Kobold Fight Club or the DnD Beyond encounter builder tool are both a good start, though unless you're throwing 6-8 encounters or day you probably want to balance more on the hard to deadly side of things.
Once you get to higher levels you can err more on the side of overpowered encounters because level 10+ characters are just really hard to kill, and if you actually do go too hard you can always scale back or have the enemies go for non-lethal options if it makes sense for them to do so.
Don't just think about what your party will encounter, but think about where the party will encounter them.
Is this fight going to happen in wide open plains with no cover and nothing to hide behind (your rogue is going to have trouble with their favourite tactics)?
Is the fight going to happen in an old temple with loads of nooks and crannies, balconies and levels?
Is this fight going to be in a town centre where the risk of a stray arrow hitting a civilian is high?
Thinking about the where is so, so important. This kind of spatial awareness means that a fight can utilise the environment to set up different challenges. In the first example above sneaky stealth characters are going to have to fall back on new tactics to survive the encounter. In the second, there's loads of ways to set up traps, or hide or make use of height to give the party an advantage against something big and scary. In the third, the party may be able to get the notice of the town watch if they fall into trouble, so they have an advantage. The where of a combat encounter can be so easily overlooked and can swing otherwise easy fights to difficult, otherwise difficult fights to easy.
Once you've got the what and the where, then comes the why. Why is this fight taking place? Why are the party attacking? This is important because it helps define the enemy actions. Let's say you've got a heavily armoured guard and two other guards watching over a treasure. If the party intention is to steal that treasure, the actions of the guards are informed by that. One guard may almost immediately run off to alert help. The others might keep attacking and allow the party to run away because protecting the treasure is their job. However, if those same guards are close enough to being killed, they might decide that three gold pieces a day isn't worth their life and lay down their arms.
Combat encounters to my mind are about the what, where, and why far more often that the CR. In fact the CR is kind of pointless and I often worry leads to this constant desire just to have one side kill the other.
Extending from this then what I suggest often is to tailor the where and the why to the what. So, if you want to throw twenty goblins at the party of four level twos, that's a challenging fight. How can we even the odds? Well, we could have this fight take place in a cave or cavern with loads of side passages. Rocks and other places to hide behind. Then we could ask why are the goblins here? If this is their home they may wish to defend it with their lives. If the party kill the goblin boss though, maybe the goblins might suggest that the party become their new boss (goblins do tend to follow other races if they are strong enough after all). At worst however, the individual goblin is likely a selfish creature. So, if it looks like it might be killed or overwhelmed, it may choose to flee instead of fight.
Don't just think about what your party will encounter, but think about where the party will encounter them.
Is this fight going to happen in wide open plains with no cover and nothing to hide behind (your rogue is going to have trouble with their favourite tactics)?
Is the fight going to happen in an old temple with loads of nooks and crannies, balconies and levels?
Is this fight going to be in a town centre where the risk of a stray arrow hitting a civilian is high?
Thinking about the where is so, so important. This kind of spatial awareness means that a fight can utilise the environment to set up different challenges. In the first example above sneaky stealth characters are going to have to fall back on new tactics to survive the encounter. In the second, there's loads of ways to set up traps, or hide or make use of height to give the party an advantage against something big and scary. In the third, the party may be able to get the notice of the town watch if they fall into trouble, so they have an advantage. The where of a combat encounter can be so easily overlooked and can swing otherwise easy fights to difficult, otherwise difficult fights to easy.
Once you've got the what and the where, then comes the why. Why is this fight taking place? Why are the party attacking? This is important because it helps define the enemy actions. Let's say you've got a heavily armoured guard and two other guards watching over a treasure. If the party intention is to steal that treasure, the actions of the guards are informed by that. One guard may almost immediately run off to alert help. The others might keep attacking and allow the party to run away because protecting the treasure is their job. However, if those same guards are close enough to being killed, they might decide that three gold pieces a day isn't worth their life and lay down their arms.
