Cannot Get a Grip on 5e Encounter/Challenge Rating

[RifleAvenger]

This year I've taken my first stab at GM'ing 5e D&D, albeit with a twist (I'm using the homebrew supplement for Final Fantasy 14, with some adjustments since like any homebrew it has tuning and design issues). I'm mixed on the system overall, but as a GM my biggest bugbear is I'm having a hell of a time trying to figure out balance points for encounters, especially since this is a very high magic world where casters are common and magic items are sold and used in daily life in any major settlement. Xanathar's guide seems useless and even incoherent: a solo encounter for my party ought to be a CR 11-13 legendary creature, but four veterans is supposed to be an equivalent encounter (not the silliest example actually; with good tactical positioning, deep HP pools, and a lot of attacks a lot of mileage can be had. I still don't think it's equivalent)?

I've GM'd 3.5, 3.P, CoC, and an assortment of nWoD/CoD games over the years. I generally like to think I'm good at judging when an encounter I've designed is balanced for a party, and when it's slanted one way or the other. In some games (high level 3.X, Mage at 4+ dots in an arcana) I almost don't need to worry if the party can take it or not, the question is "how" and or "should we?" However, in the 5e game the encounters have been very swingy.

Specifically, last session I think I accidentally threw a deadly encounter at half the party, who were split up after arriving in a new city at the beginning of a new story arc, in the form of a battlemaster, light cleric, WoFE monk, and assassin (all stated essentially as PC's, levels 7, 5, 5, and 5). I had to handwave two of the away PC's happening upon the battle midway through when one PC was at two death save fails, another had fled with an unconscious NPC (more of a secondary PC for one of the players) in tow, and the only party member still conscious and on scene from the original group was an away PC's carbuncle.

I had meant the fight to introduce the NPC/alt-PC and a set of recurring antagonists (the enemy). It was to be easy to moderate if the full party was there depending on circumstances and tactics, and hard, but doable, for the split group (and I did predict the party splitting to cover ground). Essentially, the antagonists would perform such to establish their credibility as a threat, but run for it as soon as it became apparent their target (the NPC) was too well protected - which they did after the other PC's were allowed to arrive on scene. I did not predict a full loss for the party with what would certainly have been a death if I hadn't allowed the away PC's to intervene.

Overall, is the CR system in 5e actually predictive of challenge at all, and if it is how do I assess what an enemy's CR actually is? How do I adjust for the higher magic world I've set my game in?

[Comaward]

Okay, if you have the 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide, it will help with this.
It includes a chart called XP Thresholds by character level.

STEP ONE
Basically, you take the XP of each monster you want to throw at a specific number of PCs in one combat encounter, and add all of the XP up.

STEP TWO
If you have 2 monsters, you take the XP result from STEP ONE and multiply it by 1.5.

3-6 monsters? Multiply the XP result from STEP ONE by 2.

7-10? multiply by 2.5.

[Bjarkmundur]

I've seen dozens of memes saying 5e CRs and Encounter Calculation (http://dhmstark.co.uk/rpgs/encounter-calculator-5th/) are a complete joke. I've yet to prove or disprove this public opinion in my own game, since I don't remember the time we did a 'standard' combat encounter. There has always been a big half-way event, story element or consumable (bead of fireball) that dramatically changes the results.

I am especially interested since I changed the HP scaling of PCs, and I'm looking forward to see what effect that has on encounter challenge ratings.

They are probably more like guidelines than an actual code :P

I can imagine all CR guidelines are thrown completely out the window when you add feats into the game.

[Rerem115]

CR in 5e is more of a guideline, than a rule. At least as far as I know, it's because it makes the assumption that the party, consisting of four members with no feats or magic items, will come into the encounter having spent/will spend their resources on other fights during the day.

So, if you tend to run boss encounters and don't go for attrition, it's somewhat hard to balance; PCs are fragile compared to most of the Monster Manual. When they're free to use most of their resources on one or two fights during the day, they have the damage to punch far above their weight class, but they aren't beefy enough to take a punch in return, resulting in fights that are largely decided by initiative.

[MaxWilson]

Overall, is the CR system in 5e actually predictive of challenge at all, and if it is how do I assess what an enemy's CR actually is? How do I adjust for the higher magic world I've set my game in?

CR basically measure how well the monster would do in a cage fight against newbie players. It's somewhat predictive of a ceiling on challenge: if the DMG says a given fight is Hard, then it's almost certainly not going to kill your players' characters unless you're using a monster which is disproportionately deadly for its CR due to abilities (e.g. Intellect Devourers) or intelligent tactics. But it's not necessarily guaranteed to feel hard, either--if your players know what they're doing it can feel like a curb stomp, again unless you bring out intelligent tactics or special monsters.

Overall, CR is not very useful to an experienced DM, except for calculating XP rewards. But while you're still learning the system, you will gain significant insight into what is harder than what by plugging various fights into https://kobold.club/fight/ before you run them.


Xanathar's guide seems useless and even incoherent: a solo encounter for my party ought to be a CR 11-13 legendary creature, but four veterans is supposed to be an equivalent encounter (not the silliest example actually; with good tactical positioning, deep HP pools, and a lot of attacks a lot of mileage can be had. I still don't think it's equivalent)?

Honestly, four Veterans is probably harder. That's 200+ HP of AC 17 monsters, attacking at +5 to hit for ~80 HP of damage when they hit. Compare to one CR 11 Efreet, which is 200 HP of AC 17 monsters, attacking at +10 or +7 for 35-40 HP of damage. The Veterans are more vulnerable to AoEs, but the Efreet is more vulnerable to single-target disables like grappling/proning or Hypnotic Gaze or Tasha's Uncontrollable Laughter. The Efreet is more mobile and if it uses intelligent tactics with illusions and stuff (conjuring elementals, flying away when it's wounded in order to rest and come back at full strength, etc.) the Efreet can cause them more trouble, but CR does not measure mobility or intelligent tactics or summoning spells, and in a cage fight the Veterans will be about as dangerous or more dangerous than the Efreet, so that's why Xanathar's says they're similar.

[RifleAvenger]

Okay, if you have the 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide, it will help with this.
It includes a chart called XP Thresholds by character level.

STEP ONE
Basically, you take the XP of each monster you want to throw at a specific number of PCs in one combat encounter, and add all of the XP up.

STEP TWO
If you have 2 monsters, you take the XP result from STEP ONE and multiply it by 1.5.

3-6 monsters? Multiply the XP result from STEP ONE by 2.

7-10? multiply by 2.5.

Many of my NPC's and monsters are custom, which makes this harder because I'm the one responsible for assigning values. Worse still, I don't even track experience for this game (PC's can talk their way out of or run from most encounters, when they do fight it's usually major story set pieces, so I figured it'd be better to just have advancement follow major narrative milestones), though I understand I don't need to actually be tracking experience for this method to work. The bigger issue is needing to self-determine CR or XP values for wholly 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the NPCs/monsters I use.

