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@samdurfee6093

Жыл бұрын

2:00 I did exactly that and my 5 player level 1 party wiped the Ogre clean he didn’t even get a turn.

I was very proud of my players in barovia, when they tried to kidnap Stella from the mansion and the guards came running at them. As soon as they understood that they are hilariously more powerful than the guards doing just their job and recognized one of them from sooner (a dad being very proud of his kids), they chose to run instead of just murder the guards. They didn’t run for their lives, but for the guards lives. I love this game.

I have a great story here. When my players split the party, I sent a quick "Easy" encounter after the Sorceress, Bard, and Fighter. It was intended to be quick and easy, just to give them something to do while the rest of the party was scaling a mountain. They were attacked by tiny, steam-powered spider constructs. But they didn't know the encounter was "Easy," according to CR, so they panicked. Rather than kill the tiny spiders, they came up with an escape plan: The Sorceress cast Invisibility on herself, while the Bard Dimension Doored away with the Fighter. The big problem with this plan, however, was that the spider constructs did not have eyes and therefore did not navigate by sight -- they had tremorsense, instead -- which made Invisibility pretty much pointless. So, what was supposed to be "Easy" for 3 PCs suddenly turned mega-deadly for 1 PC. Once the Sorceress realized this, she cast Banishment on herself, intending to hide in another plane for 1 minute, instead. The problem with *that* plan was that her Tiefling was native to the Infernal Plane, but she didn't know that, because her backstory was "amnesia." Only I, as DM, knew that she wasn't from the Material Plane. So, she Banished herself to the Infernal Plane, and if she stayed there for 1 minute, it would become permanent. So now this throwaway "Easy" encounter was on the verge of permanently banishing one of the PCs. I was freaking out. I hinted hard enough that I think she figured it out, and she canceled the Banishment before 1 minute. Everything worked out in the end, but it almost went horribly wrong.

@norandomnumbers

2 жыл бұрын

The tiefling would know they aren't from the material plane if they cast banishment and ended up in the hells, since there would be a loud pop and they would have full control of themself. If they cast it and were sent to a demiplane instead, the spell would immediately end as they lose concentration while incapacitated.

@CharlesBlazer

2 жыл бұрын

@@norandomnumbers Yeah, she ended up in a "place" but she had no memory of it and therefore would not have immediately recognized it as the Infernal Plane. I used it as an opportunity for her to meet the figure from her amnesia backstory that sent her to the Material Plane ("What are you doing back here??"). So, all in all, it ended up being a great moment relevant to her arc. It prompted her to Banish herself a couple more times, later in the adventure, under more controlled conditions, to go talk to him and learn more about her lost memories.

I would add a minor point to hitting the party with something massive and way to powerful. Unless you are looking for a TPK or at least some deaths, make sure it is obvious to the players that this creature is beyond them and give them a escape of some kind. Most players in D&D are used to being able to beat whatever they face, so they wade into fights without worrying too much, which can be bad if they are expected to run or negotiate.

@elgatochurro

2 жыл бұрын

Sounds like you can't beat the fear of death into them lol

@zomara0292

2 жыл бұрын

Or, if I may dare say... just... let them get in way over their heads if they miss all the signs that more skilled people have not faired well. Maybe they find a magic item that is ... broken. Or signs of a very famous adventure that everyone has heard of is dead. If they keep going forward after that, or, gods forbid, miss them completely, then let them... do what they do. They may die, they may survive, but it was their choice. If they are against the end, you can point out every sign they missed or ignored. That will show them that they need to pay more attention to the environment.

@elgatochurro

2 жыл бұрын

@@zomara0292 hope about let them face it and see if they die? It's an adventure

@alexj1989

2 жыл бұрын

@@zomara0292 Absolutely, my point is to have those warnings for them. Don’t just ambush them with a over powered enemy and then expect them to know it’s overwhelming before the TPK.

@rcschmidt668

2 жыл бұрын

Not to mention that losing a battle does not have to result in death. Being captured or in prison can be an effective training tool.

Love that you let the players describe encounters that are beneath them. More DMs should do this. It gives the players more control and speeds things up.

The main thing to do when determining encounter difficulty, is player health, and enemy damage output. if they enemy can easily knock down a player in a single hit, it's too hard.

@mikfhan

Ай бұрын

Yeah, I might give players temp HP after every long rest so they have at least 16, it gives me a grace buffer to permit more enemy types in early levels.

the best and easiest fix for CR system - DON'T!! don't use it don't worry about balanced play don't worry about a fair fight don't add difficulty to encounter creation for something that is nearly useless. 1. look at your story. 2. understand the antagonists and thier goals. 3. make a list of typical minions for the antagonist. 4. develop a list of side tasks for the antagonist that the characters can Interfere with. 5. set forth the characters and see what happens. adventure building is not difficult. don't get caught up in the fallacy of fair/balanced combat. it doesn't exist. if you have a plot and an ok (not even good) game world for the characters to interact with, you will have an amazing game. final pointer - as you are running the game, take notes. if you introduce npc's, write it down. if you make a location, write it down. if you add anything that you didn't already have planned, write it down. believe me, anything you add or say, the players will remember and try to use.

@dm4life579

Жыл бұрын

I was in this camp, until I gave up on 5e all together. Run Dungeon World/Fate/Savage Worlds or 80% of the new systems out there are almost guaranteed to be better than 5e. You should really take a look at Monster of the Week. Your formula almost exactly describes it.

I find that difficult/deadly encounters are fine for players that know what they are doing; I threw a Roc at a group of five level 2s who knew what they were doing with no problems. But a single owlbear was able to almost kill a level two character, when the players were fairly new to DND (it was a "medium" encounter for a different group of five). It really just depends on the players and their abilities and choices.

