I'm new to 5e and would like to understand about challenge ratings.

[lord eldritch]

Hello.

I used to play 1st edition D&D many years ago and now that I'm retired I've returned to find that 5e is the new normal. Just before the covid19 lockdown I asked my friends if they'd like me to DM a dungeon. They said yes and so I've been familiarizing myself with the 5e DM's guide, the Players Guide and looking at an online Monster Manual. So far, so good.

But I need some help please. Even though I have a decent backstory for the dungeon, along with a nice map, plenty of ideas for traps and tricks, a few plot twists and some juicy NPC's, I'm having trouble calculating how powerful/dangerous to make the monsters and adversaries.

I believe that the Challenge rating system is used to do this? But how? In the old days my 'traditional' method was to try and match the monsters/adversaries to the combined level and xp of the players. Is that still how it's done?

Any help or tuition given would be very much appreciated.

Thank you.

Lord Eldritch.
(aka Clemark the Half-Elven magic user, Idorm the Monk, Celymbor the gnome & many others)

[JadedDM]

I'm much like you, except it was 2E instead of 1E. I just use this (https://dhmstark.co.uk/rpgs/encounter-calculator-5th/). Plug in the numbers (how many PCs, what levels they are, how many monsters, what CR they are) and it will tell you if the encounter is trivial, easy, medium, hard or deadly.

[J-H]

CR is used to calculate monster difficulty/power. Generally CR 1 is supposedly equal to 4x 1st level adventurers - which is why something potentially super deadly like a Shadow is CR 1/2.

This link:
http://blogofholding.com/?p=7338

Has the best summary of how to calculate a monster's CR, and/or what kind of general stats you can expect from a given CR.


My party of 5-6 obliterates easy and even encounters. I'm not too keen on the DMG "easy, medium, hard" calculations as a result. I generally just eyeball it.

You really don't need to be precise with 5e...just watch for the occasional out-of-place ability like the Intellect Devourer's save-or-die-now ability.

[Yora]

The Challenge Ratings in 5th edition are ballpark estimations at best. The composition of the party, the tactical situation, and numerical superiority all affect how a fight will turn out as well.
But making a quick eatimation based on the number and level of the PCs and the Challenge Ratings of enemies is a starting point.

The system is on page 82 in the Dungeon Master's Guide and on page 165 in the free Basic Rules document.

The idea is that you first pick the desired difficulty of the encounter, which are called Easy, Medium, Hard, and Deadly, but these are really much more indicative of how much it will wear out the party between rests, not how likely it is that they win or loose. Then you pick the XP value for each character in your party based on their level and the difficulty you picked, and add them all together. That's how many XP worth of monster the should make up an encounter of that difficulty for that group of characters.
But there is still another factor that enemies in a group can support each other which makes the encounter harder, so you "count" them as being of a higher XP value than they are by themselves, depending on the total group size of enemies. Players still only get the regular amount for defeating the enemies.

This system assumes that you create an encounter knowing how hard you want it to be and what the exact party composition will be. Which I think is somewhay backwards in most situation. Most of the time I start knowing what group of monsters I want to use and then wanting to check how hard that would be, and at what point in the campaign the party might be able to handle that. Getting that by using this encounter calculation is annoyingly complex.

Even with a factor added for enemies being in larger groups, I feel that single monsters all by themselves are still weaker than expected, especially if the party is large. Because the number of PCs is not added as a multiplier in the way it's done for enemies.

Having just run my first party through level 1 and 2 myself, the lowest level still seem quite unpredictable, and I think its better to be cautious when going with enemies of higher Challenge Ratings, even when the numbers say the party should be handle one or two of them. On the other hand, the most basic CR 1/8 enemies are no real threat, even when they attack in huge numbers.

[lord eldritch]

Many thanks for the help, folks. :smallsmile:

After a forty year hiatus I restarted playing D&D 5e late last year, with a group that meets weekly at a local pub. There's nine of us, counting myself and the DM. Because of the covid19 lockdown we keep in touch via a FB page and continue the campaign, playing once a week using Discord.

So I suppose the next move I'll have to make is to e-mail the group and ask them to send me their stats. That way I'll have some data to plug into the calculators that JadedDM and J-H linked to. (Thanks again!)

Then I can see what happens and try and pitch the dungeon accordingly.

My thanks to Yora for some helpful comments too.

Cheers!

Lord Eldritch.

[J-H]

I favor one of the old school ideas of not building the encounters with a solution for the party in mind. It's up to them to figure out how to handle it, and the possible solution set should include "oh crap, we need to run away."