[MaxWilson]

Many of my NPC's and monsters are custom, which makes this harder because I'm the one responsible for assigning values. Worse still, I don't even track experience for this game (PC's can talk their way out of or run from most encounters, when they do fight it's usually major story set pieces, so I figured it'd be better to just have advancement follow major narrative milestones), though I understand I don't need to actually be tracking experience for this method to work. The bigger issue is needing to self-determine CR or XP values for wholly 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the NPCs/monsters I use.

If your custom monsters are basically just sacks of HP + attacks, like most WotC monsters, then you can use DMG tables to calculate CR. There's an online tool you can use to make it even quicker: http://1-dot-encounter-planner.appspot.com/quick-monster-stats.html

If your monsters do tricky things like AD&D monsters do, then there's probably no point in even computing the CR in the first place. You're not using CR to compute XP gains, so who cares what an individual monster CR is? You just care about the overall difficulty of an encounter, and CR isn't even particularly good at estimating that in the first place. There is an enormous difference in difficulty between 20 goblins attacking you in melee (Fireball Formation!) vs. spread out and shooting you with arrows in a dark forest, then using Nimble Escape every round to vanish back into the shadows. Same CR, completely different threat level.

But while you're still learning the system and getting an intuition for e.g. how deadly four CR 3 Veterans are when they're working together, I recommend using https://kobold.club/fight/#/encounter-builder and sticking to straightforward, WotC-authored monsters which basically just walk up and start hitting PCs.

After you've DM'ed this group through a couple dozen fights, you can toss CR out the window and never look at it again.

====================

P.S. RE:


Specifically, last session I think I accidentally threw a deadly encounter at half the party, who were split up after arriving in a new city at the beginning of a new story arc, in the form of a battlemaster, light cleric, WoFE monk, and assassin (all stated essentially as PC's, levels 7, 5, 5, and 5). I had to handwave two of the away PC's happening upon the battle midway through when one PC was at two death save fails, another had fled with an unconscious NPC (more of a secondary PC for one of the players) in tow, and the only party member still conscious and on scene from the original group was an away PC's carbuncle.

I had meant the fight to introduce the NPC/alt-PC and a set of recurring antagonists (the enemy). It was to be easy to moderate if the full party was there depending on circumstances and tactics, and hard, but doable, for the split group (and I did predict the party splitting to cover ground).

This is probably not about CR at all, and more about you overestimating how much power PCs gain in levels. Four NPCs against two PCs of slightly-higher level is indeed bad news for the PCs. You didn't say what level your PCs are, but let's say they were around level 9 (guesstimate based on your remarks on Xanathar's solos). PCs get moderate-to-major jumps in power at every new tier: 1-4, 5-10, 11-16, 17-20. You had four Tier 2 NPCs ganging up on three Tier 2 PCs of slightly higher level. I am not at all surprised that this went poorly for the PCs, especially since the players are new to the system and haven't had time to think up tactics and gimmicks.

5E's "bounded accuracy" design principle ensures that quantity really does have a quality of its own. If you want to understand why 5E is the way it is, I recommend you read 5E designer Rodney Thompson's original remarks on bounded accuracy. It's no longer on WotC's site but a copy is saved here: https://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2016/06/bounded-accuracy.html

[RifleAvenger]

If your custom monsters are basically just sacks of HP + attacks, like most WotC monsters, then you can use DMG tables to calculate CR. There's an online tool you can use to make it even quicker: http://1-dot-encounter-planner.appspot.com/quick-monster-stats.html

If your monsters do tricky things like AD&D monsters do, then there's probably no point in even computing the CR in the first place. You're not using CR to compute XP gains, so who cares what an individual monster CR is? You just care about the overall difficulty of an encounter, and CR isn't even particularly good at estimating that in the first place. There is an enormous difference in difficulty between 20 goblins attacking you in melee (Fireball Formation!) vs. spread out and shooting you with arrows in a dark forest, then using Nimble Escape every round to vanish back into the shadows. Same CR, completely different threat level.

But while you're still learning the system and getting an intuition for e.g. how deadly four CR 3 Veterans are when they're working together, I recommend using https://kobold.club/fight/#/encounter-builder and sticking to straightforward, WotC-authored monsters which basically just walk up and start hitting PCs.

After you've DM'ed this group through a couple dozen fights, you can toss CR out the window and never look at it again.I appreciate all the advice; it seems like it very much comes down to "get a better grasp on system and PC options and just design encounters to play around that." Like I'd do for any system I've more experience in.

Despite my newness to the system, I don't think "sticking to straightforward, WotC-authored monsters which basically just walk up and start hitting PCs" is an option though. This group is used to more involved scenarios and encounters, both combat and non-combat, and doubly so when I'm running given how I've run in the past. I think it would be heavily dissatisfying for all involved to revert to brainless attack-bot monsters; in fact, I can be full assured of that when two of the last games the group ran got criticized for overly simplistic and easy encounters (despite both GM's being either new to the system entirely or new to GM'ing it). Seeing as I was one of the critics for both of those as a player, it'd also be hypocritical to drag out the "I'm new to this" excuse in the current game.

Doing the work to simulate major encounters beforehand while I get comfortable is a greatly appreciated suggestion (and sounds like it could be fun), though I may have to do it by hand given the custom nature of my NPCs.


This is probably not about CR at all, and more about you overestimating how much power PCs gain in levels. Four NPCs against two PCs of slightly-higher level is indeed bad news for the PCs. You didn't say what level your PCs are, but let's say they were around level 9 (guesstimate based on your remarks on Xanathar's solos). PCs get moderate-to-major jumps in power at every new tier: 1-4, 5-10, 11-16, 17-20. You had four Tier 2 NPCs ganging up on three Tier 2 PCs of slightly higher level. I am not at all surprised that this went poorly for the PCs, especially since the players are new to the system and haven't had time to think up tactics and gimmicks.

5E's "bounded accuracy" design principle ensures that quantity really does have a quality of its own. If you want to understand why 5E is the way it is, I recommend you read 5E designer Rodney Thompson's original remarks on bounded accuracy. It's no longer on WotC's site but a copy is saved here: https://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2016/06/bounded-accuracy.htmlI would wager you're right; a lot of the time I still find myself thinking in terms of 3.5/3.P when it comes to design on the current game (where major power shifts were more often every 2 levels thanks to spellcasting and feats), despite 5e bounded accuracy and concentration making much of that experience ill-fitting.

[strangebloke]

Specifically, last session I think I accidentally threw a deadly encounter at half the party, who were split up after arriving in a new city at the beginning of a new story arc, in the form of a battlemaster, light cleric, WoFE monk, and assassin (all stated essentially as PC's, levels 7, 5, 5, and 5). I had to handwave two of the away PC's happening upon the battle midway through when one PC was at two death save fails, another had fled with an unconscious NPC (more of a secondary PC for one of the players) in tow, and the only party member still conscious and on scene from the original group was an away PC's carbuncle.