I was once in an online campaign with a DM who believed that all his encounters should be challenging for his players. Had him for either four or five sessions before an unrelated issue caused me and two other players to quit. Of those sessions, three of them had only one enemy encounter apiece. Each encounter took at least two hours to get through and took the majority of the session. The problem was his idea of challenging encounters involved overpowered enemies that not only made for constant drawn out fights, but also had the potential to easily TPK the party if the dice rolled the wrong way. (In two of the three fights, I remembered that he had to pull his punches some with his enemy attacks) Starting of, in the second session when we had our first encounter, we met a pirate captain and three of his men in a bar. Originally we were only going to talk with the pirates, but a fight ended up breaking out. The DM hadn't really planned on us actually fighting the pirates, but he did prepare the pirate's stat blocks just in case. We were a five party group of 2nd level characters, and like I said before, it took at least two hours to beat them. It took a fair bit to take down the three crewman, leaving only the pirate captain for the rest of the fight, who's what really made the fight so very drawn out and incredibly difficult. I don't remember what the stat block was for the three crewman (can't even remembered if he shared that info), but I specifically remembered after the fight, the DM showed us the pirate captain's stat block. The DM used the actual "Pirate Captain" enemy stat block from the book that has a CR 7! For context, from what I understand from Xanathar's Guide encounter charts, we should have been more around 6th level (give or take) for this fight. During the fight, the DM pulled the Pirate Captain's punches a little with his attacks. The book shows that the Pirate Captain had three attacks per turn. Two with a rapier and one with a whip. So the DM made it where the Pirate Captain either came within 5ft of you and attacked twice with the rapier, or made one range attack with the whip. Everyone tried to keep their distance from the Pirate Captain to avoid the rapier attacks. Even with this change in attacks, the Pirate Captain knocked me and another player down to zero hit points (and we stayed down for the rest of the fight), and came close to wiping the floor with the remaining three players. I don't really remember how the fight went after I got knocked unconscious. I kind of lost focus on what was going on since I was out of commission for the remainder of the battle. But it did seem that it wouldn't have taken much for things to have end very badly for us. We were very lucky we weren't TPK'd there. The following two enemy encounters, each taking a separate session to complete, continued this trend where we were kind of under leveled against our opponents, despite the fact that we got to be level three characters for those last battles. The fights were kind of frustrating to do. A good part of the reason had more to do with how every battle took hours to complete. During our second fight, three of us (two were absent that session) triggered an encounter with a single warrior from some underworld. Took a very long time to fight one opponent, but to make matters worst, we were two melee combatants and one spell caster (me as a druid), and my Moonbeam spell was causing more damage than the other two players combined each turn. By sheer luck, I had taken the Moonbeam spell when we advanced to 3rd level before the session, and the DM decided to use an enemy that was weak to radiant damage. (He wasn't aware of my spell selection) Even with the damage type advantage, it still took hours to complete. I dread to think how that would have gone if I hadn't taken Moonbeam when I did. The third battle involved a pack of wolves (six wolves I think), which we figured out during battle that the wolves weren't using the wolf stat blocks, but some other higher level creature stat block. We didn't know exactly what. (I don't remember exactly, but I think each "wolf" was making two attacks, which I think was what tipped us off. Also us figuring out their AC from our attacks and how much damage each wolf could take) Took hours to complete, and the DM had to pull his punches again by having only half of the wolf pack fight us while the other half just literally sat on the sidelines watching us fight their pack members. Once enough of the first half were dead, the second half would join the fight. The DM would ask for feedback after each session, and we tried to communicate the issues with the encounters, but he couldn't seem to truly grasp the problem. He didn't want to make things too simple for us that we just breeze through battle, but he couldn't seem to stop over doing it on the difficulty. He just wasn't able to find that necessary middle ground. Personally, I think he didn't really do any actual kind of calculations with his encounters. It seemed like he just picks out what he thinks will make for a tough fight. Which would result the battle being overly difficult. Even if we had your video back then to share with our DM, I highly doubt he would have taken your advice.

As a rule of thumb, I found that taking whatever would JUST make it deadly and then doubling that makes for a fairly balanced encounter.

@UltraV6565

Жыл бұрын

at level 1 that's a TPK, at level 11+ that may actually work

@-POISON-

Жыл бұрын

@@UltraV6565 It depends. A party including a variant human with sharpshooter, a custom lineage barbarian with GWM, a twilight cleric (or other decent domain) and a well positioned warlock, all with rolled stats in the right ability scores and it's fair game at lvl 1.

@UltraV6565

Жыл бұрын

@@-POISON- I mean yeah but those are definitely above average minmaxers. If that's the game you end up playing and enjoy then that's fine but it's not freat as a general rule of thumb for most games.

The first game I ever ran, I had 6 level one adventurers. I decided to open the campaign with a fight against 2 CR 1/2 monsters that calculated out to "easy." Unfortunately, they were Shadows...and Shadows are resistant to Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, Thunder; Bludgeoning, Piercing, and Slashing From Nonmagical Attacks...they also have immunity to Necrotic and Poison attacks and immunity to Exhaustion, Frightened, Grappled, Paralyzed, Petrified, Poisoned, Prone, Restrained conditions...and the pièce de résistance? A strength drain attack... Learned a very valuable lesson that day...

Tip 7: use the Giffyglyph Monster Maker and never look back. It uses 4e/pf2e encounter building philosophy that uses character level and party size as a baseline while using the math of 5e to determine damage and HP calculations. Ranks and Roles further diversify everything. It does mean you have to 100% homebrew everything, but my encounters have never felt better ever since I started using it. Using GGMM encounters is like eating a nice plate of bacon.

The most useful thing said was the use of Action Economy to determined encounter threat level. I'll be taking a close look at that for future encounters to see how it impact my players. Thanks.

I'm running an SW5E campaign right now where during the third session the lv 3 party of 5 came face to face with the CR 15 BBEG, a Super Tactical Droid with his personal guard and a small army of battle droids. It was meant to be a social encounter. The big bad would monologue for a bit, hinting at the first phase of his plan, and then the party would have an opportunity to slip away. Instead, halfway through his monologue the chaotic Clonetrooper Scout cast Jet of Flame in his face and made things really awkward for me. 😂

Whenever 6e comes around, I don't want 5e to completely change, but the challenge rating system is one thing I think needs a complete overhaul. My final showdown between the pcs and 2 demi-gods wound up with me having to make them hit less because I didn't want to unfairly butcher my players. It was hard, a couple went down, they loved it, and we all had fun despite me needing to make changes in the attacks.

