While we're obviously focused on character stuff, since that's what's been released, but I'm hoping One D&D improves the usability of encounter generation. You're never going to get perfect, there's too much variance in character abilities and tactics, but "better than 5e" is a pretty low bar -- for example, the "adjusted xp" system in the DM confuses everyone the first time they run into it, and people don't realize that encounter difficulty is based on the "adventuring day", but what would a better system look like?
An existing published example is in XGTE. It lacks an official means of adjusting difficulty, though just building to a different encounter size works.
A simple point budget (no adjustment for number of creatures) can be done, but you can't use xp values directly, you'd have to publish a new point chart (in the dmg, 4xCR 1/8 and 1xCR 1 have the same value, so you'd need CR 1/8 be worth 1/4 the points of CR 1).
1. Is this assuming they get rid of the "short rest" mechanic altogether?
2. What would make a point budget system any more accurate than the CR-based system most newer DMs use now?
3. Left field question: Is the number of players more important than how experienced the players are at building optimized PCs? Because an encounter that wipes a table full of 6 newbies could well be "easy mode" for 4 veteran players.
1. Is this assuming they get rid of the "short rest" mechanic altogether?
2. What would make a point budget system any more accurate than the CR-based system most newer DMs use now?
3. Left field question: Is the number of players more important than how experienced the players are at building optimized PCs? Because an encounter that wipes a table full of 6 newbies could well be "easy mode" for 4 veteran players.
1. This question is indifferent to that question, though obviously if you answer "1" short rests aren't meaningful in your game.
2. I'm not sure what system you're asserting DMs use. A system such as "monsters whose CR add up to X" would be point-based.
3. There's absolutely a skill component (both character optimization and play optimization) to difficulty; "which is more important" depends on how much skill difference there actually is. I don't think it matters to this question, though; if your four veteran players are as good as six average players you'd presumably just use six player encounters for them.
3. Left field question: Is the number of players more important than how experienced the players are at building optimized PCs? Because an encounter that wipes a table full of 6 newbies could well be "easy mode" for 4 veteran players.
Don't forget the other side of this. An inexperienced DM can easily screw up an encounter as well. Either by forgetting/ignoring a creature's powers, and making the fight too easy, or by misunderstanding the powers and making it too hard.
And either way, any kind of CR can only ever be a rough gauge. The right spell or ability can trivialize some encounters, but if no one in the party has them, now its a very hard fight (and that's just the mechanics, not even including player or DM skill). And there's no way for a designer to know beforehand when they are assigning a CR what PCs it will face. CR works well as a way for comparing monsters to each other, to see which one is relatively stronger, but comparing monsters to PCs involves too many variables.
1. Is this assuming they get rid of the "short rest" mechanic altogether?
2. What would make a point budget system any more accurate than the CR-based system most newer DMs use now?
3. Left field question: Is the number of players more important than how experienced the players are at building optimized PCs? Because an encounter that wipes a table full of 6 newbies could well be "easy mode" for 4 veteran players.
1. This question is indifferent to that question, though obviously if you answer "1" short rests aren't meaningful in your game.
2. I'm not sure what system you're asserting DMs use. A system such as "monsters whose CR add up to X" would be point-based.
3. There's absolutely a skill component (both character optimization and play optimization) to difficulty; "which is more important" depends on how much skill difference there actually is. I don't think it matters to this question, though; if your four veteran players are as good as six average players you'd presumably just use six player encounters for them.
1. I asked about short rests because "an adventuring day" in 5e usually does involve one or more short rests.
2. My understanding is that CR is already a point-based system. So would your "simple point-based system" be basically the same as CR?
3. The point of my third question is that less experienced DMs are the people who have the most difficulty balancing encounters. As a new-ish DM myself, this is one of my major concerns. I have also observed other new-ish DMs and they often have the same problem. Therefore, any Encounter Design rating system should generally be geared towards assuming that the DM is less experienced. A new-ish DM would also have more trouble than a veteran DM with gauging their own players' optimization abilities, presumably, so this question remains relevant.
2. My understanding is that CR is already a point-based system. So would your "simple point-based system" be basically the same as CR?
The current system is
Add up xp values
Adjust for number of creatures in the encounter and number of PCs
Compare to difficulty thresholds, which are based on number of players.
A simple point system deletes step 2.