....

Overall, is the CR system in 5e actually predictive of challenge at all, and if it is how do I assess what an enemy's CR actually is? How do I adjust for the higher magic world I've set my game in?

MaxWilson has the right of it as far as CR goes, but you have an additional problem

You're using statted PCs as enemies.

CR isn't intended to measure the effectiveness of PCs. PCs typically rock low HP, great defenses, and insane DPR capabilities when compared with the monsters they usually face.

For example, lets compare a veteran (CR 3) against a 5th level fighter. Both have two attacks. The fighter has 17-21 AC as compared with the Veteran's 17. If the fighter has comparable AC, he likely has far superior damage output, because if his AC is that low it means he's not using a shield. So while the Veteran deals ~15 damage a round if he hits with his longsword, the fighter deals ~25 damage a round if he hits with his greatsword. Then too, the fighter has action surge, meaning on his opening round he deals ~50 damage if everything hits. And the fighter also has a subclass boost and a feat, so if we're looking at a samurai with great weapon master, the fighter will have ~100 damage on the first round of combat.

In exchange for this, the Veteran has 58 HP as compared with the fighter, who probably has 44 health assuming average rolls and 14 CON.

You see the problem?

By using PCs as your main enemies, you're filling the board with glass cannons. Of course your combat is swingy.

And you can't just say "Well, both parties are equal-leveled PCs" because

You likely have better system mastery than your players.
You are more able to make your several characters work together.
DMPCs don't have to conserve resources, PCs do.
Certain sorts of characters are way overpowered in PC vs. PC fights, and environmental factors can make things turn into a landslide. Try and fight a bunch of paladins in melee. Try to deal with a party of rogues at range.


But yeah, 5e can get swingy. Typically, a failed save is what does it. The Wizard loses concentration on the spell that was making all the hobgoblin arrows fall short and suddenly everyone's getting pelted with fifty copies of (1d8+2d6+1). The Fighter gets hit with Banishment and suddenly the party realizes with horror that nobody in the party can actually deal damage at range and the Dragon isn't landing. Smart play is all about mitigating those big swings. Bards and paladins to keep the players from failing saves. Clerics to bring someone back from near-death. Druids and Rogues who can keep fighting long after everyone else has run out of gas.

Personally, I enjoy that aspect of the game. It means that you're either feeling like a god because you've won the strategic mini game and nothing can touch you, or everything's gone sideways and you're desperately scrambling to save your skin.

[MaxWilson]

I appreciate all the advice; it seems like it very much comes down to "get a better grasp on system and PC options and just design encounters to play around that." Like I'd do for any system I've more experience in.

Despite my newness to the system, I don't think "sticking to straightforward, WotC-authored monsters which basically just walk up and start hitting PCs" is an option though. This group is used to more involved scenarios and encounters, both combat and non-combat, and doubly so when I'm running given how I've run in the past. I think it would be heavily dissatisfying for all involved to revert to brainless attack-bot monsters; in fact, I can be full assured of that when two of the last games the group ran got criticized for overly simplistic and easy encounters (despite both GM's being either new to the system entirely or new to GM'ing it). Seeing as I was one of the critics for both of those as a player, it'd also be hypocritical to drag out the "I'm new to this" excuse in the current game.

Doing the work to simulate major encounters beforehand while I get comfortable is a greatly appreciated suggestion (and sounds like it could be fun), though I may have to do it by hand given the custom nature of my NPCs.

Yep, if straightforward encounters would bore you, then in that case doing simulations and stuff is probably your best option. It's fine to run simulations on your own (I do that plenty) but you might consider involving your players so they can gain experience too. "Hey guys, next week, want to run some practice combats against giants, dragons, and beholders? Use your current PCs or just make up practice PCs for each fight. I'll give you the level range for each fight."

If you want to integrate it into the game itself instead of as a standalone simulation, you can just make up a magic item: Helmet of Training, and give the PCs access to it via an NPC or a guild or something. "This helmet lets you experience highly-realistic visions/dreams of fighting various monsters, and you can share those dreams with others who are also wearing Helmets of Training as long as you are all touching each other." That way the players can't feel bad applying their new knowledge to actual in-game fights.

P.S. You should also take a look at the CR 6 Young White Dragon and the CR 8 Young Green Dragon. Notice that they have almost identical stats despite the +2 CR difference. 5E is very, very different from the way you describe Pathfinder, in terms of advancement. That's true for both monsters and PCs. The biggest differences in power are due to player skill and/or monster intelligence/tactics, not +levels/CR.


MaxWilson has the right of it as far as CR goes, but you have an additional problem

You're using statted PCs as enemies.

Nitpick: they're NPCs, not PCs, because there isn't a player attached.

This just comes back to what I said about WotC monsters being sacks of HPs + attacks: PCs and NPCs built using regular PHB rules will have far more options and, once the player learns the system, are quite a bit tougher than the equivalent sacks-of-HP monsters. They may have Stealth capabilities, or Athletics for grappling, or feats like Mobile to give headaches to melee enemies, etc.

I love using genuine NPCs like this (as opposed to simplistic sacks-of-HP + attacks) because it makes the world feel deeper and less player-centric[1], but you need some experience to gauge how powerful those NPCs really are, and the players need to gain some experience before they find the best countermeasures. The first time you throw a Shadow Monk 3/Rogue 2 at the PCs it has a good chance of either TPKing them or forcing them into full retreat (via Pass Without Trace + shoot arrow + Sneak Attack + Cunning Action (Hide: +18ish) as a bonus action + missile deflection even if they do manage to shoot back at you), but once they stop to think about how Readied Actions work and realize that the Search action is a thing (spend your action to spot hidden enemies, with a Perception check) it will stop being quite so scary, and they'll think, "Hey, maybe I should play one of those! But I have an idea for an improvement..."

The game still needs to be player-centric, because the actual human players at the table need their time not to be wasted, but that doesn't mean the world needs to be player-centric, even though the players need interesting things to do and decisions to make.

One simple way to do this is to just kill off all of the powerful, friendly NPCs on the players' sides at the start of a campaign, leaving only rivals and (fr)enemies.

There really isn't any point computing a CR for enemy PHB-style NPCs unless you're using XP-for-monsters.

[Chaos Jackal]

As others have said, the guidelines to calculate CR are far from accurate, and fighting PCs with DMPCs can easily be decided by a bunch of unlucky Fireball saves or a Hold Person.

Like, one of the toughest fights I've ever had in my 5e games was 3 lv11 PCs (battlemaster, hexblade, illusionist) plus a Cavalier NPC of slightly lower level against a typically CR10 young red dragon who had spellcasting as well as a draconic sorceress 12 or something with buffed HP, Dex and Con. Sure, not the easiest fight, but not terribly hard in theory, even with us being slightly below perfect condition thanks to a previous encounter... except that the sorceress won initiative, threw an upcast Hold Person, I failed my Counterspell as the illusionist and the Cavalier NPC ended up paralyzed for the entire fight. Combined with the battlemaster's lack of system mastery and bad rolls it all came down to him vs the dragon, both at like 8 hp... and he finally rolled better than 2 on his damage die. One failed Counterspell, and it all went to hell from there.

