Building Encounters

[Envyus]

They posted guidlines on how to build encounters. It's not the final version and is subject to change but it's out.

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.a...d/4ll/20140707

[Inevitability]

Interesting. It is clearly visible that WOTC is keeping the power curve flat. A challenging encounter at level 5 contains more XP than an easy 20th level encounter.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

Interesting. It is clearly visible that WOTC is keeping the power curve flat. A challenging encounter at level 5 contains more XP than an easy 20th level encounter.

I like this.

It keeps the game away from going MOAR POWER. Power gaming can still be done, but you shouldn't need to power game in order to keep up with the game... Unlike in some other editions.

[TheOOB]

I feel like with this system you can continue using weaker monsters to challenge the players even at high levels.

[Noldo]

Interesting. It is clearly visible that WOTC is keeping the power curve flat. A challenging encounter at level 5 contains more XP than an easy 20th level encounter.

The positive side effect of (relatively) flat power curve is that the characters should not outgrow the world. In RAW 3.5 the characters could grow in matter of weeks (of in game time) from lousy ragamuffin to forces that could realistically conquer most nations (unless those nations had equally powerful individuals, and if they do, why where our heroes ever needed?).

At least the first impression appears to support the view that in 5E the characters might reach the level of legendary heroes capable of doing legendary deeds, but they still fit into the world and the pseudo-medieval world might remain to make sense.

[TheOOB]

The positive side effect of (relatively) flat power curve is that the characters should not outgrow the world. In RAW 3.5 the characters could grow in matter of weeks (of in game time) from lousy ragamuffin to forces that could realistically conquer most nations (unless those nations had equally powerful individuals, and if they do, why where our heroes ever needed?).

At least the first impression appears to support the view that in 5E the characters might reach the level of legendary heroes capable of doing legendary deeds, but they still fit into the world and the pseudo-medieval world might remain to make sense.

Basically then eliminated the Dynasty Warrior's Problem.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

Basically then eliminated the Dynasty Warrior's Problem.

If you mean tying to stop players from being able to take over the world... Well it isn't about the DM saying yes or no, it is about the game assuming that you get at least X powerful to deal with things.

So if you hold back 3.5 PCs you are scrweing them over but if you don't hold them back you are screwing the in game world over.

5e seems to have fixed that problem, but hey, 5e Epic might become a thing where you start the game at level 20 and go from there.

[Yorrin]

If you mean tying to stop players from being able to take over the world

Actually he's referring to the massive swarming of lesser opponents, which is how the fights in the Dynasty Warriors games always are. XP values that scale with how outnumbered you are are helpful.

[TheOOB]

Actually he's referring to the massive swarming of lesser opponents, which is how the fights in the Dynasty Warriors games always are. XP values that scale with how outnumbered you are are helpful.

Right. 3.x had a problem where high level characters could basically say "You'll only hit me on a 20, and I'll only miss on a 5. I'll kill you in 1 hit, and you can't bypass my DR/Fast Healing" which literally allowed them to wade alone into groups of hundreds of foes and win handily.

[da_chicken]

Yeah, players can definitely still take over the world. It just so happens that the most effective way to do that now is probably raising your own army.

I'm 100% fine with that.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

Yeah, players can definitely still take over the world. It just so happens that the most effective way to do that now is probably raising your own army.

I'm 100% fine with that.

Finger of Death, literally raising your own army.

[Fwiffo86]

Yeah, players can definitely still take over the world. It just so happens that the most effective way to do that now is probably raising your own army.

I'm 100% fine with that.

I second this.

Gone are the days of Mortal Gods, and returned are the days of Heroes.

Or something equally cheesy said in the announcer voice.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

I second this.

Gone are the days of Mortal Gods, and returned are the days of Heroes.

Or something equally cheesy said in the announcer voice.

In all honesty I read that in Morgan Freeman's voice. Wasn't cheesy at all.

[da_chicken]

Finger of Death, literally raising your own army.

