I've been asked to run a one-shot for our group as not everyone can make our next session. I've only ran one other one-shot in which I just followed one I found on the internet and adding a bit of spice to the story but didn't mess with any of the encounters. This time I'm mostly making it on my own and am struggling to choose a suitable final fight for a party of 3 level 4s as I don't really understand CR. Currently thinking about an using undead, aberration or monstrosity but any ideas would be very helpful. Also some suggestions for multi-enemy encounters early on in the story would be appreciated. Thank you
This gives you an idea of how many of each creature you can use based on CR for an encounter. You can provide the encounter type (Easy, Hard, Deadly) and a number of characters and their level, and you get a chart breaking things out for you. You can then mix and match your creatures based on their CRs.
Below is a sample where I took your three 4th-level characters at any difficulty to get the output. I'd recommend playing around with the tool to see if that gives you the CR you need for your encounters.
PC Level
Monster CR
0
1/8
1/4
1/2
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
4
13-20
7-15
4-11
3-7
2-4
1-2
1
1
1
As a side note: If you have not tried the DDB Encounter Builder, that can also help you find those Player/CR matches. As a default, the Builder works with the Basic Rules monster sets but if you have bought digital copies of the book on the site those will import into the tool for additional creatures to use.
I've been asked to run a one-shot for our group as not everyone can make our next session. I've only ran one other one-shot in which I just followed one I found on the internet and adding a bit of spice to the story but didn't mess with any of the encounters. This time I'm mostly making it on my own and am struggling to choose a suitable final fight for a party of 3 level 4s as I don't really understand CR.
Well, CR isn't a great tool (it's not entirely useless, but it's not great), so understanding it won't necessarily take you very far.
The target difficulty for 5e is generally "a party of 4 PCs at level X can deal with a CR X monster". That turns out to be tuned for 'medium' encounters (6-8 encounters per day), and in practice a medium encounter is a trash fight, most people prefer significantly higher difficulty and a smaller number of encounters.
If you have XGTE, I find the encounter builder there easier to use, though again, it's tuned for 'medium' fights. It's fairly easy to boost difficulty, though: just treat the party size as larger than it actually is, or build multiple encounters and smash them together. If I wanted three encounters for a party of 3, I'd probably build to a party of 5.
However, a separate problem you'll have is that most available 'boss' monsters at an appropriate CR (around CR 5 if by itself, lower CR if it has minions) are kinda... boring.
I've been asked to run a one-shot for our group as not everyone can make our next session. I've only ran one other one-shot in which I just followed one I found on the internet and adding a bit of spice to the story but didn't mess with any of the encounters. This time I'm mostly making it on my own and am struggling to choose a suitable final fight for a party of 3 level 4s as I don't really understand CR. Currently thinking about an using undead, aberration or monstrosity but any ideas would be very helpful. Also some suggestions for multi-enemy encounters early on in the story would be appreciated. Thank you
This is a handy little tool I've used in the past: 5e Encounter Size Calculator, https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/calc/enc_size.html
This gives you an idea of how many of each creature you can use based on CR for an encounter. You can provide the encounter type (Easy, Hard, Deadly) and a number of characters and their level, and you get a chart breaking things out for you. You can then mix and match your creatures based on their CRs.
Below is a sample where I took your three 4th-level characters at any difficulty to get the output. I'd recommend playing around with the tool to see if that gives you the CR you need for your encounters.
As a side note: If you have not tried the DDB Encounter Builder, that can also help you find those Player/CR matches. As a default, the Builder works with the Basic Rules monster sets but if you have bought digital copies of the book on the site those will import into the tool for additional creatures to use.
Well, CR isn't a great tool (it's not entirely useless, but it's not great), so understanding it won't necessarily take you very far.
The target difficulty for 5e is generally "a party of 4 PCs at level X can deal with a CR X monster". That turns out to be tuned for 'medium' encounters (6-8 encounters per day), and in practice a medium encounter is a trash fight, most people prefer significantly higher difficulty and a smaller number of encounters.
If you have XGTE, I find the encounter builder there easier to use, though again, it's tuned for 'medium' fights. It's fairly easy to boost difficulty, though: just treat the party size as larger than it actually is, or build multiple encounters and smash them together. If I wanted three encounters for a party of 3, I'd probably build to a party of 5.
However, a separate problem you'll have is that most available 'boss' monsters at an appropriate CR (around CR 5 if by itself, lower CR if it has minions) are kinda... boring.
Robots. I rest my case.
I do campaigns the are beginner friendly! If you are interested, contact me at: drploppleiv@gmail.com
You could use a unspeakable horror and cut its damage in half. That thing is meant to be a boss monster.
I used the legendary crocodile Thousand Teeth as a solo monster in my GREYHAWK campaign.