I am building a custom random encounter for you group. Aimed at the warlock to return him to the cult the left. I custom created a level 4 fighter, cleric, rogue and wizard. RAW, nothing fancy. What would this groups CR be. I want the encounter hard but no TPK.
To pre-empt almost every answer you'll get on here: Don't use player characters as monsters. They work differently, PCs are meant to have resources which wear down through the day, and monsters are meant to last less than a minute and put up a good fight whilst they're doing so.
Pick analogues instead: Fighter could be a Thug, a Bandit Captain, or a Bandit, depending on the needed CR. The Wizard could be one of the wizards in Mordenkainens, or a reskinned anything with spell casting - even a faerie dragon. Remember that regardless of the stat-block, anything is what you as the DM describe it.
I am building a custom random encounter for you group. Aimed at the warlock to return him to the cult the left. I custom created a level 4 fighter, cleric, rogue and wizard. RAW, nothing fancy. What would this groups CR be. I want the encounter hard but no TPK.
What level is the party?
You can generally have at most 1 monster made using PC rules to go against the party. Everyone else needs to be much lower.
For Example if you have a fighter and a rogue vs a fighter and a rogue of anywhere near the same level, combat is going to be a 50% chance based on dice rolls. You are just as likely to end up with a TPK as not. You would need to go 3-4 levels below the PCs at which point the encounter isn't going to be anywhere near challenging.
I would probably design the Wizard, and use stat blocks that already exist for everyone else. The Wizard needs to be a lower level than the PCs, Especially with AOE affects. I would also increase the Wizards HP, and make sure to carefully select the spells he can cast. I'd also limit his castings. He can cast one really awesome AOE once and that is it.
The classes and monsters aren't balanced enough for a player level to consistently correspond to a certain CR. Player stats per level don't scale the same as monsters. Players tend to be glass cannons making combat between two sets of player characters very short and dependent on who goes first. The other issue is that all abilities adjust CR and players have allot of them. Every spell or class feature could conceivably changes power levels and they aren't all equal. Some damaging spells are 2/3 times stronger than recommendations in the DMG and some control abilities are devastating. So you need to look at each ability and spell individually. What's worse is that you probably won't use 75% of the stat block so the majority of the effort looking through player abilities to estimate their power will be wasted .
My advice is run a monster stat block and simply add 1 or 2 player abilities to it. That way you can add only what you will use and you can simply look at the abilities to see how they would effect the existing cr of the monster.
For example the cult fanatic is similar to a level 4 cleric , a spy is similar to a level 4 rogue , illusionist is similar to a level 4 wizard, thug is similar to a level 4 fighter. As you can see cr varies from 1/2-3 and they all change if you add other class abilities to them.
I am building a custom random encounter for you group. Aimed at the warlock to return him to the cult the left. I custom created a level 4 fighter, cleric, rogue and wizard. RAW, nothing fancy. What would this groups CR be. I want the encounter hard but no TPK.
To pre-empt almost every answer you'll get on here: Don't use player characters as monsters. They work differently, PCs are meant to have resources which wear down through the day, and monsters are meant to last less than a minute and put up a good fight whilst they're doing so.
Pick analogues instead: Fighter could be a Thug, a Bandit Captain, or a Bandit, depending on the needed CR. The Wizard could be one of the wizards in Mordenkainens, or a reskinned anything with spell casting - even a faerie dragon. Remember that regardless of the stat-block, anything is what you as the DM describe it.
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What level is the party?
You can generally have at most 1 monster made using PC rules to go against the party. Everyone else needs to be much lower.
For Example if you have a fighter and a rogue vs a fighter and a rogue of anywhere near the same level, combat is going to be a 50% chance based on dice rolls. You are just as likely to end up with a TPK as not. You would need to go 3-4 levels below the PCs at which point the encounter isn't going to be anywhere near challenging.
I would probably design the Wizard, and use stat blocks that already exist for everyone else. The Wizard needs to be a lower level than the PCs, Especially with AOE affects. I would also increase the Wizards HP, and make sure to carefully select the spells he can cast. I'd also limit his castings. He can cast one really awesome AOE once and that is it.
Truth be told, I mostly eyeball it. A basic guideline I use is
1: Make an encounter that you think would be balanced
2: Make it more difficult
Players are smart, and unless they are new to the game, they'll probably find some way to outfox your enemies.
Best Spells: https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/2190706-applause, https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/2047204-big-ol-switcheroo, https://www.dndbeyond.com/spells/2188701-cerwicks-copper-cables
Best Feats: https://www.dndbeyond.com/feats/1512461-soapbox-revised
Best Monsters: https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/3775489-jar-jar-binks, https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/3860024-spare-ribs
The classes and monsters aren't balanced enough for a player level to consistently correspond to a certain CR. Player stats per level don't scale the same as monsters. Players tend to be glass cannons making combat between two sets of player characters very short and dependent on who goes first. The other issue is that all abilities adjust CR and players have allot of them. Every spell or class feature could conceivably changes power levels and they aren't all equal. Some damaging spells are 2/3 times stronger than recommendations in the DMG and some control abilities are devastating. So you need to look at each ability and spell individually. What's worse is that you probably won't use 75% of the stat block so the majority of the effort looking through player abilities to estimate their power will be wasted .
My advice is run a monster stat block and simply add 1 or 2 player abilities to it. That way you can add only what you will use and you can simply look at the abilities to see how they would effect the existing cr of the monster.
For example the cult fanatic is similar to a level 4 cleric , a spy is similar to a level 4 rogue , illusionist is similar to a level 4 wizard, thug is similar to a level 4 fighter. As you can see cr varies from 1/2-3 and they all change if you add other class abilities to them.
Thank you all. This has been very helpful.