and 10 weak ones will still probably be a 1-sided fight unless you can utilize some terrain to shift the balance.

[Malifice]

And Low level monsters aren't as relevant as everyone seems to think they are. Bounded Accuracy only goes so far. 5 level 9 PC's will absolutely wipe the floor with 20 CR 1 monsters, even though it's technically a "deadly" encounter. Like already said, be careful of counting mooks towards encounter modifiers. 1 strong npc and 10 weak ones will still probably be a 1-sided fight unless you can utilize some terrain to shift the balance.

Its really an eyeball thing that comes with experience. I would probably group the lower CR critters into groups (adding together XP) and then multiply difficulty by the number by the groups.

As a very rough guideline.

Its more of an art than a science.

[Tanarii]

I'm not sure I understand your statement. Are you saying that if you do not use the creature multiplier factor, then the XP Encounter chart is worthless?Malifice (and many others on this forum) claim that the adventuring day XP table is the straight addition of all XP of creatures. Unlike the Encounter table, which adjusts for number of creatures.

In other word, you don't just add up all your adjusted XP encounter table results to see how that applies to the adventuring day table. You add up the unadjusted XP from all the creatures instead. Depending on how many creatures are in each encounter, this can easily result in an adventuring day 1.5-2+ times longer. A LOT more encounters.

If you just use the adjusted encounter XP, you can just divide adventuring day XP by medium encounter XP to see how many encounters of that difficulty PCs can handle, which is (I believe) around 4.5-5.5 / day. If you use unadjusted XP, you can make some assumptions that it'll be X1.5-2 in each encounter, and that's how you end up at 6-8 mixed medium + hard encounters.

IMO using unadjusted is useless because it doesn't do anything to reflect the difficulty of what the PCs are facing in the adventuring day. But it's important to know which it is ... It can easily make a difference of 2x the number of encounters your PCs are expected to be able to handle.


So he used the adventuring day as exactly recommended by the DMG, with the XP chart including multipliers for multiple enemies? Or he didn't? I don't know why, but my reading comprehension seems to be off this morning.
Prety sure he assumed the adventuring day table uses the adjusted XP from encounters, for a shorter (fewer encounters) adventuring day. IIRC they work on something like 5 mixed medium/hard encounters, not 6-8.

Edit: Malifice, of course I don't blame you and blame the DMG. :smallbiggrin:

[Malifice]

Malifice (and many others on this forum) claim that the adventuring day XP table is the straight addition of all XP of creatures. Unlike the Encounter table, which adjusts for number of creatures.



Actually Ive kind of softened my stance on that. Im a bet each way at present.

[Tanarii]

Actually Ive kind of softened my stance on that. Im a bet each way at present.
Given that one way to interpret it is "this is what your party can handle guideline" and not "build your encounters this way" it's probably best to put it to the actual gameplay test if you can.