@christopherclubb9167

2 жыл бұрын

There isnt going to be a 6e, or at least not anytime soon. 5e is the most successful and popular iteration of D&D, and they are making money hand over fist printing new books. What they are going to do instead is continue printing settings watered down from precious editions, adding more and more PC options until all class identity has vanished, and removing more and more established lore until monsters are a poorly traced silhouette of their true selves.

@Bluhbear

2 жыл бұрын

@@christopherclubb9167 I guess two years could be considered "not anytime soon," but it's not too far away, either.

@Humble197

2 жыл бұрын

@@Bluhbear That is not 6e. Its backwards compatible according to them. If anything its closer to a 5.5 though they have made changes already to 5e over the last few books.

@Bluhbear

2 жыл бұрын

@@Humble197 They're releasing whole new core rulebooks, so we'll really have to wait and see. I suspect it'll be more than just a little errata.

New DM here. Ran Phandelver Mines, and my first encounter ran on for what felt like an eternity. Not that Goblins were challenging by any means, but new and squishy characters just can't hit them! Then a BugBear showed up! It was like hitting two bricks together... characters couldn't do anything to him and he was just whittling down their HP. Made a homebrew rule to allow within 2 points of AC to be a "partial hit" and do half damage - this rule existed until level 3. This fixed EVERYTHING... made combat far more smooth and with partial hits it allowed for some neat roleplaying opportunities during combat.

I maintain that challenge rating is a resource designed using the basic rules as foundation and consequently works splendidly when you use it only by taking into account player character options from the very same basic rules. Pitch your monsters against a Life Domain cleric, Champion fighter, Thief rogue and School of Evocation wizard without any feats at the table and a very limited selection of spells and magic items, as is everything the official Basic Rules pdf provides for free, and you'll find that it's wonderfully accurate through all tiers of play. Although I do admit, pure, refined vanilla is not a rule set that's very popular.

For lower levels, especially until level 3, just roll min damage, everything under half of the dice is considered a 0, otherwise a 1 and no crits. Also lower the HP to 25% total value/50% of what is written. Otherwise, compare the amount of roughly equal actions each side can take. I have a loose formula in my head, but I can't really write it down, because this changes on so many little things. Roughly action economy, but if you reduce the damage by 50% you can also double the amount of creatures. (So 8 goblins doing half damage have the same "Action Quality" as 4 Level 1 PC's.....more or less) Or to put it in a bit more technical terms: Consider what action in your group is the average damage per round. That is 1 action. So if that is the fighters +2 Bow or +1 Flame Tongue attack, let's say he has ~4 of those (with action Surge and bonus action shenanigans). The whole party might have around 8 actions then with 4 players. Now if you have 8 monsters with 2 actions each, compare if they deal roughly the same damage. If yes, they have an action Quality of 1, but double the actions. So Party has 8, Monsters have 16. The monsters would probably win here. But half their damage, or HP and suddenly either the Action Quality of them halves, or the parties doubles. Is that perfect? No, probably not, but I think it works at least better. Also consider resource recovery and so on, but that is again group and tier dependant. Other Otherwise, calculate the total level of your party, if your encounter has a CR of 1/4 of that, it's deadly at level 1, 1/2 deadly at about up to level 8 (I think?), 3/4 at around 11 and then go ham latest at 16 with 1=1. More or less, read the Lazy GM's Workbook (or the other one.....ask me again if anyone cares) for the 'accurate' predictions. Just for protocol, a level 20 group should face CR 80 for a normal encounter by that standard at a regular basis, so running 5 times deadly against them works actually out by this calculation.

Storm King's Thunder encounters are crazy, it's like Wizards themselves didn't know how to prepare the encounters. My players almost TPKed battling Duke Zalto. Yeah, my playerd are a little impulsive sometimes, but that amount of fire giants to a 5 lvl 9 party was absurdly deadly

i live by point 6, i tell my players before every campaign death is possible and retreat is always an option. i run the game like Morrowind, sometimes a level 1 party runs into a lich or an owlbear or some other nasty monster they can't defeat also sometimes they find an epic weapon or other magic item really early. to me it adds to the realism of the game

Something that has really helped me adapt the base CR calculations is to take into account whether the party will have chance to prepare right before going into a fight. If I know they're gonna take a few rounds buffing, healing, and coordinating before going into combat, I know I can safely tune up the fight by 1level. I'll up it by another 1 for every extra player past 5, no matter what the guide says. Another 1 if the party is fully attuned or has multiple pets/summons out and about. This way, what the game tells me should be a deadly encounter for 6 level 13 characters feels just right and even allows them to go into another such fight before having to sneak in a short rest. The opposite also holds true, if I know I am gonna ambush them, if players are missing, if they are spent or have secondary objectives or conditions to contend with besides mere survival, I adjust the difficulty down. I find combining difficulty level ups and downs this way offers quite a bit of granularity for combat design. Other elements you may want to consider include the effective range of both sides, mobility and terrain abilities, number of casters present, and whether or not they remembered to bring snacks. Never forget the snack mod in your calculations.

Couple things to add to this: -The CR system (for some reason!) doesn't consider magic items. A good rule of thumb is that the character's level should go up by +0.25 for each uncommon, +0.5 for each rare, +1 for a very rare, and +2 or more for each legendary. So a PC at level 11 with a couple magic items might be effectively level 13 or even higher due to magic items. -There is a known problem that monster's damage doesn't go up fast enough compared to their CR. There's a guideline for how much damage should do in the DM's Guide, but if you actually run most of the monsters from the Monster Manual through it, you find that they are significantly underpowered. A lot of high CR monsters are basically big bags of HP that don't do enough damage. So you can create more interesting encounters by giving your monsters a few extra damage dice to put them more in line with the guideline, and I would also reduce their HP to keep battles fairly quick. Likewise, low CR monsters tend to have too much damage, so reducing this on the low end can help smooth out some of those Tier 1 encounters. -When in doubt, target the player's intelligence saves. Nothing will terrify a high level party faster than powerful abilities that target the most common dump stat.

I have never made an encounter too hard with VmCR, but fell into the only one boss monster trap. It was a vampire, higher CR, and the party stomped it very easy. It was the last boss of the mini-adventure too. Live and learn, give bosses minions!

