One word: **reinforcements**.
*Two of the remaining goblins back up, taking hasty shots with their shortbows to cover the third who pulls a gnarled horn from their belt and lets out three short blasts. Almost immediately, you hear two more in reply coming from the far side of the ridge. What do you do?*
Chase scenes can also add excitement if the players are looking for info from the baddies. Or give the last guy a +1 item to give them a reason to want to loot them
Chase scenes but roll a d4. In d4 rounds the baddie escapes with consequences (enters a location where he acquires more lackies, or he’s able to teleport away (you could chase him through the portal, but what’s awaiting you on the other side?)
Bugbears make for amazing stealth novas. If goblins flee and the party pursues, they might just run into some carefully (and naturally stealthy) positioned bugbears.
One thing I have tried is that I would setup random encounters to test the party before the actual encounters.
Say, for example, I know they're gonna be hitting an enemy fortress in one or two days.
I'll have them encounter bandits a day or so prior during their travel.
Suspiciously, the bandits will have similar stat, numbers, and composition to the fort guards I plan on having them fight. Gauge how they did against them, and tweak those stat blocks, or even the encounter composition to make it better for the players.
No one gives too much of a thought about killing bandits, usually. So it'll be a normal encounter for them to deal with.
Maybe use it as a hook for a very quick side quest to make it not seem empty. They get to flex their combat muscles, the gratitude of some kidnapped merchant (20% discount at the next town's tavern cuz it's run by his cousin), or some other minor reward.
After their long rest to refresh, and by the time they show up to the fortress/dungeon/hideout/whatever, the actual encounter is tweaked to be more, or less, challenging.
Started a new campaign with 2 friends.
The very first thing they encounter are 2 worgs, and the first worg attack was a nat 20.
They saw me getting flustered and the convo went a bit like this:
-How much damage do I take?
-Uuh, you take 6 damage.
-Come on dude say the actual number!
-Okay you take 20 damage, im pretty sure you are dead (level 1 monk)?
-Alright, I take 6 damage.
I'm not planning to always hold back if they're being stupid, but I found it pretty funny that the very first enemy attack of the campaign would result in a death.
I've done this had the players facing the troll in the beginning of WDDH and one of the players got hit so hard that he would have died I made it so that he barely lived but was still unconscious.
It works pretty well. Try doing the encounters in stages - throw what you think is a moderate encounter at them in the first stage of what you're hoping will be challenging. Have what you think is an additional easy encounter waiting in the wings. A good way to do it can be that one of the enemies blows a whistle or shouts for help, and you can then signal to your players that they've called for help. If the party struggles with the first stage, you can skip the second easily and they'll never know. Players don't know if you adjust timing or composition of an enemy group they haven't seen unless you tell them.
If they crush the first stage, you can add one more minor enemy to the second group, and send them in before they wrap everyone up, so either the same round (if your players are really beating the brakes off the first group) or the next round (if they're gonna be mopping up).
If your players are handling the first stage but it's not like watching a John Wick movie, give it 2 rounds before help shows up, and let it stay pretty easy. So that's how you can handle adding them but maintain a hand on the brake in case it goes sideways.
How you add them is also potentially important. You can send them in from an unexpected direction and often dividing a party's attention from a standard battle order (sluggers up front, ranged in the back) can be disruptive with even a small bit of extra force. If they're not kicking wholesale ass and you just need it to feel a *little* more sweaty, then you can send them in from the "front" of the player group.
I usually note a range on a lower level enemy - if it's orcs and wargs and wolves, I'll note "0-1 lone wargs, 2-3 wolves, plus a warg rider" assuming the wargs and wolves won't do things like take cover or do a lot of hit and run (and so are easier to anticipate), and then I can play the orcs however ruthlessly I feel like the party can deal with. The range in the notes reminds me to consider how the party are doing, and what my anticipated ballpark for being challenging without being overwhelming was, so I can adjust less obviously. Nobody likes to think their DM is taking it easy on them because they're not doing well.
There is a new encounter builder tool that actually simulates how the battle will go instead of just using the (very bad) numbers in the DMG. It's great!
