In my campaign, I've made some BBEGs for my PCs to fight over the final acts. I just put them at the level I though would present a challenge, but it's not an exact science of course to say a Level 15 character = CR 15. is there a good way to guesstimate what a CR would be for a player-made character?
CR of player characters isn’t an exact science, and player characters are glass cannons compared to monsters. You should just take the stats and plug them into a CR calculator to get the CR.
Apply these changes to a player character, and the CR will roughly equal the level. Then, make some tweaks to some numbers and you should be there:
Double the Hit Points, give advantage on saving throws against two of: (being blinded, charmed, frightened, paralyzed, poisoned, or stunned). Have 2 legendary actions, but can’t make the same one twice in one round, and can’t make multiple damaging actions twice in one round.
Attack (Half as many attacks, including bonus actions, rounded up)
Cantrip
Evade (Move half speed with Disengage)
Heal for 2 Hit Dice + 2*Con
Works for most classes, but most Rogues, Bards, and Artificers struggle in a solo fight.
I loosely based their healths on the DMG, and tweaked them with legendaries+cool items+some special features. Still, don't want them to be too hard or too easy; Kobold Fight Club is my general barometer.
But yeah, 3 BBEGs. 2-3 attacks per, 190-220HP, pretty high ACs. When they get to them there'll be some trash around them, but the main focus will be the one bad boss.
Typically, 4 characters of Level X have a Medium encounter against 1 creature of CRX. However, this doesn't work at all for turning NPCs into monsters.
Take the base stats of the NPC, and make them into a custom monsters which are much more simplified - you'll never remember everything that they can do otherwise. Focus only on their highest level spell slots and most damaging attacks.
This wil most likely take a not-inconsiderable amount of time, and could feel a bit daunting. Your other option might be to take an already existing NPC statblock, that closely resembles the traits and features that your PC-turned-BBE has, and adjust it's CR with the same method. I find it easier to play-doh statblocks around, YMMV.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
The safest method is to ignore CR and run a simulated combat; what matters is whether the PCs will win, and how much they get chewed up in the process, not nominal CR.
For a BBEG, I would also recommend drastically increasing the health of the enemy. CR does a decent job making the defences and damage output of the monster appropriate, but the encounter itself can still prove very short due to high damage output of players (particularly at higher levels) and low overall monster HP in 5e. You don’t want your final fight to be over in just a couple rounds or it will feel like a disappointing capstone to the campaign.
Simulated as in I pull up my PCs' sheets and play as them vs the BBEG? Time-consuming but certainly a good idea.
It's a useful exercise to go "okay, how much damage can my PCs dish out over one, two, three, four, five rounds", as that tells you how durable to make the monsters to achieve a given duration. Then go back through it in reverse: how fast can the BBEG drop a PC? What about multiple PCs?
Simulated as in I pull up my PCs' sheets and play as them vs the BBEG? Time-consuming but certainly a good idea.
It's a useful exercise to go "okay, how much damage can my PCs dish out over one, two, three, four, five rounds", as that tells you how durable to make the monsters to achieve a given duration. Then go back through it in reverse: how fast can the BBEG drop a PC? What about multiple PCs?
Strange... it sounds like you're suggesting that one should assess the average offensive and defensive capabilities of an NPC so that you might balance a combat encounter against a group of a known number of PCs at a particular level.
That sounds vaguely like:
Average Challenge Rating. The monster’s final challenge rating is the average of its defensive and offensive challenge ratings. Round the average up or down to the nearest challenge rating to determine your monster’s final challenge rating. For example, if the creature’s defensive challenge rating is 2 and its offensive rating is 3, its final rating is 3.
With the final challenge rating, you can determine the monster’s proficiency bonus using the Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating table. Use the Experience Points by Challenge Rating table to determine how much XP the monster is worth. A monster of challenge rating 0 is worth 0 XP if it poses no threat. Otherwise, it is worth 10 XP.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Strange... it sounds like you're suggesting that one should assess the average offensive and defensive capabilities of an NPC so that you might balance a combat encounter against a group of a known number of PCs at a particular level.
Your modeled simulation may actually work. Not disputing that.
I accept that you don't care for, and have a different assumption of how encounter balancing should work. However, what you're suggesting is already enumerated in an easily followable outline that also works.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Your modeled simulation may actually work. Not disputing that.
I accept that you don't care for, and have a different assumption of how encounter balancing should work. However, what you're suggesting is already enumerated in an easily followable outline that also works.
The implication that CR "also works" is, frankly, laughable. CR is notoriously hard to balance, particularly if you are not allowing players to mix and match from any sourcebook. CR will never be able to account for things like making a sphere of prismatic wall above an enemy and reversing gravity then ending concentration, forcing the enemy through four instances of prismatic wall. Or an assassin rogue who has manipulated multiclasses to the point they can do hundreds upon hundreds of points of damage in a surprise round. Or... Oh, no, wait. While the really broken things certainly make CR look ridiculous, a party of decent players who work together well is really all you need to tear through "appropriate" CR challenges.
