It does not matter how many times I read the various sources and using the new encounter builder is great but makes it even harder for me to understand. So expert DM's, if I have a party of 8 players at 2nd level, what would you say is the best CR for that group? Xanathar's guide has great information, but not for a party of that size, so I want to see if my understanding is correct:
A 2nd level character typically could handle 3-CR 1 monsters. The solo monster chart indicates 4-2nd level characters can handle a CR 2 monster. Does this mean 8-2nd level characters could handle 24-CR1 monsters or 2-CR2 monsters? That does not make sense to me or is my math off? Thank you in advance as I know someone will be able to explain it much better to me.
A party of 8 2nd-level characters has thresholds of 400, 800, 1,200, and 1,600 XP. Add together the monsters' XP values; multiply the effective XP for the number of monsters, as shown on the second table in that subsection, but using the multiplier one step lower (1/2 for one monster); and compare that value to the XP thresholds.
So, a medium encounter for your party would supposedly be one of the following:
one CR 5
one CR 4 and one CR 1/4
one CR 3 and one CR 1/2 to 2
two CR 2s
three CR 1s*
two CR 1s and two CR 1/2s*
two CR 1s, one CR 1/2, and two CR 1/4s**
two CR 1s and four CR 1/4s
one CR 1 and four CR 1/2s**
one CR 1, three CR 1/2s, and two CR 1/4s
six CR 1/2s
*You can add up to one CR 1/2 and one CR 1/4. **You can add up to one CR 1/2.
This is not by any means a comprehensive list, but it's one that keeps you from having to track more than half a dozen monsters.
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"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
Just a note, CR was designed for campaigns where the pcs would be faced with 5-6 combat encounters between long rests. If you run a social campaign where every combat is meaningful and a boss battle, if you go by CR your players might blow your boss away.
Kobold Fight Club has a great tool for calculating difficulty of an encounter - it even gives the "daily budget", so if you know they are doing a single encounter that day then you can make it sufficiently difficult.
Running a game with 8 players is actually difficult because of how the rating system works. While 8 characters could fight one CR5. The CR5 is going to kill someone. I would design two different encounters for level two characters. I prefer working with the daily budget. So, your daily budget is 4800xp. I don't keep that number set in stone. It's a basic guideline. I would break my encounters like this:
Hard Encounter 1200xp Easy 400xp Medium 800xp Medium 800xp Deadly 1600xp
Total 4800xp
I would be careful with deadly encounters and low level characters. Expect a death or two. You could have a 1400xp (close to deadly) encounter with two Minotaur. The Minotaur charge attack with a gore could kill a 2nd level character outright. That's the problem with having a lot of players. It's probably better to have more low CR creatures. I would keep that in mind.
So as far as the daily budget goes. Use it as a baseline. Give short rests before the bigger encounters.
Just to make an observation, based on reading these forums, a lot of DMs get set in this idea that all encounters must have a single large value target leading only a couple of meat shield minions. This concentrates a lot of power into a single individual, and very little in the others. Sure, you CAN do this, but you're skewing all the "challenge" of the CR scoring for the event into a single target. Especially at low levels, having "leader" enemies in every encounter is a bad idea. They tend to be too strong relative to the PCs, which are in turn too strong to the "minion" enemies.
As an example, our group had our first encounter -- at the time 5 PCs vs 2 Hobgobs and 4 Goblins -- we did kill them all, but our Monk was downed (we healed her) and one of our Warlocks and our Rogue took pretty heavy damage. Our second encounter -- now 6 PCs vs a Bandit Captain and 6(?) Bandits -- we were able to slaughter the bandits with impunity, but the Bandit Captain took one of the Warlocks from full to 1 HP in a single hit, and it took us 3 turns of focus fire to bring him down after mopping up the Bandits.
Realistically, the first encounter should probably have been all Goblins. Any single hit from the Hobgoblins was enough to down anyone but my Cleric or our Monk, and a crit could easily have been an instakill. The second encounter could have still had the Bandit Captain, but the health and damage kind of needed to be redistributed away from him and to the Bandits. But it could have also just been a large party of Bandits, throwing enough attacks at us that statistically we'd have taken meaningful damage from them.
Dragon is definitely right here. I think perhaps once per long rest they should encounter a sub-boss of sorts, if that. On the other hand, you can overwhelm the characters with enemies. Like the above example with the Minotaur; 7 bugbears would probably overwhelm this group. I know the examples I am using are deadly (1400xp is just under the 1600xp for deadly) encounters. I wouldn't pit them against anything above a medium encounter. Maybe a boss encounter would be a hard encounters.
As a rule, I wouldn't have a single CR5 alone in a fight with level 4 PCs. If I were to do so, it would be against a group of 2-5 characters, depending on my goal with the fight.
to add to the list of charts i personally like https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/calc/enc_size.html its simple to read and you can plug in the player number, level, and the challenge you want. now what i see as an issue is 8 players. what you may not realize is that action economy is king; 8 player turns can easily overwhelm groups of weak and or low numbers of mobs. then come the issue of particularly strong lone high cr monsters potentially devastating a group. im not saying abandon players or anything but its important to know. tack on any magical items the party has received and thing go even further south. as magic item wildly throw off the balance of the game (especially if 8 players are all getting magic items) in my opinion.
OK so I'm playing a dungeon campaign (lots of little ones as opposed to 2 or 3 massive ones) I'm not exactly sure about the last 2 dungeons compared to challenge rating and player level.
So I have 7 level 3 players and in 1 dungeon they fight (seperately);
1 Nothic, 1 spectator, 1 gibbering mouther, and a red slaad. I will have traps but I'm just not sure how appropriate the challenge will be.
In another dungeon, 7 players level 3 they are fighting;
2 rust monsters, A Nanuae (homebrew creation CR 3) an ettercap a griffon and a Phantaur (homebrew creation CR 5)
OK so I'm playing a dungeon campaign (lots of little ones as opposed to 2 or 3 massive ones) I'm not exactly sure about the last 2 dungeons compared to challenge rating and player level.
So I have 7 level 3 players and in 1 dungeon they fight (seperately);
1 Nothic, 1 spectator, 1 gibbering mouther, and a red slaad. I will have traps but I'm just not sure how appropriate the challenge will be.
In another dungeon, 7 players level 3 they are fighting;
2 rust monsters, A Nanuae (homebrew creation CR 3) an ettercap a griffon and a Phantaur (homebrew creation CR 5)
Let me know what you think
Any solo CR 5 or lower monster will be easy for a group of 7 according to the encounter math.
A solo CR 6, 2 CR 3s, or 4 CR 1-2s would be a medium encounter.
You can use the encounter builder on DDB or a 3rd party one online to calculate and balance encounters.
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[CR vs Player Number+Level] is not precisely true for all cases, and your math is not off. There are multiple videos on YouTube that did the math.
Frankly, I have seen so many experienced DMs wiping off entire group of players in the first encounter simply using that table.
If you want the perfect way to balance, it's very hard, and the complexity of doing those math is nowhere near easy. In short, use what I have done: (only considering your 8 2 lvl players with low health around 20 or less)
1. Always calculate the average dmg output for each character.
2. Check the HP for each character.
3. Make sure the minions take about average of 2 hits to be killed and will only dmg characters for average of 1/10 of their max health each turn. If you take this setup, 3/4 minions will be enough (if they roll high, well, you will need 4; alternatively, one of the 4 can have only 1 hit to be killed)
4. Larger/tougher foes will take about average 4/5 hits to be killed and will only dmg characters for average of 1/5 or 1/6 of their max health each turn. 1/2 of these will be sufficient, depending on how challenging you want.
That way, unless you roll multiple crits, the players aren't getting wiped in the first encounter. It doesn't matter what the stats block tells, it's a reference based on their playtests, you can always adjust accordingly if your players roll bad for stats etc. Also, you can ensure everyone has a turn and more to act and do something in the battle. That's way better than picking up tons of monsters like 24 CR 1 monsters.
By the way, zero team wipe from first encounters I have created for my players so far.
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Game: DD 5e
Group preferred: On the line
Experience: 2.5 yrs or so.
Location/Timezone: Iseikai Time//EMT (Emilia-tan), but not MIT.
Availability: When I sign up, I know I should be free.
Preferred role: Player. But honestly, I am into serious relationship.
It does not matter how many times I read the various sources and using the new encounter builder is great but makes it even harder for me to understand. So expert DM's, if I have a party of 8 players at 2nd level, what would you say is the best CR for that group? Xanathar's guide has great information, but not for a party of that size, so I want to see if my understanding is correct:
A 2nd level character typically could handle 3-CR 1 monsters. The solo monster chart indicates 4-2nd level characters can handle a CR 2 monster. Does this mean 8-2nd level characters could handle 24-CR1 monsters or 2-CR2 monsters? That does not make sense to me or is my math off? Thank you in advance as I know someone will be able to explain it much better to me.
You poor soul. And I thought it sucked to run a 6 person party
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It does not matter how many times I read the various sources and using the new encounter builder is great but makes it even harder for me to understand. So expert DM's, if I have a party of 8 players at 2nd level, what would you say is the best CR for that group? Xanathar's guide has great information, but not for a party of that size, so I want to see if my understanding is correct:
A 2nd level character typically could handle 3-CR 1 monsters. The solo monster chart indicates 4-2nd level characters can handle a CR 2 monster. Does this mean 8-2nd level characters could handle 24-CR1 monsters or 2-CR2 monsters? That does not make sense to me or is my math off? Thank you in advance as I know someone will be able to explain it much better to me.
Where are you getting that 1 level 2 character could fight 3 CR 1 monsters? A CR 1 monster is at least as strong as a level 3 character.
I think you were reading the chart backward. 3 level 2 characters should be fighting 1 CR 1 monster.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/creating-adventures#CreatingaCombatEncounter
A party of 8 2nd-level characters has thresholds of 400, 800, 1,200, and 1,600 XP. Add together the monsters' XP values; multiply the effective XP for the number of monsters, as shown on the second table in that subsection, but using the multiplier one step lower (1/2 for one monster); and compare that value to the XP thresholds.
So, a medium encounter for your party would supposedly be one of the following:
*You can add up to one CR 1/2 and one CR 1/4.
**You can add up to one CR 1/2.
This is not by any means a comprehensive list, but it's one that keeps you from having to track more than half a dozen monsters.
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
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Just a note, CR was designed for campaigns where the pcs would be faced with 5-6 combat encounters between long rests. If you run a social campaign where every combat is meaningful and a boss battle, if you go by CR your players might blow your boss away.
Thank you for noticing I misunderstood the charts. That is clearly what my struggle was. Not sure how I misunderstood that.
Kobold Fight Club has a great tool for calculating difficulty of an encounter - it even gives the "daily budget", so if you know they are doing a single encounter that day then you can make it sufficiently difficult.
https://kobold.club/fight/#/encounter-builder
Running a game with 8 players is actually difficult because of how the rating system works. While 8 characters could fight one CR5. The CR5 is going to kill someone. I would design two different encounters for level two characters. I prefer working with the daily budget. So, your daily budget is 4800xp. I don't keep that number set in stone. It's a basic guideline. I would break my encounters like this:
Hard Encounter 1200xp
Easy 400xp
Medium 800xp
Medium 800xp
Deadly 1600xp
Total 4800xp
I would be careful with deadly encounters and low level characters. Expect a death or two. You could have a 1400xp (close to deadly) encounter with two Minotaur. The Minotaur charge attack with a gore could kill a 2nd level character outright. That's the problem with having a lot of players. It's probably better to have more low CR creatures. I would keep that in mind.
So as far as the daily budget goes. Use it as a baseline. Give short rests before the bigger encounters.
Just to make an observation, based on reading these forums, a lot of DMs get set in this idea that all encounters must have a single large value target leading only a couple of meat shield minions. This concentrates a lot of power into a single individual, and very little in the others. Sure, you CAN do this, but you're skewing all the "challenge" of the CR scoring for the event into a single target. Especially at low levels, having "leader" enemies in every encounter is a bad idea. They tend to be too strong relative to the PCs, which are in turn too strong to the "minion" enemies.
As an example, our group had our first encounter -- at the time 5 PCs vs 2 Hobgobs and 4 Goblins -- we did kill them all, but our Monk was downed (we healed her) and one of our Warlocks and our Rogue took pretty heavy damage. Our second encounter -- now 6 PCs vs a Bandit Captain and 6(?) Bandits -- we were able to slaughter the bandits with impunity, but the Bandit Captain took one of the Warlocks from full to 1 HP in a single hit, and it took us 3 turns of focus fire to bring him down after mopping up the Bandits.
Realistically, the first encounter should probably have been all Goblins. Any single hit from the Hobgoblins was enough to down anyone but my Cleric or our Monk, and a crit could easily have been an instakill. The second encounter could have still had the Bandit Captain, but the health and damage kind of needed to be redistributed away from him and to the Bandits. But it could have also just been a large party of Bandits, throwing enough attacks at us that statistically we'd have taken meaningful damage from them.
Not every conflict needs a raid boss.
Dragon is definitely right here. I think perhaps once per long rest they should encounter a sub-boss of sorts, if that. On the other hand, you can overwhelm the characters with enemies. Like the above example with the Minotaur; 7 bugbears would probably overwhelm this group. I know the examples I am using are deadly (1400xp is just under the 1600xp for deadly) encounters. I wouldn't pit them against anything above a medium encounter. Maybe a boss encounter would be a hard encounters.
How many lvl 4 PC would you pit against one CR5??
As a rule, I wouldn't have a single CR5 alone in a fight with level 4 PCs. If I were to do so, it would be against a group of 2-5 characters, depending on my goal with the fight.
According to combat encounter rules in DMG: 1 CR5 monster is deadly for 3 or less level 4 PCs, Hard for 4, medium for 5, and easy to 6 or more.
XGtM is more results oriented and just recommends 1 CR5 for 5 level 4 PCs as a balanced encounter.
to add to the list of charts i personally like https://donjon.bin.sh/5e/calc/enc_size.html its simple to read and you can plug in the player number, level, and the challenge you want. now what i see as an issue is 8 players. what you may not realize is that action economy is king; 8 player turns can easily overwhelm groups of weak and or low numbers of mobs. then come the issue of particularly strong lone high cr monsters potentially devastating a group. im not saying abandon players or anything but its important to know. tack on any magical items the party has received and thing go even further south. as magic item wildly throw off the balance of the game (especially if 8 players are all getting magic items) in my opinion.
OK so I'm playing a dungeon campaign (lots of little ones as opposed to 2 or 3 massive ones) I'm not exactly sure about the last 2 dungeons compared to challenge rating and player level.
So I have 7 level 3 players and in 1 dungeon they fight (seperately);
1 Nothic, 1 spectator, 1 gibbering mouther, and a red slaad. I will have traps but I'm just not sure how appropriate the challenge will be.
In another dungeon, 7 players level 3 they are fighting;
2 rust monsters, A Nanuae (homebrew creation CR 3) an ettercap a griffon and a Phantaur (homebrew creation CR 5)
Let me know what you think
Any solo CR 5 or lower monster will be easy for a group of 7 according to the encounter math.
A solo CR 6, 2 CR 3s, or 4 CR 1-2s would be a medium encounter.
You can use the encounter builder on DDB or a 3rd party one online to calculate and balance encounters.
Would 5 lv3 PCs be able to handle a CR3 monster?
Yes, and probably with considerable ease.
Join the Competition of the Finest 'Brews XIX! (Or just spectate and vote, that's cool too. Either way, go there. It's awesome, and it'll be even more awesome if you join.)
[CR vs Player Number+Level] is not precisely true for all cases, and your math is not off. There are multiple videos on YouTube that did the math.
Frankly, I have seen so many experienced DMs wiping off entire group of players in the first encounter simply using that table.
If you want the perfect way to balance, it's very hard, and the complexity of doing those math is nowhere near easy. In short, use what I have done: (only considering your 8 2 lvl players with low health around 20 or less)
1. Always calculate the average dmg output for each character.
2. Check the HP for each character.
3. Make sure the minions take about average of 2 hits to be killed and will only dmg characters for average of 1/10 of their max health each turn. If you take this setup, 3/4 minions will be enough (if they roll high, well, you will need 4; alternatively, one of the 4 can have only 1 hit to be killed)
4. Larger/tougher foes will take about average 4/5 hits to be killed and will only dmg characters for average of 1/5 or 1/6 of their max health each turn. 1/2 of these will be sufficient, depending on how challenging you want.
That way, unless you roll multiple crits, the players aren't getting wiped in the first encounter. It doesn't matter what the stats block tells, it's a reference based on their playtests, you can always adjust accordingly if your players roll bad for stats etc. Also, you can ensure everyone has a turn and more to act and do something in the battle. That's way better than picking up tons of monsters like 24 CR 1 monsters.
By the way, zero team wipe from first encounters I have created for my players so far.
Personal Signature should be creative and original:
Game: DD 5e
Group preferred: On the line
Experience: 2.5 yrs or so.
Location/Timezone: Iseikai Time//EMT (Emilia-tan), but not MIT.
Availability: When I sign up, I know I should be free.
Preferred role: Player. But honestly, I am into serious relationship.
Game style: I don't fill the chat with ooc.
I’ve read that a lvl 1 party can defeat lvl 1 cr, lvl 2 = 2, etc.
You poor soul. And I thought it sucked to run a 6 person party