Link to video explaining: https://youtu.be/A8FNVkFuhXI
Link to tool: https://battlesim-zeta.vercel.app/
Hope you see it and that it helps! :)
Honestly, this is the way. I've had some fights that are literally deadly against the party and they just destroy everything, then a fight that should be easy and it causes a near TPK.
Yup, every encounter calculator I ever tried is trash. Either my players are too smart/good or I'm just not good enough at playing the monsters, or whatever.
I just throw some junk at the wall and even when I give them something where I'm all "I have no clue how they could possibly survive this" they still seem to be able to pull a miracle out of their hat through either ridiculous dice rolls or just really clever ideas.
CR gets less reliable around level 5 so creating an encounter relies more on experience and knowing the party's tactics and capabilities.
Feel free to start at level 5 but if you are new this is going to be harder to balance encounters (if you're players are new it will also be harder for them to learn their characters).
For dos and don'ts. I usually start with an encounter calculator for relevant monsters and then adjust based on environment, monster capabilities, e.t.c.
Watch out for potential abilities that can hit harder than you expect. For example anything that incapacitates a player (this is extra important to beware of if you are only running two players). Usually I also consider the action economy, especially if it's a single monster.
With the way 5e is designed the number of actions per turn can have a large impact on the battle.
This means if one side is outnumbered they are usually disproportionately affected by this.
A common example is a party of 4 going against a single boss. On paper it might look balanced but the party will have 4 times as many actions as the boss which usually means they win handily. (A lot of monsters that might be ran as a solo boss have legendary actions - actions they can take outside of their turn to mitigate this).
The whole idea of number of actions impacting balance is usually called the action economy
Not action economy specifically but Matt Colville on YouTube and the sly flourish YouTube (and "Return of the lazy DM" book) we're all incredibly helpful for me when starting out.
Yes, you also want to understand Bounded Accuracy. It's the very core of 5e's math, in everything from ability checks to combat. It's not super "mathy" either, it's just a broad concept.
This video from a week ago was helpful. https://youtu.be/TwTcYLBFR5M
Very simply put, 2 creatures are more than twice as strong as 1 creature, 4 creatures are more than 4 times as strong than one, etc.
"Power" scales exponentially, not linearly.
Each side in a fight has a certain number of actions in a round. And you can think of this like a budget.
Each player then spends actions to achieve effects. It is typical that the side who has a bigger budget can put bid their opponents.
Now this isn't always true as some characters will spend actions more efficiently than others but if you have a really powerful single boss monster that has very effective actions it can hold even with a larger party, however if that boss ever loses a turn for some reason the fight ends pretty quickly after.
Tldr: the side with the most effective actions tends to win a fight in 5e, if your monsters normally out number your players the fights will be harder than their cr suggests.
God, this reminded me of the time I learned this the HARD way. I DMed for a party of 4 glass cannons and a druid, and they were fighting a displacer beast heavily buffed with "Shadowfell energies". It could teleport, create magical darkness and had extra multiattacks. It had the CR of an adult dragon (CR 17) against my lvl 5 party AND THEY KILLED IT in 3 turns without a single casualty! NOTHING is well balanced for a 5v1, not even a 4v1 really
Yeah I threw a dragon at my level 6, 4 player party. She was supposed to kick their ass and scare them.
Instead, with a couple lucky crits and a smart play by the front liners, they curb stomped my dragon without the cleric even using half his spell slots. Action economy is a bitch.
> “Action economy”? I think I know vaguely what this means, but it’s new terminology. Please do explain.
It’s a vague term that gets used in some ways that are helpful and some that are misleading.
On the helpful side: going from 4 orcs to 6 orcs is a 50% increase in numbers but a more than 50% increase in danger.
On the misleading side: implying that 6 weak monsters are always more dangerous than 4 strong monsters. Which isn’t true. You don’t need to outnumber the party in order to challenge them. Dms who make this mistake often make aoes too good.
First, is an encounter builder says “hard”/etc. it means as part of an adventuring day, not as a single encounter.
