Adventure difficulty check

[Gamezdude]

Im wanting to do an adventure with 4/5 encounters and Ive checked them over with the D20 encounter calculator but it seems abit unreasonable...

The Party:-
2x Lvl 4

Creatures:-
1st Encounter
Troglodyte CR1

2nd Encounter
1-2 Troglodyte/s CR1

3rd Encounter
1-2 Troglodyte/s CR1

4th Encounter
2x Troglodytes CR1

Secret Encounter
Monsteous Centetpede (M/L) CR1/2 (Not half, 1 or 2)

According to the calculator, I should have only 1 Troglodyte per encounter which just seems unnatural...
Would this be too hard or OK?

[Talverin]

Only comes out to APL+1, which isn't terribly difficult. That should be fine for a whole day of encounters. Your spellcaster may run out of spells early, but that's mainly because of their low level. As long as they have backup stuff or are creative with cantrips everything should be fine. CR1's aren't too difficult. I mean, if at least one character is melee-focused, they may very well casually one-shot kill those Trogs, no crits or special abilities needed. 13 health is not very much at all. Rather than have four encounters with 1-2 each, you might want to condense it to three encounters, or even two, and increase the number of Trogs in each encounter instead. It's not a great feeling when two people wade into battle and the guy with higher initiative just slaps down the only opponent. All the setup for battle is kinda wasted at that point. Larger groups are more likely to actually challenge them.

Their APL is considered 3 (4, -1 for <3 people), and CR1 encounters are well below their level. 2 Trogs makes it CR3, and 3 Trogs makes it CR4, which would be 'Difficult' at APL+1. That might be a more interesting target number, rather than having a series of one-shot kills and then an actual battle.

[Gamezdude]

Only comes out to APL+1, which isn't terribly difficult. That should be fine for a whole day of encounters. Your spellcaster may run out of spells early, but that's mainly because of their low level. As long as they have backup stuff or are creative with cantrips everything should be fine. CR1's aren't too difficult. I mean, if at least one character is melee-focused, they may very well casually one-shot kill those Trogs, no crits or special abilities needed. 13 health is not very much at all. Rather than have four encounters with 1-2 each, you might want to condense it to three encounters, or even two, and increase the number of Trogs in each encounter instead. It's not a great feeling when two people wade into battle and the guy with higher initiative just slaps down the only opponent. All the setup for battle is kinda wasted at that point. Larger groups are more likely to actually challenge them.

Their APL is considered 3 (4, -1 for <3 people), and CR1 encounters are well below their level. 2 Trogs makes it CR3, and 3 Trogs makes it CR4, which would be 'Difficult' at APL+1. That might be a more interesting target number, rather than having a series of one-shot kills and then an actual battle.

What is APL?
Where are you getting this from??? :/

[Quertus]

It's not a great feeling when two people wade into battle and the guy with higher initiative just slaps down the only opponent.

I've gotta disagree with this. My BDH party, the worst initiative was +7 (an NPC Arcane Archer, IIRC), and anyone rolling an initiative in the low teens would expect the battle to be over before they got to go.

And it was awesome! We would plow through a dozen or more encounters per night, the whole party felt bloody awesome, if you didn't get to go this fight, no problem, you would shine in many of the other fights we'd have tonight.

Heaven forbid that we ever had to talk to anyone, though, because the tooth fairy from Rise of the Guardians (of the Galaxy of Ga'hoole) had a better grasp of humanity than this party, who struggled to convince townsfolk, lawmen, etc, that we were preferable to the monsters we were there to help them with.

EDIT: now, yes, if the same person always gets to shine, it's a problem. And varying your encounters, so the same person doesn't always shine, is an important GMing skill. So, in that regard, it's good to have a mix of fight types, including varying the types and numbers and tactics and conditions of the enemies.

[tiercel]

To paraphrase Cap’n Barbossa: “The CR system is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.”

An encounter’s “appropriateness” depends on many things, and CR is not only often problematic, but only a starting point in itself.


Optimization: are we talking a Core sword-and-board Fighter plus a Core Rogue, or are we talking DruidZilla with optimal animal companion, scrolls, partially charged wands, with an Abrupt Jaunt ACF Focused Specialist Conjurer Wizard who already looks like Times Square under a detect magic spell?
Numbers: 2-on-1 tends to play out differently than 2-on-2 or 2-on-4 even at the “same” CR
Environment: The DMG talks about tweaking the Encounter Level due to the circumstances of the two sides’ encounter: does one side have a defensive terrain advantage? Is one side more likely to achieve surprise? At what distance does the encounter likely begin? Will enemies fight to the death, and if not, what will they do instead?
Special: A trog isn’t just its hp, AC, and natural-weapon attack routine. Inflicting the sickened condition with Stench makes everything else about the encounter more dangerous for PCs.

