I'm trying to calculate some encounters using the new rules, and am finding an issue with the 3 difficulty level system.
At what point should one consider an encounter "Trivial" as per the 2014 rules (IE: so low level that it's not worth treating as difficult) or Deadly (IE: So high level that it's practically guaranteed to TPK).
I didn't see anything clarifying where the floor and ceiling of the difficulty are, just that "lower than X is easy, higher than Y is hard."
Use the following guidelines to create a combat encounter of a desired level of difficulty.
Three categories describe the range of encounter difficulty:
Low Difficulty. An encounter of low difficulty is likely to have one or two scary moments for the players, but their characters should emerge victorious with no casualties. One or more of them might need to use healing resources, however. As a rough guideline, a single monster generally presents a low-difficulty challenge for a party of four characters whose level equals the monster’s CR.
Moderate Difficulty. Absent healing and other resources, an encounter of moderate difficulty could go badly for the adventurers. Weaker characters might get taken out of the fight, and there’s a slim chance that one or more characters might die.
High Difficulty. A high-difficulty encounter could be lethal for one or more characters. To survive it, the characters will need smart tactics, quick thinking, and maybe even a little luck.
***
And then there's a table then gives a rule of thumb for the xp budget to match those levels.
I assume you're looking at the same things though, so, what more specifically doesn't quite make sense yet?
I'm trying to calculate some encounters using the new rules, and am finding an issue with the 3 difficulty level system.
At what point should one consider an encounter "Trivial" as per the 2014 rules (IE: so low level that it's not worth treating as difficult) or Deadly (IE: So high level that it's practically guaranteed to TPK).
I didn't see anything clarifying where the floor and ceiling of the difficulty are, just that "lower than X is easy, higher than Y is hard."
Am I missing something?
Strictly speaking deadly is if you have more XP than the high difficulty allows. In reality, the new system isn't much better than the old system
In every case the PCs you have and how many encounters you have is far more important to what is deadly then the XP guidelines offer.
Easy should be easy to figure out. Any encounters that the PCs can just sleep through are easy.
I’ve had encounters that were obviously deadly and the only way to get involved with them and die was to be stupid, and yes, I killed the whole party. This particular group had a habit of ignoring every single sign, including NPC’s chasing them down roads telling them not to do the thing they’re gonna do and they did it anyway.
other times there’s been hard encounters that have turned extremely deadly to bad roles, two or three missed hits two or three hits on the other side can swing a battle, a long way. if it’s just dumb luck as a DM I’ve had God’s interfere I’ve backed off on reinforcements that kind of thing and let the party fight their way out of it. Some of those have been the most memorable fights I’ve ever played.
there’s also times where you have new players with low-level characters that an encounter is trivial five cobalts against five player characters where it’s gone south, the same thing as above, you can interfere in such ways that lets the party fight out of it or you can let the monsters just play dumb and not kill the people that are weak or whatever.
I’ve also had fights that were hard turn trivial on the parties behalf, strictly because of smarts and planning. I don’t adjust those the party thought it out the party strategized and made something that was gonna be very hard. Very easy. That’s a win.
in addition I’ve had hard fights that turned tribute because the party rolled for crits in a row. That’s were the DND gods work sometimes.
if I’m really not sure how I’ve set an encounter up and what I’m doing is gonna affect things all the encounter up and play a one shot with friends outside the group or another DM group just to see how it rolls. I’ve done that a couple of times and found some glaring issues that made the encounter easy as well as a couple of times I’ve done that and there is no winning the encounter and I’ve either left those with obvious don’t go in here, signs and another way out and or adjusted them down.
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Hey everyone!
I'm trying to calculate some encounters using the new rules, and am finding an issue with the 3 difficulty level system.
At what point should one consider an encounter "Trivial" as per the 2014 rules (IE: so low level that it's not worth treating as difficult) or Deadly (IE: So high level that it's practically guaranteed to TPK).
I didn't see anything clarifying where the floor and ceiling of the difficulty are, just that "lower than X is easy, higher than Y is hard."
Am I missing something?
Not sure what exactly you're asking.
New DMG lays out the three levels of difficulty:
Combat Encounter Difficulty
Use the following guidelines to create a combat encounter of a desired level of difficulty.
Three categories describe the range of encounter difficulty:
Low Difficulty. An encounter of low difficulty is likely to have one or two scary moments for the players, but their characters should emerge victorious with no casualties. One or more of them might need to use healing resources, however. As a rough guideline, a single monster generally presents a low-difficulty challenge for a party of four characters whose level equals the monster’s CR.
Moderate Difficulty. Absent healing and other resources, an encounter of moderate difficulty could go badly for the adventurers. Weaker characters might get taken out of the fight, and there’s a slim chance that one or more characters might die.
High Difficulty. A high-difficulty encounter could be lethal for one or more characters. To survive it, the characters will need smart tactics, quick thinking, and maybe even a little luck.
***
And then there's a table then gives a rule of thumb for the xp budget to match those levels.
I assume you're looking at the same things though, so, what more specifically doesn't quite make sense yet?
Strictly speaking deadly is if you have more XP than the high difficulty allows. In reality, the new system isn't much better than the old system
In every case the PCs you have and how many encounters you have is far more important to what is deadly then the XP guidelines offer.
Easy should be easy to figure out. Any encounters that the PCs can just sleep through are easy.
Technically Deadly is the second highest combat difficulty on dndbeyond, the highest is "This would kill Tiamat", a thousand times harder than Deadly
it also depends what you’re trying to do.
I’ve had encounters that were obviously deadly and the only way to get involved with them and die was to be stupid, and yes, I killed the whole party. This particular group had a habit of ignoring every single sign, including NPC’s chasing them down roads telling them not to do the thing they’re gonna do and they did it anyway.
other times there’s been hard encounters that have turned extremely deadly to bad roles, two or three missed hits two or three hits on the other side can swing a battle, a long way. if it’s just dumb luck as a DM I’ve had God’s interfere I’ve backed off on reinforcements that kind of thing and let the party fight their way out of it. Some of those have been the most memorable fights I’ve ever played.
there’s also times where you have new players with low-level characters that an encounter is trivial five cobalts against five player characters where it’s gone south, the same thing as above, you can interfere in such ways that lets the party fight out of it or you can let the monsters just play dumb and not kill the people that are weak or whatever.
I’ve also had fights that were hard turn trivial on the parties behalf, strictly because of smarts and planning. I don’t adjust those the party thought it out the party strategized and made something that was gonna be very hard. Very easy. That’s a win.
in addition I’ve had hard fights that turned tribute because the party rolled for crits in a row. That’s were the DND gods work sometimes.
if I’m really not sure how I’ve set an encounter up and what I’m doing is gonna affect things all the encounter up and play a one shot with friends outside the group or another DM group just to see how it rolls. I’ve done that a couple of times and found some glaring issues that made the encounter easy as well as a couple of times I’ve done that and there is no winning the encounter and I’ve either left those with obvious don’t go in here, signs and another way out and or adjusted them down.