Combat encounters to my mind are about the what, where, and why far more often that the CR. In fact the CR is kind of pointless and I often worry leads to this constant desire just to have one side kill the other.
Extending from this then what I suggest often is to tailor the where and the why to the what. So, if you want to throw twenty goblins at the party of four level twos, that's a challenging fight. How can we even the odds? Well, we could have this fight take place in a cave or cavern with loads of side passages. Rocks and other places to hide behind. Then we could ask why are the goblins here? If this is their home they may wish to defend it with their lives. If the party kill the goblin boss though, maybe the goblins might suggest that the party become their new boss (goblins do tend to follow other races if they are strong enough after all). At worst however, the individual goblin is likely a selfish creature. So, if it looks like it might be killed or overwhelmed, it may choose to flee instead of fight.
This is great advice, and I do the same thing. The only thing I have to add is the WHEN, like whether it’s night or day, rain or snow, ETC. it’s worth thinking about all these points before picking a CR, because more often then not the CR will come to you after you finish thinking about these things.
Try it out with dummy characters at home, play the party like the players would, and see how it pans out.
This right here. Rehearse it with a run through with some PCs you can create as close to their abilities and with items similar to what they have and it is cool if you use any of the encounters' weaknesses in the test run. This will give you an idea. You don't have to run through the whole adventure, just the predicted encounters.
Ooh, yeah, balancing encounter levels can be a tricky thing. You want the encounters to be tough and challenging, so the players don't get bored. But you also don't want to kill the characters so often that the players get frustrated and stop playing. There's a few things you can do to find that happy balance, and the more you play, the easier it will be to find that balance. Just gonna ramble a few points in no particular order...
1. Know your party. You'll need a good idea of what your party's strengths and weaknesses are. For example, if the party is all melee fighters they might wipe out an orc war band very easily, but a flying creature can just rain down damage and if they can't reach it, they're boned. Knowing the capabilities of your party will help you select monsters and other encounters that target their weaknesses and their strengths. If the party has a bunch of wizards and clerics, they're gonna pass a lot of Wisdom saving throws that an encounter may force them to make. But Constitution saves are gonna be a big weakness. Also, if the party has more than one person capable of healing, then you can feel comfortable throwing more damage at them. But if the party doesn't have a primary healer, then they're gonna drop a lot quicker. So maybe focus more on condition effects, like stun, exhaustion, fear, etc.
2. Know the monsters. It's hard to know what monsters to throw at the party if you don't know what the monsters are and what they can do. Okay, so, this part is gonna sound like homework, but yeah, you should spend some time just reading the stat blocks of monsters. At least for the popular ones, and for the ones that you figure will be in the area where your party is adventuring. And think about what the Big Bad Evil Guy will be and consider what kinds of minions that BBEG will have around him. The better you know the monster's capabilities, the better you'll be able to match them to the power level of the party.
3. Use the environment against them. Fighting monsters on dry land is easy. But that fight will be a lot harder if you're trudging through mud while fighting. Or if you're knee deep in water. Your movement speed is decreased, you might have disadvantage on Dexterity checks and saves. Maybe you're fighting in a frozen landscape and every party member has to make a Dexterity saving throw at the start of each turn or slip and fall prone. Now they're losing movement, losing actions, and suddenly those kobolds are a real threat! Maybe they're fighting outside and there's a storm raging, so ranged attacks have disadvantage. Or maybe there was no encounter at all. Maybe the party is just hiking through the jungle and one party member sees a cute colorful little creature that looks perfectly harmless. So they pet the creature, and the creature purrs and acts friendly and then just runs off into the jungle. So the party is thinking that was just a cute little nothing. An hour goes by and now you're asking that player for a Constitution saving throw. And regardless what they roll, they fail. They won't know what made them sick, but they are now violently ill, poisoned, exhausted, the works! They might think they drank tainted water, they might think the jungle is cursed. Surely it couldn't be that the cute little critter they patted was extremely poisonous.