Luke, go eat a plate of bacon. I started DMing a year ago, and the campaign is still going strong! I may have gotten a bit of advice from other videos here and there, but your videos account for no less than 95% of how I approach things, solve problems, and prepare. You're the reason I didn't crash and burn. Thank you

My group has two wizards and a druid that like to conjure/summon creatures. I find that I have had to rebalance every creature I put in the game because I don't want to just add more creatures to match the number of summons. Too many creatures on the board makes for a slow and boring encounter. In order to balance a creature, I adjust their Hit Die to give them the proficiency bonus I want for them, based on PC class mechanics, and then give them max HP. I then try to balance the creatures based on action economy. If a planned encounter has few baddies, I give some creatures legendary actions (usually offensive) OR legendary reactions (usually defensive). Alternatively or additionally, I will add a bonus action attack (like a bite) that is usable based on conditions, such as prone, grappled, etc. and allow their normal attacks to have a chance to cause those effects. I try to make is so that the creatures' attack damage * number of attacks per round can effectively damage PCs and their summons to create a some threat, with creatures' HP pool lasting about 3 rounds. If the number of creatures is roughly equal to the number of PCs, I will balance the creatures based on PC classes, like rebalancing the knight based on a lvl 6 generic fighter without a subclass. This gives the knight second wind, action surge, a couple points of ASI, and a fighting style, while changing the HD from 8d8 to 6d10. Lastly, based on the flavor and type of the creature, I will give magic users more usable spells in combat than what is in the stat block. While I find that this makes for better encounters, the biggest challenge is to balance for the high AC tank and low AC wizards. I have the melee creatures get have higher To Hit scores, gain advantage, and force condition saves, like grapples, to mess with the tank, while ranged or high movement melee creatures, with lower To Hit scores, attack the low AC PCs.

I have found you need to reduce the hp/damage a bit at LV 1-4 but it varies by the experience of the players, power of the builds and magic items. If you have more than 4 PCs they are much more powerful even LV 5. And their 3-4 always increase difficulty as you said. But here are a few things that help me personally 1) double max HP. Calculate the max possible Hp of an enemy and double it. Use max Hp for when you have more enemies or close to max. Lower this if you have a massive swarm of foes or the party are really injured. Don’t ever go below average HP! 1-3 enemies 1-2= double max (aka boss Hp) the third is max Hp 4-7 enemies 1= boss 1-2= av. The remainder are max Hp 2) add more AC. Give enemies better armour. Literally. Boost DEX, magic armour boots, etc. 3) add saving throw proficiencies 4) add skill proficiencies 5) buff some stats 6)spellcasting added variants. 7) give extra actions 8) give useful and tactical bonus action 9) reactions! Add for example ; Parry; +2 to Ac vs one attack they perceive incoming 10) legendary resistances/actions 11) more always active powers my favs; magic resistance, magic weapons, immutable form, immunities, resistances, weaknesses, auras, ability that recharges a special way such as a breath weapon that recharges if hit by that element, etc. 12) recharging actions such as breathweapons or gaze attacks. 13) add ranged options whenever even remotely able to be explained with verisimilitude 14) lairs/tactical terrain the enemies utilize tactically. 15) if possible use ideas from older editions to power up pathetically weak 5e versions. The higher level and more numerous the PCs the more you need to improve monsters Also look at what glaring weaknesses a monster has either give them an ally who covers this OR improve them to have new abilities. Example the Tarrasque is pathetic. It does NOT deserve CR 30! Basic fixing HP 1500-2500. AC 27 spd 50 ft. INT 5, magic weapons, aura; when within 20 feet of the Tarrasque on a solid surface (such as a building or the ground) at the start of their turn a creature must make a DC 17 DEX save or be knocked prone. Creatures that are within this aura as the Tarrasque moves must also make this save. Bonus action; hurl boulder + 9 range 60/240 one target hit; 30; 4d10+10 bludgeoning damage and the creature must succeed a DC 17 STR save or be knocked prone (if non hover flight they fall 500 ft in one round taking appropriate fall damage) once they are prone they must then succeed another save DC17 DEX or become pinned by the boulder and restrained. Removing the boulder requires a DC 20 STR check and uses an action a creature can help which not only grants advantage but lowers the DC by 2 for each helping creature up to 4 total creatures including the pinned creature. Also this means it knows to look up and throw rocks at flying targets, it also now deals magical slashing with claws and piercing with bite, etc. And that’s the minimum! I’d also consider adding; immutable form, legendary action: throw boulder as 1 LA, and even give it a nuclear breath weapon for more Godzilla; dealing three types 1/3 force 1/3 radiant 1/3 necrotic, etc! Also please add the following into all dragons; magic resistance, magic weapons, reaction parry, bonus action cantrip, spellcasting! If it has legendary actions make action spells be LA’s that cost 1-3. Consider also giving them shapeshifting powers and immunity to being forcefully shapeshifter against their will. And natural powers to sense treasure and value of goods, give them also aura abilities and have their Breath weapons recharge when anyone is stupid enough to hit them with their breath weapon damage type (immunity) or if they take a minimum of __ damage of that type such as 10+.

Weak encounters are great for wearing down a party a bit before the boss fight. Yes, they will easily kill the small group of kobolds, but they are probably going to take at least a couple hits. If they're in a situation where even a short rest is risky, those couple hits or burnt spell slots can make a big difference in the long run. I find it a great method for dealing with cocky spell casters that burn through their slots just so the other characters won't get the kills. They learn pretty quick to let the fighters deal with their share when they are nearly useless in a big battle because they tossed a needless fireball at half a dozen kobolds.

Most helpful thing I do is something you kinda mentioned. Once they reach level five I start paying attention to the party's average damage output per turn. I just jot it down every other encounter. Then, as I'm thinking and looking ahead I can ask myself "how many rounds do I want this monster / boss to last?" And I can adjust it accordingly. Also, something that I think throws off the CR system a lot is a few abilities, which I won't call overpowered, but they can change the entire course of the fight with one botched saving throw. Stuff that paralyzes and stuns or silences. Or something like Banshee's wail that can reduce lots of people to 0 HP. You just have to be aware of those things and account for them.

