Hoping for some guidance here as i'm not finding the DMG guide correlating usefully/comprehensibly for my limited newbie brain regarding how I should go about workng this out?
The immediate NPC villain in question is a multiclassed level 7 battlemaster/ level 3 wizard. He has homebrew armour that makes him pretty buffed and a magical weapon (greatsword of wounding) too.
I'm running a game with 7 to 8 PCs at the moment.
How should I determine the challenge rating of the enemy to know whether to up-scale downscale or at what milestone I should introduce him?
Well, what's his armor class, what are his hit points, what's his to-hit bonus, and how much damage can he do on each of the first three rounds of combat?
Tricky thing is his armour giving resistance to all - which is story essential. Suggests to me the standard calculation wouldn't compensate for this and probs under powers him in overall CR. But I'm not sure what a sensible adjustment would be?
AC 19 = CR 17
HP 78 = CR 1
So assumedly av def CR is 9
Max damage per round (gets 2 attacks) is chill touch & great sword attack totalling: 31 which makes a CR 4
Attack bonus is + 7 (+ 3 strength from armour buff and prof bonus + 4) which is CR 8
Making av Off Bonus CR 6
And Overall CR av is 7.5 rounded up to 8
but if you're saying its the first three rounds of max damage then that's 93 which must change things? And dat armour doh...???
If he resists all damage, without exception, treat his hit points as twice what they are. 156 effective HP puts you at defensive CR 6. Since his AC is 4 higher than the expected AC, his defensive CR is increased by 2, giving us 8. He also knows the Shield spell and can use it SIX times. This means he’s probably going to be casting it every round if he’s hit by an attack. His effective AC is 24, and his defensive CR is now 10.
He cannot attack with his great sword and use chill touch in the same round, so forget that. Each greatsword Attack does 10 average damage for 20 DPR, plus the wound effect, which I’m going to eyeball as being worth about 3 DPR. So if we start with a baseline of 23 DPR, then increase the DPR of one round by 20 (action surge), we get 43, 23, 23. Let’s also assume he uses all of his superiority dice to deal extra damage to enemies. That’s 5d8=22 over the course of 3 rounds. That brings us to a 3-round total of 111 damage, an average of 37 DPR. 37 DPR brings us to an offensive CR of 5, which we don’t have to adjust for his attack bonus.
That gives us a CR of 8 if we go strictly by the numbers.
But I would consider the fact that a 24 AC is going to be very hard for attack-based characters to hit, so if you have a lot of characters in your party who use attacks to do damage, that’s not gonna be much fun.
If he resists all damage, without exception, treat his hit points as twice what they are. 156 effective HP puts you at defensive CR 6. Since his AC is 4 higher than the expected AC, his defensive CR is increased by 2, giving us 8. He also knows the Shield spell and can use it SIX times. This means he’s probably going to be casting it every round if he’s hit by an attack. His effective AC is 24, and his defensive CR is now 10.
He cannot attack with his great sword and use chill touch in the same round, so forget that. Each greatsword Attack does 10 average damage for 20 DPR, plus the wound effect, which I’m going to eyeball as being worth about 3 DPR. So if we start with a baseline of 23 DPR, then increase the DPR of one round by 20 (action surge), we get 43, 23, 23. Let’s also assume he uses all of his superiority dice to deal extra damage to enemies. That’s 5d8=22 over the course of 3 rounds. That brings us to a 3-round total of 111 damage, an average of 37 DPR. 37 DPR brings us to an offensive CR of 5, which we don’t have to adjust for his attack bonus.
That gives us a CR of 8 if we go strictly by the numbers.
But I would consider the fact that a 24 AC is going to be very hard for attack-based characters to hit, so if you have a lot of characters in your party who use attacks to do damage, that’s not gonna be much fun.
Oops, I forgot to account for shield, but did you account for the second wind (average 12 healing once with bonus action which it doesn't use much with anyway so basically free)? That brings Def CR to 11, but average stays the same.
Overall, I'd say this will not be a fun fight with high AC and the ability to shut down spells with silence.
Thank you all - and especially for spelling it out for me. I’ll remove some of the effects to make it more fun for players! You’ve been a huge help :) x
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Hoping for some guidance here as i'm not finding the DMG guide correlating usefully/comprehensibly for my limited newbie brain regarding how I should go about workng this out?
The immediate NPC villain in question is a multiclassed level 7 battlemaster/ level 3 wizard. He has homebrew armour that makes him pretty buffed and a magical weapon (greatsword of wounding) too.
I'm running a game with 7 to 8 PCs at the moment.
How should I determine the challenge rating of the enemy to know whether to up-scale downscale or at what milestone I should introduce him?
Thanks!
Bx
Well, what's his armor class, what are his hit points, what's his to-hit bonus, and how much damage can he do on each of the first three rounds of combat?
https://ddb.ac/characters/8202263/rSXTH0
Tricky thing is his armour giving resistance to all - which is story essential. Suggests to me the standard calculation wouldn't compensate for this and probs under powers him in overall CR. But I'm not sure what a sensible adjustment would be?
AC 19 = CR 17
HP 78 = CR 1
So assumedly av def CR is 9
Max damage per round (gets 2 attacks) is chill touch & great sword attack totalling: 31 which makes a CR 4
Attack bonus is + 7 (+ 3 strength from armour buff and prof bonus + 4) which is CR 8
Making av Off Bonus CR 6
And Overall CR av is 7.5 rounded up to 8
but if you're saying its the first three rounds of max damage then that's 93 which must change things? And dat armour doh...???
Thanks again!
Defensive CR 9.
Offensive CR 5.
Average CR 7.
If he resists all damage, without exception, treat his hit points as twice what they are. 156 effective HP puts you at defensive CR 6. Since his AC is 4 higher than the expected AC, his defensive CR is increased by 2, giving us 8. He also knows the Shield spell and can use it SIX times. This means he’s probably going to be casting it every round if he’s hit by an attack. His effective AC is 24, and his defensive CR is now 10.
He cannot attack with his great sword and use chill touch in the same round, so forget that. Each greatsword Attack does 10 average damage for 20 DPR, plus the wound effect, which I’m going to eyeball as being worth about 3 DPR. So if we start with a baseline of 23 DPR, then increase the DPR of one round by 20 (action surge), we get 43, 23, 23. Let’s also assume he uses all of his superiority dice to deal extra damage to enemies. That’s 5d8=22 over the course of 3 rounds. That brings us to a 3-round total of 111 damage, an average of 37 DPR. 37 DPR brings us to an offensive CR of 5, which we don’t have to adjust for his attack bonus.
That gives us a CR of 8 if we go strictly by the numbers.
But I would consider the fact that a 24 AC is going to be very hard for attack-based characters to hit, so if you have a lot of characters in your party who use attacks to do damage, that’s not gonna be much fun.
Oops, I forgot to account for shield, but did you account for the second wind (average 12 healing once with bonus action which it doesn't use much with anyway so basically free)? That brings Def CR to 11, but average stays the same.
Overall, I'd say this will not be a fun fight with high AC and the ability to shut down spells with silence.
You’re right; I did forget second wind.
Incidentally, this is why I don’t run NPCs built with the PC classes. Too many things to keep track of.
Agreed. You can cut the NPC down to just relevant and relied upon abilities.
Thank you all - and especially for spelling it out for me. I’ll remove some of the effects to make it more fun for players! You’ve been a huge help :) x