I’m writing a campaign that is doing short one-on-one sessions with each of the players to preface where it opens. The players all star at Lvl. 4 in this campaign, but I need a beast to pit up against each of the players on their own, for the setup to work. At the current moment I have a Giant Boar (CR. 2) but I want to know if that’s too challenging for a single lvl 4 character.
You should be able to solve this using math. The boar does 17 damage with its attack and should have a 50% hit rate, so you just need to see if the character can survive 8.5 damage per round long enough to kill it.
Simulating an encounter is always the most accurate way to balance, but it also tends to be time consuming, and the problem with a single PC is that encounter results can be quite swingy and class dependent. On average I would expect a level 4 PC to beat a giant boar, but it doesn't take particularly unusual bad luck (say, the boar charges and manages a critical hit for 31 damage) for it to turn out otherwise.
Given that the initial encounter is sounds like it's mostly setup, I'd err on the side of easy, and I'd pick a creature with more predictable performance. A brown bear is very unlikely to beat a level 4 PC, but shouldn't be completely trivial.
In a perfect world, CR is meant to be an average difficulty fight for a party of 4 at that level that is fresh and fully ready to go in the fight.
So a CR 1 monster should be something 4 Lv1 players should take a moment to kill, could possibly do some damage if they are stupid in the fight though.
For example, a CR 1 Animated Armor. 33 HP. Multiattack 2 Attacks. +4 to hit, 5 Damage a hit. (1d6+2)
Even with a party of 4, that could still potentially 1-shot just about anyone depending on how you roll the damage and what everyone's HP is. But it doesn't have a ton of HP, shouldn't survive more than 2 rounds at most. If your squishy players stay away from it, it only has 25 movement, they'll be fine.
For a single level 1 player, a 1/4 CR is going to be the ideal fight for them most likely.
A CR1/4 Animated Broom, for example, 14 HP. 5 damage a hit. (1d4+3). 1 attack per round.
Unless you have a Wizard who made some really bad decisions at character creation regarding their CON, even they can survive at least 1 round against it. But even a 1/4 CR, it could potentially still kill the player if they get bad rolls, or play dumb.
But CR isn't perfect. Party Compositions can have bad matchups against certain monsters. Action Economy also comes in to play pretty quickly when you start dealing with numbers.
Got a Solo Wizard? They're likely going to easily deal with the melee-only monster that has 25 movement and cant catch up to them. But stick that same wizard in melee range against that same creature at the start of the fight? They might start to crumble. Likewise, put them against something with the same CR but that has a ranged attack, and the wizard might struggle.
DDB also has an encounter builder you can play around with, but even that is only going to be a guess. You have to gauge things with your players and figure it out.
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I’m writing a campaign that is doing short one-on-one sessions with each of the players to preface where it opens. The players all star at Lvl. 4 in this campaign, but I need a beast to pit up against each of the players on their own, for the setup to work. At the current moment I have a Giant Boar (CR. 2) but I want to know if that’s too challenging for a single lvl 4 character.
You should be able to solve this using math. The boar does 17 damage with its attack and should have a 50% hit rate, so you just need to see if the character can survive 8.5 damage per round long enough to kill it.
I’ve never seen that answer, but it rlly works. Thank you!
Simulating an encounter is always the most accurate way to balance, but it also tends to be time consuming, and the problem with a single PC is that encounter results can be quite swingy and class dependent. On average I would expect a level 4 PC to beat a giant boar, but it doesn't take particularly unusual bad luck (say, the boar charges and manages a critical hit for 31 damage) for it to turn out otherwise.
Given that the initial encounter is sounds like it's mostly setup, I'd err on the side of easy, and I'd pick a creature with more predictable performance. A brown bear is very unlikely to beat a level 4 PC, but shouldn't be completely trivial.
You're welcome.
The encounter building rules in the DMG give guidance on an XP budget to use per character here: Building Encounters
For a single level 4 character, the XP budgets would be 250/375/500 for Low/Moderate/High difficulty encounters. Enemy XP values are as follows:
CR1/8 - 25 XP CR1/4 - 50 XP CR1/2 - 100 XP CR1 - 200 XP CR2 - 450 XP
I'd stick with a single CR2, or maybe like 3 CR1/2 monsters at most, unless you want to kill your player.
In a perfect world, CR is meant to be an average difficulty fight for a party of 4 at that level that is fresh and fully ready to go in the fight.
So a CR 1 monster should be something 4 Lv1 players should take a moment to kill, could possibly do some damage if they are stupid in the fight though.
For example, a CR 1 Animated Armor. 33 HP. Multiattack 2 Attacks. +4 to hit, 5 Damage a hit. (1d6+2)
Even with a party of 4, that could still potentially 1-shot just about anyone depending on how you roll the damage and what everyone's HP is. But it doesn't have a ton of HP, shouldn't survive more than 2 rounds at most. If your squishy players stay away from it, it only has 25 movement, they'll be fine.
For a single level 1 player, a 1/4 CR is going to be the ideal fight for them most likely.
A CR1/4 Animated Broom, for example, 14 HP. 5 damage a hit. (1d4+3). 1 attack per round.
Unless you have a Wizard who made some really bad decisions at character creation regarding their CON, even they can survive at least 1 round against it. But even a 1/4 CR, it could potentially still kill the player if they get bad rolls, or play dumb.
But CR isn't perfect. Party Compositions can have bad matchups against certain monsters. Action Economy also comes in to play pretty quickly when you start dealing with numbers.
Got a Solo Wizard? They're likely going to easily deal with the melee-only monster that has 25 movement and cant catch up to them. But stick that same wizard in melee range against that same creature at the start of the fight? They might start to crumble. Likewise, put them against something with the same CR but that has a ranged attack, and the wizard might struggle.
DDB also has an encounter builder you can play around with, but even that is only going to be a guess. You have to gauge things with your players and figure it out.