I just eyeball it and keep getting lucky

@DavvyChappy

3 жыл бұрын

The mark of a true DM.

@yanderenejoyer

3 жыл бұрын

This... I feel called out.

@darienb1127

3 жыл бұрын

yeah, bascially. CR is bullshit anyways

@Menzobarrenza

3 жыл бұрын

Works every time, most of time.

@rianantony

3 жыл бұрын

@@Menzobarrenza 60% of the times it works 100% of the time

Another pro tip: if the players get a super high damage crit against the boss, and it’s super hype, feel free to just kill the boss. They don’t know how much health it has.

@papaquaalude8227

3 жыл бұрын

exactly. there’s nothing saying you have to let the fight continue so the party can whittle down the 30 or so HP left when the barbarian got a really cool critical with his throwing axe. just say he got him right between the eyes and move on

@zooker7938

3 жыл бұрын

Yes! If my players get a really cool hit that brings an enemy down to 3 health, I just let it die.

@johnstarinieri7360

3 жыл бұрын

I did that once, it *technically* had 3 HP left but the party had two people down and it was a great smite-crit so I allowed it. It was a great moment.

@Gibbons3457

3 жыл бұрын

On the flip side. If you want to make a boss feel terrifying do the opposite. Especially if it has only a dozen hp left. The pause and uncertainty the players feel when the boss takes a 78 damage crit and stays standing, spits out a tooth and says "my turn". Sure he dies next round but that extra turn can do wonders for his image.

@thewisefools7014

3 жыл бұрын

Never even thought about this for some reason good idea gonna do it sometimes (:

So he says it during the video, but I'll condense it into one phrase: Fudge stats, rarely rolls. It's a hell of a lot diffferent to say the dragon dies like 40 hit points too soon or it's breath happens to deal a couple less die of damage than it is to say it just misses.

@LupineShadowOmega

3 жыл бұрын

For the dragon specifically, I tend to. "Oh its breath weapon doesn't recharge" a couple of times.

I balance encounters this way: "Do I think the party can plausibly beat this without any guaranteed death?" If the answer is yes, that's good enough for me. It can be tough or easy, the important part for me is that it is beatable. From there, I focus on making sure the encounter feels real. Because verisimillitude is the most important part of running for me.

@DavvyChappy

3 жыл бұрын

I feel this.

@Menzobarrenza

3 жыл бұрын

Amen.

@ryuuducat

3 жыл бұрын

I feel like you have read AngryGM's blog. And i support that.

@TaberIV

3 жыл бұрын

The way most people play 5e, if players want a real challenge almost every counter should be "deadly" according to CR, because they probably have a lot of resources. I rarely run 5 combat encounters between long rests.

3:09 I'm glad someone finally said that. I hear so many stories where it starts with something impressive, like "We killed a terrasque," but it turns out to be a Runescape bossfight where the player(s) in question safespotted it and took potshots for 3 hours and the boss eventually died. Or someone says "the terrasque is ACTUALLY EASY" and then they tell a story about breaking the rules. That happens, too.

@ayamamotohaha5235

3 жыл бұрын

If people want to have fun by following the laid out rules I think they should be allowed to. If it’s fun for them to do exactly that then why not?

@purpleisdebeste

3 жыл бұрын

@@ayamamotohaha5235 normal fights are already too long, doing nothing every turn for way more hours sounds like literal (nine) hell(s)

@ayamamotohaha5235

3 жыл бұрын

@@purpleisdebeste but what if somebody finds it fun, Or at the very least satisfying to do that? I’m not saying you need to find it fun. I don’t find it fun, but if someone does then I don’t think their fun is any less valid.

@purpleisdebeste

3 жыл бұрын

@@ayamamotohaha5235 If they do all the more power to them and their party of 3+ people who presumably also find it fun (since everyone should be having fun)

@ayamamotohaha5235

3 жыл бұрын

@@purpleisdebeste yay!

On-the-fly HP editing is probably the easiest way to deal with imbalance if you've over/underestimated. Sometimes you can also make flavorful opportunities for stat tweaks: e.g. if the party's fighting a vine monster with a lot of attacks that's destroying your party, if they do enough damage in one round, you could say that one of its limbs has been disabled, thereby removing one of its attacks. And of course always remember that not all monsters are mindless fight-to-the-death types. Some may use tactics, or may flee the moment they get hurt. Just don't do something like has happened in a lot of early games I was in--they randomly run away from party members to provoke AoO's cause the DM overestimated the players (and didn't want to do on-the-fly health adjustments).

@gamara204

3 жыл бұрын

Good to see ya Zed and good tip on the health editing.

"If he dies, he dies." - - Every DM I've had.

@CooperAATE

Жыл бұрын

Of course I know him - he's me.

See this is a good video for new and existing DMs. That’s what I love about your content, people who have been playing for years and people who have been playing for days can both watch your videos and learn something!

I got a bag of beans at level 5. I got the mummy lord out of it. The party killed it.

great vid, but I prefer to err on the side of harder encounters & scale them down by making some enemies flee the battle or not send the extra wave. as the 6 fights/day is rarely used, I just hit the party like a truck.

