After studying official adventures and the CR of their dungeons, I have come to a rough estimate of the Average Total CR within a whole dungeon. This data, and the estimates made, are based on adventures for characters levels 1 to 5 with 5 "dungeons" that are supposed to be done in a single in-game day.
Dungeon Number/Assumed Party Level
Average Total CR
CR per party level
1
6.875
6.875
2
13.125
6.5625
3
15.5
5.166667
4
19.625
4.90625
5
36.5
7.3
Total Dungeon CR Averages
6.162083 per level
Or in other words, at least in early levels, official dungeons are roughly based around a total of 6 CR per the expected level of 4 party members. You can see that the first and second dungeon hold closely to this, while the CR per level drops for the third and fourth dungeons, and the last dungeon jumps above this to give a finale challenge.
Why is this important?
While balancing a single fight isn't too hard, I have found balancing a whole dungeon has been a bit tricky. By figuring this out, I now have a rough estimate of the average difficulty that I can work with. Something that I can use to build pre-planned dungeons more effectively. Obviously, you should never hold fast purely to a formula, but I felt I should share this information with my fellow DMs - especially those that want to create pre-planned adventures and dungeons, and may have some trouble figuring out what to put in their dungeons.
This data does not apply to every adventure, and may not be correct for later levels or big dungeons meant to be completed over several in-game days and/or multiple levels. I would only have confidence in it up to level 10.
Um... this probably more or less works at low levels because of how xp value varies with CR at low CRs, but in principle they're just using game-days worth of adjusted xp values.
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After studying official adventures and the CR of their dungeons, I have come to a rough estimate of the Average Total CR within a whole dungeon. This data, and the estimates made, are based on adventures for characters levels 1 to 5 with 5 "dungeons" that are supposed to be done in a single in-game day.
Or in other words, at least in early levels, official dungeons are roughly based around a total of 6 CR per the expected level of 4 party members. You can see that the first and second dungeon hold closely to this, while the CR per level drops for the third and fourth dungeons, and the last dungeon jumps above this to give a finale challenge.
Why is this important?
While balancing a single fight isn't too hard, I have found balancing a whole dungeon has been a bit tricky. By figuring this out, I now have a rough estimate of the average difficulty that I can work with. Something that I can use to build pre-planned dungeons more effectively. Obviously, you should never hold fast purely to a formula, but I felt I should share this information with my fellow DMs - especially those that want to create pre-planned adventures and dungeons, and may have some trouble figuring out what to put in their dungeons.
This data does not apply to every adventure, and may not be correct for later levels or big dungeons meant to be completed over several in-game days and/or multiple levels. I would only have confidence in it up to level 10.
Um... this probably more or less works at low levels because of how xp value varies with CR at low CRs, but in principle they're just using game-days worth of adjusted xp values.