Even outside spellcasting, however, and even with statted monsters, you're not gonna get much mileage out of the CR calculations. Thanks to bounded accuracy, quantity is quality (even if the quality isn't great), but the multipliers are probably higher than they should be, and throwing one monster against the PCs from lv5 onwards when the party picks up extra attacks and 3rd-level spells should probably have a multiplier smaller than 1, because outside of legendary actions (and many times even then) the DPR capacities of PCs are so great that, when faced with a single monster which they can focus down they can obliterate it within two rounds and a bit of luck.

I once dropped a CR10 young red dragon plus three or four kobolds on three lv10 PCs (paladin, rogue and monk) with some attrition damage from previous kobold guerilla tactics. My expectations from this fight? Downing one PC at most. Which I barely succeeded at doing, dragon died right after.

Personally, from my experience as both a player and DM, you can easily consider most fights with a theoretical CR of party level+1 or 2 to be of so-called medium difficulty. It takes a lot of enemies, peculiar monsters or quite intelligent tactics to make a fight that's theoretically CR+2 over the recommended actually dangerous.

[ad_hoc]

Can you try running a published adventure first?

To learn the system.

There is a formula you can go through to assign CR to homemade creatures. Perhaps easier might be to find similar monsters and go from there.

The CR system does work quite well. Read that page in the DMG that describes it though. Read the descriptions of the various encounter types. It sounds like a "deadly" encounter is not what you think it is.

Keep in mind too that the encounter building guidelines assume no magic items. If you introduce a lot of them then you're going to have to increase the challenges.

In my experience if you use the guidelines for an entire adventuring day with many encounters and numerous creatures in most combats, it is quite difficult.

Finally, the way the DM plays the enemy creatures has a huge effect on difficulty. If all creatures are played like zombies then encounter difficulty will be greatly reduced.

[MaxWilson]

Can you try running a published adventure first?

The published adventures are garbage. Don't emulate them or you'll learn bad habits. You'd do better running practice encounters generated on Kobold Club (https://kobold.club/fight/).


Personally, from my experience as both a player and DM, you can easily consider most fights with a theoretical CR of party level+1 or 2 to be of so-called medium difficulty. It takes a lot of enemies, peculiar monsters or quite intelligent tactics to make a fight that's theoretically CR+2 over the recommended actually dangerous.

I second this rule of thumb, and will add that a PC of level N is likely to struggle (i.e. face real danger) taking on a typical monster of CR N-1 in a cage match, but most adventures aren't/shouldn't be cage matches. So a fight of 4 10th level PCs vs. 4 CR 9 Abominable Yetis could be anywhere between a TPK (if players fight straightforwardly and are unlucky on die rolls) and a fairly easy encounter, especially if players are using e.g. spells like Wall of Force to divide-and-conquer, or Pass Without Trace to surprise the Abominable Yetis while they're in a vulnerable formation.

[ad_hoc]

The published adventures are garbage. Don't emulate them or you'll learn bad habits. You'd do better running practice encounters generated on Kobold Club (https://kobold.club/fight/).


They really aren't.

Most of the people who have trouble with 5e don't play published adventures. It's not a coincidence.

(seriously though, the published adventures sell very well. Many people run them just fine and have a great time with them. You're in the tiny minority here).

[RifleAvenger]

They really aren't.

Most of the people who have trouble with 5e don't play published adventures. It's not a coincidence.

(seriously though, the published adventures sell very well. Many people run them just fine and have a great time with them. You're in the tiny minority here).I'm going to have to agree with Max here. While I'm new to 5e, I've had a lot TTRPG experience elsewhere and published modules are usually inadequate and rail-road'y as packaged. At best, I find something I could use with significant adaptation (Close to Home for Mage or Hunter, Red Hand of Doom for 3.5, Curse of Strahd seems like it could be great with adaptation in 5e). More often, I get either the equivalent of a writing prompt or nothing at all.

Modules just can't account for the sheer variability of player agency, player skill, or build optimization. Thus they won't work with groups whose expectations are severely out of line with the module's assumptions. The amount of work needed to fix them up for my group is little different than just generating original content, in my experience. When my very dramatic urban fantasy Pathfinder game ended this January, the group thought to take a break by running Forge of Fury for 3.5 out of the box. Cue the madness as we have my Druid allowed to use Greenbound Summoning and Summon Fey (and an earth elemental companion that can scout the entire dungeon unseen and unheard) next to a freaking Hexblade, fighting encounters against designated villains designed for the severely sub-optimal assumed party of blasty wizard, healbot cleric, bad fighter build, and bad rogue build. The worst thing being that the Hexblade was probably still too strong for the module.

The game was only salvaged by ****posting about how the party "killed them all, and not just the men, but the women and children too!" as settlement after settlement of sapient races was massacred for seemingly no good reason at all. Followed by a bizarre attempt to be serious about the horror of it all, and the party breaking up forever at the end of the game after seeing who they were in the dark (the "good" and neutral characters nearly attempted to assassinate the evil ones, but ultimately we all decided actually doing PvP would leave an even worse taste in the mouth). Some of the meta-aspects were fun in retrospect (as was the GM just letting me blow out all the stops on a 3.5 druid), but I don't think any of us would want to actually play it again.

The only game I've made considerable use of modules as-is in is Call of Cthulu for one shot games between marquee titles. Even then, it only works because everyone in the group expects to be dead or insane by the end of the session and doesn't care that the rails and seams of the scenario are clearly visible.

[Bjarkmundur]

This thread somehow just got weird. Are we sure we're talking about 5e here?

Feels like with the available resources (such as the monster stats in my signature the link I provided earlier, and the knowledge that Feats and Magic Items are variant rules) things should be running rather smoothly.

I have 2-3 players running a published module, and the one time I thought I'd better reduce the power level of an encounter they ended up steamrolled it.

That being said, I always make sure my players have at least one very good consumable, if it turns out they need an edge against a particularly troublesome group of opponents. This was very helpful against the three Shadows we faced last session.

The only problem I ever had with encounter difficulty was the HP pools of the players (starts out too low, and grows too fast) and the damage output added by feats (GWM). After smoothing out those two factors everything has been running perfectly.

But it does seem like you have a very particular group with particular skills and expectations. In 4e I had a similar problem, and I ended up creating new monster making guidelines for myself. I took data from every single encounter an slowly but surely created an excel document that generated the stats and numbers based on my input. After I created it I completely moved away from official monsters. My formulas were tailor made for my group, and every encounter was exactly as difficult as I intended it too be (except maybe the last two xD). I've started the same project in 5e. It's very bare-boned, but I know this will be an amazing resource once we reach higher levels and I have collected more data. It looks something like this (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1d92XLmQN2lmndBbekd6Ns3pDjdLE__FHGGmSWLUVOOM/edit?usp=sharing), but it is miles away from being finished.