@DavvyChappy

3 жыл бұрын

100% this.

People discredit experience when it comes to encounters. You can also buff monsters without changing any numbers. Simply spreading them out or giving them tactics drastically changes how hard they are. Wizard keeps fireballing monsters? Spread them. Archer too strong? Use arrow slits and have the monster move into full cover when the monster is done. Environmental factors and traps during the battle also works well. I had one encounter I used those tentacle mouth things from half life in a room with vines everywhere and natural pits covered with moss to make them move slower and be forced to think about their movements. And I added a gelatinous cube with insane hp to stop them from standing still and holding actions. Did the party goof and now a flood of monsters are coming at them that will guarentee a tpk? Only send in 3 at a time and slowly wear them. Makes the tension still high without punishing them severely.

Remember that it doesn't always have to be balanced. Sometimes giving at super easy fight makes your plays feel powerful. On the other hand having things in the world that are just too strong can feel realistic and set up a problem that your players have to solve without just throwing math rocks at it till it dies.

@gwazidm70

3 жыл бұрын

Agreed. I find the whole "everything must be balanced" idea to rob a lot of engagement potential from the campaign. There's a rewarding feeling to fail to fight something the first time, and then come back and beat it later not due to leveling, or the DM cheating, but just because the players did their homework, came in with a battle plan and earned the victory through clever thinking. And other times, just coming back at later level and winning from the higher numbers is rewarding too, to reflect the growth your characters have gone through. My favourite example happened just two months ago. I placed a monster that was blockading a town's ability to support itself (cut off the trade routes and all that). This creature was immune to all damage that wasn't magical (or from magic weapons) and had a very deadly combat style, but one also easily avoidable once players established the pattern. The first time the players took it on they barely wounded it and almost faced a TPK, almost because 3/4 players succeeded on their Death Saves and were then able to escape to live another day. A few sessions later, they came back having studied it's fighting style, deploying appropriate encounters, and enchanting their gear so that they could more easily hurt the monster. And with only 1 level difference between the attempts, they completely decimated the bosses with little difficulty. It was a moment of real triumph and accomplishment for the players, and once that taught the players to approach every battle carefully and with thought. It was the kind of accomplished feeling and lessons that players would never have if their DM just ascribed to the thought of "All encounters are required to be balanced".

In my Great Pumpkin Halloween One-shot, I realized that some bad dice rolls on my party's side nearly wiped them, so Charlie Brown and Co. were quickly replaced with their Broadway counterparts. Having them take down Kristin Chenoweth with a Trident of Fish Command was a personal highlight.

I try to teach my players through combat. Monsters effectively flank, now players know that flanking is important. Monsters sneak up behind them, the rouge now knows to do the same. I am running waterdeep dragon heist, and i decided to make fights with though enemies but less of them, becuse i only have 2 players, but they are a fighter and thief, so alot of dps, and nice healing with hp potions. That said, next game i am going to let them battle a mind flayer at level 5, because it makes sense in the story and they battle him at full resources, because i feel that they are too afraid to waste their abilities.

Man, most of this i already knew, but the whole "trial run the encounter on your own" is something that feels like an obvious solution that genuinely never occurred to me. Thanks for that. It's nice if I'm worried about how a fight might go

I have a whole different problem; when I dm my monsters keep on critting waaaay more often than my players do xD

@airsheeps

3 жыл бұрын

Consider capping the number of crits possible for the enemies in an encounter. Just treat a 20 the same as any other result after, say, the second crit. No guaranteed hit, no double damage dice

@LupineShadowOmega

3 жыл бұрын

Them is the breaks. I say that as someone that almost never crits, meanwhile I've had an actual fight that we as a party lost and I crit literally 3 times as a high level fighter. It was the most disgusting thing ever and I almost died that fight, if not for the Druid getting me back up and our sorcerer teleporting us out because things weren't looking good.

@RayPoreon

3 жыл бұрын

I would recommend using monsters that might have a non-lethal motive in mind just in case the rolls completely wipe them. Eg capture for slavery, 'meats back on the menu boys', intent to harvest the player character's souls later on, glorified pets etc etc. You can also just straight-up give the players a weak sidekick or a magic item that can block a few crits.

@GusMortis

3 жыл бұрын

You dont have to tell the truth about your dice roles. Your God. What you say goes. I know it seems dishonest to change dice roles, I had a dm that would fake role dice to build tension before something was going to happen anyways regardless of roll. Its always your call though.

@worthasandwich

3 жыл бұрын

So there is a story of a gm in our group that would just roll Skittles instead of dice. The players only caught on when he popped on in his mouth.

In the animated spellbook ''The most usefull chart in DnD'' contains information i think is so amazing for creating balanced encounters. As the chart shows at what lvl which amount of damage could be clasified. You can always compare creature damage to that chart and go work from that starting point.

@jasonbrown6604

3 жыл бұрын

What is animated spellbook?

@DenzelRealm

3 жыл бұрын

@@jasonbrown6604 Video series on youtube.

If an encounter of multiple monsters is too powerful for my players one thing I've down is make the monsters fight them selves.