@guyman1570

2 жыл бұрын

Honestly "save or suck" abilities are rather stupid, IMO. Instead of dropping the PC's hp to zero, I personally just make the banshee give a 6d6 psychic damage (and halve it if passed). It works out to be in much more line with other abilities in the game.

[ Before video starts ] The Challenge rating system is balanced off of the core rules , the 1st few D&D 5e books & the player's are experienced and cautious. This means variant rules like Multi-classing & feats are not in play.

One thing I've implemented with higher level encounters is to allow legendary creatures to use a legendary action to cast their spells. Often this will allow them to use crowd control off turn while on their turn they use their main attacks.

I run a lvl10-20 campaign so I have a few work arounds I use. Hp is flexible. To hit bonus is flexible. Using the avg dmg instead of rolling. Throw more at the party. The only unwinnable battle is one where escape is impossible. Increase the damage when needed. Give the enemies skills/feats the pcs have as well. Polearm master, lucky etc. Use mythic monsters and allow legendary actions for monsters that otherwise dont have them. Lots of little tricks that can make combat more exciting and much more challenging. With all the options open to pcs, the monsters are severely overmatched. Especially in larger parties or parties that tend to min/max.

Me saying out loud to my computer "I just don't even balance encounters" your rule not to try to balance encounters... Well played

This is helpful, I have tried to use CR to build encounters and ended up with either a slog or a near tpk or a way to easy fight, I have been just adjusting some of them on the fly for a while and haven’t bothered with CR calculations, and honestly the “unbalanced” building is much easier to do than trying to balance it. You need to show the PCs they can’t just fight the whole world.

3.5e, Boneclaw. Characters chased it for many months of play, and multiple xerox copy characters; Ragnar-Bagnar-Lagnar-Lagnar, Jr.- Steve.

I have some guidelines for myself - for levels and tiers, use the sky flourish deadly benchmark but go up by 1/4 for every tier (1/4 for tier 1, 1/2 for tier 2, 3/4 for tier 3, 1 for tier 4) - action economy: same as video but to attempt to put a number to guidelines, 1 monster means action economy will decrease the difficulty, more monsters than players means action economy will raise the difficulty - balancing encounters is way more forgiving when you do more encounters per long rest (especially because you don’t have to go as deadly every time just to be challenging) except at lower levels - the best time to balance an encounter is mid fight. I only do this for important or other possibly very deadly battles, but having contingencies for making the battle harder or easier partway through (environmental complication, reinforcements, etc) is the only remotely surefire way that ensure a well tuned challenging encounter

Yes! Thank you! The CR mechanic in several game systems, have vexed me repeatedly. Just ask the underwhelmed or brutalized PCs in my campaigns. I appreciate this upload so much! PS All hail the Baconator!!

I TPKd my party twice in like five sessions due to trusting CR. Thank you for this. It will be useful when they finally wake up in the Shadowfell

I find the challenge rating less of a headache if the players know how to run away and don't YOLO every fight.

Great vid as always!

I actually think CR generally works for levels 1-4 as well. Early PC deaths can actually work well to establish harsh expectations on the party, so that at later levels they won’t expect to steam roll every encounter.

I run a homebrew campaign and we had a reoccurring Bone Devil villain. After the first fight, I gave them the heart of the devil and multiple options of what to do with it. Our ranger has a sentient morphing sword that can suck souls of the recent dead or strong willed souls. They eventually decided to suck the soul of the demon to my delight. I homebrewed the Bone Devil to be a legendary feature and had the party pulled into a nightmare astral realm and fight the Bone Devil in an arena set up in his favor. I kept downing PC's and ended up having to pull my punches and not use the most efficient tacits to not tpk.

Great video Luke!

A interesting point about the CR rating is that people forget that magic items, feats and book expansions are optional rules and not considered when making the rules for CR. Yet it is standard for players and DM’s to ignore this while blaming the CR system for not working.

All videos very helpful! Keep goind!

The 5e CR system is so bad, that one of the guys I game with decided to write his own. He took a somewhat optimized fighter (or maybe it was rogue or warlock) and designed a system where the CR of a monster meant it would (on average) be killed by a character is 3 rounds, and knock the character out in 4 rounds. A balanced encounter is one where you have a monster matching the CR of a character for each player. The 5e server I played on had a DM who decided that a monster with CR = APL+10 is roughly balanced for the boss.....and he might have a few mooks to help whose CR=APL.

An addition from me: just let enemeis take 10 on Initiative. I had an incredibly humilating encounter where no enemy rolled above 5 on initiative and PCs were in total control of the entire battle, never allowing the enemeis any room to actually pose a threat, just constantly be on the desensive.

Never liked CR. The old system of comparing Player Hit Die to Monster Hit Die was much easier.

Whats crazy is that I didn't make the CR rating myself, but I was running through the Death House on Curse of Strahd, and my players JUST SO HAPPENED to move the orb that activates the 5 Shadows in one of the rooms. In a poor series of events, I happened to have crit two players twice. (Keep in mind, I just told my players to start at level 3 instead of level 1 hopefully to survive easier). My players had some bad rolls and a TPK took place. Super unfortunate with the rolls, but i just don't understand how Shadows are considered CR 1/2

@codysandusky2130

2 жыл бұрын

I'm about to start a Curse of Strahd campaign and have the players starting at Level 1 to allow for the leveling noted in the module... I may need to adjust my plans there, even knowing the whole campaign is meant to be somewhat lethal.

@sketchopotamus8449

2 жыл бұрын

@@codysandusky2130 if they have a cleric or a paladin it might be a different story, unfortunately my group didn't have either. But if not, it might be a good idea to lower the amount of damage the shadows do maybe (2d6+2 necrotic and 1d4 strength) if you max roll for second level characters they might go down in one hit

Tangential topic: what is with adventure modules that grossly overestimate PC ability? So often I see "This adventure is designed for four 1st-level characters." Then, Mission 1 (11 encounters), average CR is 2.5 and the second encounter is CR 4. The CR 4 has 46 hp, +13 to hit and damage per hit is between 14 and 42. It's listed as wounded and has reduced AC and movement speed, and it can only attack every other round, but it is either run away immediately or instant death to any PC who gets too close. There are also encounters listed as CR 7 or even CR 10, but those at least allow for possible diplomacy or trickery to get around. And it explicitly states a couple times that PCs should not reach 2nd level until after the mission is complete. What am I missing? Are these adventures playtested? Is an average group of four level-1 PCs actually expected to have better than a 50% chance of surviving all or even any of those encounters?