4. Challenge Rating (CR) is useful, but not entirely reliable. If you click on "Tools" at the top of the page, then click on "Beta Encounter" you'll go to the Encounter Builder tool which is really kinda handy. You can plug in the levels of your party and pick a few monsters and the computer will tell you how tough of an encounter that should be for the party. Again, it's not completely accurate all the time, but it's a good rough estimate.
5. It's okay to change the encounter during the encounter. Not every encounter is a battle to the death. Sure, some monsters ain't too bright and will just kill stuff until they die. But most monsters (beasts, and any other creature with an Intelligence or Wisdom above 5) will try to run away if the fight is going against them. So maybe you threw a group of orcs at the party and the party is not doing too good. Sometimes the dice just don't cooperate. If the party is getting really hurt and you really don't want to kill them on a random encounter, just wait until a second or third orc gets killed and say that the other orcs decide to bail out and make a run for it. Or maybe you threw a group of cultist-assassins at the party, and the party is getting cut to ribbons. Let a couple of them drop to zero, then say they hear a horn in the distance, or maybe they see a blue flash of light behind them, and the Big Bad Evil Guy is standing there. He calls off the assassins, and addresses the party, saying some really creepy evil stuff like, "So you've been following me, hmmm? Well, I've been following you, too. This was fun. Let's continue this, at my place. See you there." So what actually happened was that you took pity on the players and left a couple of them alive so they can try to save their fallen buddies from dying. But that's not what the players will see! From their perspective, they got their butts kicked, and then they found out that the Bad Guy knows they're coming after him. From their perspective, they're in even more trouble now than they were before!
6. There's more than meets the eye. This is kind of like #5. Let's say you throw a few orcs at the party and the party cuts them down pretty easily. So the players are feeling good about how tough they are. Until they turn around and see the rest of the orc tribe coming out of the woods looking for their buddies. You see, fights are noisy. Some monsters are attracted to the sounds of battle. So if you give them an encounter that's too easy for them, well, that was just the first part of the encounter.
Well, that's enough rambling for now I guess. But yeah, balancing encounters is kind like exercising. Just start small and work your way up. It's okay to throw them an easy encounter once in a while. And it's okay to throw an overwhelming encounter at them sometimes that forces them to run away to survive. That just makes your world more realistic. Life doesn't throw you balanced manageable challenges in a steady progression. Life throws whatever it has at you and you need to either figure out how to win, or put your pride aside and just run away.
The where advice is fantastic. Terrain, imo, is one of the major factors that makes CR so iffy when it comes to measuring difficulty.
Another thing to consider is which encounter it will be that day. Will the party be fresh from a long rest with all their hit points and spells? Or will this be the near mythical encounter No. 6-8 that day, after the party has been beaten up a bit and the casters are down to cantrips?
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Hi all,
I was curious if anyone has any techniques/strategies for how to build a fair but challenging encounter for your players?
As it stands, I consider the group level and abilities, where they are, the campaign, creature relevancy and abilities. Any tips beyond that?
-Thanks
Try it out with dummy characters at home, play the party like the players would, and see how it pans out.
Mystic v3 should be official, nuff said.
Kobold Fight Club or the DnD Beyond encounter builder tool are both a good start, though unless you're throwing 6-8 encounters or day you probably want to balance more on the hard to deadly side of things.
Once you get to higher levels you can err more on the side of overpowered encounters because level 10+ characters are just really hard to kill, and if you actually do go too hard you can always scale back or have the enemies go for non-lethal options if it makes sense for them to do so.
Don't just think about what your party will encounter, but think about where the party will encounter them.
Is this fight going to happen in wide open plains with no cover and nothing to hide behind (your rogue is going to have trouble with their favourite tactics)?
Is the fight going to happen in an old temple with loads of nooks and crannies, balconies and levels?