Usually I'm more concerned with the balance between the players rather than if they can deal with the monsters. They don't all have to be good at combat, but they all have to be equally important to the party in some way. For example, the Wizard is a key part of battles due to his crowd control spell while the Rogue helps deal with very dangerous traps.

So, one thing I like to do is when the BBEG is a magic user is to give them access to the clone spell or claim the BBEG they fought before was a simulacrum that was acting on the real BBEG's behalf in the off chance the fight was to easy or the party decides to take a long rest right outside his tower because what wizard with 20 intelligence is going to sit there and wait for you to heal up and kill them no their gonna do something to ensure their safety.

The website Kobald fight klub is really helpful. You can insert how many characters your party has, the types of creatures you want to use, and how easy or hard you want the fight to be. Generally I’ll have a “deck” of encounters I’ll use with X number of easy, medium, difficult, or deadly encounters the party could encounter.

When Davy posts this when I am balancing encounters

@fancyb.p.6122

3 жыл бұрын

Here’s a tip if the party is too powerful. Use zombies, they inherit undead fortitude makes them really hard to kill.

Here is my understanding of the factors that make up a parties strengths, and are important to take into account when creating encounters: 1) The most important factor to consider is the players themselves, not there characters as having smart or dumb players can dramatically change their effectiveness in combat. 2) So, the second most important factor to consider is the player characters both individually, and as a whole looking at factors like survivability, damage output, consistency, and longevity in combat along side what attacks and spells they have access to because a large group of goblins is nothing to a fire ball or two while it can be a big issue for the big single target burst damage paladin. 3) What kind of game are you running, and what skills does the party have. If you are running a game with a specific enemy type or a specific atmosphere then you should plan around that, and take into consideration the player characters skills as someone with expertise in perception and the observant feat is going to ruin any surprise attacks you through at them which a party that has poor perception will be very weak against surprise attacks. 4) Lastly, what enemies do you plan to use, and how do you intend to use them. A good example is goblins, and wolves with goblins they are going to fight smart using traps and staying out of reach of the barbarian while wolves are going to rush in and swarm the party or run away before the party can confront them.

That's all well and good, but then everything turns on its head when the dice are involved. I mean, I had my player slugfest a group of three kobolds for about 7 rounds because absolutely no freakin' hit was landed. And another time I had my main boss get crit twice in a row (once with the bloody rogue, no less), and go down to half hp

I used the 'parallel combat' system through the first 15 combat encounters I ran in 5E (after years of DMing 1E/3E). I had to stop at 15 though, because my players were not nearly as good at running their party as I was - they harbored too much fear of death from previous editions (also being new to 5E). After a while, it's hard to hold back the 'tactical advice', since you've already seen what works - better to let the players come up with their own strategy... even when it's sub-optimal.

I like throwing a real doozy at them out of left field that they probably don't want to take on but they remember it later when they're a little stronger and go back after their quest is done

Very true about CR being more like guidelines than actual rules. I have something called the “Gorp-Mareni Dichotomy” where an appropriate-CR monster might be able to go a round or two with the Barbarian, but one errant hit on the squishy wizard and it’ll turn her into a jam stain. In a party of 3, this is a pretty stark difference that always needs considering, and therefore balancing.

I've DMed for 20 years at this point and one thing I can say is almost no encounter goes the way I'd expect from calculating the CR. I've seen my most recent party tear through a CR10 "tough" troll zombie like wet tissue paper only to turn around and nearly get TPKd by a joke CR2 demon turkey encounter. I don't believe in balance. I believe in setting the encounter at tough to deadly and if I see my players get whooped I'll just make a few less strategic moves that're still 100% justifiably in context.

I use an old 3.5 encounter balance math. Four lvl 4 adventurers would be a CR five party total. It has worked out in 5E especially once certain classes get that extra attack action. Might not work all the time, but it is how I learned when I started DM-ing during that edition.

@Gibbons3457

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah 5e went to all the effort of introducing bounded accuracy but the tried to crowbar 3.5 CR into it. It's why most monsters have really boring stat blocks. Two attacks, maybe a breath weapon or condition, and done, unless its a caster then it can have 8 or more spells, half of which are useless in combat, and spell slots of various levels. They made action economy matter but then made the actions boring. Best thing I ever did was start stealing actions from 4e and pathfinder 2e. Massively streamlined combat and made 8t more interesting.

I remember an old thread where DMs discussed this sort of issue and the general consensus was, "as long as everyone is having fun, then whatever, it's done!". A lot of DMs secretly fudged roles to make the fight a bit more epic or to save a character the player was really into for one more session. Honestly, as long as folks are into it, it's a success.

What I do to balance my encounters is I slowly introduce ability after ability from the monsters and figure out at what point do these abilities feel threatening enough or not at all. I've had combat encounter where the boss had a self heal that he never used because his AC and health pool was already efficient enough against the party. I had a necromancer second phase boss that I just let the zombies be normal zombies instead of the heavily equipped, psuedo spellcasters I had originally planned because the first phase did more work to my party than I expected. Literally one of my most recent pathfinder sessions, I threw a bunch of Devils at a party with no silver weapons. It was tough, but I ruled that for the smaller minion enemies, if they were hit with a silver weapon or their DR was overcome, they just died.