CR is really only useful for giving one an idea of relative power between monsters, not between monsters and the player. If you know an encounter of CRX was not powerful enough or too powerful, you can make the next one CRX +/- Y. It's much better to compare CR between your own encounters, rather than compare CR to players... and even that is not a perfect system.
Your modeled simulation may actually work. Not disputing that.
I accept that you don't care for, and have a different assumption of how encounter balancing should work. However, what you're suggesting is already enumerated in an easily followable outline that also works.
The implication that CR "also works" is, frankly, laughable. CR is notoriously hard to balance, particularly if you are not allowing players to mix and match from any sourcebook. CR will never be able to account for things like making a sphere of prismatic wall above an enemy and reversing gravity then ending concentration, forcing the enemy through four instances of prismatic wall. Or an assassin rogue who has manipulated multiclasses to the point they can do hundreds upon hundreds of points of damage in a surprise round. Or... Oh, no, wait. While the really broken things certainly make CR look ridiculous, a party of decent players who work together well is really all you need to tear through "appropriate" CR challenges.
CR is really only useful for giving one an idea of relative power between monsters, not between monsters and the player. If you know an encounter of CRX was not powerful enough or too powerful, you can make the next one CRX +/- Y. It's much better to compare CR between your own encounters, rather than compare CR to players... and even that is not a perfect system.
The comic expectation that encounters need to be tuned to computer simulations for definite outcomes is the only portion of this that is laughable. Your last paragraph runs true to the actual expectation of Encounter Balance and CR. Probability of outcome. Including the caveat that your imperfect system is better than another imperfect system does little to hide the fact that you understand this as well.
I know full well that the Encounter Balance system is imperfect and I've come to accept that the purpose is for the outcome of the encounter to be discovered, not dictated. I simply fail to see the point of fixing the engine on a bicycle. The Encounter Balance system works for it's intended purpose, not for the purpose that some try to use it for.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Your modeled simulation may actually work. Not disputing that.
I accept that you don't care for, and have a different assumption of how encounter balancing should work. However, what you're suggesting is already enumerated in an easily followable outline that also works.
The implication that CR "also works" is, frankly, laughable. CR is notoriously hard to balance, particularly if you are not allowing players to mix and match from any sourcebook. CR will never be able to account for things like making a sphere of prismatic wall above an enemy and reversing gravity then ending concentration, forcing the enemy through four instances of prismatic wall. Or an assassin rogue who has manipulated multiclasses to the point they can do hundreds upon hundreds of points of damage in a surprise round. Or... Oh, no, wait. While the really broken things certainly make CR look ridiculous, a party of decent players who work together well is really all you need to tear through "appropriate" CR challenges.
CR is really only useful for giving one an idea of relative power between monsters, not between monsters and the player. If you know an encounter of CRX was not powerful enough or too powerful, you can make the next one CRX +/- Y. It's much better to compare CR between your own encounters, rather than compare CR to players... and even that is not a perfect system.
The comic expectation that encounters need to be tuned to computer simulations for definite outcomes is the only portion of this that is laughable. Your last paragraph runs true to the actual expectation of Encounter Balance and CR. Probability of outcome. Including the caveat that your imperfect system is better than another imperfect system does little to hide the fact that you understand this as well.
I know full well that the Encounter Balance system is imperfect and I've come to accept that the purpose is for the outcome of the encounter to be discovered, not dictated. I simply fail to see the point of fixing the engine on a bicycle. The Encounter Balance system works for it's intended purpose, not for the purpose that some try to use it for.
I would never play test my encounters, but I’m also an established DM who has a fairly good grasp of party power, what monsters are capable of, and who feels comfortable adjusting fights mid-combat for things that are or are not working.
This thread is created by a DM who clearly feels they need some help on the balancing front, and who does not want the BBEG - presumably the capstone of their entire campaign - to be disappointment. If one does not have the instinctive understanding of “here is the type of fight I need for my particular group”, playtesting the fight (particularly if it is only one singular fight that is the most important in the entire campaign) can be a good idea to get at least a baseline for your party, which you can use as a building block for other encounters.
Again, not a tool I would use, but I can see how it would be helpful to others, and my inclination would be to give an OP asking for help all the available tools at their disposal, and let them choose what works best for their DMing style.
You could maybe use the quick encounter tables in Xanathar's guide to everything if the npc is made as if it were a pc. See what CR is good for a one on one fight for a character that level and choose that.
