Im running a game through hoard of the dragon queen and I currently have six players in which I allowed stats to be rolled in front of me. Currently they are owning every deadly encounter I throw their way and I was curious if there was a way to account for a pc’s “Cr” based off the increase in Ac and attack much like a dm would do to adjust a monsters CR based upon the same thing in the DMG on page 273?
Hoard of the Dragon Queen is ideal for 4 characters, as opposed to 6-- two additional turns are likely what is making the biggest difference for you. I might recommend giving a "boss" monster a legendary action (described here) or adding a some lower CR minions to a fight to increase the number of actions that the enemies get.
Just going to have to make adjustments. I run into this now and then with my group. There are all sorts of ways to go about this. One you could simply add more baddies or just use something a bit more challenging. Or give the current monster something interesting. Like a breath weapon. Again, there are all kinds of ways to handle it. I think the biggest factor is knowing your players/characters. If you have a group of glass cannons then you know they could wipe the floor with a CR that would give most a challenge. Just keep in mind how much damage the group can handle as well. Toss some skill challenges at the players. Mix it up. If you find that you gave the group something that they cannot handle then just reduce the HP/challenge of the encounter and end it early. You are the DM. I see this issue more with a group of characters that are very min-maxed, but thats not to say that it dont happen with averagely rolled characters.
Yeah I’m not against player characters being/feeling powerful. In fact I’m quite the opposite but I’m more concerned about the speed in which they are leveling as opposed to how they stomp encounters. For example it’s hoard of the dragon queen and they have done super well (and I don’t throw them a bone) in encounters where they should run and are lv 3 before even completing the sally port, the mill, or the duel, even the dragon “attack” . This is likely me throwing encounters after encounter at them in order for it to feel like a real siege as opposed to what it is in HotDQ which feels lackluster (having played it)
You may want to swap to "Milestone" leveling as opposed to XP, in that case-- That way they can level when they reach story moments, and you don't have to worry about how many encounters you're throwing at them vs the XP they're gaining.
The Encounter Builder Alpha can help here as well. Put in the monsters, and the original planned party mix of 4 characters at the appropriate level. Then change the party make up, and then add monsters as needed until the difficulty matches again.
But even then; some party compositions might require tuning. Its a different feel if there are no healers, and no potions, vs. two healing casters in a party of 5. If they are having too easy of a time at the calculated difficulty, try adding enough monsters to put it at the next one.
I would be careful about flooding the fights with a lot of monsters, vs a couple of heavy hitters. I find the later works better for most of my encounters, and I like keeping them from Medium or Hard. Deadly requires a screw up.
I generally run with a group of 6. I have found that adding number of mobs can quickly turn deadly if they are not controller focused. However, I have shifted creatures to having max hp and it seems to balance out the encounters pretty good.
I have found that Cr can sometimes just not work. Example: my party of 3 level 5s destroyed my fight with 3 CR 1 monsters 4 CR 1/4 monsters and a CR 4 boss. I would avoid relying too heavily on CR, I would just go with your gut here.
CR is only part of the story when it comes to encounter building. Terrain, tactics, and the tools in the stat blocks can really change the course of battle when used right.
Tactics and Strategy:
Not every creature will stand toe to toe with the party and fight to the death. Sometimes they run when they realize that the fight is not going to go in their favor. Sometimes they retreat and grab reinforcements making the fight harder. Sometimes they surrender thinking the party will show mercy. Sometimes they'll negotiate, information for their life.
Some monsters are smarter than others, a Hobgoblin will use the hoard of Goblins to great effect as cannon fodder while he does serious damage using ranged. A caster can control the battlefield while ranged enemies pepper the party, and the melee group pins the party down so they can't advance on the other threats. Some creatures will use hit and run tactics, never letting the party get close and never letting them have rest.
Terrain is a great tool as well. Use high ground, use cover, use passages that allow part of the force to get behind the party. If there's a pit, let the creatures use it as a threat just the same as the players. Lava pools, water, stone outcroppings, trees, vines, webs, all of these things can give your creatures more tools with which to harass the players.
Free rolling stats for characters changes everything about CR for encounters. You can reverse engineer the table to tell you the approximate power level of a character.
Find the CR that matches the proficiency bonus.
Give all characters with an AC of 9 to 19 a CR score =level plus Dex mod,and other bonuses to AC from feats and features . Add 1 point to score for each point at AC 20 and above, AC values really skew results.
Add hp score from the chart. Will make some difference at high levels.
Find your highest melee or spell strike on the table.
Figure average damage. This is a hard one. I went with single target, easy to figure for melee. For casters I used concentration/duration damage spell for one round plus single target strike spell damage. Calculate average damage of the strike spell by adding all the average damage at the spell slot levels, divided by total spell slots.
Find your spell DC on the table. I would use that number for full and half casters like Wizard and Paladin. I would enter 0 for Arcane Trickster Rogue or say a melee class with Magic Initiate feat.
This is complete speculation and me eyeballing numbers. I tried it on a 5th level Cleric and a 5th level Fighter and amazingly, they both came out to CR 5.5.
CR is fairly....a guideline and nothing more. As in it gives an idea in what range of creatures to throw against your party. Making sure the creatures you use are in the range of damage output/survivability compared to the PC's. If you're not familiar enough with the numbers yourself to wing it. Beyond that, drop CR out of the window and google "Action Economy".
Action Economy is much more important. Where an encounter based around CR might make the situation Deadly++++ on paper. Your players can easily experience it as a fairly easy one. With Action Economy you make sure the enemies + environment etc have enough actions to account for the actions the PC's have. Making it much more balanced and easier to figure out what you want. Knowing the Action Economy will give you insight to add elements that Thaco suggest. Throw in environmental effects and give the enemies legendary actions, or outright extra stuff they can do as a bonus action. Such as Hobgoblin commander using a shout that lets all his minions within 15ft move an extra 5ft for free. Or something. I often also give enemies a multi-strike upgrade or crit range increase several levels before the PC's do as well.
This is also one of many reasons where XP leveling is rather limiting. You either have encounters that aren't challenging enough and need to use more of them in an adventuring day. Even though it is arbitrary for the actual game and what is happening. Or you do make encounters more appropriate and break the XP budget causing PC's to level up too fast. Milestone in this regard is much more versatile and free to actually create big epic encounters without having to worry whether it fits within a certain XP budget.
Hello all!
Im running a game through hoard of the dragon queen and I currently have six players in which I allowed stats to be rolled in front of me. Currently they are owning every deadly encounter I throw their way and I was curious if there was a way to account for a pc’s “Cr” based off the increase in Ac and attack much like a dm would do to adjust a monsters CR based upon the same thing in the DMG on page 273?
thank you!!
Hoard of the Dragon Queen is ideal for 4 characters, as opposed to 6-- two additional turns are likely what is making the biggest difference for you. I might recommend giving a "boss" monster a legendary action (described here) or adding a some lower CR minions to a fight to increase the number of actions that the enemies get.
Just going to have to make adjustments. I run into this now and then with my group. There are all sorts of ways to go about this. One you could simply add more baddies or just use something a bit more challenging. Or give the current monster something interesting. Like a breath weapon. Again, there are all kinds of ways to handle it. I think the biggest factor is knowing your players/characters. If you have a group of glass cannons then you know they could wipe the floor with a CR that would give most a challenge. Just keep in mind how much damage the group can handle as well. Toss some skill challenges at the players. Mix it up. If you find that you gave the group something that they cannot handle then just reduce the HP/challenge of the encounter and end it early. You are the DM. I see this issue more with a group of characters that are very min-maxed, but thats not to say that it dont happen with averagely rolled characters.
Yeah I’m not against player characters being/feeling powerful. In fact I’m quite the opposite but I’m more concerned about the speed in which they are leveling as opposed to how they stomp encounters. For example it’s hoard of the dragon queen and they have done super well (and I don’t throw them a bone) in encounters where they should run and are lv 3 before even completing the sally port, the mill, or the duel, even the dragon “attack” . This is likely me throwing encounters after encounter at them in order for it to feel like a real siege as opposed to what it is in HotDQ which feels lackluster (having played it)
You may want to swap to "Milestone" leveling as opposed to XP, in that case-- That way they can level when they reach story moments, and you don't have to worry about how many encounters you're throwing at them vs the XP they're gaining.
The Encounter Builder Alpha can help here as well. Put in the monsters, and the original planned party mix of 4 characters at the appropriate level. Then change the party make up, and then add monsters as needed until the difficulty matches again.