Have you seen the stats of the humanoid zombies (the spell restricts itself to humanoids)? In Legacy of the Crystal Shard they were 9 hp, AC 8, move 20 ft., average save of -2, with a single melee attack at +2 for 1d4+2 damage. They have about a 50% chance when brought to 0 hp to instead go to 1 hp, but beyond that they're really quite awful. Attacking a fortified location would require thousands, and Finger of Death doesn't allow you to refill your ranks like Animate Dead. Making those one seventh level spell at a time is laughable. A 20th level Wizard can make a whopping five a day and they would be worth 50 XP in total to an adventuring party. To a 1st level PC all by himself at five to one odds, that would be triple XP. That's 150 XP... which is just barely enough to be a Hard encounter.

[Tholomyes]

I'm not terribly a big fan of the way this seems to be working out. CR is basically meaningless, as far as it seems, because if you look at the XP guidelines vs the XP per CR, you slowly see CR = Level monsters go from a moderate encounter at level 1 to nearly a Hard encounter by level 8. Say what you will about 3e's CR system, at least CR = Level was always supposed to be an average encounter, even if it didn't work out that way in practice. And 4e made it really simple, in that X Level Y monsters were an average encounter for X Level Y PCs (where you could also change out a monster for a few minions, or two monsters for an elite, and alter up levels slightly, and so on, so it wasn't always a 5-on-5). With this, There's not really an easy way to build encounters, except with that table and a calculator/pad and paper.

Still, my other main gripe is that the 2-encounter per day assumption seems pretty low. I'm hoping they add suggestions for alternate rules to combat this, especially given that combat goes by so quick in 5e. It's not like higher level 3e and 4e, where you might need to cut back on fights per day, since they take so long.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

Have you seen the stats of the humanoid zombies (the spell restricts itself to humanoids)? In Legacy of the Crystal Shard they were 9 hp, AC 8, move 20 ft., average save of -2, with a single melee attack at +2 for 1d4+2 damage. They have about a 50% chance when brought to 0 hp to instead go to 1 hp, but beyond that they're really quite awful. Attacking a fortified location would require thousands, and Finger of Death doesn't allow you to refill your ranks like Animate Dead. Making those one seventh level spell at a time is laughable. A 20th level Wizard can make a whopping five a day and they would be worth 50 XP in total to an adventuring party. To a 1st level PC all by himself at five to one odds, that would be triple XP. That's 150 XP... which is just barely enough to be a Hard encounter.

First of all, thanks for taking that seriously. And here I thought people would think I was joking.

[da_chicken]

I'm not terribly a big fan of the way this seems to be working out. CR is basically meaningless, as far as it seems, because if you look at the XP guidelines vs the XP per CR, you slowly see CR = Level monsters go from a moderate encounter at level 1 to nearly a Hard encounter by level 8. Say what you will about 3e's CR system, at least CR = Level was always supposed to be an average encounter, even if it didn't work out that way in practice. And 4e made it really simple, in that X Level Y monsters were an average encounter for X Level Y PCs (where you could also change out a monster for a few minions, or two monsters for an elite, and alter up levels slightly, and so on, so it wasn't always a 5-on-5). With this, There's not really an easy way to build encounters, except with that table and a calculator/pad and paper.

Remember the table is the XP budget per PC. You have 5 level 8 PCs and want a challenging encounter. 5 * 700 = 3500 XP budget. Now you look at CR 8 and below monsters to see what's in their range, and you pick whatever you want to be there until you're in the ballpark of 3500 XP.

The only hard part, IMO, is the outnumber rules when you want a gigantic horde. If you wanted 3500 XP worth of 10 XP zombies, for example, you kind of have to work backwards. How about 25 to 1. The XP multiplier is (25 + 1) / 2 = 13. 13 * 10 = 130 XP each, so that's 130 * 5 * 25 = 13,000 XP. Way too hard. How about 6 to 1? (6 + 1) / 2 = 3.5. 3.5 * 10 = 35 XP each. That's 6 * 5 * 35 = 1050 XP. Too little. 12 to 1. (12 + 1) / 2 = 6.5 --> 65 XP. That's 12 * 5 * 65 = 3900 XP. A little too high. How about 11 to 1. (11 + 1) / 2 = 6. 6 * 10 = 60 XP. 11 * 5 * 60 = 3300. There we go. That's 55 zombies with 200 XP to spare. So we can add 3 and make it 58 zombies for 3480 XP.