Dude I fucking love your videos, I wish I could observe everything as critically as you do. Your vids are a godsend, and your advice has helped me so much with my DM'ing. Thank you, Davvy Chappy.

Scaling monsters up or down is also good to ensure that the encounter makes thematic sense, so you don't feel like you HAVE to include a monster because it's the 'correct' CR when it would make no sense for it to be in the area the encounter takes place.

My basics would be: If the target can one-shot a party member on a failed save or hit, probably don't use it until later most of the time.

As a player who keep track of monster ac (by remembering what hits and what doesn't) messing with the hp is far better, i have dm'ed a few fights and the best ones are where i messed with the hp to keep everyone on there toes. Also if you feel like it, just add in some RP stuff from the monsters and give a bonus to players that interact with it, my best time with this was when i had a wyvern roar at the party in the middle of a fight and the barb roared back toled them to roll intimidation did the same for the wyvern, barb won the wyvern was garented to attack the barb next turn and it had disadv on the roll for being rattled. Theres so much you can do out if the rules if you want to do it.

Loved the Crunch Wrap Supreme!!

The trick to D&D is making the players feel like the odds are stacked against them when in reality they are in their favour. This can be tough to pull off because they aren't stupid. Common DM tricks like adding or subtracting monster hit points are painfully obvious to experienced players. This is why it's important to try and balance encounters correctly in the first place and look for subtle ways to tilt that balance if you find you've miscalculated.

I can never edit the cr on a monster because my players are constantly analyzing their rolls to figure out the cr

one way to spice up encounters is to give creatures Legendary and Lair Actions that don't normally have them. it helps makes boss fights more imposing a lower levels, even if they are things like extra attacks. one thing you can also do is have the Lair actions also damage the enemies, so the players can use that to their advantage if they position correctly.

I'm loving the new channel logo

My first session DMing, running a module, DMing for fairly experienced players, the *second* combat encounter -- when the party was at full health -- was a TPK at the hands of some giant badgers who got lucky. So, yeah, CR is useful at low levels, but things like multi-attack, resistances, vulnerabilities, etc. can really throw off an encounter if the dice refuse to roll how they're "supposed" to. As a newbie, I wasn't aware of that, and I got bit, hard. Davvy's totally right, though. As DM, I quickly came up with plan B, my downed players got some time to recover, and the next time, they taught those stinkin' badgers a lesson. TPKing your party only means the end of the fun or the campaign you as the DM say so. I learned really quickly to test my encounters, or adjust them on the fly, to make them as easy -- or as hard -- as the story and the campaign require.

I'm a big advocate for doing mock battles, especially for customized creatures. I usually run them with just the most basic shells of my player characters, and I have them do their most basic functions. If the fight seems to be tense just from running my players at their most Easy AI level, it's usually good for me. Then I get to be surprised when they do cool stuff I didn't think of or even do during the fight, so it's surprising for me as well.

Thank you for the advice 🙂.

I'm a math nerd through and through, I took calculus for fun as an elective class is high school, I went to competitions for applied mathematics and made it to state finals without studying, and I frequent anydice and can use it well. CR isn't the issue of creature balance in 5e, it's the monsters themselves. If you use the rules in the DMG for homebrewing creatures, a Helmed Horror is CR 9.18 instead of 4 and lets not talk about Quicklings. My point is that if you use the homebrew creature chart with the abilities factored in, it only has a deviation of about 6% across all levels (from my statistical analysis anyway. TTK, chance to hit, ect) from what the adventuring day math calculates to be. And Davy, while the game balance doesn't require a specific build of party composition, it does require the players act tactically, not waste actions, and work together. I can and have shown my players they need to work together when a group of 3 level 10 PCs were almost defeated by 5 CR 1 kobolds without using any traps or trickery (3 dragonshield, 2 sorcerers). The Druid's wildshapes and summons were blocking the wizard's LoS to cast spells properly while the paladin was too far away to help off attacking the backline while the wizard was being attacked without help. At the end of that combat (which was the only combat they had that day, so they were full on resources), the wizard was down without their best slots and several missing from casting shield and counterspell to stay alive, the moon druid had burned both of their wildshapes and most of their slots on healing and was bloodied at the end of the fight, and the paladin/sorcerer was down after using all of their lay on hands on healing themself and with almost all of their spell slots still available because he only used them as smites on undead or crits. They would have probably lost the gladiatorial combat if the kobolds didn't run out of spell slots. PS: The PC team name was The Gabagoons, and the kobolds were called the Half-Half Dragons.

@gwazidm70

3 жыл бұрын

This is by far the most extreme example I've heard of to get into players heads it's far more about how you play than what you play. DM's and Players will cry about "Balance" till their face goes blue. But so often don't realize that the intelligence of the players and their strategies are far more important than the stats behind those characters. So expecting everything to be solved just through "Balance" is missing a very big (the biggest) part of play. Not to mention DnD 5e having used Bounded Accuracy is also incredibly good at preventing almost all of the "God-Killer" nightmare builds that older editions of DnD have a reputation for, so really when you hear of Power Gamers these days... The power difference isn't actually that high anyways? The actual numbers are very similar (if not identical. Unless if the player is doing something crazy like Dump INT Wizard). Most of the time, if the Optimizer is doing better it's probably not even because of the Optimization anymore, but the player just understands the tools their character has better, and as a result is better at utilizing them.

