Thanks so much in advance for your time and help. My name is Kelly and am fairly new to both DnD and DMing, as is my party. I am coming up with a hopefully pretty expansive and interesting PC-choice driven world for my party. I'm going with a Caribbean-esqe pirate/sailing/nautical theme. What I'm struggling with is figuring out what is a good combat encounter for my party. I want to keep combat down to 1-2 encounters per session as we have a party of 6-7 and don't want it sucking up all the time. So any guides and tips to having challenging but not impossible fights for a party of that size, tips or ideas in general would be greatly appreciated as well. Thanks so much ! All tips and critiques welcome!
Welcome to DMing. I will give you the standard advice several of us here give... watch Matt Colville's Running the Game series. It is excellent. Here is the first in the series:
In terms of specifically designing encounters, you can use the encounter builder here on DDB, or at Kobold Fight Club, to scale encounters properly. For low level parties you are looking for creatures with a CR of 1 or less... Then as they go up, you want to look for increasingly hard enemies. If you are going to homebrew the enemies then what I suggest, rather than trying to completely make up your own from scratch, is to repurpose or reskin existing enemies. So for example, you can take something like a goblin, use its stat block, and just use those abilities for low level enemy pirates.
Be careful using the encounter builder if you're doing a solo monster (or better, don't use solo monsters); for 6 level 1 PCs a CR 2 is classed as Easy, CR 3 is Medium, CR 4 is Hard, and CR 5 is Deadly, and at low numbers of encounters per day you want most encounters to be Deadly, but a lot of CR 4-5 critters will be dropping level 1 PCs in a single hit, or even doing twice their hp (resulting in instant death).
Yeah that's what I've been reading. I'm thinking of a larger number of 1/4 difficulty monsters? I also read that it's ill-advised to have more enemies than PC's at lower levels. Would you guys concur with that statement? One of the first encounters I had planned before making my post was a pack of Twig Blights, I was thinking 8 but now I'm thinking that may be too many? Any thoughts?
Yeah that's what I've been reading. I'm thinking of a larger number of 1/4 difficulty monsters? I also read that it's ill-advised to have more enemies than PC's at lower levels. Would you guys concur with that statement?
Not really, a set of fresh level 1 PCs can probably handle two CR 1/8 monsters per PC, but I don't recommend having more monsters than PCs when you have six to seven PCs because it will take forever.
having more monsters than party members is fine, the problem comes if you add more monster types than party members or you forget that all same type monsters act on the same initiative count
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NNCHRIS: SOUL THIEF, MASTER OF THE ARCANE, AND KING OF NEW YORKNN Gdl Creator of Ilheia and her Knights of the Fallen Stars ldG Lesser Student of Technomancy [undergrad student in computer science] Supporter of the 2014 rules, and a MASSIVE Homebrewer. Come to me all ye who seek salvation in wording thy brews! Open to homebrew trades at any time!! Or feel free to request HB, and Ill see if I can get it done for ya! Characters (Outdated)
Yeah. Personal experience: Our Beer and Pretzel's game I play with some friends have 6 PCs. Now the game is basically only combat but the first combat took close to 1 hour and it was only 6 zombies. 12 Initiatives will drag out a fight. SO just be mindful. You want combat challenging, but depending on how long your sessions are going to be, the number of turns in a combat round will dictate how long and dragged out that combat will be.
When it comes to having more monsters than PCs, the issue is the action economy. The simple fact of 5e is that whichever side has the most Actions/Round has the advantage. That doesn’t automatically mean that the baddies will win if they outnumber the PCs, just that they well do more damage on average over the whole combat compared to an equivalent CR of monsters with fewer attacks. But that’s okay.