Still, my other main gripe is that the 2-encounter per day assumption seems pretty low. I'm hoping they add suggestions for alternate rules to combat this, especially given that combat goes by so quick in 5e. It's not like higher level 3e and 4e, where you might need to cut back on fights per day, since they take so long.

That's two hard encounters, which are about 150% the size of a challenging encounter. Our encounter above of an army of 58 zombies was 3480 XP. The daily XP budget is 5 * 1050 * 2 = 10,500 XP. Our zombie army is a third of that, meaning you're still talking 3 challenging encounters each day, 6 moderate encounters, or nearly 18 easy encounters.

[da_chicken]

First of all, thanks for taking that seriously. And here I thought people would think I was joking.

On these boards you can't be too careful.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

On these boards you can't be too careful.

True true

Though I'm sure eventually there will be a way to spam Finger of Death or whatever else to make hordes of undead.

Maybe a Necromancer wizard school?

[da_chicken]

True true

Though I'm sure eventually there will be a way to spam Finger of Death or whatever else to make hordes of undead.

Maybe a Necromancer wizard school?

Oh, I'm sure Animate Dead is still a spell. Unlimited Zombies is hardly a major concern.

[Palegreenpants]

Yeah, players can definitely still take over the world. It just so happens that the most effective way to do that now is probably raising your own army.

I'm 100% fine with that.

That's how we do it in the real world, and I'm fine with it as well.

[Tholomyes]

Remember the table is the XP budget per PC. You have 5 level 8 PCs and want a challenging encounter. 5 * 700 = 3500 XP budget. Now you look at CR 8 and below monsters to see what's in their range, and you pick whatever you want to be there until you're in the ballpark of 3500 XP.

Except look at the starter set. A CR 1 encounter is 200 XP, aka a moderate encounter for 4 level 1 PCs, but a CR 2 encounter is 450 XP, aka somewhere between a moderate and a challenging encounter for 4 level 2 PCs, as is a CR 3 encounter for level 3 characters, at 700 XP. A CR 4 encounter, at 1100 XP is only slightly less than a Challenging encounter for 4 level 4 PCs, and (since we don't have numbers for 5-7, but we can assume they lie somewhere in between) a CR 8 encounter, at 3,900 XP, is slightly less than a Hard encounter for 4 level 8 PCs. It's not easy to just look at the CR numbers and make an encounter based on those, the same way it was in 3e and especially 4e.

That's two hard encounters, which are about 150% the size of a challenging encounter. Our encounter above of an army of 58 zombies was 3480 XP. The daily XP budget is 5 * 1050 * 2 = 10,500 XP. Our zombie army is a third of that, meaning you're still talking 3 challenging encounters each day, 6 moderate encounters, or nearly 18 easy encounters.

Oh, my mistake. So that's 3 or 4 encounters per day (I'm ignoring Easy encounters, since, well, look at the XP budget; they're hardly worth even mentioning). What a huge difference.

[1337 b4k4]

Except look at the starter set. A CR 1 encounter is 200 XP, aka a moderate encounter for 4 level 1 PCs, but a CR 2 encounter is 450 XP, aka somewhere between a moderate and a challenging encounter for 4 level 2 PCs, as is a CR 3 encounter for level 3 characters, at 700 XP. A CR 4 encounter, at 1100 XP is only slightly less than a Challenging encounter for 4 level 4 PCs, and (since we don't have numbers for 5-7, but we can assume they lie somewhere in between) a CR 8 encounter, at 3,900 XP, is slightly less than a Hard encounter for 4 level 8 PCs. It's not easy to just look at the CR numbers and make an encounter based on those, the same way it was in 3e and especially 4e.