[Chaos Jackal]

They really aren't.

Most of the people who have trouble with 5e don't play published adventures. It's not a coincidence.

(seriously though, the published adventures sell very well. Many people run them just fine and have a great time with them. You're in the tiny minority here).

I'm not sure where you get that from. Published adventures are, among others, what AL runs on, and people playing AL quite often have little to no experience of the game. If the modules were designed to be hard (and they aren't) then people would be discouraged pretty damn quickly by them. As it is, even when limited to PHB+1, most people make it through AL games just fine, which is quite telling of the difficulty of most modules.

Module stories aren't necessarily bad, but as far as encounters go they're generally simple.

[MaxWilson]

This thread somehow just got weird. Are we sure we're talking about 5e here?

Feels like with the available resources (such as the monster stats in my signature the link I provided earlier, and the knowledge that Feats and Magic Items are variant rules) things should be running rather smoothly.

I have 2-3 players running a published module, and the one time I thought I'd better reduce the power level of an encounter they ended up steamrolled it.

I'm not surprised. The real problems with the published adventures have mostly to do with how poorly they are written and executed (RifleAvenger's likening of them to "writing prompts" above is very apt) and how unimaginative they are--familiarizing yourself with someone else's boring adventure and then revamping it to be interesting is a poor use of time compared to just buying or writing an interesting one in the first place. But in addition to that, the published adventures are typically very, very easy for anyone who's thinking even a little bit out of the box, and that's what you apparently ran into here.

Then I see people telling others to go consult the published adventures if they want to learn how to make fun, challenging adventures, and it makes me want to tear my hair out. That is, if I still had hair.


I'm not sure where you get that from. Published adventures are, among others, what AL runs on, and people playing AL quite often have little to no experience of the game. If the modules were designed to be hard (and they aren't) then people would be discouraged pretty damn quickly by them. As it is, even when limited to PHB+1, most people make it through AL games just fine, which is quite telling of the difficulty of most modules.

Module stories aren't necessarily bad, but as far as encounters they're generally simple.

This is a good point, and it's why my main beef with the published adventures is not the lack of challenge. Easy isn't bad, it's just easy.

But a truly excellent adventure would have things like difficulty sliders already built in: For novice players, when you defeat this Mind Flayer he has a map of the defenses in his pocket. For highly-experienced players, two of the Drow Warriors are actually inhabited by Intellect Devourers, so the Mind Flayers in the factory will not be surprised by the PCs and all enemies will initially be concealed behind total cover, and the Intellect Devourers inside the Drow Warriors may attempt to disable and/or possess any brawny-but-tough-looking PCs who get close enough.

A truly excellent adventure has to be better than something I'd sketch on the back of a napkin or it's not worth my time. Ideally it inspires me with ideas I can use in my own games going forward.

[ad_hoc]

I'm not sure where you get that from. Published adventures are, among others, what AL runs on, and people playing AL quite often have little to no experience of the game. If the modules were designed to be hard (and they aren't) then people would be discouraged pretty damn quickly by them. As it is, even when limited to PHB+1, most people make it through AL games just fine, which is quite telling of the difficulty of most modules.

Module stories aren't necessarily bad, but as far as encounters they're generally simple.

AL games don't use the hardcover books right? Those are the ones I have experience playing with.

I didn't say they were "hard" just that they are well balanced. I have found them to be difficult and requiring wits and thought to prevail. As long as you don't outlaw character deaths and TPKs they are a real threat.

They are well balanced around the 3 pillars, if the party successfully engages with exploration and social interaction then they should be expected to make it through.

I have had a number of campaigns end in TPKs though. If the DM doesn't play enemy creatures like zombies then they can be difficult.

(oh, are you referring to the 'trouble with 5e' comment? I have found that most people on this forum when expressing that they have trouble understanding how to play 5e haven't actually played published adventures. That's my go to advice for that reason. Also, they're fun.)

(oh further, AL makes up, what, 1% of the player base? It's not really worth talking about when talking of a large picture)

[stoutstien]

They really aren't.

Most of the people who have trouble with 5e don't play published adventures. It's not a coincidence.

(seriously though, the published adventures sell very well. Many people run them just fine and have a great time with them. You're in the tiny minority here).

Not quite. While I agree that new(er) DM should run a published adventures first I don't think they are well done as a whole. We don't know how they are received as a whole because they never ask so the data isn't available.
We know the books with player options sell well more or at least from Amazon and other major online retailers who release that information which is predicable due to the player vs DM(player) pool.

I will say that the published stuff is used a lot as a base but are changed and Homebrewed heavily. Maximize npc hp is a common one.

[BloodOgre]

One of the things I do is take a look at the number of hit dice a creature has. In this case, a veteran has 9 hit die, making it essentially a 9th level generic fighter, with no feats or abilities beyond multi-attack. This makes them a hair over CR2 but not really CR3. If you have a party at CR12, that means you have four PCs with an average level of 12 (with all the special abilities their class and subclass provide, let alone any feats they may have taken), four 9th level generic fighters will not stand a chance, at all. After the first round of combat, whomever is left should be retreating. Six veterans is a little more of a challenge, but not really much. So I look at the party as a whole, since the characters get ASIs/feats every 4 levels, I treat the SAIs/feats as a CR bump. So a party averaging 10th level is a CR of 12. A party averaging level 12 is CR 15.

BUT, then you add a heavy magic environment to the mix, then you need to equip your enemy NPCs with magic as well. a groups CR rating goes out the window if you add a lot of magic to the mix. Magic can greatly increase damage output of the group by both increasing the chance to hit and increasing the damage of each hit. Magic can also decrease the chances of the PCs getting hit. To balance things out, you need to give the NPCs magic of their own.

WoTC assumes that PCs will have 2 to 4 encounters before each short rest and six to eight encounters before a long rest. Rarely is that ever the case. A party that has taken damage will rest if they feel safe unless there is a time limit or the monsters start actively seeking them out. So sometimes, so have to wear the PCs down to make encounters "fair".

Finally, creatures, particularly intelligent ones, use tactics. Check the blog, "The monsters know what they are doing." http://themonstersknow.com/ Your six to eight veterans, should probably present only half the veterans to the group, with the other half shooting the PCs with their crossbows. Have them concentrate on one PC at a time to quickly reduce the PC party's numbers, and fall back under cover of the archers when they are low on hp, allowing the archers to enter melee fresh and the wounded to take over as archers.

[Chaos Jackal]

AL games don't use the hardcover books right? Those are the ones I have experience playing with.

I didn't say they were "hard" just that they are well balanced. I have found them to be difficult and requiring wits and thought to prevail. As long as you don't outlaw character deaths and TPKs they are a real threat.

They are well balanced around the 3 pillars, if the party successfully engages with exploration and social interaction then they should be expected to make it through.