@shanemacmillan5732

3 жыл бұрын

@@gwazidm70 I built a level 10 character that deals 120 damage on average rolls on the first round of combat and it only costs me a 1st level slot for resources and requiring no magic items. They also have a +23 to stealth. 5e isn't hard at all to break in half. I hold myself back from breaking the difficulty of the game for DMs when I'm playing, I know how hard the process of balance can be. The above character also has 20 AC 73 HP and can kill most non fighter, ranger, paladin, barbarians at who are at level 20 (but that won't matter when the stealth bonus is +23 and +8 to hit). The DM hit us with an Iron golem and a chimera in an ambush, the forge cleric gave me magic weapon and I kicked both of the monster's asses. Before the game, I had told the DM that this character was specifically built so I could not have to think tactically in combat and so I could focus more on the RP of the game. Turns out the DM doesn't like when players have strong PCs and was trying to kill the entire party out of spite (this had been a problem across multiple games and this became the boiling point when he said "I need to make my deadly encounters even stronger"). That was the last session he had played with us, and I'm now running 2 games for those players as a DM. Edit: Leading up to the game I kept finding ways to get higher and higher damage until finally finding 120 at the limit. I actually didn't use that build of the character, I ended up using a 93 average damage build since it would end up being more versatile and I didn't want to play an exclusively ranged character since that 120 required sharpshooter and I would prefer the +2 AC from the ASI and fighting style.

@gwazidm70

3 жыл бұрын

@@shanemacmillan5732 I'm going to assume the +23 Stealth involved the use of Pass Without Trace? I'm also now curious on what precisely the build is that was able to pull off such a high amount of damage.

@shanemacmillan5732

3 жыл бұрын

@@gwazidm70 Really nothing that special, 5 assassin rouge, 5 gloomstalker ranger take hunter's mark, Magic Weapon, pass without a trace, and Zephyr strike. With extra attack on gloomstalker with the extra d8 damage that's 4d8 after all three of the attacks, each hit while a creature is marked with hunter's mark is a d6 for 3d6 and so too does sneak attack add another 3d6, then add sharpshooter for +14 per hit and then assassinate (which shouldn't be hard to proc with the invis and +12 stealth while concentrating on HM. Though technically speaking, you could have it up before hand then switch to HM but I digress) to double our dice for our grand total of 8d8+12d6+42 or on average 120 damage on the first round of combat. And that's assuming you don't use that poisoner's kit proficiency from assassin level 3... Edit: as a reminder, you can use your bonus action to place the mark at 90ft (common distance since gloomstalker give +30ft of darkvision to those who have it) then you can attack 3 times as your main action before they can react. This could also technically be done at level 9, but I like the uncanny dodge and you get the extra 2d6 from sneak attack crits and it comes out to an even 120 damage. Secondary reminder: If you set up Zephyr strike and activate the advantage on the next turn, you can then dash as a bonus action for 120 feet of not provoking attacks of opportunity. That should get you far enough that your stealth and/or rope trick should get you out of danger.

@gwazidm70

3 жыл бұрын

@@shanemacmillan5732 Ah, it's a Nova Alpha Strike build, that helps explain some of it. Still, that set up is pretty impressive. Though, the three spells you listed, Pass Without Trace, Hunters Mark and Zephyr Strike was all Concentration spells, how are you able to combo all of them in the same spree of attacks?

Nice subtle endorsement of 4e’s biggest strength.

I am so here for the cat interruptions. :3

Great advice as always! Thank you.

Very good advice. I personally like to take higher CR monsters and lower their health when I want a terrifying but beatable opponent.

Thought this was a video about the outer planes and the blood war, and the eternal balance of it all. I actually am much more interested in what the videos actually about 👍

Thanks for reminding me, I forgot to throw a hydra, behir, abominable yeti, and tyrannosaurus rex at my lvl4 party. I’m sure they’ll be fiiiiine

One other decent tip for encounter balancing between similarly powerful PCs and enemies is to focus on action economy. If a party is taking more actions in a round than the enemies, it is very likely they’ll win (hence why legendary actions exist for bosses). Same applies for enemies with more actions a round than the party. (Admittedly spellcasters with AOEs complicate things a bit.)

"You cannot have a game without it being balanced to some extent" *Laughs in Worlds Without Number*

Also not mentioned here is the number of encounters between recovering abilities. What would otherwise be an easy fight according to CR gets a lot harder when the party has burned all its spell slots and abilities

Usually, lots of DMs have said that CR is inaccurate and usually leads to combats that aren’t as difficult as they want to, and I think I’ve come up with a solution to fix the “underpowered” monsters. Step 1: Grab a monster of the appropriate CR and don’t use average health. If a monster ends up having 6d12 hit dice, max that up to 72 as a base and add the extra bonus they have to their hp. Most players who are competent (aka not new) will wipe the floor with average hp monsters, so bump up the health and start getting to those juicy numbers. If this is a one-monster boss fight, don’t feel shy giving the monster the Tough feat. After all, these are supposed to be “tough” fights Step 2: proficiency bonus is key. If a monster has a 16 in strength (+3 modifier) and your party has an average AC of 17, don’t settle for that +2 in proficiency the monster may have. Raise it up so that your monster can hit them on at least a 10 or 9. That +5 to hit (which has a

My dm has an interesting style. He makes the world so insanely powerful that level 10 characters are fighting cr 30+ monsters, but he gives us tools and home brew so that our level 10 party is stronger than average level 20 parties. He also doesn’t balance things around the party, so some fights will be much easier than usual, but some times fights have the right attributes to render some members almost useless. It really makes every combat exciting and lethal.