[NigelWalmsley]

The CR system underestimates the number of below-level creatures necessary to be an appropriate challenge. I would expect that two 4th level characters would be reasonably able to deal with 2 to 4 CR 1 creatures, depending on exact circumstances.


and CR is not only often problematic,

CR isn't really "often" problematic. It's just that the cases where it is are a lot more memorable than the ones where it isn't. People tend to have a really bad memory for stuff that works fine and is unexciting. If you open a random MM to a random page, the creature on that page is probably CR'd correctly. But it's also probably a creature you didn't remember until you were looking at the page.

[tiercel]

CR isn't really "often" problematic. It's just that the cases where it is are a lot more memorable than the ones where it isn't. People tend to have a really bad memory for stuff that works fine and is unexciting. If you open a random MM to a random page, the creature on that page is probably CR'd correctly. But it's also probably a creature you didn't remember until you were looking at the page.

While you make a good point about selection bias, there are arguably at least some systemic issues with CR as well:

* any complex creature (notably, dragons)
* any creature that becomes significantly more complex through advancement
* any creature that appears either in numbers much greater than, or much fewer than, PCs (as you noted)
* any creature with significant SR or magic “immunity” (CR seems to think this is a big deal, as opposed to being brute-forced to death with “nonmagical” magic)
* any one-trick ponies (which may completely overwhelm a party susceptible to its strength, or be practically a non-encounter to a party which can sidestep it)
* CR creep from one Monster Manual to another (though MMII certainly does seem to stand out) - but also see “optimization” below

I don’t know if that’s a majority, but “often” seems a not-unreasonable descriptor... also and especially including some of the issues I noted in my prior post, particularly optimization level. Core MMI monsters are presumably balanced against standard 4d6-drop-lowest or standard point buy Jozan, Mialee, Tordek, Lidda (i.e. healbot, blaster, sword-and-board BSF, single-class rogue skillmonkey), which means CR means something rather else against 32-point buy multi-ACF-and-prestige-class nothing-below-Tier-3 finely-tuned murderhobos.

(This seems to be, for instance, one of the generally-agreed general points in the Red Hand of Doom guide thread, which rates RHoD highly as a module but contains many suggested tweaks for optimization levels significantly above the four iconics.)

[NigelWalmsley]

any complex creature (notably, dragons)

Dragons are a bad example. They were intentionally under-CRed so that an nominally appropriately-CRed one would work as a boss monster. No system works well if it is intentionally sabotaged.


any creature that becomes significantly more complex through advancement

I would argue that the rules for monster advancement are distinct from the CR of specific monsters. The commonly-cited issues with associated/non-associated class levels are as much an issue of class imbalance as a problem with the CR system, if not more so.


any creature that appears either in numbers much greater than, or much fewer than, PCs (as you noted)

It's not a strong defense, but I would point out that that's technically a different part of the rules. It's important to be precise in criticisms (which, of course, I was not).


any creature with significant SR or magic “immunity” (CR seems to think this is a big deal, as opposed to being brute-forced to death with “nonmagical” magic)

I would dispute that this is the case, and ask that you provide specific examples of creatures you'd consider to be overpaying for magic immunity.


any one-trick ponies (which may completely overwhelm a party susceptible to its strength, or be practically a non-encounter to a party which can sidestep it)

Closet trolls are, broadly, CRed correctly if it is assumed they are encountered in the titular closet. Of course results may vary if they are not, but I would again argue that no system holds well when its assumptions are attacked.


CR creep from one Monster Manual to another (though MMII certainly does seem to stand out) - but also see “optimization” below

I'm unconvinced this is as large a factor as is sometimes claimed.


CR means something rather else against 32-point buy multi-ACF-and-prestige-class nothing-below-Tier-3 finely-tuned murderhobos.

The beauty of a consistent system is that it doesn't really matter where the line is. If your party bats three points above CR, CR can still do its job as long as you can subtract a single digit number from another number that has at most two digits. Which, sure, not as useful as an exact match, but you can't blame CR for the rest of the system not being balanced.