I have had a number of campaigns end in TPKs though. If the DM doesn't play enemy creatures like zombies then they can be difficult.

(oh, are you referring to the 'trouble with 5e' comment? I have found that most people on this forum when expressing that they have trouble understanding how to play 5e haven't actually played published adventures. That's my go to advice for that reason. Also, they're fun.)

(oh further, AL makes up, what, 1% of the player base? It's not really worth talking about when talking of a large picture)

Making up arbitrary numbers doesn't constitute an argument. It constitutes arbitrary numbers.

Yes, AL players might be a minority, but they sure as hell aren't just 1% of the playerbase.

WotC wouldn't bother with the event if it had little to no representation.

Many people who play 5e picked up the game and group at AL. They might have abandoned it, but they were there at some point.

And, most importantly, even if there was only one person playing AL (which there isn't), it doesn't change the fact that WotC publishes books based around AL. It's why things like domain spells or expanded spell lists always contain PHB spells in order to adhere to the PHB+1 rule, it's why most adventures don't run beyond tier 3 or come in continuations so that there's always a way to start from lv1, and it's why published adventures aren't hard or indicative of balance. They aren't meant to challenge veterans with system mastery.

I do believe MaxWilson is a bit harsh here, published adventures can be pretty neat (see Curse of Strahd or Waterdeep) and new players and DMs can get the feel of the game and some ideas from them, in addition to not having to face the often steep hurdle of making something from scratch when you're new at the job or system. But hard? Inspired? Creative? They're largely railroaded, with specific solutions and pointers and encounters which, for the most part, won't pose a threat to decent party without the involvement of bad luck or glaring mistakes.

Creating an encounter of appropriate CR involves a lot of things and factors, which published adventures just don't address. Really, any suggestions as to how to properly make encounters has to be taken with a grain of salt, given each DM's and each group's different dynamics; most rules of thumb like the one I suggested before are just general ideas. And you sure as hell won't find the solution in a book designed for an arbitrary average.

[MaxWilson]

I do believe MaxWilson is a bit harsh here, published adventures can be pretty neat (see Curse of Strahd or Waterdeep) and new players and DMs can get the feel of the game and some ideas from them, in addition to not having to face the often steep hurdle of making something from scratch when you're new at the job or system. But hard? Inspired? Creative? They're largely railroaded, with specific solutions and pointers and encounters which, for the most part, won't pose a threat to decent party without the involvement of bad luck or glaring mistakes.

Creating an encounter of appropriate CR involves a lot of things and factors, which published adventures just don't address. Really, any suggestions as to how to properly make encounters has to be taken with a grain of salt, given each DM's and each group's different dynamics; most rules of thumb like the one I suggested before are just general ideas. And you sure as ---- won't find the solution in a book designed for an arbitrary average.

Yes, I am being harsh. Are their adventures worse than the average material on DM's guild? No, they're better than that. They're probably better than the average adventure written by the typical DM who has learned DMing by osmosis and example from reading published adventures from TSR/WotC/other companies.

But are they good enough that if I owned WotC, I would have trouble finding someone who could write better and clearer material? No, they are not. Pacing/balance/structural issues aside, they've not even well-formatted for ease of reference during play, to prevent the DM from overlooking important information until too late. Even if WotC can't hire game designers with deep insight, can't WotC even hire a good editor? It's a huge missed opportunity.

As professional products, WotC adventures as a whole are unimpressive. Curse of Strahd has its good points and the idea of tarroka deck-driven replayability is great, but the actual execution falls short. The most promising aspect of Curse of Strahd winds up being not much more than a writing prompt.

[ad_hoc]

Making up arbitrary numbers doesn't constitute an argument. It constitutes arbitrary numbers.

Yes, AL players might be a minority, but they sure as hell aren't just 1% of the playerbase.

That was an aside, and the player count of AL has nothing to do with both whether published adventures are good and whether they are popular.

I don't actually have the numbers but I can't imagine it to be higher than a few % at most. 1% was just a guess, I didn't say it was fact. The point is, it's a small number when compared to the 5e player base.

1% is still going to be over 200 000 anyway. How many more people do you think there are who play AL?

[SpawnOfMorbo]

I'm 100% convinced that the guidelines in 5e were made, they changed a lot of the system, and then they forgot to change the encounter guidelines or just figured it worked well enough.

The CR system just isn't even all that well thought out. I've seen level 5 groups take out imposible encounters and yet fall to lower CR encounters. No, the dice weren't the fault.

Honestly, everything past about level 10 is not well done.

But if you want to "learn" the system, trial and error is your new friend. Set players in situations they aren't meant to die from, plotwise, but someone wants them alive so while they may fail at winning an encou ter, there's a reason why they aren't killed. This also will allow players to experiment with their characters.

[MaxWilson]

I'm 100% convinced that the guidelines in 5e were made, they changed a lot of the system, and then they forgot to change the encounter guidelines or just figured it worked well enough.

We know for a fact that this happened because there's documentation: after the Basic rules came out but before the DMG, somewhere around IIRC version 1.3 of the Basic Rules, they changed the definition of encounter difficulty so that what was previously a Medium encounter was now Easy, what was Hard was now Medium, etc. (We also know they didn't update the text recommending "six to eight Medium/Hard encounters" per adventuring day, which is why you now cannot fit six to eight Medium/Hard encounters into the adventuring day budget--that guideline comes from before, with six to eight of what are now Easy/Medium encounters.)


The CR system just isn't even all that well thought out. I've seen level 5 groups take out imposible encounters and yet fall to lower CR encounters. No, the dice weren't the fault.

The CR system follows the same sort of scaling as Lanchester's Squared Law, which says that in direct combat where both sides are fully engaged (soldiers shooting at other soldiers), combat power scales roughly as the square of the number of soldiers you have: 200 soldiers is about 4x as powerful as 100 soldiers, because you have twice the firepower and twice as many bodies to soak hits. In more complex scenarios where there is e.g. area artillery (like Fireballs) it's common to assume that combat power scales a little more slowly, as the 3/2 power of the number of soldiers you have, and if you look at the DMG multipliers for number of enemy monsters this is basically the formula it is following.

So the CR system isn't totally unprecedented--it's at least following the general form of actual military force analysis. But we can immediately predict some cases where it will break down, such as in actual direct combat where e.g. all of the enemies have missile weapons and are spread out too widely for area bombardment like Fireball to be effective. In this case, scaling by 3/2 power will underestimate strength, which means that for large groups like 30 goblins with shortbows, spread out, the DMG will greatly underestimate their deadliness... and this is exactly what we see happening.

Although of course it depends on group composition as well. If the whole group is composed of AC 21+ PCs, and they do stuff like exploit total cover and lie prone to impose disadvantage on enemy archers, they may still come out of the encounter without significant damage, whereas a more typical group including single-classed wizards/bards/sorcerers/warlocks with AC 12-15ish will get shredded.