To give an example, in 5e, a medium encounter for a party of 4 is 1,000-1,500 adjusted xp. You can do this with
1xCR 4 (1,100 xp)
2xCR 2 (900 xp, 1,350 adjusted xp)
3xCR 1 (600 xp, 1,200 adjusted xp)
5xCR 1/2 (500 xp, 1,000 adjusted xp); 6x is 1,500 adjusted xp
8-10xCR 1/4 (400-500 xp, 1,000-1,250 adjusted xp); 13x is 1,650 adjusted xp
14xCR 1/8 (350 xp, 1,050 adjusted xp); 15x is 1,500 adjusted xp
That's... unintuitive and generally something you do by computer, such as the encounter generator. It also has really weird effects on mixed CR enemies. You can achieve identical results with a point system like:
Budget: 28 points
CR 1/8: 2 points (14)
CR 1/4: 3 points (9)
CR 1/2: 5 points (5)
CR 1: 8 points (3)
CR 2: 14 points (2)
CR 3: 20 points
CR 4: 27 points (1)
The drawback is that you can no longer use this to fill out a daily budget, but... I don't think people do that anyway.
I think big part of the reason why exp. points are used to calculate encounters is because many DMs are used to basing XP on encounters. The more monsters defeated, the more XP. If you use milestone levelling, XP per monster/NPC is of little consequence except insofar as it is used to as a reference related to CR. Ultimately, the point system you refer to would probably work just fine as long as the points can be easily translated back into XP for the DMs that are accustomed to that.
I think big part of the reason why exp. points are used to calculate encounters is because many DMs are used to basing XP on encounters.
The problem isn't using xp for encounters; it worked fine in 4e. The problem is that the adjusted xp calculation is hard to use and produces weird results.
A simple point system won't work though. If it did they would have used one and it would be called XP and you would simply get an XP budget and add up the total XP of the monsters and compare to thresholds. See the problem is that encounter difficulty is non-linear in the number of enemies. Against a party of 4, the difference in difficulty between 8x CR 2 and 4x CR 2 is not the same as the difference in difficulty between 2x CR 4 and 1x CR 4, despite the fact that in both cases we are simply doubling the total budget.
Plus there is an enormous difference in encounter difficulty between the enemies surprising the party and the party surprising the enemies which no simple point system can account for.
IMO, they need to provide actual guidance to DMs for what to take into consideration when designing an encounter, not a dumb calculator.
Ultimately, encounter design is always going to be somewhat imperfect. It's a hard system and area to get right, so though it will hopefully be a lot better than the current and ineffective system, I don't have my hopes set too high for how awesome it will be.
Typically, I would say having things designed for around 4 encounter per a day makes sense, as long as there are variant rules and mechanics for more. To be honest, I think the current system would work fine if people counted traps, hazards, and interactions with potentially hostile NPCs as "encounters" and if experience was given out for them.
I hope that we get both a point budget system and a table system. I found the latter much more intuitive and easier to use, but you also can't use it to effectively have your characters fight lots of low level monsters, or to see how much they would get steamrolled by creatures of another, higher challenge rating. That's why I think that both of these systems should be in the core rules.
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A simple point system won't work though. If it did they would have used one and it would be called XP and you would simply get an XP budget and add up the total XP of the monsters and compare to thresholds. See the problem is that encounter difficulty is non-linear in the number of enemies. Against a party of 4, the difference in difficulty between 8x CR 2 and 4x CR 2 is not the same as the difference in difficulty between 2x CR 4 and 1x CR 4, despite the fact that in both cases we are simply doubling the total budget.
Plus there is an enormous difference in encounter difficulty between the enemies surprising the party and the party surprising the enemies which no simple point system can account for.
IMO, they need to provide actual guidance to DMs for what to take into consideration when designing an encounter, not a dumb calculator.
AgileM makes some good points. Action economy is a major issue in combat encounter design. Tactical positioning and traps are another major issue. We've all experienced (or at least heard about) kobold warrens giving hell to experienced players despite kobolds themselves being low CR opponents. (And then there's always the possibility that the party solves the planned-violent encounter with some totally un-scripted-for solution that evades any direct confrontation with the planned foes.) I think what's great about tabletop RPGs is what makes it difficult to make a truly comprehensive CR system. At the same time, you kind of need one to help new-ish GMs to not TPK or exhaust the party too quickly.
So, yes, I think an encounter difficulty rating should include factors like better tactical positioning, number of healers in the PC group and be able to account for stuff like "Does this party have Counterspell on their spell list?" or "does this party know how to use a 10-foot pole?" Ideally, at least.