Admittedly I don't have the starter set sitting here to see exactly where you're getting these numbers from, but I think you're a bit confused. A monster CR rating has nothing to do with how difficult or not that monster will be as a solo encounter with the party. From my understanding, CR is a relative power comparison between monsters, and relates to players only in that it's a guide suggesting that this monster is an appropriate monster to use in a challenge for a party of CR Level or better. The actual difficulty of the encounter is still determined by the amount of XP budget you spend. In other words, CR doesn't mean "use this monster as a solo against a CR level party and it's a 'X difficulty' encounter"

[TheOOB]

Admittedly I don't have the starter set sitting here to see exactly where you're getting these numbers from, but I think you're a bit confused. A monster CR rating has nothing to do with how difficult or not that monster will be as a solo encounter with the party. From my understanding, CR is a relative power comparison between monsters, and relates to players only in that it's a guide suggesting that this monster is an appropriate monster to use in a challenge for a party of CR Level or better. The actual difficulty of the encounter is still determined by the amount of XP budget you spend. In other words, CR doesn't mean "use this monster as a solo against a CR level party and it's a 'X difficulty' encounter"

The CR of a monster is the minimum level of a character/party that can be expected to have the resources and abilities to defeat it. An Ogre is CR 2 because it can take out a level one character in one hit for example.

The monsters XP value is it's difficulty, the CR is more of a DM warning that characters under a certain level just may not be able to defeat the creature.

[Tholomyes]

Admittedly I don't have the starter set sitting here to see exactly where you're getting these numbers from, but I think you're a bit confused. A monster CR rating has nothing to do with how difficult or not that monster will be as a solo encounter with the party. From my understanding, CR is a relative power comparison between monsters, and relates to players only in that it's a guide suggesting that this monster is an appropriate monster to use in a challenge for a party of CR Level or better. The actual difficulty of the encounter is still determined by the amount of XP budget you spend. In other words, CR doesn't mean "use this monster as a solo against a CR level party and it's a 'X difficulty' encounter"

I understand that's where they're coming from, but also by that same token, How is a CR 8 monster an appropriate challenge for a Level 8 party, if it's also nearly a Hard encounter, by XP rating? If it were an appropriate challenge, shouldn't it be at least in the moderate to challenging range?

But even more than that, just because that's what CR means, doesn't mean that it's the right way of presenting encounter building. In both 3e and 4e they managed to find a system that presented numbers for CR and Level, that corresponded with party level, and could easily be scaled back or forward for easier or more challenging encounters. It was simple to just look at the book, and find an encounter that suited the environment and the party, and you could (at least in 4e) decide to add more challenging monsters at the expense of normal monsters, and add a bunch of minions, at the expense of a normal monster, and keep the total challenge of the encounter roughly balanced. The fact that they are refusing to follow a similar way of doing things for 5e, gives me cause for concern, as even people who disliked 4e generally agree it was easy to DM and design encounters for (and 3e would likely be the same way, if the CR system did a better job at accurately representing the challenge of monsters or NPCs at higher levels).

The CR of a monster is the minimum level of a character/party that can be expected to have the resources and abilities to defeat it. An Ogre is CR 2 because it can take out a level one character in one hit for example.

The monsters XP value is it's difficulty, the CR is more of a DM warning that characters under a certain level just may not be able to defeat the creature.

I'd appreciate that way of doing things, if that were actually how it seemed they were going to do things, but it seems that they're sticking to a X CR = Y XP model, where:
1/8 CR = 25 XP
1/4 CR = 50 XP
1/2 CR = 100 XP
1 CR = 200 XP
2 CR = 450 XP
3 CR = 700 XP
4 CR = 1100 XP
and (since we're given nothing from 5-7) 8 CR = 3900 XP

Though, truth be told, I'd like them just take the 4e encounter design system, but perhaps give a CR, which determines the earliest they could safely used as an enemy without being too lethal.

[1337 b4k4]

I understand that's where they're coming from, but also by that same token, How is a CR 8 monster an appropriate challenge for a Level 8 party, if it's also nearly a Hard encounter, by XP rating? If it were an appropriate challenge, shouldn't it be at least in the moderate to challenging range?

Because it's an appropriate challenge, just a hard one. I fail to see the issue.