The system is designed to have 6-8 encounters of Medium Difficulty per Adventuring Day (Long Rest to Long Rest). (They don’t all have to be specifically “combat encounters” though.) The math was done so that by the end of that Adventuring Day, the party will have had their resources depleted and will need another Long Rest again. If you have fewer combats, then they are supposed to be harder. A “Deadly” encounter should be the tough equivalent of 2-3 Medium encounters. That means the same party should be able to 2-4 Deadly encounters with the same total overall effect as 6-8 Medium encounters.
So it is totally okay to outnumber the party with monsters. One just must remember that by the end of it, the party should have taken a lot of damage and used a lot of resources like spell slots and potions and such. But, if you outnumber them by more than 2:1, it is certainly possible for it to get away from you and really damage the party by killing more than one of them at a time. And as long as they have some healing in the group, even dropping a PC down to 0 HP is not an issue because they only need one HP to stand back up and keep fighting like The Undertaker. But if you drop 2 or more at the same time during the same fight... The others might not be able to pour potions in their mouths quickly enough for them to keep up.
Early on, PC death is rough for them because they are basically broke. But by 5th level they should be able to handle a PC death once in a while because they can afford to bring them back to life. Usually. So it’s a kind of balancing act for the DM who isn’t used to it at first. But once you get the hang of it, it isn’t so bad to be able to adjust stuff to help rectify your miscalculations.
When it comes to having more monsters than PCs, the issue is the action economy. The simple fact of 5e is that whichever side has the most Actions/Round has the advantage.
This 'simple fact' has the major flaw of being false; vast numbers of crap actions are still crap. Fights in D&D are mostly dps races, whichever side runs out of hit points first loses. The main reason large numbers of small monsters are scary is because the way multiple monsters are scaled means they tend to have a larger combined dpr and hp than single monsters at the same xp totals. A bugbear has DPR 11 and 27 hp; 4x bandit have DPR 22 and 44 total hp (worse accuracy and ac, but enough to make up for the difference). It's expected that area effects will even things out, but unless they're pretty large areas they don't.
When it comes to having more monsters than PCs, the issue is the action economy. The simple fact of 5e is that whichever side has the most Actions/Round has the advantage.
This 'simple fact' has the major flaw of being false; vast numbers of crap actions are still crap. Fights in D&D are mostly dps races, whichever side runs out of hit points first loses. The main reason large numbers of small monsters are scary is because the way multiple monsters are scaled means they tend to have a larger combined dpr and hp than single monsters at the same xp totals. A bugbear has DPR 11 and 27 hp; 4x bandit have DPR 22 and 44 total hp (worse accuracy and ac, but enough to make up for the difference). It's expected that area effects will even things out, but unless they're pretty large areas they don't.
It is a simple fact that when the baddies have whacktons of attacks, that’s one of the major factors that contributes to high DPR. I’ll refer to my usual example of 8 goblins compared to 1 ogre. Both sides are the same CR, and they have roughly the same HP, but the goblins have eight times as many attacks. Which one’s gonna have the higher DPR?
Add to that the fact that “weight of Fire” (volume of attacks) means that the gobbos have a much better probability of guaranteed damage every turn. That ogre misses 1ce and it’s DPR for the round is 0, but the goblins still have 7 more chances if they miss once.
So... how was wrong? Please explain that one to me ‘cause I don’t get it.
I'm also confused. If "multiple monsters are scary" then why does it not also follow that having more monsters than PCs gives the monsters' side an advantage?
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
It is a simple fact that when the baddies have whacktons of attacks, that’s one of the major factors that contributes to high DPR. I’ll refer to my usual example of 8 goblins compared to 1 ogre. Both sides are the same CR, and they have roughly the same HP, but the goblins have eight times as many attacks. Which one’s gonna have the higher DPR?
Add to that the fact that “weight of Fire” (volume of attacks) means that the gobbos have a much better probability of guaranteed damage every turn. That ogre misses 1ce and it’s DPR for the round is 0, but the goblins still have 7 more chances if they miss once.
So... how was wrong? Please explain that one to me ‘cause I don’t get it.