I'm literally just focusing on making more a narrative motivated encounter with enemies that feels dangerous but actually are not. Since I gave up on trying to calculate the encounter so I just look at something I want to use and figure out how to use it.

Over 3 years as a Forever DM of 5 Reliable groups, i kind of learned the management. Not that half my waking thoughts are about DnD5e statistics and stuff but... Yeah... It will break you. Pebbles make good bases.

Talking about the CR system reminds me of what happened at my last session. 2 level 12 rogues, 12 trolls. Should have been nearly triple the deadly encounter threshold, but we won with tactics. Mostly me playing decoy while the other rogue was the invisible railgun. But I have to agree that the CR system is pretty bad. I use a table at my games that account for the PC's options, items, etc. to modify what CR the party should be facing. It's not perfect, but gives me a better idea of how to build an encounter, or just design some better tactics for the enemies, since I also write up battle strategies so I know how to play the monsters in more challenging and fun ways.

It‘s funny that this video came out this week, in Fact, my Group had a major Problem with a too powerful Encounter just 3 days ago. (Spoilers for Dragon of Icespire Peak). We use XP leveling in our game ( another big problem in my opinion), went to the Mountain toe mine, and got completely overrun by Wererats that where immune to our attacks because we didn‘t habe silvered Weapons yet and our Spellcasters, who have been missing the last few sessions, where completely underleveled and we suffered a big TPK. The DM then told us that the Quest was balanced for Chars of Levl 4-5, while our Wizard and Bard where only Levl 2.

I just don't understand how people still struggle with CR. For my 2 years and 1.5 campaigns, it's worked perfectly. The math is right there.

I was running a small plane hopping campaign and needed flying undead due to setting. Eventually settled on giant ghosts aka the ghosts of giants due to their level and power I through 6 at them. Possession at least gave me an out for the TPK though.

Example on the "Overpowered monster that the party cannot fight": A CR 13 Adult White Dragon vs 5 level 6 sub optimally built but tactically strong characters.

I wanted a more challenging fight, so I buffed a Mummy. I didn't read how Mummy Rot works properly, so a CR 5 Mummy murdered one of my level 3 players. It worked out well in the end, and sent the message (accidentally) that my game could be deadly.

Your thoughts about how the game seems optimally balanced for levels 5-10 were especially awesome in this video.

Luke gives us tips on how to *not* murderize players, at least not in one hit? :D

2nd combat encounter in a new campaign. My group and I had finished our 4 year high school spanning adventure and were ready to start anew. Players start at level 5. There are 4 of them. I plop a level 7 paladin in front of them. He crits…twice…the parties paladin is down… yea I kinda botched that one but I didn’t wanna fudge so I let the crit slide and they would’ve said something if he didn’t smite. My goal is to keep them on their toes and actually have stakes in the campaign. I want them to feel like their characters could die if the right situation arises. They aren’t plot armored movie stars

One time my party of level 7 characters went up against a giant lava snake (reskinned behir, cr 11) who could dodge into a lava stream for total cover and look up to spit a fire beam. A single enemy towards an entire party, no worries right? Except the behir makes 12d10 lightning (in this case fire) damage in a line and I had not modified the damage one bit. Barbarian succeeded on their dex save and managed to stay up, fighter didn't and went from full hp to 0 in a hit. If the squishy sorcerer had been standing behind them he would have been OBLITERATED even with a successful save. I also roll openly on Roll 20 (including damage dice, so they would have noticed if I suddenly switched to like 8d10, and recharge dice for fire breath) so no fudging. I told myself "alright, this thing packs a bit *too* much of a punch, but if the fire breath comes back I have to use it or they'll think I'm wussing out on them." Luckily for them (and me) I never rolled a 5 or above on the recharge die. The battle turned out into a mad game of tag, where they took turns distracting the snake while trying to get fighter on her feet. She was still really low on HP so a single fire beam hit would have turned her into a charcoal brisket, save or not. The artificer, who usually stays in the background giving covering fire, got to shine as a front line hero and managed to dodge and tank multiple snake bites with her +1 shield. The two rangers who usually nuke everything within 300 feet range had to rely on readied actions to take pot shots on the fire snake, and managed to whittle it down to the point where divine sorcerer (who usually is more of a healer/support) could take it down with a thunder-reflavoured fire ball. I think the snake would have lived with 4 hp, but it was such an explosive ending and he usually doesn't get the killing blow so I let him have it. In the end, I would have lowered the damage that thing could do to the point where it was a threat without being able to OHK players, but the fight was really tough and memorable. They really had to buckle up to get through.

pf, if you think the CR rating in DnD5 is broken, try out Pathfinder 1 with the Path of War ruleset. We are level 11 and my character can alone annhilate most CR11 monster of the monster handbook in a single round - without the monster being able to hurt me. And I'm not even the type of player that optimizes everything. Feats + Classes are picked by the rule of cool. The strongest character of the group reliably does twice off my damage...

I just choose whatever monsters I think are cool and fit. And just hit them with the nerf bat if needed. Just scale the damage dice down, enough that they can't be one shot. And drop the HP. It's worked so far for me.

I've been DM'ing LMOP for a group of new players - I've been looking for a better way to understand exactly how hard an encounter will be for my group, and I like the advice of double checking for 1-hit KOs by the enemies. I'll definitely take all of your points into consideration for future sessions beyond this module! Also, my go-to as a last-ditch attempt to let players know something is too big to handle before engaging: Have one of the players roll a history/arcana/etc. check to see if they know anything about the monster. If they roll high-ish or better, part of what they 'know' is how scary this particular creature seemed in books/lore/etc.

@guyman1570

2 жыл бұрын

Klarg the Bugbear is an infamous party-killer in LMOP, so watch out for that!

