I'm a first time dm, but I've been playing the game for 5ish years. Apart from a little bit of running lost mines of Pand. I haven't dm'd before at all and I'm about to be running a homebrewed world campaign.
I was having session 0s with my different players, mostly so I can practice, but also to get a feel for their charries, etc. And so far have done the grave cleric and the bloodhunter and I'm totally at a loss about how to properly balance encounters.
Using basic encounter generator math (like the dnd beyond, etc), the numbers say that the encounter I span up for the clerics session 0 was deadly- only it very much wasn't and he breezed through it no problem, such that I even quickly upgraded the 'boss monster' into being a stronger one.
Based on that I made the bloodhunters have more enemies/harder, (he pretty much did the lost mines 4 goblin fight + 2 bug bear) and nearly killed the poor guy-having to pull in a deux ex machina cleric to save him.
I still have to do the wizard and the fighter and I'm really at a loss as to what the 'right' balance is. Obviously all classes have different pros and cons (the cleric can heal himself, he didn't need to, but he can),
They are level 2, and when they are all together will have a party of 4, and right now I'm not certain that their first group encounter is appropriately tiered; a handful of bullywugs and a merrow as the big bad.
This problem has been giving me so much trouble. I've been wading through this swamp for months now. It keeps me awake at night. I kind of went off on a tangent in the spoiler tag. I think it answers your question, but maybe not in the direct sense.
I think the best piece of advice I got from this site about it is that you are not there to solve the party's problems. You're there to present the problems. It's up to the party to solve the party's problems. What I'm starting to realize (With my party, but maybe it's a universal problem) is that we've been trained by video games to see a group of enemies and KNOW that they can wade in there and kill everything. Maybe it'll be close, but they know you don't want to kill them, so they can safely assume they should win this fight. If things get dicey (Oh D&D pun, nice) then something went wrong; it's either your fault or their fault. That's not a good way of thinking.
The thing about video games is they've had hours of testing to see if this fight is balanced. We don't have that luxury as DMs. We have tables and guesses. "They're against 5 CR 1/4 goblins. What could go wrong? You're down? What do you mean you're down?"
Also, we have Dice. No amount of skill or tactics or magic can save you from Dice. Sometimes your players are a god. 20's everywhere. Their enemies all bow before their high rolls as the DM rolls one after one for the might beasts before them. Sometimes you can't walk a straight line to save your life. And there's not method to prevent that. Some nights are just bad.
But that's not your problem as GM. You give them problems. They come up with solutions. My party's (Most party's?) solution is to hit it until it stops hitting them. Why didn't they run away? Just because you make a combat encounter doesn't mean they HAVE to kill everything. "This fight is too hard for us for the level we're at! Why would you make it so hard?" "... It wouldn't have been hard if you did x,y, and z. You didn't have to fight it. You could have done anything in the world. YOU saw 4 goblins and 2 bug bears. YOU thought you could handle it. YOU were wrong."
Best I can say is to not be afraid to be steamrolled. It doesn't hurt anything to let your players feel badass when they womp you. For practice, I'd say keep doing the encounters as the calculators dictate. It should even out to average fair fights with a steamroll here or there and a fight to the death here or there. Tinker around with adding enemies or enemies with special abilities. Use "Save or Fail" spells on your high AC players to make them feel excited too. Maybe if your dice are on fire and the monsters keep rolling crit after crit keep a couple of those to yourself. The only things you can really fudge are monster attack rolls, damage, and remaining health. Observant players will notice that their 15 didn't hit earlier and it did hit now, so you can't really mess with monster AC mid-fight.
If you see the fight turning south for your party, instead of a deus ex machina, suddenly their attacks seem to be doing a lot less damage. Weird, the suspense is still on. Suddenly, your 6 damage is really messing up the monsters where it was nothing earlier. The DM just got more descriptive with their injuries, no big deal.
I hope this helped.
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Hello!