[Tholomyes]

Because it's an appropriate challenge, just a hard one. I fail to see the issue.

I can't see how you're failing to understand. If something is defined as an appropriate challenge for a given level, then why does what is considered an "appropriate challenge" based on CR, and an "appropriate challenge" based on the encounter building guide vary so wildly? If the designers believe that a Bugbear is an appropriate challenge for Level 1, and a Dragon is an appropriate challenge for level 8, then why is one considered only a moderate encounter, while the other is considered a Hard encounter? They're both listed as an appropriate challenge. If what is "appropriate" is considered a moderate encounter, then the dragon should be CR 18. If what is "appropriate" is a Hard encounter, then the Bugbear should only be CR 1/3. If what is "appropriate" is a challenging encounter, then the Bugbear should be CR 1/2 and the Dragon should be CR 10 or 11. But they should be standardized. One metric shouldn't say that a monster is an appropriate challenge, where another metric says that it's not. All that does is make encounter building that much harder on the DM.

[1337 b4k4]

I can't see how you're failing to understand. If something is defined as an appropriate challenge for a given level, then why does what is considered an "appropriate challenge" based on CR, and an "appropriate challenge" based on the encounter building guide vary so wildly? If the designers believe that a Bugbear is an appropriate challenge for Level 1, and a Dragon is an appropriate challenge for level 8, then why is one considered only a moderate encounter, while the other is considered a Hard encounter? They're both listed as an appropriate challenge. If what is "appropriate" is considered a moderate encounter, then the dragon should be CR 18. If what is "appropriate" is a Hard encounter, then the Bugbear should only be CR 1/3. If what is "appropriate" is a challenging encounter, then the Bugbear should be CR 1/2 and the Dragon should be CR 10 or 11. But they should be standardized. One metric shouldn't say that a monster is an appropriate challenge, where another metric says that it's not. All that does is make encounter building that much harder on the DM.

Because you're confusing the two tools. Appropriate challenge means "falls within the XP range for encounter building for this level". Something can be an appropriate challenge and still be difficult, or it can be easy or moderate, but it's still appropriate. CR says "when can a party be reasonably expected to be able to handle this monster", XP budget tells you how hard it will be.

[da_chicken]

Except look at the starter set. A CR 1 encounter is 200 XP, aka a moderate encounter for 4 level 1 PCs, but a CR 2 encounter is 450 XP, aka somewhere between a moderate and a challenging encounter for 4 level 2 PCs, as is a CR 3 encounter for level 3 characters, at 700 XP. A CR 4 encounter, at 1100 XP is only slightly less than a Challenging encounter for 4 level 4 PCs, and (since we don't have numbers for 5-7, but we can assume they lie somewhere in between) a CR 8 encounter, at 3,900 XP, is slightly less than a Hard encounter for 4 level 8 PCs. It's not easy to just look at the CR numbers and make an encounter based on those, the same way it was in 3e and especially 4e.

If my reading of the Buidling Encounters article is right, encounters don't have CRs. Creatures have CRs. Encounters just have XP values. So a 1000 XP encounter is simultaneously high challenging for 4 level 3 PCs, moderate to challenging for 4 level 4 PCs, moderate for 20 level 1 PCs, moderate for 2 level 10 PCs, and easy for 4 level 14 PCs. To build an encounter, you start with the PC's average level, the number of PCs, and determine the XP value. To determine how hard a given pre-built encounter is, you start with the XP value, the PC's average level, and the number of PCs. When I run 5e, for example, all my encounters have to be built for 8 PCs, not 4.

All CR does is tell you how dangerous the creature is. A 1000xp creature might have an AC of 16, for example. A first level Fighter can hit that on an 11 or better, but a breath weapon that deals 3d6 damage in an area makes it very deadly to low level parties. So if they call that CR 4, it tells you that it was designed to challenge characters of about level 4 regardless of how much XP it's worth. Those 20 level 1 PCs might be able to gang up and kill the creature pretty easily, but the monster has a few abilities (attacks, defenses, or both potentially) that just wildly outclass level 1 PCs. It's likely to outright kill many of them, even though they should be more than a match for the creature in the end if they don't care about losses. On the other hand, the two level 10 PCs might very well have some abilities which outclass the CR 4 monster, even though it's a moderate XP value.