My point isn't that more actions isn't better. More actions is certainly better. It's just that people have a bad habit of claiming it's the only thing. 2 goblins have more actions than one ogre and are certainly not more dangerous.
The accurate version is "At a given xp budget, if the PCs are using single target damage, the larger number of monsters is more dangerous".
My advice for low level combat if you and your group are new to the game is to start with something you're confident they'll be able to handle without much trouble, and slowly increase the heat over multiple encounters to either find the point that feels right, or where you get a better handle on 'how hard something actually is'. As people will say here, it's not always easy to know how deadly something is from the CR alone, and if you underestimate a certain ability (or get lucky on a monster with a multi-attack) you can accidentally cause a TPK you never expected.
Personally, I'd avoid encounters with a large number of monsters simply because it will take you forever to get through, and players will start to get bored between their turns. This is especially true at low levels where they're going to be waiting 10 minutes just to find out they missed their one attack. I'd encourage you to pick a more manageable set of low level monsters (with low AC), no more than four, and make the environment you're fighting in one of the characters. For example, a Pirates of the Caribbean setting you could have a fierce storm rocking the boat they're fighting on every two rounds (and have everyone make a Dex saving throw or fall prone), or if they're wading through swampy waist-deep water, maybe use three monsters which use the hide ability every second round to dive under the water, ready to spring up again on the next turn.
Always considering the environment like this is one way I've found to turn combat (which I find to be the most boring part of the game) into a memorable event that happens, and the tedious act of making sure its balanced becomes less important. For example, if you realise two rounds in that you've given them more than you expected, you can use the environment to re-calibrate the encounter. A wave washes over the decks and takes a monster with it, or the hiding monster never returns... but could be lurking anywhere around them! To you it might feel a bit like you're cheaply fixing your mistakes, but it'll be less obvious to your players who will be excited by the action.
Thanks again for all your help. One more thing I'd like to get some input on is in regards to loot and shops, are there any good resources on placing balanced loot into the world, what shops should offer, and what PC's can start off with?
in the dmg there are both individual creature and hoard loot tables
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
NNCHRIS: SOUL THIEF, MASTER OF THE ARCANE, AND KING OF NEW YORKNN Gdl Creator of Ilheia and her Knights of the Fallen Stars ldG Lesser Student of Technomancy [undergrad student in computer science] Supporter of the 2014 rules, and a MASSIVE Homebrewer. Come to me all ye who seek salvation in wording thy brews! Open to homebrew trades at any time!! Or feel free to request HB, and Ill see if I can get it done for ya! Characters (Outdated)
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Hi all!
Thanks so much in advance for your time and help. My name is Kelly and am fairly new to both DnD and DMing, as is my party. I am coming up with a hopefully pretty expansive and interesting PC-choice driven world for my party. I'm going with a Caribbean-esqe pirate/sailing/nautical theme. What I'm struggling with is figuring out what is a good combat encounter for my party. I want to keep combat down to 1-2 encounters per session as we have a party of 6-7 and don't want it sucking up all the time. So any guides and tips to having challenging but not impossible fights for a party of that size, tips or ideas in general would be greatly appreciated as well. Thanks so much ! All tips and critiques welcome!
-Kelly <3
Welcome to DMing. I will give you the standard advice several of us here give... watch Matt Colville's Running the Game series. It is excellent. Here is the first in the series:
In terms of specifically designing encounters, you can use the encounter builder here on DDB, or at Kobold Fight Club, to scale encounters properly. For low level parties you are looking for creatures with a CR of 1 or less... Then as they go up, you want to look for increasingly hard enemies. If you are going to homebrew the enemies then what I suggest, rather than trying to completely make up your own from scratch, is to repurpose or reskin existing enemies. So for example, you can take something like a goblin, use its stat block, and just use those abilities for low level enemy pirates.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
Thanks guys! Will check out the video after work! Hvae been watching the various "Don't Stop Thinking" videos on DnD and DMing thus far.