The CR system is okay for what it is: a very crude measure of raw DPR x raw HP, with accuracy and AC very crudely factored in. It's not by any means a measure of real combat power, especially not once you filter it through the lens of ANOTHER approximation which is the encounter difficulty system.


Honestly, everything past about level 10 is not well done.

But if you want to "learn" the system, trial and error is your new friend. Set players in situations they aren't meant to die from, plotwise, but someone wants them alive so while they may fail at winning an encou ter, there's a reason why they aren't killed. This also will allow players to experiment with their characters.

This is good advice. I've been surprised how often players survive situations that I totally thought were on the verge of TPK, to the point where I've even said to the players, "I'm not sure but it looks to me like you're all about to die," and yet somehow they don't! A spell like Evard's Black Tentacles or a consumable magic items like the Horn of Valhalla can really turn the tide, or sometimes even just a lucky round of good die rolls. You learn a lot about 5E from experimenting.

[strangebloke]

This is good advice. I've been surprised how often players survive situations that I totally thought were on the verge of TPK, to the point where I've even said to the players, "I'm not sure but it looks to me like you're all about to die," and yet somehow they don't! A spell like Evard's Black Tentacles or a consumable magic items like the Horn of Valhalla can really turn the tide, or sometimes even just a lucky round of good die rolls. You learn a lot about 5E from experimenting.

Yeah, the best way to avoid an accidental TPK is to give powerful consumables.

And the big thing to remember with CR is that terrain is everything. Archers at long range behind full cover suck. Long range enemies with a mobility advantage can be straight up untouchable. If a melee beast can get advantage, they become a giant meat grinder since they typically have really high damage output. A single really deadly person in a narrow hallway can be a huge pain.

[HouseRules]

We know for a fact that this happened because there's documentation: after the Basic rules came out but before the DMG, somewhere around IIRC version 1.3 of the Basic Rules, they changed the definition of encounter difficulty so that what was previously a Medium encounter was now Easy, what was Hard was now Medium, etc. (We also know they didn't update the text recommending "six to eight Medium/Hard encounters" per adventuring day, which is why you now cannot fit six to eight Medium/Hard encounters into the adventuring day budget--that guideline comes from before, with six to eight of what are now Easy/Medium encounters.)



The CR system follows the same sort of scaling as Lanchester's Squared Law, which says that in direct combat where both sides are fully engaged (soldiers shooting at other soldiers), combat power scales roughly as the square of the number of soldiers you have: 200 soldiers is about 4x as powerful as 100 soldiers, because you have twice the firepower and twice as many bodies to soak hits. In more complex scenarios where there is e.g. area artillery (like Fireballs) it's common to assume that combat power scales a little more slowly, as the 3/2 power of the number of soldiers you have, and if you look at the DMG multipliers for number of enemy monsters this is basically the formula it is following.

So the CR system isn't totally unprecedented--it's at least following the general form of actual military force analysis. But we can immediately predict some cases where it will break down, such as in actual direct combat where e.g. all of the enemies have missile weapons and are spread out too widely for area bombardment like Fireball to be effective. In this case, scaling by 3/2 power will underestimate strength, which means that for large groups like 30 goblins with shortbows, spread out, the DMG will greatly underestimate their deadliness... and this is exactly what we see happening.

Although of course it depends on group composition as well. If the whole group is composed of AC 21+ PCs, and they do stuff like exploit total cover and lie prone to impose disadvantage on enemy archers, they may still come out of the encounter without significant damage, whereas a more typical group including single-classed wizards/bards/sorcerers/warlocks with AC 12-15ish will get shredded.

The CR system is okay for what it is: a very crude measure of raw DPR x raw HP, with accuracy and AC very crudely factored in. It's not by any means a measure of real combat power, especially not once you filter it through the lens of ANOTHER approximation which is the encounter difficulty system.



This is good advice. I've been surprised how often players survive situations that I totally thought were on the verge of TPK, to the point where I've even said to the players, "I'm not sure but it looks to me like you're all about to die," and yet somehow they don't! A spell like Evard's Black Tentacles or a consumable magic items like the Horn of Valhalla can really turn the tide, or sometimes even just a lucky round of good die rolls. You learn a lot about 5E from experimenting.


When spread out so thin that fireball does not work, the group of goblins are under Lanchester's Square Law.
When group together so closely that fireball could kill subgroups, the group of goblins are under Lanchester's Linear Law.

[MaxWilson]

When spread out so thin that fireball does not work, the group of goblins are under Lanchester's Square Law.

Yes.


When group together so closely that fireball could kill subgroups, the group of goblins are under Lanchester's Linear Law.

Yes, or when the goblins don't have shortbows.

That doesn't even factor in other complexities, like whether the goblins have total cover/heavy obscurement available to let them exploit Nimble Escape.

There is no formula you can use that will accurately predict actual encounter difficulty from CR, because CR is already a simplification. To predict real encounter difficulty you need to go back to the specific monster abilities and analyze them in the context of the actual encounter.

[HouseRules]

Yes.



Yes, or when the goblins don't have shortbows.

That doesn't even factor in other complexities, like whether the goblins have total cover/heavy obscurement available to let them exploit Nimble Escape.

There is no formula you can use that will accurately predict actual encounter difficulty from CR, because CR is already a simplification. To predict real encounter difficulty you need to go back to the specific monster abilities and analyze them in the context of the actual encounter.

True, and Lanchester's Laws is an simplification of a differential equation into two extremes - Square and Linear - as two laws.
Thus, CR is a simplification of a simplification.

[Throne12]

I use the CR as a very very rough estimate to what will be challenging to the party. I then look at what I want the encounter to be. Then I'll add monsters and Environment challenges. Then when we are at the table and running through the encounter. I'll adjust things on the fly like hp, damage dice, number of attacks, lower or higher DC's, have reinforcements come, have some flee, ect. What ever I need to do to make it a more balanced or tougher. It's all about feeling the flow of the encounter.


Also DM tip: if you have to many npc's or one over powerful npc. Have them move around all the time giving your PC's AoO's. I've used this a lot when I first started out and was throwing deadly encounters at my party and it turned those deadly encounters into tough encounters.

[Zhorn]

If you only run single encounters, CR just doesn't work.
If you are running a couple of encounters between each rest, CR has some value.
If you run a war of attrition with at least 6 encounters between each long rest, CR becomes a great tool.

[MaxWilson]

If you run a war of attrition with at least 6 encounters between each long rest, CR becomes a great tool.

If you spread your adventuring day budget over 6-8 encounters, they all wind up being very small and easy, and you can wind up in a situation where the PCs wind up spending negligible resources to beat each one, making CR even worse at predicting outcomes than it is in a big encounter. They can easily blow through 300%+ of the adventuring day XP budget that way, but the worst part is that the DM will be bored while they are doing so, and potentially so will the players.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

Yeah, the best way to avoid an accidental TPK is to give powerful consumables.