[lord eldritch]

I favor one of the old school ideas of not building the encounters with a solution for the party in mind. It's up to them to figure out how to handle it, and the possible solution set should include "oh crap, we need to run away."

Yes, I see that J-H.

A generic dungeon, rather than a tightly-tailored one.

With as wide a choice of options as possible.

Sounds good to me. :)

Thanks.

Lord Eldritch.

[Psyren]

I favor one of the old school ideas of not building the encounters with a solution for the party in mind. It's up to them to figure out how to handle it, and the possible solution set should include "oh crap, we need to run away."

While this is fine, you should also think about your party's abilities and what they might and might not have the tools to handle. Even if it's a solution that is less obvious, one that they don't think of in the moment, or that they use improperly, the encounter is still fair if there's something they can do to resolve it (even if that solution is "run away.")

For example, throwing a troll at a party with no access to acid or fire damage is less punishing in 5e, but still makes the fight harder than its challenge rating might suggest, because it's impossible to kill and will always have at least 10 hp on its turn no matter how much damage the party inflicts the previous round. That's not saying you can't create such an encounter, but that does make it harder, so think about what options are available to your party - can they use the environment or their belongings to overcome its regen? Can they successfully run away? Can they neutralize it without killing it, such as targeting its weak mental saves instead of its hit points or strong physical ones? Etc.

TL;DR - A GM is a game designer, and as with all game design, nothing beats good playtesting for checking your work.

[MrCharlie]

While this is fine, you should also think about your party's abilities and what they might and might not have the tools to handle. Even if it's a solution that is less obvious, one that they don't think of in the moment, or that they use improperly, the encounter is still fair if there's something they can do to resolve it (even if that solution is "run away.")

For example, throwing a troll at a party with no access to acid or fire damage is less punishing in 5e, but still makes the fight harder than its challenge rating might suggest, because it's impossible to kill and will always have at least 10 hp on its turn no matter how much damage the party inflicts the previous round. That's not saying you can't create such an encounter, but that does make it harder, so think about what options are available to your party - can they use the environment or their belongings to overcome its regen? Can they successfully run away? Can they neutralize it without killing it, such as targeting its weak mental saves instead of its hit points or strong physical ones? Etc.

TL;DR - A GM is a game designer, and as with all game design, nothing beats good playtesting for checking your work.
It's actually very hard for a party to really screw up badly enough to have no fire damage-torches deal 1 fire damage and everyone starts with 10 in an explorer's pact, or at the least candles or oil.

That aside, CR in general is a lie wrapped in an enigma cloaked in magical math. CR rarely actually translates to the risk of an encounter, and most often vastly overestimates how likely the party is to die. On the other hand, an experienced or new DM can easily wipe a party with a low CR encounter-there are a few specific tricks, like everything associated with mind-flayers, a few other overtuned monsters, and pact tactics at really low level, that DMs can use you wipe the party if they really want to wipe them out.

More pertinently, there are a few maxims; AOE becomes better as you add more of it, NPCs are wonky and NPC spellcasters in particular are scary, Dragons hit a bit over their CR in all cases, if you're in water with something that can swim and you can't you're boned, and disabling effects should never be spammed by enemies, even if the CR calculator is telling you it's fine; it's never fine, it's lying to you, don't do it. You won't kill anyone per say, but combat will take an eternity and everyone will hate you. Oh, and creatures with immunity to damage should A. Be obviously immune, and B. Should have a planned-for alternative method of dealing with them, lest you accidentally juggernaut the party to death. Puzzle bosses are fine, accidentally killing the entire party because no one can hurt the werewolf isn't.

[DeadMech]

CR is a suggestion more than anything. There are times it is useful and times it is less useful. Enemies that can grant themselves advantage in a fight tend to be under CR'd in my experience. sahuagin as example. Or stuff with pack tactics. Advantage increases their chance of hitting thus increasing their dpr significantly. it also increases the risk of crits drastically which again increases their expected dpr.

Some monsters have life drain effects on hit like the specter that make them not great to throw at low level parties like their CR would suggest. One lucky hit on their part coupled with a single failed save results in a permanently dead character with no recourse. Watched that happen to a guy at our table playing his first session of dnd ever. First round of combat

Other monsters like ghosts with their possession ability are grossly mis CR'd because of how wildly it'll swing action economy and it's potentially unfixable once it happens depending on party comp and spell loadout. I've got my own horror story with them but I'd rather just point to how Matt Mercer almost TPK'd his party with a pack of ghosts and had to noticeably pull back with them to stop from ruining the game.