Unpopular opinion: Whatever rules 1DD uses for encounter design is immaterial next to explaining how encounters work. A DM should not have to comb third-party sources to know what the term "action economy" is or how it impacts battles, nor should they need a bunch of forum posts/YouTube videos explaining R5e's attrtion-based system of encounter design and how the One Fight Per Day standard completely throws it off. A DMG that explains how encounters work, what tends to make them more challenging or less, and arms the DM with the knowledge of why the encounter design rules are the way they are is vastly more important than the actual encounter design rules themselves.
...that and the Mob Attack rules should be much easier to find and more tightly integrated into combat, to give DMs better options for using large hordes of smaller critters when it's narratively appropriate without having to invent a "Swarm" statblock.
Unpopular opinion: Whatever rules 1DD uses for encounter design is immaterial next to explaining how encounters work. A DM should not have to comb third-party sources to know what the term "action economy" is or how it impacts battles, nor should they need a bunch of forum posts/YouTube videos explaining R5e's attrtion-based system of encounter design and how the One Fight Per Day standard completely throws it off. A DMG that explains how encounters work, what tends to make them more challenging or less, and arms the DM with the knowledge of why the encounter design rules are the way they are is vastly more important than the actual encounter design rules themselves.
...that and the Mob Attack rules should be much easier to find and more tightly integrated into combat, to give DMs better options for using large hordes of smaller critters when it's narratively appropriate without having to invent a "Swarm" statblock.
Not sure why you think that's an unpopular opinion b/c I agree wholeheartedly. Swarm rules and Minion rules should be provided along side basic encounter design information like:
Action economy & balancing number of attacks by the party and vs the party
Death spirals & alternative outcomes to TPKs
Terrain & Obstacle rules -> what is partial cover, full cover, obscurement, difficult terrain and how these impact melee vs ranged
Battlefield Control & Concentration -> how long should a caster be able to maintain concentration, how can enemies overcome different battlefield control measures without just being immune to it.
How to calculate approximate DPR for your party and for monsters against your party and using that with HP totals to design encounters for a particular length.
I'd also like to see more info in the monster manual : e.g. next to the Shadow "Warning PCs with low STR are particularly vulnerable, and it is particularly dangerous for multiple shadows to attack the same PC as the Strength Drain can easily kill most PCs with only a couple unlucky rolls.", or next to the Mindflayer "The power of this monster comes from its ability to stun its enemies parties with very high INT saves or other protection will find the monster easy to defeat, but parties with low INT saves are particularly vulnerable."
My guess is that they're going to encourage fewer, harder encounters in an adventuring day. Most of us know the 6-8 guideline, but sticking to it was another matter entirely. But harder encounters are also swingier for the party. I suspect this is the reason they are also experimenting with things like monsters being unable to crit, feats at first level, and giving more and more casters healing abilities at level 1.
My guess is that they're going to encourage fewer, harder encounters in an adventuring day. Most of us know the 6-8 guideline, but sticking to it was another matter entirely. But harder encounters are also swingier for the party. I suspect this is the reason they are also experimenting with things like monsters being unable to crit, feats at first level, and giving more and more casters healing abilities at level 1.
Agreed. I think that’s also why they’re tamping down on how many spells a caster can have prepared. Probably a lot of other things that are going to look like big nerfs, but are actually rebalancing for fewer encounters per day.
A simple point system won't work though. If it did they would have used one and it would be called XP and you would simply get an XP budget and add up the total XP of the monsters and compare to thresholds.
The reason they didn't do that is because they were trying to make the "adventuring day" daily budget concept work, which means they wanted the adjusted xp value of an encounter to reflect expected resource expenditure. Since an encounter with two monsters does not generally expend 2x the resource of an encounter with one monster, they had to use the adjusted xp mechanic.
However, if they throw out the concept of the daily budget, a linear method works fine.
A simple point system won't work though. If it did they would have used one and it would be called XP and you would simply get an XP budget and add up the total XP of the monsters and compare to thresholds.
The reason they didn't do that is because they were trying to make the "adventuring day" daily budget concept work, which means they wanted the adjusted xp value of an encounter to reflect expected resource expenditure. Since an encounter with two monsters does not generally expend 2x the resource of an encounter with one monster, they had to use the adjusted xp mechanic.
However, if they throw out the concept of the daily budget, a linear method works fine.
