Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 SillyMind Oct 20, 2014 8:45:46	I don't know if I'm the only one to find it strange but as is, with multiple foes multiplying the XP ''budget'' of encounters, the encounter guidelines have weird results.   For instance, a Frost giant (CR 8) is worth 3,900XP and is a medium encounter by itself for 4 level 8 PCs. Add a Bandit (CR 1/8) to the encounter and the ''encounter budget'' becomes 5,887XP so a hard encounter for the same PCs. But it is my understanding that in this encounter the bandit doesn't increase the threat at all and is even trivial for 4 level 8 PCs. The Bandit could be easily killed by an AoE targeting the Giant and not even be a threat. Put 4 Bandits, the Frost Giant and the ''encounter budget'' increases to 8,000XP so a deadly encounter. I can see this encounter being played out but I don't feel the Bandits will be that significant taking at most 1 round to being all dispatched.   Following the same guidelines, your 4 PCs must be level 17 if you want to put a band of 4 Frost Giants against them (deadly encounter), so mid-level critters can almost never be grouped and forget about putting 4 Horned Devils (CR 11) against your players it will never be a viable encounter. I feel the higher-level foes will be less used in group as even monster with a CR below 1 coupled with them would increase the ''encounter budget'' through the roof leaving them only usable when alone.   Do you feel the current guidelines become more and more out of balance has the level of the campaign increases because of the multipliers?
#2 Eugee Oct 20, 2014 10:48:27	The Encounter XP Multiplier idea falls apart pretty rapidly when using monsters which have widely varying CRs.  There was a thread on Reddit where someone reverse engineered the encounter XP calculations to make a new way to build encounters.  Each player has a Player Experience Level (PEL) and then each CR equates to a PEL as well (call it Monster Experience Level or MEL).  To balance encounters, you add up all the party PELs (for example, a level 3 character is 2.5 PEL, or 15 for a party of 6) and then 40% of that is the Easy budget, 60% is the Medium budget, 80% is the Difficult budget, and 100% of your Total Party Experience level (TPEL) is the budget for a Deadly encounter.  120% or more is going to make TPKs more and more likely.   I found the thread--it was Enworld, sorry.   There's a PDF on the site which has a simple one-page chart.  It's pretty handy really.  For most encounters the two methods come out to about the same difficulty.  The PEL/MEL method doesn't involve any # of monster special multipliers though, which is nice.  But using your example above:   Level 8 PCs have a PEL of 8 x 4 = 32 PEL   A CR 8 monster is 18 MEL or 56% of 32, about a Medium encounter. Adding a CR 1/8 Goblin to the giant makes it 18.67 TMEL, virtually no impact on the fight.   I've been using both methods to calculate fights, and both work well.  The second way doesn't care about # of monster multipliers, which is nice.
#3 iserith Oct 20, 2014 10:57:42	The encounter building guidelines are more art than science, so you're going to have to use your judgement and experience when deciding whether or not a given encounter is as difficult as its adjusted experience point value suggests. The previous edition of the game had very good encounter building guidelines that could be used to consistently produce level-appropriate encounters by difficulty, but they have not continued that tradition in D&D 5e.    If you're not sure how tough an encounter will be, a good rule of thumb is to take away a few monsters and add them back in when things are getting tough. It's easier to add than to take away because the latter has a bit of cheesy look to it when you realized you've made a miscalculation as to difficulty.
(Reply to #2) SillyMind	Eugee wrote:
#5 woif Oct 20, 2014 14:54:57	yeah the group multipliers are kinda bogus. In my balancing I havent been using any modifier if #of enemies <= #of PCs and my party has handled it pretty well. As iserith it's more of an art, especially once you take into consideration your party composition. If you have 2 characters with strong AOE attacks an ambush of 12 kobolds isn't terribly scary, if each character can only attack 1 kobold per turn the fight becomes quite deadly even though the XP values don't change at all.   I haven't tried the ENworld link yet but I'm going to test it out and see how it compares.
#6 DaveDash Oct 20, 2014 15:11:08	Heh I just posted a similar thread. The idea is that numbers are more powerful due to action economy, and a bunch of low CR can still mess up higher level players due to bounced accuracy.
(Reply to #6) SillyMind	DaveDash wrote:
(Reply to #7) DaveDash	SillyMind wrote:
(Reply to #8) SillyMind	DaveDash wrote:
(Reply to #9) DaveDash	SillyMind wrote:
#11 Inertius Oct 20, 2014 17:10:18	In my experience as a new DM with new players, the XP budget system has not been very useful at all. I wouldn't throw a monster with a much higher CR than the party level average, but you really need to think about things like terrain, party teamwork, spells available, current HP, surprise, etc. I've had "deadly" encounters made trivial by smart positioning and crowd control, and I've had "easy" encounters turn bad because of a surprise round.
#12 Rhenny Oct 20, 2014 18:33:37	If you look at many of the encounters in Phandelver or Horde of the Dragon Queen, you'll find that they are beyond deadly.      The encounter guidelines definitely err on the easy side.   That said, at lower levels, bad luck or bad tactics can more easily lead to TPK or character death.   I've yet to DM or play beyond level 4 so I can't really comment on what happens in the mid and higher levels.   Additionally, the first night of Horde of the Dragon Queen basically forces PCs to last through a full-scale raid of Greenest and play through about 10 or 12 encounters before they can take a long rest.   That type of prolonged assault is really what works well in 5e.   (Although, at 1st level it seems a bit excessive.   Our DM let us level up to 2nd level after 5 or 6 encounters.  If he didn't, we probably would not have lasted through the night).
(Reply to #12) DaveDash	Rhenny wrote:
(Reply to #13) Rhenny	DaveDash wrote:
#15 Timborama Oct 21, 2014 7:38:34	Hmmm, the incomplete guidelines are guidelines that are incomplete...   Working as intended! At least, until the DMG comes out.
#16 sleypy Oct 21, 2014 9:35:44	Rhenny wrote: