So i'm a new GM. I played AD&D a long time ago but i recently got back into the hobby as a DM of 5e.
Right now i'm planning the first couple of adventures for my new campaign with 4 of my friends, all starting at level 1. Problem is, im finding it hard to balance encounters. I tried using online calculators and the dnd beyond encounter builder, but i find out that encounter are really fast classified as deadly encounters.
For instance. 4 level 1 characters against 4 Goblins - in my head a manageable fight. But the calculators list the encounter as deadly. Ok, i can just try stuff out, and add a goblin on the fly here and there, but i really want to use some mini boss encounters to start off with some fight that where somewhat memorable, but i'm finding really hard to figure out what i can actually set my players up against. An Orc seems like a good mini boss, but i'm scared of that big axe of his. I could easy end the life of half the groups characters.
I know the math behind the calculators, so thats not what i'm asking about, more about tips on balancing your encounters to the group. Any help would gladly be appreciated.
My favorite encounter balance calculator is donjon tools'. It's never led me wrong.
That said, it doesn't hurt to try an "easy" encounter first and see how your players handle that, and increase the difficulty from there. Alternatively, you can also do test runs.
Level 1 is always a scary, thrilling time to be an adventurer.
So i'm a new GM. I played AD&D a long time ago but i recently got back into the hobby as a DM of 5e.
Right now i'm planning the first couple of adventures for my new campaign with 4 of my friends, all starting at level 1. Problem is, im finding it hard to balance encounters. I tried using online calculators and the dnd beyond encounter builder, but i find out that encounter are really fast classified as deadly encounters.
For instance. 4 level 1 characters against 4 Goblins - in my head a manageable fight. But the calculators list the encounter as deadly.
What 5e calls 'deadly' is more realistically called 'dangerous'; it's expected to force burning about 1/3 of your daily resources and might go badly if you roll badly or use bad tactics. One on one vs goblins could certainly go poorly, we nearly wiped with 5 PCs against 4 Kenku at level 1, though a lot of mistakes were made.
I'm planning a new campaign too, and I am going to have my players start at level 2 with the fixed HP for the first level just to give them a decent cushion, then I can give them some cooler fights initially and feel better about it. The first battle or maybe more I won't be awarding any XP since they are getting a free level up.
Encounter balance is always tough, particularly early. There are a couple of things to keep in mind though.
It's hard to die in 5e. You have to fail 3 death saves. While possible, it's not nearly as brutal.
Encounters are balanced around (a) how many encounters per rest (b) action economy. If there is only one encounter per long rest, then a deadly encounter may not be bad, since characters have all their resources. If it is the 4th or 5th encounter after a short rest, then they may have nothing and it suddenly becomes impossible. You determine how much you want to try to drain the party's resources before encounters. Along those lines, the party may want to regroup and retreat to long rest... in which case, the monsters may also have time to plan/fortify etc.
And from your example. Goblins are hard to hit at level 1, they get free disengage and can stealth and have a pretty good to hit. The Lost Mine of Phandelver intro module has an encounter like this early on and talks through it as well. A few good init and hit rolls from the goblins and the action economy quickly swings to them.
Hope some of the above helps!
PS. Levels 3-7 are a good sweet spot for encounter builders working well imo.
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"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"
I would mention and add in my own limitd experience opinion that "fun" encounter design begins at or after 3rd level. 1st level has always been the level where a "let the dice fall as they may" approach is most likely to see Real Character Death. My own decision has been to skip directly to 2nd to save my players and myself the anxiety. I'd also say the Encounter Builder on DDB is pretty good, and it's best to keep the encounters at medium or hard tops until maybe 3rd or 4th level.
Be aware that the action economy of D&D presumes you're throwing up to 8 resource- consuming encounters (not necessarily just combat, but any puzzle or social encounter that your players might choose to spend their limited daily resources to get through) per adventuring day.
This is not always realistic, so you may find "deadly" encounters skewing towards the easy side if you only have 1-2 encounters per day so your spellcasters are free to use up all their spell slots without a care, fighters are blowing second winds/action surges every combat, and the monk can just make every strike a stunning strike.
In order to mitigate this, you can do one of two things:
1) you could, on days when it makes plot sense why there wouldn't be more than a couple encounters in a single day, increase the difficulty of the 1 to 2 encounters you have either by increasing the amount of baddies, using 4e's minion rules, choosing extra tough enemies, or tinkering with stat blocks to make tougher versions of enemies, thus ensuring that your players' use of resources is warranted rather than overkill. A variant of this might be to place deliberately easy encounters between hard boss monsters, just to soak up additional resources.
2) or you could track time in such a way where multiple sessions can span across a single adventuring day, so that resources spent during encounters at the end of last session are still spent at the beginning of the next. This should make things more challenging and strategic for your players, and if you stick to around 8 encounters over the adventuring day, then you should find the difficulty of the encounters aligning more with their actual challenge ratings. That said, this method works better for dungeon crawl scenarios where it makes sense for characters to wander across encounters with such frequency as they clear room after room with maybe a single big encounter taking up a large portion of the session.
A variant I was considering for Curse of Strahd, though it works for others as well, is to have two kinds of rests:
Good Rest: this is a standard long rest. To take a good rest, you must either spend Inspiration, or spend a day in proper relaxation, such as Carousing.
Poor Rest: any other type of long rest is a poor rest. When you take a poor rest, any resources that recover on a long rest will only recover up to half their normal maximum, minimum 1 (for spells, only recover half your slots that have one spell per level).
One thing that I do is adjust the damage that monsters do slightly. If I feel that an encounter is too difficult I'll change the damage from 1d6 + 2 to 1d6. It's a subtle and very tiny change but I've found that it's just about perfect.
Another thing that I do is intentionally throw in an easy encounter every now and then that is designed to let the PC's win easily without expending any resources other than taking a couple of hits. That does two things, it gives the players a sense the their characters are super powerful which they enjoy every now and then and it let's me practice judging what my group can and can't handle without needing to recover after I kill them.
I think throwing in easy encounters is super important. It does several things, keeps the game and plot flowing quickly. If they expend any resources then it is a bonus. I find if every encounter is hard then the party just wants to take a long rest after, but if they aren't too beat up they will want to keep going and the toll the easy encounters takes will lead to a bigger battle that has more on the line because of it.
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So i'm a new GM. I played AD&D a long time ago but i recently got back into the hobby as a DM of 5e.
Right now i'm planning the first couple of adventures for my new campaign with 4 of my friends, all starting at level 1. Problem is, im finding it hard to balance encounters. I tried using online calculators and the dnd beyond encounter builder, but i find out that encounter are really fast classified as deadly encounters.
For instance. 4 level 1 characters against 4 Goblins - in my head a manageable fight. But the calculators list the encounter as deadly. Ok, i can just try stuff out, and add a goblin on the fly here and there, but i really want to use some mini boss encounters to start off with some fight that where somewhat memorable, but i'm finding really hard to figure out what i can actually set my players up against. An Orc seems like a good mini boss, but i'm scared of that big axe of his. I could easy end the life of half the groups characters.
I know the math behind the calculators, so thats not what i'm asking about, more about tips on balancing your encounters to the group. Any help would gladly be appreciated.
My favorite encounter balance calculator is donjon tools'. It's never led me wrong.
That said, it doesn't hurt to try an "easy" encounter first and see how your players handle that, and increase the difficulty from there. Alternatively, you can also do test runs.
Level 1 is always a scary, thrilling time to be an adventurer.
What 5e calls 'deadly' is more realistically called 'dangerous'; it's expected to force burning about 1/3 of your daily resources and might go badly if you roll badly or use bad tactics. One on one vs goblins could certainly go poorly, we nearly wiped with 5 PCs against 4 Kenku at level 1, though a lot of mistakes were made.
I'm planning a new campaign too, and I am going to have my players start at level 2 with the fixed HP for the first level just to give them a decent cushion, then I can give them some cooler fights initially and feel better about it. The first battle or maybe more I won't be awarding any XP since they are getting a free level up.
Welcome to GM'ing !
Encounter balance is always tough, particularly early. There are a couple of things to keep in mind though.
Lastly, for "boss" monsters, consider action oriented monsters as described here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_zl8WWaSyI
And from your example. Goblins are hard to hit at level 1, they get free disengage and can stealth and have a pretty good to hit. The Lost Mine of Phandelver intro module has an encounter like this early on and talks through it as well. A few good init and hit rolls from the goblins and the action economy quickly swings to them.
Hope some of the above helps!
PS. Levels 3-7 are a good sweet spot for encounter builders working well imo.
"An' things ha' come to a pretty pass, ye ken, if people are going to leave stuff like that aroound where innocent people could accidentally smash the door doon and lever the bars aside and take the big chain off'f the cupboard and pick the lock and drink it!"
I would mention and add in my own limitd experience opinion that "fun" encounter design begins at or after 3rd level. 1st level has always been the level where a "let the dice fall as they may" approach is most likely to see Real Character Death. My own decision has been to skip directly to 2nd to save my players and myself the anxiety. I'd also say the Encounter Builder on DDB is pretty good, and it's best to keep the encounters at medium or hard tops until maybe 3rd or 4th level.
Be aware that the action economy of D&D presumes you're throwing up to 8 resource- consuming encounters (not necessarily just combat, but any puzzle or social encounter that your players might choose to spend their limited daily resources to get through) per adventuring day.
This is not always realistic, so you may find "deadly" encounters skewing towards the easy side if you only have 1-2 encounters per day so your spellcasters are free to use up all their spell slots without a care, fighters are blowing second winds/action surges every combat, and the monk can just make every strike a stunning strike.
In order to mitigate this, you can do one of two things:
1) you could, on days when it makes plot sense why there wouldn't be more than a couple encounters in a single day, increase the difficulty of the 1 to 2 encounters you have either by increasing the amount of baddies, using 4e's minion rules, choosing extra tough enemies, or tinkering with stat blocks to make tougher versions of enemies, thus ensuring that your players' use of resources is warranted rather than overkill. A variant of this might be to place deliberately easy encounters between hard boss monsters, just to soak up additional resources.
2) or you could track time in such a way where multiple sessions can span across a single adventuring day, so that resources spent during encounters at the end of last session are still spent at the beginning of the next. This should make things more challenging and strategic for your players, and if you stick to around 8 encounters over the adventuring day, then you should find the difficulty of the encounters aligning more with their actual challenge ratings. That said, this method works better for dungeon crawl scenarios where it makes sense for characters to wander across encounters with such frequency as they clear room after room with maybe a single big encounter taking up a large portion of the session.
A variant I was considering for Curse of Strahd, though it works for others as well, is to have two kinds of rests:
One thing that I do is adjust the damage that monsters do slightly. If I feel that an encounter is too difficult I'll change the damage from 1d6 + 2 to 1d6. It's a subtle and very tiny change but I've found that it's just about perfect.
Another thing that I do is intentionally throw in an easy encounter every now and then that is designed to let the PC's win easily without expending any resources other than taking a couple of hits. That does two things, it gives the players a sense the their characters are super powerful which they enjoy every now and then and it let's me practice judging what my group can and can't handle without needing to recover after I kill them.
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I think throwing in easy encounters is super important. It does several things, keeps the game and plot flowing quickly. If they expend any resources then it is a bonus. I find if every encounter is hard then the party just wants to take a long rest after, but if they aren't too beat up they will want to keep going and the toll the easy encounters takes will lead to a bigger battle that has more on the line because of it.