Not true, because of action economy. Let’s take a party of 4 that could take on a CR 4 creature worth 1100 XP they would likely get wiped by 22 CR 1/4 creatures worth 1100 XP. The XP is the same but the party isn’t likely to survive any round we’re all 22 enemies attack. Now if this same party ambushes this 22 CR 1/4 enemies and hits them with a couple of AoE attacks this same deadly combat becomes trivial at best. Like others have explained it will be more important for WotC to give guidance about this and other combat situations than to rehabilitate the CR system. The DMG needs to do more than show new DMs how to read CR and XP systems. It’s needs to teach them how to adjust combats for their party, fix mistakes on the fly and keep the game going.
Long story skip to the TLDR below if you don’t care.
I remember putting 4 level 3 new players against a small Gnoll pack not understanding that CR. So I had my four players vs four gnolls that added up to CR 4, thinking it would be a slightly tougher fight. 1 Pack Lord, 1 Gnawler, 1 Hunter, and 1 regular Gnoll. Fight starts and I almost immediately notice my mistake. One the fight started with the party stuck in 5ft wide tunnel coming into an open area. That would be fine if the wizard wasn’t up front. The pack lord won initiative and after multi attacking the wizard was at deaths door. Thankfully they went next, but went into full panic “I’m going to die, you’re trying to kill me,” mode. They misty stepped behind the rest of the party after some coaxing to look at all their options on their turn. Next was the Gnawler who moved into the tunnel space left by the Wizard and attacked the Rogue with multi attack. I think one of them missed can’t really remember just that she didn’t go down and had enough to not go down when she did get hit by and AoO on her turn when she decided to force her way to the back of the party. The Ranger moves to the front of the line to tank and attack the Gnawler. The Gnoll hits him with a thrown spear, and then the Hunter hits with its first bow attack. At this moment I decided the Hunter which normally has multiattack did not. Did I mention this party has no healer. I did give every player one healing potion, but I really didn’t balance this fight correctly. Even changing that one enemy so it only had one attack didn’t fully stop the death spiral I knew was likely to happen. At that moment I was thinking I TPKed the party in there second adventure together, because I didn’t understand the action economy and I placed them in a bad tactical situation because they failed a stealth check. Worst part was I think only one of them failed that check. I allowed the Ranger to switch spaces with the sorcerer since he didn’t move on his turn and the sorcerer wanted to use burning hands. I told him he would risk an attack of opportunity which I rolled in front of him. He got hit and had very little hp left. The burning hands dropped the Gnawler. I started thinking it was fine. The pack lord move over dead Gnawler and drops the sorcerer. Wizard, rogue, Ranger attack but don’t drop pack lord. I decide that gnoll doesn’t have any spears to throw and can’t get past pack lord. I also decide that since they are too far into the tunnel the Hunter doesn’t get its now one attack. Ranger survives Pack Lord. Wizard drops Pack lord. Rogue and Ranger leave tunnel to attack gnoll, but Ranger gets dropped this round. Wizard and Rogue without any other modifications from me manage to kill gnoll and hunters within the next two rounds. During this time Sorcerer had rolled natural 1 on a death save and eventually stabilized by the skin of his teeth. This was supposed to be the first of 3 combats to clear this mine network. After this I decided to read the DMG instead of just skimming through it. I don’t use the CR or experience system in the DMG. Action economy is more important and understanding your players abilities and tendencies is far more important when picking challenges for them. I don’t think I could DM for a group that just shows up with their character sheets. I need to look at them before hand to craft an appropriate challenge that could kill them but wouldn’t automatically sweep them.
TLDR
Not a great DM, I didn’t understand CR and almost wiped my players by having them face too many monsters with multiattack. Action economy matters.
2: it should be done for varying numbers of encounters per adventure day. Not “the mean is 3.16 encounters each day”. Some days there might be one, some days there might be a dozen. Structuring for a set number per day creates a static basis that ultimately kills creativity and hampers design of creative solutions, leading to the very accusations of bland we see for other reasons.
3: it needs to work at 20th level, 15th, 10th, 5th, and 1st level all equally well.
4: it should take 5 to 13 rounds to resolve an encounter.
5: scratch the above: length of encounter should ramp by level.
6: it should be based on means, not averages, and never maxes or mins.
7: it should include a structured template for a series of encounters that are interconnected, not just one at a time.