Is this fight going to be in a town centre where the risk of a stray arrow hitting a civilian is high?
Thinking about the where is so, so important. This kind of spatial awareness means that a fight can utilise the environment to set up different challenges. In the first example above sneaky stealth characters are going to have to fall back on new tactics to survive the encounter. In the second, there's loads of ways to set up traps, or hide or make use of height to give the party an advantage against something big and scary. In the third, the party may be able to get the notice of the town watch if they fall into trouble, so they have an advantage. The where of a combat encounter can be so easily overlooked and can swing otherwise easy fights to difficult, otherwise difficult fights to easy.
Once you've got the what and the where, then comes the why. Why is this fight taking place? Why are the party attacking? This is important because it helps define the enemy actions. Let's say you've got a heavily armoured guard and two other guards watching over a treasure. If the party intention is to steal that treasure, the actions of the guards are informed by that. One guard may almost immediately run off to alert help. The others might keep attacking and allow the party to run away because protecting the treasure is their job. However, if those same guards are close enough to being killed, they might decide that three gold pieces a day isn't worth their life and lay down their arms.
Combat encounters to my mind are about the what, where, and why far more often that the CR. In fact the CR is kind of pointless and I often worry leads to this constant desire just to have one side kill the other.
Extending from this then what I suggest often is to tailor the where and the why to the what. So, if you want to throw twenty goblins at the party of four level twos, that's a challenging fight. How can we even the odds? Well, we could have this fight take place in a cave or cavern with loads of side passages. Rocks and other places to hide behind. Then we could ask why are the goblins here? If this is their home they may wish to defend it with their lives. If the party kill the goblin boss though, maybe the goblins might suggest that the party become their new boss (goblins do tend to follow other races if they are strong enough after all). At worst however, the individual goblin is likely a selfish creature. So, if it looks like it might be killed or overwhelmed, it may choose to flee instead of fight.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
This is great advice, and I do the same thing. The only thing I have to add is the WHEN, like whether it’s night or day, rain or snow, ETC. it’s worth thinking about all these points before picking a CR, because more often then not the CR will come to you after you finish thinking about these things.
This right here. Rehearse it with a run through with some PCs you can create as close to their abilities and with items similar to what they have and it is cool if you use any of the encounters' weaknesses in the test run. This will give you an idea. You don't have to run through the whole adventure, just the predicted encounters.
Welcome to the tables!
Ooh, yeah, balancing encounter levels can be a tricky thing. You want the encounters to be tough and challenging, so the players don't get bored. But you also don't want to kill the characters so often that the players get frustrated and stop playing. There's a few things you can do to find that happy balance, and the more you play, the easier it will be to find that balance. Just gonna ramble a few points in no particular order...
1. Know your party. You'll need a good idea of what your party's strengths and weaknesses are. For example, if the party is all melee fighters they might wipe out an orc war band very easily, but a flying creature can just rain down damage and if they can't reach it, they're boned. Knowing the capabilities of your party will help you select monsters and other encounters that target their weaknesses and their strengths. If the party has a bunch of wizards and clerics, they're gonna pass a lot of Wisdom saving throws that an encounter may force them to make. But Constitution saves are gonna be a big weakness. Also, if the party has more than one person capable of healing, then you can feel comfortable throwing more damage at them. But if the party doesn't have a primary healer, then they're gonna drop a lot quicker. So maybe focus more on condition effects, like stun, exhaustion, fear, etc.
2. Know the monsters. It's hard to know what monsters to throw at the party if you don't know what the monsters are and what they can do. Okay, so, this part is gonna sound like homework, but yeah, you should spend some time just reading the stat blocks of monsters. At least for the popular ones, and for the ones that you figure will be in the area where your party is adventuring. And think about what the Big Bad Evil Guy will be and consider what kinds of minions that BBEG will have around him. The better you know the monster's capabilities, the better you'll be able to match them to the power level of the party.