@pocketbard

2 жыл бұрын

@@guyman1570 Yep, we had 2 of the 4 go down before killing him. Good way to start a session with new players, huh?

I'm currently running Curse of Strahd (at an elevated level) and had changed The big bad in Argonvostholt to have the statics of a Death Knight. He had a couple adds to help but that didn't matter. The group Pally ran up and Crit twice (At level 11) and just obliterated the Death Knight. I never even got a turn with him.

I misjudged the difficulty, but one of my more experienced players realized that the encounter was going to be impossible... but since they were humans raiding supply caravans and he was a Hexblade he decided to join up, he played up how he was helping guard a traveling merchant but was left for dead after being attacked by a pack of wolves. One thing lead to another, the bandits were now caught between the NPC caravan guard of the next caravan they were attacking and the players that were hunting them. It was a tough fight with the guards doing little more than distracting 5 of them but it was enough to make what I thought was going to be a hard encounter into an actual hard encounter.

So I was learning how much pcs can take and was sick of them plowing through my encounters with ease. So at level 3, I threw a young green dragon at them. 4 of the 5 went down, and the last pc got the final blow with a massive crit right before the final blow for a tpk. We still talk about how awesome that night was. But I never worried about making an encounter too hard again

Once had a DM who thought it was a great idea to throw 4 Spectres and then without a short rest a Wraith at a party of 3 level 3 characters, and then blame me for powergaming when I play tactically to save my party members. :/

I like a base encounter plus waves of reinforcements. You can always cancel a wave or too.

Oddly, the old equivalent in B/X may have been more useful than this CR stuff in 5e. You simply looked at the Hit Dice listing, and it would also have one or more superscript asterisks attached to represent the powers of the monster's special abilities.

@ViktorTheMusician

2 жыл бұрын

Finding that Hit Dice : Experience chart in one of those OSR books felt like finding the missing link lmao, it 100% lines up to how 5e allocates XP, it HAS to be what they were using.

If I had bacon while watching this, my day would be complete.

The sad part, is that I have just about completely ignored CR in general. The only reason I use it is because on DnDB, CR dictates proficiency for homebrew creatures, and is a required spec to save your work.

Bacon. Now to my point. Thanks luke. Great video. Yes I remember when my party of four level 12 Adventures easily wiped the floor with a cr18 monster who even had a couple of minions to help take some of the heat. Once the party gets above level 10 I find it very hard to balance encounters. They are either way too easy or way way too hard.

I threw a CR 28 creature at four level 14s as a final fight after three medium encounters, including a homebrewed CR 12 ooze that was an optional battle. The ooze fucked them up more than the CR 28 boss.

Even though I agree that CR requires judgement to be useful and cannot be used by just computing the numbers, I will say that a parameter that is often overlooked about the creation of encounters and CR is that you are cautionned against using creatures whose CR is above (and I would add even equal to) the average level of the party, especially at lower levels. Hence the 1st level group of adventurers against a single ogre example is something the DM guide already cautions against. Now, this is not a way to say that CR works as it is, but I feel that we should at least make sure we rant against things that aren't already accounted for. In my opinion, there is no way a number based system like CR can work. It can only be used as a guide, and I feel it is its intended use. You must always exercise judgement, because even some low level CR monsters have a particular ability set that makes them very dangerous. The same goes for some monsters that have a lot of narrative based powers which gives them a high CR but these monsters will fare pretty miserably in a standard fight.

I have grown to like the word "chiefchin" and imagine tribes of beings who choose their leaders by the prominence of one's jawline.

I feel like one tangible example of CR rating ridiculousness for a lot of new players is Cryovain the big baddie in Dragon of Icespire Peak. It's a CR 6 on paper, but honestly a team of 4 level 6's could easily kill cryovain in two turns. I had to seriously turn up the heat on Cryovain to make it a challenge.

@ChristopherRoss.

2 жыл бұрын

In fairness, the adventure was designed for people who had never played before. Theoretically they would still be figuring out the tactics, and may not have done all the quests to buff up before the fight.

@christopherclubb9167

2 жыл бұрын

Meanwhile, a simple "trivial encounter" of 4 shadows and 4 darkmantles could TPK a 7th level party (or higher, depending on abilities).

Great video, Luke, thank you, just comment to deadly encounters. Again difference in GMing styles. Let the story evolve the way players go? Or kill them for entering high level area... Both are possible and both can have their reasons behind them, you just need to talk this through in the session 0 so everyone can adapt to the chosen playstyle. Dark gritty high fantasy where humanoids are being exterminated by all the other more powerful beings will have way different encounters than heroic light-hearted high fantasy where you follow each player's adventures from their backstories. Once again both are valid, just talk things through in the session 0, much thanks. Much love, take care and bye ❤️

I don't use the CR. I look at the monsters HP, AC, number of attacks, probability of hitting the characters, damage output per round, action economy available, and any specials they have. I then balance that against the party and tweak it if it is to be a weak/easy, moderate, challenging, or deadly encounter. I am an analyst by trade, so I have no problems in doing this and I often do it on the fly for random encounters.

Once threw a party of 4 level 15s at a Dragon Turtle. They absolutely spanked it in just 2 short rounds

I've learned to take a closer look at a monster's special abilities or attacks. If it has a paralyzing or restraining effect, for example, and the entire party has bad luck... one low-CR creature's special attack can decimate a party right at the start.

Nice video!

@theDMLair

Жыл бұрын

Thanks!

My first encounter as a new DM I dropped a single bugbear for my party of 3 level 1's in a room and changed what was happening in that room on the fly (also kind of to see what happens). They completely murderized it without it doing a thing (it missed its only attack), yes it would have dropped any of them if it hit. But they did also have a healer. So now I am torn on what to do for encounters like that. I also have an encounter planned later with 3 bugbears potentially ambushing them, guess we will see how it goes!

@christopherclubb9167

2 жыл бұрын

If you know for sure the monster will die before it acts again, you can fudge a hit but make the damage not enough to instantly drop someone. I wouldn't do this too often, but it's a good way to subtly cost the party more resources if they are maxed up.