8: They have to get rid of this bits and bites low CR crap. I just ramped all the monsters in my new campaign up, and had to build a new CR set up for it. I use a Base Cr with modifiers for variable changes to monsters, and since I have critters that are under an inch in size and over 50 cu ft in size, I needed a whole different system. Then I had to allow for gigantic but low hp and micro but high hp monsters. Because hp is not always or inherently a function of size. I have ten variables that change the cr as much as -5 or +10, and the final max CR is 40 plus a fade level up to 50.
I could have done a better system, but that would mean altering the core monster stats system as a whole because it is built into the encounter system.
9: they need to make it clear that some critters are only able to be attacked by much larger size groups. And then be aware that some few campaigns have 10 or 12 players a session and a model built only for four won’t scale up properly unless you account for as few as two and as many as a dozen at the start.
10: They really do need scaled battle and siege mechanics again. I won’t ask for something that is super cool with tokens (theater of the mind is my style anyway) because this isn’t a wargame , it is an rpg, and so something at least marginally decent, even if it means cannibalizing the 1e rules.
I probably have more, lol. Terrain effects and impacts, randoms, environmental encounters for survival style campaigns, some new gm guidance on structural encounter design and tension-suspense curves, crap like that.
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Not true, because of action economy. Let’s take a party of 4 that could take on a CR 4 creature worth 1100 XP they would likely get wiped by 22 CR 1/4 creatures worth 1100 XP.
(a) that's not because of action economy, that's because the CR 1/4 creatures have a typical combined dpr of 110 while the CR 4 has a typical dpr of 25. 90% of things people blame on action economy are not because of action economy, they're because of the encounter system. The only things that are really about action economy are single target action denial abilities.
(b) "linear" does not mean "XP". The XP values are designed to work with the DMG system, you'd need a new point system.
Not true, because of action economy. Let’s take a party of 4 that could take on a CR 4 creature worth 1100 XP they would likely get wiped by 22 CR 1/4 creatures worth 1100 XP.
(a) that's not because of action economy, that's because the CR 1/4 creatures have a typical combined dpr of 110 while the CR 4 has a typical dpr of 25. 90% of things people blame on action economy are not because of action economy, they're because of the encounter system. The only things that are really about action economy are single target action denial abilities.
(b) "linear" does not mean "XP". The XP values are designed to work with the DMG system, you'd need a new point system.
The dpr of a dead creature is zero. A CR 1/4 monster isn’t meant to stick around against most parties so it shouldn’t really dpr. It just takes one players action to hit them with an AoE. If you use a bunch of low CR creatures the the math changes because the designers already know that the players might not be able to get rid them and thus their dpr matters. Also trying to separate dpr and action economy seems like a pointless argument. The dpr comes from them having more actions.
You’re asking for simple addition system when that’s just not something the system supports. Depending on how many creatures and those creatures abilities the math would change drastically. The side with the most actions typically has an advantage. Some abilities subvert this by taking actions from the opposing side: stun, paralyze, banishment.
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While we're obviously focused on character stuff, since that's what's been released, but I'm hoping One D&D improves the usability of encounter generation. You're never going to get perfect, there's too much variance in character abilities and tactics, but "better than 5e" is a pretty low bar -- for example, the "adjusted xp" system in the DM confuses everyone the first time they run into it, and people don't realize that encounter difficulty is based on the "adventuring day", but what would a better system look like?
An existing published example is in XGTE. It lacks an official means of adjusting difficulty, though just building to a different encounter size works.
A simple point budget (no adjustment for number of creatures) can be done, but you can't use xp values directly, you'd have to publish a new point chart (in the dmg, 4xCR 1/8 and 1xCR 1 have the same value, so you'd need CR 1/8 be worth 1/4 the points of CR 1).
Questions:
1. Is this assuming they get rid of the "short rest" mechanic altogether?
2. What would make a point budget system any more accurate than the CR-based system most newer DMs use now?
3. Left field question: Is the number of players more important than how experienced the players are at building optimized PCs? Because an encounter that wipes a table full of 6 newbies could well be "easy mode" for 4 veteran players.
1. This question is indifferent to that question, though obviously if you answer "1" short rests aren't meaningful in your game.
2. I'm not sure what system you're asserting DMs use. A system such as "monsters whose CR add up to X" would be point-based.
3. There's absolutely a skill component (both character optimization and play optimization) to difficulty; "which is more important" depends on how much skill difference there actually is. I don't think it matters to this question, though; if your four veteran players are as good as six average players you'd presumably just use six player encounters for them.