3. Use the environment against them. Fighting monsters on dry land is easy. But that fight will be a lot harder if you're trudging through mud while fighting. Or if you're knee deep in water. Your movement speed is decreased, you might have disadvantage on Dexterity checks and saves. Maybe you're fighting in a frozen landscape and every party member has to make a Dexterity saving throw at the start of each turn or slip and fall prone. Now they're losing movement, losing actions, and suddenly those kobolds are a real threat! Maybe they're fighting outside and there's a storm raging, so ranged attacks have disadvantage. Or maybe there was no encounter at all. Maybe the party is just hiking through the jungle and one party member sees a cute colorful little creature that looks perfectly harmless. So they pet the creature, and the creature purrs and acts friendly and then just runs off into the jungle. So the party is thinking that was just a cute little nothing. An hour goes by and now you're asking that player for a Constitution saving throw. And regardless what they roll, they fail. They won't know what made them sick, but they are now violently ill, poisoned, exhausted, the works! They might think they drank tainted water, they might think the jungle is cursed. Surely it couldn't be that the cute little critter they patted was extremely poisonous.
4. Challenge Rating (CR) is useful, but not entirely reliable. If you click on "Tools" at the top of the page, then click on "Beta Encounter" you'll go to the Encounter Builder tool which is really kinda handy. You can plug in the levels of your party and pick a few monsters and the computer will tell you how tough of an encounter that should be for the party. Again, it's not completely accurate all the time, but it's a good rough estimate.
5. It's okay to change the encounter during the encounter. Not every encounter is a battle to the death. Sure, some monsters ain't too bright and will just kill stuff until they die. But most monsters (beasts, and any other creature with an Intelligence or Wisdom above 5) will try to run away if the fight is going against them. So maybe you threw a group of orcs at the party and the party is not doing too good. Sometimes the dice just don't cooperate. If the party is getting really hurt and you really don't want to kill them on a random encounter, just wait until a second or third orc gets killed and say that the other orcs decide to bail out and make a run for it. Or maybe you threw a group of cultist-assassins at the party, and the party is getting cut to ribbons. Let a couple of them drop to zero, then say they hear a horn in the distance, or maybe they see a blue flash of light behind them, and the Big Bad Evil Guy is standing there. He calls off the assassins, and addresses the party, saying some really creepy evil stuff like, "So you've been following me, hmmm? Well, I've been following you, too. This was fun. Let's continue this, at my place. See you there." So what actually happened was that you took pity on the players and left a couple of them alive so they can try to save their fallen buddies from dying. But that's not what the players will see! From their perspective, they got their butts kicked, and then they found out that the Bad Guy knows they're coming after him. From their perspective, they're in even more trouble now than they were before!
6. There's more than meets the eye. This is kind of like #5. Let's say you throw a few orcs at the party and the party cuts them down pretty easily. So the players are feeling good about how tough they are. Until they turn around and see the rest of the orc tribe coming out of the woods looking for their buddies. You see, fights are noisy. Some monsters are attracted to the sounds of battle. So if you give them an encounter that's too easy for them, well, that was just the first part of the encounter.
Well, that's enough rambling for now I guess. But yeah, balancing encounters is kind like exercising. Just start small and work your way up. It's okay to throw them an easy encounter once in a while. And it's okay to throw an overwhelming encounter at them sometimes that forces them to run away to survive. That just makes your world more realistic. Life doesn't throw you balanced manageable challenges in a steady progression. Life throws whatever it has at you and you need to either figure out how to win, or put your pride aside and just run away.
Well, I hope this helps. Have fun!
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
The where advice is fantastic. Terrain, imo, is one of the major factors that makes CR so iffy when it comes to measuring difficulty.
Another thing to consider is which encounter it will be that day. Will the party be fresh from a long rest with all their hit points and spells? Or will this be the near mythical encounter No. 6-8 that day, after the party has been beaten up a bit and the casters are down to cantrips?