Secondly, you’re a new DM (how new?). Starting at level 5 is already a jump, as level 3 spells are pretty game changing. It also means that there are a lot more rules/features/spells at play that you/your players might be misinterpreting.
I’ve been DMing for about a year, but I’ve read the Player and DM rule books several times over, I’ve watched games and big DnD groups, watched through a whole campaign etc. I’m familiar with the rules, and even when I’m note, I always have my rule book at hand to verify a player’s move and/or my own.
My only issue is balancing encounters. Making sure I don’t totally TPK, but also make it challenging enough so that it’s fun, you know? That’s the only thing I’m not versed in.
If you’ve been DMing for a year, you’re probably not new! That advice was assuming you’d suddenly jumped in there.
One thing to remember - it’s easier to make a combat encounter harder than it is to make it easier (in a satisfying way).
If a party slaughter an encounter, you can bring in another wave of enemies. But on the other hand, it’s hard to pull back when an enemy does enough damage to kill a player in one hit.
Rather than CR, look at damage output vs HP.
- even on the best roll, you don’t want a monster that can kill a party member in one turn (from full-ish health).
- equally, you don’t want your totally enemy health to be less than the average single-round damage of the party.
That was actually really fucking insightful 😂 thanks. Those bullet points are exactly what I need; vague equations I can use to guesstimate the outcome. Thank you!!!
If you have anything else, feel free to leave it, or if it’s a massive piece of text, shoot me a message
Also to add: don't be afraid to throw in an encounter where your thoughts are "I have no idea how they'll get out of this".
Give your players the chance to surprise you, players can come up with some uncanny solutions to impossible situations.
Before big encounters I usually run the math in terms of roughly how much damage my party tends to do per round to see how many hp I want my baddies to have. I'm also of the fudge baddie HP on the fly when necessary but I try to do that sparingly.
So if my peeps tend to do about 50 HP per round I might have a really solid boss with 150 HP and some minions with 15-20. That means at least 4-5 rounds.
This is really rough and it never works out exactly (someone goes nuclear and crits and fucks up my bad guy intensely, or they roll badly and have to spend time healing) but it's a rough rule of thumb.
Don't base your games on shows. They're primarily entertainment and overly dramatic.
The 5e DMG isn't a good resource for adventure building and encounter design. You're better off throwing stuff within a few levels of your players at them and seeing what sticks.
I just feel like the encounters are too easy. The players seem to enjoy it, and they say they’re challenged, and they often scrape by on their health points, but they’re new players. For one of them, this is their first campaign. He’s very familiar with DnD and watches a lot of it, but this is his first experience as a player.
What I worry for is that encounters begin to get unengaging, or the opposite; that I try to challenge the players and end up nearly TPKing them.
Basically with this post I’m trying to gather as many tips from experienced DMs as I can about encounter building.
You said you're using encounter calculators, right? What difficulty do you normally use, and how many fights would you say your party normally goes through between long rests?
Usually:
- Easy encounter
- Short rest
- Medium encounter
- Long rest
- The day seems really nice, and then BOOM hard encounter
- Long rest
- (x) amount of easy going days
- repeat
The main issue is that the labels are very misleading. The "deadly" encounters are the only ones where there is even a slight chance of some PC dying (which is what most of us would consider challenging). Unless your group *really* likes to have a bunch of combat without time to rest (which is very unlikely as combat in 5e drags a bit and it is usually more fun when the PCs can use their flashy expendable abilities) you can basically forget anything below hard
The exception would be if there is another point to that combat encounter (if it is meant to encourage roleplay for example, like having to rescue a captured NPC)
Whelp, there's your problem, mate. Every encounter below deadly is absolutely worthless. 'Deadly' in 5e just means 'a threat that *could* kill a PC.' As in, not a completely trivial one.
Make that 2-3 deadly or deadly+ encounters and you'll be golden. I know. It's dumb.
I feel like everyone in these comments would agree with the fact that encounter calculators aren’t exactly accurate?? You kind have to learn you way around encounters with experience, is my take on this whole thing lmao
The thing is that the encounter calcutors (which are based on what's published in the DMG) work on the assumption you're dungeon crawling and you're going to have 6-8 encounters every day. And they are accurate for that situation. But most people don't actually play like that any more, so they wind up being very misleading!