Don't forget the other side of this. An inexperienced DM can easily screw up an encounter as well. Either by forgetting/ignoring a creature's powers, and making the fight too easy, or by misunderstanding the powers and making it too hard.
And either way, any kind of CR can only ever be a rough gauge. The right spell or ability can trivialize some encounters, but if no one in the party has them, now its a very hard fight (and that's just the mechanics, not even including player or DM skill). And there's no way for a designer to know beforehand when they are assigning a CR what PCs it will face. CR works well as a way for comparing monsters to each other, to see which one is relatively stronger, but comparing monsters to PCs involves too many variables.
1. I asked about short rests because "an adventuring day" in 5e usually does involve one or more short rests.
2. My understanding is that CR is already a point-based system. So would your "simple point-based system" be basically the same as CR?
3. The point of my third question is that less experienced DMs are the people who have the most difficulty balancing encounters. As a new-ish DM myself, this is one of my major concerns. I have also observed other new-ish DMs and they often have the same problem. Therefore, any Encounter Design rating system should generally be geared towards assuming that the DM is less experienced. A new-ish DM would also have more trouble than a veteran DM with gauging their own players' optimization abilities, presumably, so this question remains relevant.
The current system is
A simple point system deletes step 2.
To give an example, in 5e, a medium encounter for a party of 4 is 1,000-1,500 adjusted xp. You can do this with
That's... unintuitive and generally something you do by computer, such as the encounter generator. It also has really weird effects on mixed CR enemies. You can achieve identical results with a point system like:
The drawback is that you can no longer use this to fill out a daily budget, but... I don't think people do that anyway.
I think big part of the reason why exp. points are used to calculate encounters is because many DMs are used to basing XP on encounters. The more monsters defeated, the more XP. If you use milestone levelling, XP per monster/NPC is of little consequence except insofar as it is used to as a reference related to CR. Ultimately, the point system you refer to would probably work just fine as long as the points can be easily translated back into XP for the DMs that are accustomed to that.
The problem isn't using xp for encounters; it worked fine in 4e. The problem is that the adjusted xp calculation is hard to use and produces weird results.
A simple point system won't work though. If it did they would have used one and it would be called XP and you would simply get an XP budget and add up the total XP of the monsters and compare to thresholds. See the problem is that encounter difficulty is non-linear in the number of enemies. Against a party of 4, the difference in difficulty between 8x CR 2 and 4x CR 2 is not the same as the difference in difficulty between 2x CR 4 and 1x CR 4, despite the fact that in both cases we are simply doubling the total budget.
Plus there is an enormous difference in encounter difficulty between the enemies surprising the party and the party surprising the enemies which no simple point system can account for.
IMO, they need to provide actual guidance to DMs for what to take into consideration when designing an encounter, not a dumb calculator.
Ultimately, encounter design is always going to be somewhat imperfect. It's a hard system and area to get right, so though it will hopefully be a lot better than the current and ineffective system, I don't have my hopes set too high for how awesome it will be.
Typically, I would say having things designed for around 4 encounter per a day makes sense, as long as there are variant rules and mechanics for more. To be honest, I think the current system would work fine if people counted traps, hazards, and interactions with potentially hostile NPCs as "encounters" and if experience was given out for them.
I hope that we get both a point budget system and a table system. I found the latter much more intuitive and easier to use, but you also can't use it to effectively have your characters fight lots of low level monsters, or to see how much they would get steamrolled by creatures of another, higher challenge rating. That's why I think that both of these systems should be in the core rules.
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HERE.AgileM makes some good points. Action economy is a major issue in combat encounter design. Tactical positioning and traps are another major issue. We've all experienced (or at least heard about) kobold warrens giving hell to experienced players despite kobolds themselves being low CR opponents. (And then there's always the possibility that the party solves the planned-violent encounter with some totally un-scripted-for solution that evades any direct confrontation with the planned foes.) I think what's great about tabletop RPGs is what makes it difficult to make a truly comprehensive CR system. At the same time, you kind of need one to help new-ish GMs to not TPK or exhaust the party too quickly.
So, yes, I think an encounter difficulty rating should include factors like better tactical positioning, number of healers in the PC group and be able to account for stuff like "Does this party have Counterspell on their spell list?" or "does this party know how to use a 10-foot pole?" Ideally, at least.