I don’t even use the challenge rating system. I homebrew 100% of my creatures especially bosses and special things like Dragons(the tail attack is a cone as example) and I just change damage on things based on the average damage the party has per turn and the average health they have. It has worked well thus far, eliminating CR for me entirely. Your tips all could be crunched int 1: use it, try it and tweak accordingly” but not bad tips; would be useful if o haven’t thrown the CR system out the door years ago.

CR is useful as a guideline, but it'll never be an exact science.

I scale the enemy hit dice secretly on the fly if the encounter was out of balance and the PCs are none the wiser. I generally only tweak it once though, and then commit to it, so that there's still some element of chance

Dear Al Gore Rhythm, Luke doesn't suck, bacon is great, and this video was quite good. Sincerely, Me.

Biggest issue with cr is that your SUPPOSED to run multiple combats a day. Don't allow players to take more than 1 long rest every 16 hours, and have more combats and things feel better. I typically do this leading up to big situations (like for Strahd, going thru the Amber Temple or Arganvostholt, etc)

Had a BLT with lots of BACON and a side of BACON while watching this morning:)

I feel challenge rating works well with smart play and good encounter designs. Now what you said about medium encounters on level one and two this is specifically mentioned in the dmg. The book agrees with you on this. Later level encounters should always be hard or deadly this can be inferred by the adventuring day section. And I find all of this work good but it does require putting thought in to all the other aspects of an encounter and yes plan an adventuring day, it works and means you dont have to throw a single swingy 5xcr encounter... Now of course the prevalence of magical items in the party is a weakness in the system as it does not adjust CR based on expected number of magic items...how could it? But this is were encounter design and the adventuring day is actually important. I know a lot of people want to play critical role with maybe 1 fight every other "episode" and Will scoff at too many encounters a day as it would ruin immersion and I get that. BUT this is not impro teater the game and it was not designed as such it is an adventure game with hopefully equal parts social interaction/action/exploration and it works if you play after its design. It will not fill a role it was not intendent for. If want to use the bones of the system to play a different game thats great but dont blame the designers when your trying to play monopoly with chess.

I'm using milestone leveling almost on every campaign. That way I hardly use the cr system, I just throw creatures and enemies according to story. if a particular creature is too strong for the party they'll know it from me instantly this urges the players to use their brains instead of their game mechanical prowess to overcome the enemy (sometimes they don't have to kill the creature only by pass it). I'm hoping that in the new edition, 5.5 or whatever, they'll make milestone leveling standard with perhaps a revamped cr system optional.

A single hook horror against a party of 4 level 3 people, who were already pretty hurt from a fight with a gelatinous cube. Yeah, did not go well.

My groups Barbarian is a beast. It's my fault mostly, he is a new to the game player and I've been mostly generous but when they faced off against the last BBEG I tied him up with hordes of undead while the rest of the party tried to kill boss. Boss and minions were killed way to fast but the fight was stated as deadly. Yeah for the boss lol

I am new to DND. Yeah. It is rough. A big part is learning all the rules. There are a lot of them. Yet even if I do get a DM to show me the ropes, it can still be tough. I find that my group has terrible accuracy. I was even wondering if there was something wrong or something we missed. I looked it up and others were struggling too. I was thinking that the encounters would be more fair if the armor class was lowered. Then things can hit. Then I see there can be more things. Sometimes someone in the party would drop to zero hit points and pass out. Fortunately nobody died yet. It may be a good idea to nerf low lever creatures in several ways to make it appropriate for characters. I am starting to get the hang of it. I play a wizard. So I just aim to be a glass cannon. I use three cantrips alot. They are fire bolt, ray of frost and shocking grip. I also have a level 1 spell called burning hands. I basically nuke enemies until they die. There is nothing super fancy. I am totally going for the evocation school when I get higher. It is nice and straightforward. Maybe cantrips in general are a good thing to go for a beginner spellcaster. They don't use up spell slots.

Another layer to all of this is the loot system. There really isn't any kind of guidance in the system to tell DMs how many magic items of which levels of power a character should have at each level because these items make a huge difference in what kinds of challenges they can take on. And this is even more the case at lower levels. Magical items can make a world of difference for a level 2 character. There is no system for adjusting your party level based on the equipment they have and that would be super useful.

An adult blue dragon's breath on 2 characters lvl9 (1 mage/1warrior). The mage was on the floor trying to reach the luminous door. xD

Helpful.

2:27 Says the guy who put a buffed Ogre Zombie and 6 Crawling Claws into a level 3 adventure.

In the curse of stradh campaign myself and few other players almost got wiped out on session 1 when we angered the spirits of the children by setting their bones and the toy house on fire. Thankfully the DM accepted the negotiation request by one of the players. But 2 lvls later we decimated one of the hags when she was alone on the road. The CR rating is a hit and miss. I will try to implement your suggestions in my games

Thought I had wanted any DMs take on it. What if I give lower creatures classes? Like orcs and goblins. It just seem like the situation is more like ME: OK you walk down. The alley way and a our halfway in An Orc jumps out and attacks you, roll for initiative...OK you won. Monk: I side step and slap him. Me:ok he is dead I want it to be a little more challenging, Not really hard but challenging. Like maybe it take 3-5 rounds to kill them. If the players are lower level.

@Cloud_Seeker

11 ай бұрын

The problem is D&D 5e is not designed around being a game where you have prolonged battles where a single enemy takes 3-5 turns to kill. Most battles are won or lost within 3-4 rounds. If a battle is prolonged it will just go into a situation where the players and the enemies are stationary and just doing basic attacks against each other. There is no fluidity in the combat. There is no momentum or poistioning. It is one model slapping another model with a pool noodle until one model can't continue slapping with a pool noodle. This is why combats do not last very long. The challenge does not come from dealing with one or two strong enemies. It comes from reaching the end of the dungeon with enough resources left to fight the boss with. D&D 5e is designed around resource managment. This is also why most DM's fail to understand the power the players have. They throw in one or two fights and then let the party rest for the day. It make sense in a realistic sense, but that isn't how the mechanics are made. The game is designed to have 6-8 seperate battles every single day. This will might take more than 1 session and can be a grind, but this is the challenge. Making more powerful enemies does not improve the game. The combat mechanics are to simple for that. You should instead have multiple smaller battle and keep the momentum going by changing the battlefield.