The best way to really analyze your monster's output against players is to just go over it's sheet and evaluate how it works, what are it's stats, how does it play, etc. For example, a Lich is CR 21. It has extremely high Intelligence, high constitution, charisma, and dex, and abover average wisdom and strength. therefore, it relies mostly on preparation, planning, scheming, and knowing the party (intelligence related skills), in order to win a fight. It's not a tank, especially not with 135 hp at level 21. However, we also have to look at other defensive abilities. LEGENDARY RESISTANCE! huge buffer right there. Warlock tries to drop a massive damage spell? Nah. Wizard tries hold monster? Pass. Legendary resistance is extremely powerful, so take that into account in relation to your spellcasters. speaking of, a lich also has high level spellcasting (this is an example so i won't go into it all) but you would look at each spell, how they function, and how they can hurt the party/help the lich. the lich also has a powerful melee, paralyzing touch, which is in effect hold person that's easier to hit with. This assures that the barbarian will think twice before getting too close. You would also take into account legendary actions (which buff the lich's action economy, something wizard's usually suck at), and resistances, etc. The point is, every monster is different, and you have to take different things into account. A few problems a lot of people run into when designing a BBEG encounter is not giving it enough health, and not having enough actions. If it's just a lich against a level 20 party, they will MELT it. But if you throw in some minions, double it's health, and give it a lair, now we're crackin'. I used to run a thread (tagged in my sig) that has some tips on how to do everything I mentioned above. check it out for more info.
All helpful, thanks! The DMG guide on general CR tips + the comments here have had me retweaking the BBEGs. Since the PCs will encounter them linearly, I'm hoping that the final BBEG construction is reflective of lessons-learned from the fights preceding it. Don't want them to be impossible, do want them to be difficult so the PCs have to really think about their moves.
All helpful, thanks! The DMG guide on general CR tips + the comments here have had me retweaking the BBEGs. Since the PCs will encounter them linearly, I'm hoping that the final BBEG construction is reflective of lessons-learned from the fights preceding it. Don't want them to be impossible, do want them to be difficult so the PCs have to really think about their moves.
Attaboy. Don't TPK, just make it fun. That's difficult to do but you're on the best track. Hope it goes well!
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Updog
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In my campaign, I've made some BBEGs for my PCs to fight over the final acts. I just put them at the level I though would present a challenge, but it's not an exact science of course to say a Level 15 character = CR 15. is there a good way to guesstimate what a CR would be for a player-made character?
CR of player characters isn’t an exact science, and player characters are glass cannons compared to monsters. You should just take the stats and plug them into a CR calculator to get the CR.
Apply these changes to a player character, and the CR will roughly equal the level. Then, make some tweaks to some numbers and you should be there:
Double the Hit Points, give advantage on saving throws against two of: (being blinded, charmed, frightened, paralyzed, poisoned, or stunned). Have 2 legendary actions, but can’t make the same one twice in one round, and can’t make multiple damaging actions twice in one round.
Works for most classes, but most Rogues, Bards, and Artificers struggle in a solo fight.
How many do you have? I have a spreadsheet that use. I enter the monster's information and it gives me a CR according to the DMG.
I loosely based their healths on the DMG, and tweaked them with legendaries+cool items+some special features. Still, don't want them to be too hard or too easy; Kobold Fight Club is my general barometer.
But yeah, 3 BBEGs. 2-3 attacks per, 190-220HP, pretty high ACs. When they get to them there'll be some trash around them, but the main focus will be the one bad boss.
The information for how to do this is in the DMG.
Typically, 4 characters of Level X have a Medium encounter against 1 creature of CRX. However, this doesn't work at all for turning NPCs into monsters.
Take the base stats of the NPC, and make them into a custom monsters which are much more simplified - you'll never remember everything that they can do otherwise. Focus only on their highest level spell slots and most damaging attacks.
As @Sanvael has already mentioned, the safest solution might be to run the character through the Creating Quick Monster Stats in the DMG.
This wil most likely take a not-inconsiderable amount of time, and could feel a bit daunting. Your other option might be to take an already existing NPC statblock, that closely resembles the traits and features that your PC-turned-BBE has, and adjust it's CR with the same method. I find it easier to play-doh statblocks around, YMMV.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
The safest method is to ignore CR and run a simulated combat; what matters is whether the PCs will win, and how much they get chewed up in the process, not nominal CR.
Simulated as in I pull up my PCs' sheets and play as them vs the BBEG? Time-consuming but certainly a good idea.
For a BBEG, I would also recommend drastically increasing the health of the enemy. CR does a decent job making the defences and damage output of the monster appropriate, but the encounter itself can still prove very short due to high damage output of players (particularly at higher levels) and low overall monster HP in 5e. You don’t want your final fight to be over in just a couple rounds or it will feel like a disappointing capstone to the campaign.