Unpopular opinion: Whatever rules 1DD uses for encounter design is immaterial next to explaining how encounters work. A DM should not have to comb third-party sources to know what the term "action economy" is or how it impacts battles, nor should they need a bunch of forum posts/YouTube videos explaining R5e's attrtion-based system of encounter design and how the One Fight Per Day standard completely throws it off. A DMG that explains how encounters work, what tends to make them more challenging or less, and arms the DM with the knowledge of why the encounter design rules are the way they are is vastly more important than the actual encounter design rules themselves.
...that and the Mob Attack rules should be much easier to find and more tightly integrated into combat, to give DMs better options for using large hordes of smaller critters when it's narratively appropriate without having to invent a "Swarm" statblock.
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Not sure why you think that's an unpopular opinion b/c I agree wholeheartedly. Swarm rules and Minion rules should be provided along side basic encounter design information like:
I'd also like to see more info in the monster manual : e.g. next to the Shadow "Warning PCs with low STR are particularly vulnerable, and it is particularly dangerous for multiple shadows to attack the same PC as the Strength Drain can easily kill most PCs with only a couple unlucky rolls.", or next to the Mindflayer "The power of this monster comes from its ability to stun its enemies parties with very high INT saves or other protection will find the monster easy to defeat, but parties with low INT saves are particularly vulnerable."
My guess is that they're going to encourage fewer, harder encounters in an adventuring day. Most of us know the 6-8 guideline, but sticking to it was another matter entirely. But harder encounters are also swingier for the party. I suspect this is the reason they are also experimenting with things like monsters being unable to crit, feats at first level, and giving more and more casters healing abilities at level 1.
Agreed. I think that’s also why they’re tamping down on how many spells a caster can have prepared. Probably a lot of other things that are going to look like big nerfs, but are actually rebalancing for fewer encounters per day.
The reason they didn't do that is because they were trying to make the "adventuring day" daily budget concept work, which means they wanted the adjusted xp value of an encounter to reflect expected resource expenditure. Since an encounter with two monsters does not generally expend 2x the resource of an encounter with one monster, they had to use the adjusted xp mechanic.
However, if they throw out the concept of the daily budget, a linear method works fine.
Not true, because of action economy. Let’s take a party of 4 that could take on a CR 4 creature worth 1100 XP they would likely get wiped by 22 CR 1/4 creatures worth 1100 XP. The XP is the same but the party isn’t likely to survive any round we’re all 22 enemies attack. Now if this same party ambushes this 22 CR 1/4 enemies and hits them with a couple of AoE attacks this same deadly combat becomes trivial at best. Like others have explained it will be more important for WotC to give guidance about this and other combat situations than to rehabilitate the CR system. The DMG needs to do more than show new DMs how to read CR and XP systems. It’s needs to teach them how to adjust combats for their party, fix mistakes on the fly and keep the game going.
Long story skip to the TLDR below if you don’t care.
I remember putting 4 level 3 new players against a small Gnoll pack not understanding that CR. So I had my four players vs four gnolls that added up to CR 4, thinking it would be a slightly tougher fight. 1 Pack Lord, 1 Gnawler, 1 Hunter, and 1 regular Gnoll. Fight starts and I almost immediately notice my mistake. One the fight started with the party stuck in 5ft wide tunnel coming into an open area. That would be fine if the wizard wasn’t up front. The pack lord won initiative and after multi attacking the wizard was at deaths door. Thankfully they went next, but went into full panic “I’m going to die, you’re trying to kill me,” mode. They misty stepped behind the rest of the party after some coaxing to look at all their options on their turn. Next was the Gnawler who moved into the tunnel space left by the Wizard and attacked the Rogue with multi attack. I think one of them missed can’t really remember just that she didn’t go down and had enough to not go down when she did get hit by and AoO on her turn when she decided to force her way to the back of the party. The Ranger moves to the front of the line to tank and attack the Gnawler. The Gnoll hits him with a thrown spear, and then the Hunter hits with its first bow attack. At this moment I decided the Hunter which normally has multiattack did not. Did I mention this party has no healer. I did give every player one healing potion, but I really didn’t balance this fight correctly. Even changing that one enemy so it only had one attack didn’t fully stop the death spiral I knew was likely to happen. At that moment I was thinking I TPKed the party in there second adventure together, because I didn’t understand the action economy and I placed them in a bad tactical situation because they failed a stealth check. Worst part was I think only one of them failed