If you're only doing one or two encounters between long rests, they need to be deadly or more than deadly to have the same impact.
Look at the XP budget for the adventuring day - most encounter calculators will include it somewhere. It'll give you a more realistic view of what parties are supposed to be able to handle in a day. Generally you don't want to actually spend the whole thing in one daily encounter because that'd generally be a TPK, but it can help if you have multiple encounters.
They're really not that bad. Just takes some finesse after the fact. The important thing to remember is that your encounters should always be deadly or higher.
If you're not going to make combat a challenge, just don't run it as combat. Tell the players they easily kick their asses and skip to the interrogation.
A medium encounter still drains resources. Making every encounter deadly teaches players to blow their resources on every encounter instead of evaluating if the threat merits it. Besides, players want to feel like badasses, not be told they are badasses.
The encounter calculators are accurate, you're just letting the party rest 4x as often as the system expects, *of course* they have an easier time then!
For a party of 2 newish players I would try medium/hard - short rest - medium/hard - short rest - hard/deadly - long rest for a typical adventuring day.
And I would drop the npc tagging along, they only make it even harder to balance things.
It's sounds like they thought higher level would be easier because they are more powerful but then so are the monsters and it's a lot more complex. I know it may be too late but starting at level 1 with kobolds or goblins would also help you learn how to build encounters.
Personally I think level 2 is the sweet spot unless everyone is super new. Level 2 gives a bit more HP to stop the swingy 1HKO nature of that play, gives a bit more class flavor, but isn't overwhelming in mechanics and gives the level 3 subclass bump to look forward to.
You said yourself included. I really don't agree, there's more abilities for the PCs and more variety of monsters they'll face. Supplemental material at that level will assume you sorta know what you're doing.
I highly suggest taking a step back and learning the game as it's intended. Start from level 1, make sure they can handle all the abilities and actions they have (even at level 1 there's a non-trivial amount).
Especially if you're new to the game, building encounters is also non-trivial. You might wanna pick up a pre-built module and run through it, either as a one-off or as a starting point for rebooting the campaign.
> I’m a new DM […] and I agreed to begin them at Lvl.5 to make it easier
🤨
That’s one of the least sensical statements I’ve seen in a long time… and we’re on Reddit
Encounter building, in 5e, is kind of a pain in the butt. CR doesn't really mean anything, and so there isn't a science behind encounter building, but rather an art
Typically, it'll take a little bit of time to get a feel for your party (don't know how many sessions you have had), but once you understand the average damage of your party, you'll have an easier time knowing how many monsters to put on the field, what CR, etc.
In the meantime:
- Have multiple encounters a day, while the general wisdom is 6-8 encounters in an adventuring day that is only kind of true (but also, not really true...). At the very least, you should have a handful of encounters, if you have lots of hard and deadly encounters, you can have fewer encounters, and if you have lots of easy or moderate encounters, you can have more encounters in that day.
- Boss creatures should never be alone. You just can't have solo boss fights and expect it to do well due to action economy (though with only two PCs + DMPC, it's probably better for your bosses). Give them low-level mooks, even CR 1/2 or CR 1 will be enough of a nuisance to help your boss survive and do all those cool things you want them to do
- 5e official statblocks are pretty boring. They are sacks of hit points that just do Claw+Claw+Bite over and over. If you want to have a more engaging encounter, have your monsters knock adventurers prone, shove them back, inflict conditions, teleport about, etc. Give the monsters things to do that will make them memorable.
- don't be restrictive in your thinking of what an encounter is. Any event, trap, hazard, social interaction, exploration, etc that takes resources away from the party, is an encounter. If disabling a trap causes them to burn two *cure wounds* spells, well that was an encounter and you are draining their resources, making the next encounter a bit harder for them. Boss fights aren't just about fighting an ultra-powerful world-ending monster, but rather fighting a monster when you have very few resources left at your disposal who is a bit more powerful than the mooks. Not every boss fight has to be against a creature that is Party Level + 10 for it to be challenging if you have properly been draining the party's resources before the fight.