@Menzobarrenza

3 жыл бұрын

That's sounds pretty interesting.

@brandondennis5166

3 жыл бұрын

@@Menzobarrenza On the contrary, spending 2 to 3 hours in a fight where you character is useless sounds pretty boring.

@Menzobarrenza

3 жыл бұрын

@@brandondennis5166 That's not the part I was referring to.

@silver4831

3 жыл бұрын

"he gives us tools and home brew so that our level 10 party is stronger than average level 20 parties." So, you cheat. lol a level 20 party are GODS.

@clarkmilstead9927

3 жыл бұрын

@@silver4831 level 20 is quite strong, but besides spells like wish and abilities like divine intervention, you aren’t really godlike or invincible. Also keep in mind the monsters are much more powerful than most even the strongest of rules as written dnd monsters.

I'm almost sure someone already made the surpreme Crunchwrap of destruction

When I balance my games, I usually just find monsters that look cool and that fit with the setting, then make it so that my players can fight them without dying, whether that means giving them unexpected help, nerfing the monsters’ abilities, or even taking away the monsters’ HP. Idk if this is the right thing to do, but it’s worked out well so far.

I needed this

What books really start to highlight the power creep? Or would you say its a few key subclasses, spells etc.

Wizard fighting with his sandal. Lol.

There have been so many fights I ran where I just like knocked a few stats down when it was clear they were too much. Since a few of my players will accidentally make something broken I have to scale up...and then over do it so scale down mid fight.

Two things I think need mentioning. 1. CR in 5e is broken and vestigial there are CR 2 enemies that can part wipe level 5 characters and most things over cr 5 are pushovers. Most fights that the rules say are deadly encounters won't even challenge are barely competent party but if you throw one to many monsters into a fight you can drop parties with very weak monsters. This is because bounded accuracy, the way 5e is designed, makes the number of actions matter more than the strength of the individual. Two or three big monsters are going to suffer if outnumbered by the PCs but the same goes for the PCs if outnumbered 2:1 by goblins or kobolds. This often means that you're left with a choice between overwhelming your party with lots of minions or throwing something that can two shot any member of the party but drops in two rounds. Solution: For almost every monster in the game increase its hp by half or more and lower its damage per round. Best way to lower damage is to divide it in two but double the number of attacks. 2. Good combat design should attack the parties strengths not their weaknesses. Bear totem barbarian in the party? Don't keep throwing psychic damage at them it feels cheap. Instead up the damage of the front line brutes so it feels cool to tank. Halving 10 to 5 is alright; halving 20 to 10 feels better, even though the end result is twice as much damage taken. Another way to do this is to make monsters weak to specific abilities the party has, obvious example undead vs a cleric, fiends vs a paladin but you can it with anyone. Got a PC with expertise in athletics? Throw an enemy with great AC make it poor at resisting grapples and shoves.

Thank you for the episode.

DMs are more game designers than lots of us realize. It’s the whole point. Design!

i just open the monster manual to a random page and start looking from there (kinda like old zapping) and when i go ooooouuuu thats what i put in that sesion (with out makinig it imposible of course) then i switch hp or something so that it wouldn't drag too much. But sometimes it kinda hard to chalenge without making the creature a sponge, but the cool abilities are usualy deadly so it's a miss and match. Looooove to you and your content.

I've always had to stop and question myself what type of encounter style I'm going for. Sometimes it's just a few minions to help drain resources so the later encounters feel much more of a threat or are you going for that one big bad to challenge the whole group. Plus being able to tell the style of the party helps balance encounters so well, are they power blasters, defensive tanks, or all rounders. Also never be afraid to ask for advice from a forum or other DM's cause sometimes a pair of fresh eyes helps a lot.

A few other balancing tips for 5e! >Understand offensive CR vs defensive CR. A creature that is CR 5 could have a an offensive CR of 8 and a defensive CR of 2, giving it the overall CR of 5. Such a creature would have low health and AC, bht very high damage output. This would be very dangerous for a level 5 party! This creature has the potential to wipe the party in a few turns with massive damage, especially if it has high initiative. Try to use monsters with similar off/def CR at lower levels. The example creature could be better suited for a level 8 party, but given a few minions to soak up damage and extend the fight. Check the DMG for more information on CR. >Know your players' saves! A party consisting of a Sorcerer, Artificer, Barbarian, and Fighter is a party that all has proficiency in Con saves. Creatures that rely on Con save abilities for damage will be very ineffective. Mix it up! >Mix enemy positions. Mix together enemies that attack at different ranges, and use some enemies that require saving throws. This will allow your monsters to spread out and keep the players moving, as well as targeting weak characters behind the front line. Many low CR minions will have both a melee and a ranged option, and add a handful of casters to the mix. >Don't use DMPCs as bosses! Monsters made using the character creation process are impossible to balance. They have far too low of health and far to great of power to be effective. Balancing control spells is also incredibly difficult, as they aren't factored into the average damage per round factor that is used to calculate CR. Modify an NPC statblock from a printed book.