Cool, Yeah I will definitely check out the encounter builder as well.
-Kelly
Be careful using the encounter builder if you're doing a solo monster (or better, don't use solo monsters); for 6 level 1 PCs a CR 2 is classed as Easy, CR 3 is Medium, CR 4 is Hard, and CR 5 is Deadly, and at low numbers of encounters per day you want most encounters to be Deadly, but a lot of CR 4-5 critters will be dropping level 1 PCs in a single hit, or even doing twice their hp (resulting in instant death).
Yeah that's what I've been reading. I'm thinking of a larger number of 1/4 difficulty monsters? I also read that it's ill-advised to have more enemies than PC's at lower levels. Would you guys concur with that statement? One of the first encounters I had planned before making my post was a pack of Twig Blights, I was thinking 8 but now I'm thinking that may be too many? Any thoughts?
Not really, a set of fresh level 1 PCs can probably handle two CR 1/8 monsters per PC, but I don't recommend having more monsters than PCs when you have six to seven PCs because it will take forever.
having more monsters than party members is fine, the problem comes if you add more monster types than party members or you forget that all same type monsters act on the same initiative count
NNCHRIS: SOUL THIEF, MASTER OF THE ARCANE, AND KING OF NEW YORKNN
Gdl Creator of Ilheia and her Knights of the Fallen Stars ldG
Lesser Student of Technomancy [undergrad student in computer science]
Supporter of the 2014 rules, and a MASSIVE Homebrewer. Come to me all ye who seek salvation in wording thy brews!
Open to homebrew trades at any time!! Or feel free to request HB, and Ill see if I can get it done for ya!
Characters (Outdated)
Yeah. Personal experience: Our Beer and Pretzel's game I play with some friends have 6 PCs. Now the game is basically only combat but the first combat took close to 1 hour and it was only 6 zombies. 12 Initiatives will drag out a fight. SO just be mindful. You want combat challenging, but depending on how long your sessions are going to be, the number of turns in a combat round will dictate how long and dragged out that combat will be.
When it comes to having more monsters than PCs, the issue is the action economy. The simple fact of 5e is that whichever side has the most Actions/Round has the advantage. That doesn’t automatically mean that the baddies will win if they outnumber the PCs, just that they well do more damage on average over the whole combat compared to an equivalent CR of monsters with fewer attacks. But that’s okay.
The system is designed to have 6-8 encounters of Medium Difficulty per Adventuring Day (Long Rest to Long Rest). (They don’t all have to be specifically “combat encounters” though.) The math was done so that by the end of that Adventuring Day, the party will have had their resources depleted and will need another Long Rest again. If you have fewer combats, then they are supposed to be harder. A “Deadly” encounter should be the tough equivalent of 2-3 Medium encounters. That means the same party should be able to 2-4 Deadly encounters with the same total overall effect as 6-8 Medium encounters.
So it is totally okay to outnumber the party with monsters. One just must remember that by the end of it, the party should have taken a lot of damage and used a lot of resources like spell slots and potions and such. But, if you outnumber them by more than 2:1, it is certainly possible for it to get away from you and really damage the party by killing more than one of them at a time. And as long as they have some healing in the group, even dropping a PC down to 0 HP is not an issue because they only need one HP to stand back up and keep fighting like The Undertaker. But if you drop 2 or more at the same time during the same fight... The others might not be able to pour potions in their mouths quickly enough for them to keep up.
Early on, PC death is rough for them because they are basically broke. But by 5th level they should be able to handle a PC death once in a while because they can afford to bring them back to life. Usually. So it’s a kind of balancing act for the DM who isn’t used to it at first. But once you get the hang of it, it isn’t so bad to be able to adjust stuff to help rectify your miscalculations.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
This 'simple fact' has the major flaw of being false; vast numbers of crap actions are still crap. Fights in D&D are mostly dps races, whichever side runs out of hit points first loses. The main reason large numbers of small monsters are scary is because the way multiple monsters are scaled means they tend to have a larger combined dpr and hp than single monsters at the same xp totals. A bugbear has DPR 11 and 27 hp; 4x bandit have DPR 22 and 44 total hp (worse accuracy and ac, but enough to make up for the difference). It's expected that area effects will even things out, but unless they're pretty large areas they don't.