But even then; some party compositions might require tuning. Its a different feel if there are no healers, and no potions, vs. two healing casters in a party of 5. If they are having too easy of a time at the calculated difficulty, try adding enough monsters to put it at the next one.
I would be careful about flooding the fights with a lot of monsters, vs a couple of heavy hitters. I find the later works better for most of my encounters, and I like keeping them from Medium or Hard. Deadly requires a screw up.
GLHF
I generally run with a group of 6. I have found that adding number of mobs can quickly turn deadly if they are not controller focused. However, I have shifted creatures to having max hp and it seems to balance out the encounters pretty good.
I have found that Cr can sometimes just not work. Example: my party of 3 level 5s destroyed my fight with 3 CR 1 monsters 4 CR 1/4 monsters and a CR 4 boss. I would avoid relying too heavily on CR, I would just go with your gut here.
The 6 most hated words in all of d&d history: make me a dex saving throw .
CR is only part of the story when it comes to encounter building. Terrain, tactics, and the tools in the stat blocks can really change the course of battle when used right.
Tactics and Strategy:
Not every creature will stand toe to toe with the party and fight to the death. Sometimes they run when they realize that the fight is not going to go in their favor. Sometimes they retreat and grab reinforcements making the fight harder. Sometimes they surrender thinking the party will show mercy. Sometimes they'll negotiate, information for their life.
Some monsters are smarter than others, a Hobgoblin will use the hoard of Goblins to great effect as cannon fodder while he does serious damage using ranged. A caster can control the battlefield while ranged enemies pepper the party, and the melee group pins the party down so they can't advance on the other threats. Some creatures will use hit and run tactics, never letting the party get close and never letting them have rest.
Terrain is a great tool as well. Use high ground, use cover, use passages that allow part of the force to get behind the party. If there's a pit, let the creatures use it as a threat just the same as the players. Lava pools, water, stone outcroppings, trees, vines, webs, all of these things can give your creatures more tools with which to harass the players.
Free rolling stats for characters changes everything about CR for encounters. You can reverse engineer the table to tell you the approximate power level of a character.
Find the CR that matches the proficiency bonus.
Give all characters with an AC of 9 to 19 a CR score =level plus Dex mod,and other bonuses to AC from feats and features . Add 1 point to score for each point at AC 20 and above, AC values really skew results.
Add hp score from the chart. Will make some difference at high levels.
Find your highest melee or spell strike on the table.
Figure average damage. This is a hard one. I went with single target, easy to figure for melee. For casters I used concentration/duration damage spell for one round plus single target strike spell damage. Calculate average damage of the strike spell by adding all the average damage at the spell slot levels, divided by total spell slots.
Find your spell DC on the table. I would use that number for full and half casters like Wizard and Paladin. I would enter 0 for Arcane Trickster Rogue or say a melee class with Magic Initiate feat.
This is complete speculation and me eyeballing numbers. I tried it on a 5th level Cleric and a 5th level Fighter and amazingly, they both came out to CR 5.5.
CR is fairly....a guideline and nothing more. As in it gives an idea in what range of creatures to throw against your party. Making sure the creatures you use are in the range of damage output/survivability compared to the PC's. If you're not familiar enough with the numbers yourself to wing it. Beyond that, drop CR out of the window and google "Action Economy".
Action Economy is much more important. Where an encounter based around CR might make the situation Deadly++++ on paper. Your players can easily experience it as a fairly easy one. With Action Economy you make sure the enemies + environment etc have enough actions to account for the actions the PC's have. Making it much more balanced and easier to figure out what you want. Knowing the Action Economy will give you insight to add elements that Thaco suggest. Throw in environmental effects and give the enemies legendary actions, or outright extra stuff they can do as a bonus action. Such as Hobgoblin commander using a shout that lets all his minions within 15ft move an extra 5ft for free. Or something. I often also give enemies a multi-strike upgrade or crit range increase several levels before the PC's do as well.
This is also one of many reasons where XP leveling is rather limiting. You either have encounters that aren't challenging enough and need to use more of them in an adventuring day. Even though it is arbitrary for the actual game and what is happening. Or you do make encounters more appropriate and break the XP budget causing PC's to level up too fast. Milestone in this regard is much more versatile and free to actually create big epic encounters without having to worry whether it fits within a certain XP budget.