Instead of rolling or taking the given average to determine how many hit points enemies have, I note down their minimum and maximum possible HP. When my players damage them, I count the damage up rather than down. They can then die at any hit I like between the min and max. This can be used to taste, but it's a great stopgap for the standard advice of "Have at least six years experience DMing so you have an innate feel for this stuff."

Tysm for the vida davvy

So I have a question if I have 4 level 3 players and they've adopted a Death Dog because he is a good boy is CR still good for getting a baseline idea on if an encounter will be good for them? I'm using a website called Kobold Fight Club to help with encounters. It allows me to input the number of players, their levels and the monsters they'd be fighting, but it doesn't allow me to put NPC allies on their side so currently I'm inputting the players and the monsters in the encounter and I'm guessing whether or not it'll scale right. This sort of works out for me. The party recently fought 4 direwolves with their death dog, an NPC who was a former adventurer (Level 14, but I told them that he'd do whatever they told him to do.) and 2 NPCs that if I'm remembering right were CR 3 and 1/8 the fight was pretty balanced, the wolves got wrecked, but one player lost about half his health and the cleric used a large portion of his spell slots. This was an encounter I rolled off of a table so I feel it went about as good as it could have gone. Now the party is on their own still with their Death Dog and I want to ensure I can still balance things well enough. It was a little easier when I knew I had the former adventurer cause I could just input him into the fight club, but now it's just guess work.

Balancing according to my DM: "if they die they die".

Love the built differently reference

As just an easy way to gauge how a fight might turn out. Just look at the averages for damage, and what other tricks both sides have. You don't have to create your own scene to test it out if it seems off, and I've found this to work out pretty well most times. Obviously though, if a creature uses a whole bunch of tricks, instead of just doing damage, then this falls apart, so really, it only works for those lower levels. I'd guess and say it might stop working completely, at party level 8 or 9.

I love VTT, but the fact that most of them always have an automatic "health gauge" system (for example the green>yellow>red>zzz icon) is something you cant take away in some of them, so even if you try to make an encounter easier by making an enemy one hit, the players will know saying how it went from yellow to dead in one middling hit. In real life though the players never know the true value so when you say "it dies" the players just automatically believe it since there is no visual indicator of the number health constantly on

Awesome!

For low level encounter balancing I just don't use damage bonuses. That wolf does 2d6+3 and that is too much, I just do 2d6. Not huge, but it does add up and works

The way my DM balances encounters is he sets each encounter to deadly and knows his bad rolls will even things out and its worked out pretty well. He also makes bosses have three phases to spice things up.

Yay new video~!

I write encounters, playtest them in a west march, then save the ones that work. Honestly I have spent more time running one-shots and self-contained games testing concepts and encounters than I have playing as a player. The curse is real.

Any plans to cover third party settings like The Last Citadel?

4:38 This one never sat well with me. Granted, I used to do it all the time (and I did something similar for a fight with an Ancient Red dragon that I morphed into an Adult Dragon midway through the fight when I realized my party of level six characters, even with magic items, a couple of siege weapons, and a whole other young dragon helping them, couldn't possibly beat an ANCIENT dragon, especially when young blue dragon didn't get his lightning breath back for something like five rounds.) Now I'm much more experienced, I know what my party can handle more or less. I also mostly play online with Tabletop Simulator, but it would feel disingenuous to arbitrarily change monster stats during a fight, mostly because of my style. When I record damage, I do "damage on" (IE I have a notepad, piece of the map, description box ect) where I write down a -x every time a player does damage to a monster. I like this system because it gives everyone some idea of what they've done so far, and at a glance, they can tell which monster has been hurt more. I personally feel like adjusting monster hit points or armor class mid fight would be quite obvious due to my style. I also roll everything in the open now. I strictly do not fudge rolls anymore. Custom Engineering a monster before a fight is totally fine. I've given a Zombie plate armor before and it was great. Doing this kind of "Schrodinger's orcs" stuff is not my style, but if it is YOUR style feel free to use it!

You should always have options. Some of those options are fighting foes that you know you can't win against by want to try anyway. Balance is optional.