Oh, my mistake. So that's 3 or 4 encounters per day (I'm ignoring Easy encounters, since, well, look at the XP budget; they're hardly worth even mentioning). What a huge difference.

I'm not sure what the sarcasm blue is for. The difference between 2 encounters and 4 encounters is significant. How many encounters per day do you run? I don't even think 4e expected more than about 4.

[Tholomyes]

If my reading of the Buidling Encounters article is right, encounters don't have CRs. Creatures have CRs. Encounters just have XP values. So a 1000 XP encounter is simultaneously high challenging for 4 level 3 PCs, moderate to challenging for 4 level 4 PCs, moderate for 20 level 1 PCs, moderate for 2 level 10 PCs, and easy for 4 level 14 PCs. To build an encounter, you start with the PC's average level, the number of PCs, and determine the XP value. To determine how hard a given pre-built encounter is, you start with the XP value, the PC's average level, and the number of PCs. When I run 5e, for example, all my encounters have to be built for 8 PCs, not 4.

All CR does is tell you how dangerous the creature is. A 1000xp creature might have an AC of 16, for example. A first level Fighter can hit that on an 11 or better, but a breath weapon that deals 3d6 damage in an area makes it very deadly to low level parties. So if they call that CR 4, it tells you that it was designed to challenge characters of about level 4 regardless of how much XP it's worth. Those 20 level 1 PCs might be able to gang up and kill the creature pretty easily, but the monster has a few abilities (attacks, defenses, or both potentially) that just wildly outclass level 1 PCs. It's likely to outright kill many of them, even though they should be more than a match for the creature in the end if they don't care about losses. On the other hand, the two level 10 PCs might very well have some abilities which outclass the CR 4 monster, even though it's a moderate XP value.

I understand that much. What I'm trying (and failing, apparently) to ask is "Why is this the desirable way of presenting the information to build an encounter?" It's not that they can't do it another way; they've had the past two editions where one could, just looking at the CR value or Level of the monsters in the MM, design up encounters at varying degrees of difficulty for parties of all levels. I could accept the argument that the CR system fell apart at higher levels in 3e, but from my experience with 4e, they managed to perfect it by that point. So again I just don't see why they didn't decide to do it that way. It's not like there's the issue that XP is how dangerous it is (regardless of level) while CR is the minimum level that it's feasible to use against a party, since, based on the information we have, XP is determined by CR. So all they'd have to do is make CR be the metric to tie encounter design to (which would be supplemented by XP budgets, which, since XP is a function of CR, would be easy to make equivalent)

I'm not sure what the sarcasm blue is for. The difference between 2 encounters and 4 encounters is significant. How many encounters per day do you run? I don't even think 4e expected more than about 4.

It's not necessarily about what 4e did, since, in 4e each individual fight was longer, and more impactful. So I'd probably peg 4e's combat encounters to some multiple of 5e's (for simplicity's sake, say 2-to-1). With 5e, if I'm designing a series of encounters around something that's time sensitive (such as a cultist trying to summon an elder god or what have you) the decreased impact of each individual fight leads to decreased suspense built by each fight. So 4 5e fights might measure to the impact of 2 4e fights, meaning you'd need more fights in 5e to get a certain level of suspense, which is more than a 5e adventuring day could hold.

(As an aside, having to increase the number of combat encounters in 5e to match the individual impact of each 4e fight might seem like it would come with the 4e problem of bogging down the game too much with combat, but I'd disagree here; Even assuming the 2-to-1 conversion I had above, I've found in the playtest that 5e fights generally last 5-10 minutes. It seems in the finished game they might be longer, so I'll bump that to 10-15 minutes. Even with 2-to-1 conversion, that averages around 25 minutes, versus the ~an hour for 4e, so you still have a lot more time, beyond what 4e provided, for non-combat aspects.)