And the big thing to remember with CR is that terrain is everything. Archers at long range behind full cover suck. Long range enemies with a mobility advantage can be straight up untouchable. If a melee beast can get advantage, they become a giant meat grinder since they typically have really high damage output. A single really deadly person in a narrow hallway can be a huge pain.

The best way to trivialize an encounter is also to give powerful consumables.

The CR system just doesn't work. When the guide leads you off a cliff, the guide is a flaw.

[Bloodcloud]

I have had great success using the daily encounter budget and spending it on 2-3 deadly encounters and one medium-hard.
Volo, Mordenkainen and Ravnica all have fairly fun and complex monsters to base your own homebrew on.
Dont forget, enemy placement and arena design can change things drastically.
The cr is a guideline for how quickly the monster can kill your players if the dice go their way. Making an encounter memorable/challenging requires putting the player in a hard spot they have to get out of (ex.: monster can spawn other monsters right next to the spellcaster, ranged monster have a terrain advantage and cover, tight tunnel with kobolds and traps...)

[SpawnOfMorbo]

The cr is a guideline for how quickly the monster can kill your players if the dice go their way.

This is called a crapshoot, not a set of guidelines.

[MaxWilson]

This is called a crapshoot, not a set of guidelines.

Allow me to phrase it differently: CR is a guideline for how newbie players will fare against a monster played straightforwardly by a newbie DM. If you stick to DMG XP budgets and Easy-to-Hard encounters AND ALSO avoid letting monsters outnumber players by more than 2:1, it is highly unlikely you will accidentally kill your players' characters.

Unless you accidentally pick one of the weird monsters, like Banshees or Intellect Devourers, or Shadows. Then you might accidentally kill them anyway.

[Zhorn]

If you spread your adventuring day budget over 6-8 encounters, they all wind up being very small and easy, and you can wind up in a situation where the PCs wind up spending negligible resources to beat each one, making CR even worse at predicting outcomes than it is in a big encounter. They can easily blow through 300%+ of the adventuring day XP budget that way, but the worst part is that the DM will be bored while they are doing so, and potentially so will the players.

Disconnect here. I'm not talking about using daily XP budgets.
Trying the satisfy XP budgets and CR at the same time you'll be in for a very boring game.

Tomorrow night's game I'll be blowing out 3/4 of the day's xp budget on one encounter, but their're still going to be 5 other encounters mapped before the sun goes down (3 before, 2 after) to resource drain. Gonna be way over budget when all is done, but those last couple of encounters will be the party running on the last of their dregs and will be CR appropriate, and by that point, at least one player will hit 0 hp during those last 2.

What I should have specified is CR is valuable to tell what creatures your party should be able to handle. If you go by a single encounter day, CR means nothing. If you run multiple encounters a day, CR represents a good target are for the kinds of things to fight. Running on empty, a party should handle a CR appropriate encounter, but it should still pose a risk. If your party can still nova down a CR appropriate enemy, then they have not had enough encounters that day.

Ignoring the XP budget stuff, I actually agree with everything you said.

[MaxWilson]

Disconnect here. I'm not talking about using daily XP budgets.
Trying the satisfy XP budgets and CR at the same time you'll be in for a very boring game.

Tomorrow night's game I'll be blowing out 3/4 of the day's xp budget on one encounter, but their're still going to be 5 other encounters mapped before the sun goes down (3 before, 2 after) to resource drain. Gonna be way over budget when all is done, but those last couple of encounters will be the party running on the last of their dregs and will be CR appropriate, and by that point, at least one player will hit 0 hp during those last 2.

Oh, okay. That's fine then. Running lots of Deadly encounters per day is pretty fun, I agree. I don't usually compute XP budgets until after the encounter is over, but it's not rare for me to e.g. spend 130% of my entire XP budget in one encounter, and then have a couple more that are each about 50% of the XP budget, although...

note: I am a Combat As War DM. Combat is rarely the only option, and I go out of my way to roleplay monsters instead of treating them as kamikaze tactical masterminds (unless they really are kamikaze tactical masterminds), and the monsters may start the engagement spread out through multiple connected areas and won't necessarily all realize they're under attack on the first round of combat. So one reason I exceed the XP budget is because I know the XP budget is overly conservative for the style of game I run.
If I made monsters magically appear surrounding the PCs 20' away with no chance to detect the monsters beforehand or sneak by them, like some DMs do, I would be more cautious about wildly exceeding XP budgets.


What I should have specified is CR is valuable to tell what creatures your party should be able to handle. If you go by a single encounter day, CR means nothing. If you run multiple encounters a day, CR represents a good target are for the kinds of things to fight. Running on empty, a party should handle a CR appropriate encounter, but it should still pose a risk. If your party can still nova down a CR appropriate enemy, then they have not had enough encounters that day.

Ignoring the XP budget stuff, I actually agree with everything you said.

:) I don't think CR is even good at predicting that. A dozen sneaky, poisonous CR 1/4 Drow or a CR 4 Banshee played with kiting tactics can be deadlier to a 6th level party than a brute CR 6 Cyclops despite being "easier" both by CR and by difficulty rating. CR is good for predicting what will absolutely not kill your players even if they are stupid, but once you start running multiple deadly or Deadly encounters in a row (because you know the players find that kind of thing enjoyable) you are way beyond the bounds of where CR is even meaningful.

[stoutstien]

Oh, okay. That's fine then. Running lots of Deadly encounters per day is pretty fun, I agree. I don't usually compute XP budgets until after the encounter is usual, but it's not rare for me to e.g. spend 130% of my entire XP budget in one encounter, and then have a couple more that are each about 50% of the XP budget, although...

note: I am a Combat As War DM. Combat is rarely the only option, and I go out of my way to roleplay monsters instead of treating them as kamikaze tactical masterminds (unless they really are kamikaze tactical masterminds), and the monsters may start the engagement spread out through multiple connected areas and won't necessarily all realize they're under attack on the first round of combat. So one reason I exceed the XP budget is because I know the XP budget is overly conservative for the style of game I run.
If I made monsters magically appear surrounding the PCs 20' away with no chance to detect the monsters beforehand or sneak by them, like some DMs do, I would be more cautious about wildly exceeding XP budgets.



:) I don't think CR is even good at predicting that. A dozen sneaky, poisonous CR 1/4 Drow or a CR 4 Banshee played with kiting tactics can be deadlier to a 6th level party than a brute CR 6 Cyclops despite being "easier" both by CR and by difficulty rating. CR is good for predicting what will absolutely not kill your players even if they are stupid, but once you start running multiple deadly or Deadly encounters in a row (because you know the players find that kind of thing enjoyable) you are way beyond the bounds of where CR is even meaningful.

Something I use is a CR+ rating where I add or subtract from the rating based on environmental and tactical elements the same way one would use monster features to adjust it.
I also only average the first two rounds of damage output for NPCs with a slightly higher value put on the first round which is where alot of the pase of the encounter is set.

Example : goblins get moved up to 1/2 CR because of how likely they will either surprise or avoid most of the first round of incoming damage. They are more dangerous one for one than orcs.