It's a useful exercise to go "okay, how much damage can my PCs dish out over one, two, three, four, five rounds", as that tells you how durable to make the monsters to achieve a given duration. Then go back through it in reverse: how fast can the BBEG drop a PC? What about multiple PCs?
Strange... it sounds like you're suggesting that one should assess the average offensive and defensive capabilities of an NPC so that you might balance a combat encounter against a group of a known number of PCs at a particular level.
That sounds vaguely like:
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
The difference is: the modeling actually works.
Your modeled simulation may actually work. Not disputing that.
I accept that you don't care for, and have a different assumption of how encounter balancing should work. However, what you're suggesting is already enumerated in an easily followable outline that also works.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
The implication that CR "also works" is, frankly, laughable. CR is notoriously hard to balance, particularly if you are not allowing players to mix and match from any sourcebook. CR will never be able to account for things like making a sphere of prismatic wall above an enemy and reversing gravity then ending concentration, forcing the enemy through four instances of prismatic wall. Or an assassin rogue who has manipulated multiclasses to the point they can do hundreds upon hundreds of points of damage in a surprise round. Or... Oh, no, wait. While the really broken things certainly make CR look ridiculous, a party of decent players who work together well is really all you need to tear through "appropriate" CR challenges.
CR is really only useful for giving one an idea of relative power between monsters, not between monsters and the player. If you know an encounter of CRX was not powerful enough or too powerful, you can make the next one CRX +/- Y. It's much better to compare CR between your own encounters, rather than compare CR to players... and even that is not a perfect system.
The comic expectation that encounters need to be tuned to computer simulations for definite outcomes is the only portion of this that is laughable. Your last paragraph runs true to the actual expectation of Encounter Balance and CR. Probability of outcome. Including the caveat that your imperfect system is better than another imperfect system does little to hide the fact that you understand this as well.
I know full well that the Encounter Balance system is imperfect and I've come to accept that the purpose is for the outcome of the encounter to be discovered, not dictated. I simply fail to see the point of fixing the engine on a bicycle. The Encounter Balance system works for it's intended purpose, not for the purpose that some try to use it for.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I would never play test my encounters, but I’m also an established DM who has a fairly good grasp of party power, what monsters are capable of, and who feels comfortable adjusting fights mid-combat for things that are or are not working.
This thread is created by a DM who clearly feels they need some help on the balancing front, and who does not want the BBEG - presumably the capstone of their entire campaign - to be disappointment. If one does not have the instinctive understanding of “here is the type of fight I need for my particular group”, playtesting the fight (particularly if it is only one singular fight that is the most important in the entire campaign) can be a good idea to get at least a baseline for your party, which you can use as a building block for other encounters.
Again, not a tool I would use, but I can see how it would be helpful to others, and my inclination would be to give an OP asking for help all the available tools at their disposal, and let them choose what works best for their DMing style.
You could maybe use the quick encounter tables in Xanathar's guide to everything if the npc is made as if it were a pc. See what CR is good for a one on one fight for a character that level and choose that.
The best way to really analyze your monster's output against players is to just go over it's sheet and evaluate how it works, what are it's stats, how does it play, etc. For example, a Lich is CR 21. It has extremely high Intelligence, high constitution, charisma, and dex, and abover average wisdom and strength. therefore, it relies mostly on preparation, planning, scheming, and knowing the party (intelligence related skills), in order to win a fight. It's not a tank, especially not with 135 hp at level 21. However, we also have to look at other defensive abilities. LEGENDARY RESISTANCE! huge buffer right there. Warlock tries to drop a massive damage spell? Nah. Wizard tries hold monster? Pass. Legendary resistance is extremely powerful, so take that into account in relation to your spellcasters. speaking of, a lich also has high level spellcasting (this is an example so i won't go into it all) but you would look at each spell, how they function, and how they can hurt the party/help the lich. the lich also has a powerful melee, paralyzing touch, which is in effect hold person that's easier to hit with. This assures that the barbarian will think twice before getting too close. You would also take into account legendary actions (which buff the lich's action economy, something wizard's usually suck at), and resistances, etc. The point is, every monster is different, and you have to take different things into account. A few problems a lot of people run into when designing a BBEG encounter is not giving it enough health, and not having enough actions. If it's just a lich against a level 20 party, they will MELT it. But if you throw in some minions, double it's health, and give it a lair, now we're crackin'. I used to run a thread (tagged in my sig) that has some tips on how to do everything I mentioned above. check it out for more info.
Updog
All helpful, thanks! The DMG guide on general CR tips + the comments here have had me retweaking the BBEGs. Since the PCs will encounter them linearly, I'm hoping that the final BBEG construction is reflective of lessons-learned from the fights preceding it. Don't want them to be impossible, do want them to be difficult so the PCs have to really think about their moves.
Attaboy. Don't TPK, just make it fun. That's difficult to do but you're on the best track. Hope it goes well!
Updog