I like the idea of internal politics to nerf a fight that's going a bit too badly (in this vein); have the ones suddenly seen to be wearing the hawk insignias hold back or leave while the ones with two triangles are in the front, dying. (Easy to write into later descriptions as a widespread thing, too.) It's very much in theme with pretty much every campaign everywhere. **laughs**

Do agree that is important properly balance a game but when I was staring out how to figure CR and balance the encounters is very difficult figure out what is good challenge for the party specially if you only go by CR. At least for when I was staring there was no video or article or anytype of guideline that explain how to balance encounter. it taken me a lot of trail, error and almost killing my party to even come close to figure it

I don't balance encounters, like at all. But, then I also do not prep, for the most part , combat encounters. I prep encounter, how the players approach and resolve them is up to them. And I think it makes for a more interesting and varied game, that gives the players more agency. It of course also means creating encounters, that have goals outside of kill everything to the last man standing, and making failure, with a given task, an actual option without it breaking the game. Of course, it is something you have to talk about with your players. In 5e, for the most part, the assumption has been that your party will encounter enemies appropriate for their level, with the goal of fighting them to death. Also many people enjoy P&P Rpgs mostly for the tactical combat aspact. in those cases balanced combat encounter are important. But there are and have been many games out there that take a different approach. From Old School DnD to various pbta-systems and many more. And this can also easily be brought into 5e, which in my opinion makes it more interesting and leads to richer roleplay.^^

The first time I ran a big battle where there were three separate factions all fighting each other at the same time I completely over-tuned the encounter and one shot the party cleric and had to basically nerf everybody else's hit points but I was lucky cuz it was a big melee free for all so I got really lucky that I was able to do that on the fly without anyone noticing. It's all trial and error

I do the play through where I think of how I would play the PCs in the fight. If it's not a Hard encounter, I make it more difficult because a group of four should be better at using their own PCs than me.

I really enjoyed that ☺

Roll20 has been really cool for me to learn fights. I just take my parties characters I made copies and I can just run them through my encounters and see how bad they. It is a bit weird though because sometimes you run a fight and the monster just rolls high and fucks up your party so you scale it down a little or remove a monster to make it more doable. You than test is a bit more and it seems alright. However when your party goes to fight it the thing keeps rolling 11 and your party beats all of the monsters without taking like any damage and you feel like you failed. My pc's love to do the fights so they enjoy it but I just want them to be really good.

I pay literally no attention to CR, use monsters that I think are cool, and just have a completely arbitrary 'gut feeling' system of how much HP the monster has based on both keeping track of how much damage the party has done to it, and how much HP the party has left. So If I want it to be a harder fight, give the Monster 1 or 2 bonus to hit, and have it survive longer into the party's health bars. So in my notes I count UP the damage the party has done to the monster not count DOWN its remaining HP. That way I dont have to worry about balancing a fight, because balancing is done on the fly based on how things go, and it allows for more 'cinematic' results. This way I can do things like see that my wizard or w/e has 3 HP left and he just landed a firebolt, well lucky for him he just saved the day and his firebolt killed the monster in a miraculous last ditch effort to save the rest of the party that had already been downed by the monster. I like to run cool games and like my players to feel like heroes. Also if the Monster lands a crit or two on the party and does a shit ton of damage, I personally can hand of god it and make the monster go down after having taken less damage. Dont tell my players any of this. They just think theyre cool heroes. But it only works since I have very very strict table rules against meta gaming. "but dm the last gnoll died after taking only 30 damage, and this one has already taken 45!" "Well aight mister, you know the rules, you meta game we skip your turn." Now I never have to dish punishment because my players just dont pull this crap but I fully understand that this kind of running combat wouldnt work at a table without a good trust and focus on story telling rather than war-gaming.

It was the meow for me, lol.

I had a DM once who would brag about how he didn't even try to balance the encounters in his game. When me and the only remaining player (the other 2 had quit by that point) replied with "Yeah, we noticed" he got offended...

Needed this. I'm a newbie DM who's kinda nervous about killing PCs--I get that it's part of the game, but the fact of the matter is that if someone goes down, they do not get to play the game for a bit, and if there's a TPK, guess we're done playing DnD tonight.

I have a player who informed me about his plans in relation to his character: 3 levels in fighter (arcane archer) 3 levels in rogue (assassin) 3 levels in ranger (gloom stalker) We did the math, and on average he'll be able to do 150+ damage in the first round if it's a surprise attack. Now this puts me in a little trouble: either I make most encounters in broad daylight and the enemies expecting an agressive action (which basically undermines the point of his entire build) or let him do his thing making the encounters trivial. Pls help.

One of my last games ended with the DM letting a player play the boss, charm anyone who tried to attack him, while he took massive swaths out of our health and, the DM gave him an alley to heal him the moment we did any decent damage

Best way to balance is to keep throwing enemies at them until a pc dies, then you know the encounter is challenging enough.

@silver4831

3 жыл бұрын

Then they get more XP as they are OP. xD

Yes But also, I don't always want my players to win Sometimes a character death serves the story (against a boss monster or something), or I don't want them to get past a certain point (like the King's guard are blocking them from assaulting the Royal court). Obviously I wouldn't be aiming for a TPK ever but I might want to reinforce the possibility of the players not being the scariest thing in all the land

i mean i litterally reflavor the monaters for monaters and chqrakters from the lol univerae cause my campaign play in runeterra. for example. cho gath would be a tyrask

When my players wipe I just resurrect them 500 years later with some creepy wizard and have them roll for what got looted off them when dead.

If you remember the Puffin Forest video on rules, he stated that the reason messing with encounters in players favor is that it could look like favoritism and the players that weren't saved are gonna get angry.