I'm a first time dm, but I've been playing the game for 5ish years. Apart from a little bit of running lost mines of Pand. I haven't dm'd before at all and I'm about to be running a homebrewed world campaign.
I was having session 0s with my different players, mostly so I can practice, but also to get a feel for their charries, etc. And so far have done the grave cleric and the bloodhunter and I'm totally at a loss about how to properly balance encounters.
Using basic encounter generator math (like the dnd beyond, etc), the numbers say that the encounter I span up for the clerics session 0 was deadly- only it very much wasn't and he breezed through it no problem, such that I even quickly upgraded the 'boss monster' into being a stronger one.
Based on that I made the bloodhunters have more enemies/harder, (he pretty much did the lost mines 4 goblin fight + 2 bug bear) and nearly killed the poor guy-having to pull in a deux ex machina cleric to save him.
I still have to do the wizard and the fighter and I'm really at a loss as to what the 'right' balance is. Obviously all classes have different pros and cons (the cleric can heal himself, he didn't need to, but he can),
They are level 2, and when they are all together will have a party of 4, and right now I'm not certain that their first group encounter is appropriately tiered; a handful of bullywugs and a merrow as the big bad.
tldr: How do I make balanced fights? xDD
This problem has been giving me so much trouble. I've been wading through this swamp for months now. It keeps me awake at night. I kind of went off on a tangent in the spoiler tag. I think it answers your question, but maybe not in the direct sense.
I think the best piece of advice I got from this site about it is that you are not there to solve the party's problems. You're there to present the problems. It's up to the party to solve the party's problems. What I'm starting to realize (With my party, but maybe it's a universal problem) is that we've been trained by video games to see a group of enemies and KNOW that they can wade in there and kill everything. Maybe it'll be close, but they know you don't want to kill them, so they can safely assume they should win this fight. If things get dicey (Oh D&D pun, nice) then something went wrong; it's either your fault or their fault. That's not a good way of thinking.
The thing about video games is they've had hours of testing to see if this fight is balanced. We don't have that luxury as DMs. We have tables and guesses. "They're against 5 CR 1/4 goblins. What could go wrong? You're down? What do you mean you're down?"
Also, we have Dice. No amount of skill or tactics or magic can save you from Dice. Sometimes your players are a god. 20's everywhere. Their enemies all bow before their high rolls as the DM rolls one after one for the might beasts before them. Sometimes you can't walk a straight line to save your life. And there's not method to prevent that. Some nights are just bad.
But that's not your problem as GM. You give them problems. They come up with solutions. My party's (Most party's?) solution is to hit it until it stops hitting them. Why didn't they run away? Just because you make a combat encounter doesn't mean they HAVE to kill everything. "This fight is too hard for us for the level we're at! Why would you make it so hard?" "... It wouldn't have been hard if you did x,y, and z. You didn't have to fight it. You could have done anything in the world. YOU saw 4 goblins and 2 bug bears. YOU thought you could handle it. YOU were wrong."
Best I can say is to not be afraid to be steamrolled. It doesn't hurt anything to let your players feel badass when they womp you. For practice, I'd say keep doing the encounters as the calculators dictate. It should even out to average fair fights with a steamroll here or there and a fight to the death here or there. Tinker around with adding enemies or enemies with special abilities. Use "Save or Fail" spells on your high AC players to make them feel excited too. Maybe if your dice are on fire and the monsters keep rolling crit after crit keep a couple of those to yourself. The only things you can really fudge are monster attack rolls, damage, and remaining health. Observant players will notice that their 15 didn't hit earlier and it did hit now, so you can't really mess with monster AC mid-fight.
If you see the fight turning south for your party, instead of a deus ex machina, suddenly their attacks seem to be doing a lot less damage. Weird, the suspense is still on. Suddenly, your 6 damage is really messing up the monsters where it was nothing earlier. The DM just got more descriptive with their injuries, no big deal.
I hope this helped.