that check. I allowed the Ranger to switch spaces with the sorcerer since he didn’t move on his turn and the sorcerer wanted to use burning hands. I told him he would risk an attack of opportunity which I rolled in front of him. He got hit and had very little hp left. The burning hands dropped the Gnawler. I started thinking it was fine. The pack lord move over dead Gnawler and drops the sorcerer. Wizard, rogue, Ranger attack but don’t drop pack lord. I decide that gnoll doesn’t have any spears to throw and can’t get past pack lord. I also decide that since they are too far into the tunnel the Hunter doesn’t get its now one attack. Ranger survives Pack Lord. Wizard drops Pack lord. Rogue and Ranger leave tunnel to attack gnoll, but Ranger gets dropped this round. Wizard and Rogue without any other modifications from me manage to kill gnoll and hunters within the next two rounds. During this time Sorcerer had rolled natural 1 on a death save and eventually stabilized by the skin of his teeth. This was supposed to be the first of 3 combats to clear this mine network. After this I decided to read the DMG instead of just skimming through it. I don’t use the CR or experience system in the DMG. Action economy is more important and understanding your players abilities and tendencies is far more important when picking challenges for them. I don’t think I could DM for a group that just shows up with their character sheets. I need to look at them before hand to craft an appropriate challenge that could kill them but wouldn’t automatically sweep them.
TLDR
Not a great DM, I didn’t understand CR and almost wiped my players by having them face too many monsters with multiattack. Action economy matters.
1st, it should work.
2: it should be done for varying numbers of encounters per adventure day. Not “the mean is 3.16 encounters each day”. Some days there might be one, some days there might be a dozen. Structuring for a set number per day creates a static basis that ultimately kills creativity and hampers design of creative solutions, leading to the very accusations of bland we see for other reasons.
3: it needs to work at 20th level, 15th, 10th, 5th, and 1st level all equally well.
4: it should take 5 to 13 rounds to resolve an encounter.
5: scratch the above: length of encounter should ramp by level.
6: it should be based on means, not averages, and never maxes or mins.
7: it should include a structured template for a series of encounters that are interconnected, not just one at a time.
8: They have to get rid of this bits and bites low CR crap. I just ramped all the monsters in my new campaign up, and had to build a new CR set up for it. I use a Base Cr with modifiers for variable changes to monsters, and since I have critters that are under an inch in size and over 50 cu ft in size, I needed a whole different system. Then I had to allow for gigantic but low hp and micro but high hp monsters. Because hp is not always or inherently a function of size. I have ten variables that change the cr as much as -5 or +10, and the final max CR is 40 plus a fade level up to 50.
I could have done a better system, but that would mean altering the core monster stats system as a whole because it is built into the encounter system.
9: they need to make it clear that some critters are only able to be attacked by much larger size groups. And then be aware that some few campaigns have 10 or 12 players a session and a model built only for four won’t scale up properly unless you account for as few as two and as many as a dozen at the start.
10: They really do need scaled battle and siege mechanics again. I won’t ask for something that is super cool with tokens (theater of the mind is my style anyway) because this isn’t a wargame , it is an rpg, and so something at least marginally decent, even if it means cannibalizing the 1e rules.
I probably have more, lol. Terrain effects and impacts, randoms, environmental encounters for survival style campaigns, some new gm guidance on structural encounter design and tension-suspense curves, crap like that.
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(a) that's not because of action economy, that's because the CR 1/4 creatures have a typical combined dpr of 110 while the CR 4 has a typical dpr of 25. 90% of things people blame on action economy are not because of action economy, they're because of the encounter system. The only things that are really about action economy are single target action denial abilities.
(b) "linear" does not mean "XP". The XP values are designed to work with the DMG system, you'd need a new point system.
The dpr of a dead creature is zero. A CR 1/4 monster isn’t meant to stick around against most parties so it shouldn’t really dpr. It just takes one players action to hit them with an AoE. If you use a bunch of low CR creatures the the math changes because the designers already know that the players might not be able to get rid them and thus their dpr matters. Also trying to separate dpr and action economy seems like a pointless argument. The dpr comes from them having more actions.
You’re asking for simple addition system when that’s just not something the system supports. Depending on how many creatures and those creatures abilities the math would change drastically. The side with the most actions typically has an advantage. Some abilities subvert this by taking actions from the opposing side: stun, paralyze, banishment.