It is a simple fact that when the baddies have whacktons of attacks, that’s one of the major factors that contributes to high DPR. I’ll refer to my usual example of 8 goblins compared to 1 ogre. Both sides are the same CR, and they have roughly the same HP, but the goblins have eight times as many attacks. Which one’s gonna have the higher DPR?
Add to that the fact that “weight of Fire” (volume of attacks) means that the gobbos have a much better probability of guaranteed damage every turn. That ogre misses 1ce and it’s DPR for the round is 0, but the goblins still have 7 more chances if they miss once.
So... how was wrong? Please explain that one to me ‘cause I don’t get it.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
I'm also confused. If "multiple monsters are scary" then why does it not also follow that having more monsters than PCs gives the monsters' side an advantage?
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
My point isn't that more actions isn't better. More actions is certainly better. It's just that people have a bad habit of claiming it's the only thing. 2 goblins have more actions than one ogre and are certainly not more dangerous.
The accurate version is "At a given xp budget, if the PCs are using single target damage, the larger number of monsters is more dangerous".
Okay, that’s a fair point.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
My advice for low level combat if you and your group are new to the game is to start with something you're confident they'll be able to handle without much trouble, and slowly increase the heat over multiple encounters to either find the point that feels right, or where you get a better handle on 'how hard something actually is'. As people will say here, it's not always easy to know how deadly something is from the CR alone, and if you underestimate a certain ability (or get lucky on a monster with a multi-attack) you can accidentally cause a TPK you never expected.
Personally, I'd avoid encounters with a large number of monsters simply because it will take you forever to get through, and players will start to get bored between their turns. This is especially true at low levels where they're going to be waiting 10 minutes just to find out they missed their one attack. I'd encourage you to pick a more manageable set of low level monsters (with low AC), no more than four, and make the environment you're fighting in one of the characters. For example, a Pirates of the Caribbean setting you could have a fierce storm rocking the boat they're fighting on every two rounds (and have everyone make a Dex saving throw or fall prone), or if they're wading through swampy waist-deep water, maybe use three monsters which use the hide ability every second round to dive under the water, ready to spring up again on the next turn.
Always considering the environment like this is one way I've found to turn combat (which I find to be the most boring part of the game) into a memorable event that happens, and the tedious act of making sure its balanced becomes less important. For example, if you realise two rounds in that you've given them more than you expected, you can use the environment to re-calibrate the encounter. A wave washes over the decks and takes a monster with it, or the hiding monster never returns... but could be lurking anywhere around them! To you it might feel a bit like you're cheaply fixing your mistakes, but it'll be less obvious to your players who will be excited by the action.
Thanks everybody for your insight and help! I think I have a much better grasp now and a better direction on what I want to do!
Hey everyone,
Thanks again for all your help. One more thing I'd like to get some input on is in regards to loot and shops, are there any good resources on placing balanced loot into the world, what shops should offer, and what PC's can start off with?
Thanks again, guys! You guys are awesome!
-Kelly <3
in the dmg there are both individual creature and hoard loot tables
NNCHRIS: SOUL THIEF, MASTER OF THE ARCANE, AND KING OF NEW YORKNN
Gdl Creator of Ilheia and her Knights of the Fallen Stars ldG
Lesser Student of Technomancy [undergrad student in computer science]
Supporter of the 2014 rules, and a MASSIVE Homebrewer. Come to me all ye who seek salvation in wording thy brews!
Open to homebrew trades at any time!! Or feel free to request HB, and Ill see if I can get it done for ya!
Characters (Outdated)