So no I don't recommend blindly throwing monsters at a party judging by their CR and expecting things to go well. But tastes vary. My current party of 3 lvl 8's just finished taking a young red dragon of CR 10 after the rogue got ambushed by it followed by 3 clay golems at cr 9 each. Of course this is a temporary covid discord game where we were told ahead of time that difficulty would be jacked up. And I haven't told my party that my character doesn't even have access to greater restoration yet to fix their drained max hp... so...yeah

[Ninja_Prawn]

I favor one of the old school ideas of not building the encounters with a solution for the party in mind. It's up to them to figure out how to handle it, and the possible solution set should include "oh crap, we need to run away."

A neat catchphrase for encounter-building I heard once was "build fair, play to win", which chimes with this approach.

As for CR, I will second DeadMech's note of caution. It's a very rough system with lots of imperfections, so as a DM you need to be able to adapt on the fly. But if you grew up on 1e, I'm sure that'll be second nature to you!

And yes, the page in the Dungeon Master's Guide with the numbers on it is 82. Note in particular the way it accounts for action economy. Studying the monster-building guidelines on pages 274-281 is also very illuminating.

[Chronos]

Yes, CR is a suggestion at best, but nobody even seems to know what it's a suggestion of. People often say things like "You use it to plan encounters. See, you take the XP values for all the monsters, and dd them up, and compare it to this table...", which is a process that doesn't use CR at all.

[Ninja_Prawn]

It's definitely more of an art than a science, and art is all about suggesting things! Should we listen to Sage Advice, or do you subscribe to more of a 'death of the author' reading? What do you see when you look at a CR 2 ogre? :smallwink:

[Bloodcloud]

I would recommend Kobold fight club
https://kobold.club/fight/#/encounter-builder

Very user friendly, great ressource for encounter building, xp calculation and challenge assessment.

In my experience, "easy" means they dont need to even use limited ressources to curbstomp the encounter, medium will probably get them to burn a little bit of of ressources, hard is where there is actually a rik of a player dropping to 0hp, and deadly is only the basic threshold where the fight COULD end up badly for the players with bad luck/stupid play. Taking on encounter worth triple the deadly threshold is possible, more even as you go higher level.

[Sjappo]

Yes, I see that J-H.

A generic dungeon, rather than a tightly-tailored one.

With as wide a choice of options as possible.

Sounds good to me. :)

Thanks.

Lord Eldritch.
Remember that, once engaged in melee, it is very hard to run away from anything in DnD. Most times the movement rates are equal meaning a determined monster will always catch up. Plus, depending on your group, lots of players ignore this possibility because running away isn't a thing in DnD since, o, 3E at least.

So, be sure to check is your players get the concept.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

If I go by the books my encounters a day are 3 deadly*1.5 and 1-2 deadly*3 with the rest being social encounters.

Just give them a few monsters that look good for your party and change it as the fight go. Eventually you will know what to bring them without changing stuff in the middle of a fight.

[lord eldritch]

Thanks very much, one and all, for your replies. :smallsmile:

Ummm... sorry, but I don't think I can do justice to everyone who posted since my last message, so if its ok, I'd just like to respond specifically to Ninja Prawn, Bloodcloud and Sjappo.

Ninja_Prawn,

You needn't worry. Adapting on the fly was second-nature to me when all we had was 1e. Nowadays I just have to bring that skill to 5e and that requires the same level of familiarity with today's rules and I had with the old ones. Just give me time and I'll get there!

Bloodcloud,

Thanks for that link to the Kobold Fight Club. I'll be checking that out asap.

Sjappo,

Thanks for that. I've seen (and taken part in) more than one last-ditch-fight-to-the-end, when our party could have cut and run, living to fight another day. With age cometh wisdom. Hopefully. (Sighs.)

Thanks again to all.

Lord Eldritch.

[Lupine]

One more thing that you might find helpful (though maybe not): https://www.themonstersknow.com/

Just a generally good source to find how to run certain monsters.

EDIT:
Oh, and be careful about buffing/nerfing things. With a few notable exceptions, 5e is generally decent in balence. (This particularly applies to the Rogue's Sneak Attack. It's the thing that makes rogues actually worth something.)

That also makes me think about the Assassin subclass, and the assured crit. Seems really powerful, as it doubles SA dice, but it is not as bad as you'd think. Just be sure you're clear on the rules for surprise (Ie, it's more like a one-turn condition than anything else.)