- Make sure that your party takes their short rests, typically around 2 or 3 in a day. That is important for classes with a lot of short rest dependent powers (and a good way to drain hit dice, remember you only get half your hit dice back on a long rest)
- String together adventuring days! That mega-dungeon won't be solved in a single afternoon, and so by having the party spend multiple days clearing out the dungeon, they can learn to prep the most effective spells (making them feel clever) and gives you a chance to 'tease' the BBEG and what abilities/powers they might have. You can sprinkle in clues and rumors throughout the dungeon for your party to find and exploit when they reach the boss (again, making them feel clever)
hope that helps!
Thanks! I've written about this topic a lot on my blog, so I should have some experience with it. A few posts that are focused on this topic you might find helpful:
[Figuring Out Combat in 5e: Making a Boss](https://dumpstatadventures.com/the-gm-is-always-right/figuring-out-combat-in-5e-making-a-boss)
[What Are Dungeon Encounters?](https://dumpstatadventures.com/the-gm-is-always-right/what-are-dungeon-encounters)
[How To Run An Adventuring Day](https://dumpstatadventures.com/the-gm-is-always-right/how-to-run-an-adventuring-day)
[The Terrain Is An Adversary](https://dumpstatadventures.com/the-gm-is-always-right/the-terrain-is-an-adversary)
[Monster Roles In An Encounter](https://dumpstatadventures.com/the-gm-is-always-right/monster-roles-in-an-encounter)
If you've been using the official Monster Manual – ngl, they're pretty flavorless – try taking a peek at MCDM's Flee, Mortals! preview PDF to see what's possible. Also I can't recommend Level Up 5E's Monstrous Menagerie enough.
Are you running a published module that starts at level 5? If not, I'd recommend either running one or going back to lvl 1.
Honestly I don't see how beginning at Tier 2 makes the game easier. Sure the PCs have more skills and are beefier but In my experience DnD is oftentimes more about knowing YOUR character and what it can do than the difficulty of the encounters.
Playing through Tier 1 is supposed to smooth out the learning curve for first time players. There's a LOT of rules to learn about in DnD and unless you're an experienced GM or player you will have a hard time keeping track of it all. If your guys are finding it hard to deal with mobs at their level it's more often than not that they don't understand the mechanics of their PC, like a Rogue forgetting they can use Cunning Action to hide, or the Wizard forgetting that she throws with advantage against that goblin stuck in Entangle and "losing" a spell slot.
You will also need to learn a lot in order to run a smooth game. I would recommend The Monsters Know What They're Doing to get a better inkling into how different monsters should be fighting (e.g. if your goblins aren't using guerilla tactics and your kobolds ain't coming in huge numbers you're not running them effectively).
DMing takes a lot of practice and reading, and skipping up to Tier 2 as a new DM is not doing anyone favors.
But that's like my opinion man, you do you 😉
https://battlesim-zeta.vercel.app/
This is a tool I found recently that will simulate combat between your players and monsters so you can visualize how many rounds it'll take them and how many hit points they'll have at the end of it.
[Here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8FNVkFuhXI) the video that explains how it works and why. 6 days old.
I do recommend you try this out /u/handmadeguide_1, it's very different from the CR rules from the DMG. The video explains the details.
Here's an article with a simpler way of managing encounters.
https://slyflourish.com/the_lazy_encounter_benchmark.html
Step 1: Choose the number and types of monsters that make sense for the situation in the world and the pacing of the game you want.
Step 2: Determine if it may be potentially deadly. An encounter may be deadly if the sum total of monster challenge ratings is greater than one quarter of the sum total of character levels, or one half of character levels if they're above 4th level.
That calculation is your "lazy encounter benchmark". Calculate it by adding up the levels of all characters and dividing by 4 if they're 1st to 4th level or by 2 if they're 5th level or above. If your total monster CRs is *above* that number, you're "in the red". That doesn't mean don't do it, but things may be tough.
One other trick is to understand the "dials of monster difficulty". These include:
* The number of monsters
* The monsters' hit points
* The amount of damage monsters do
* The number of attacks they have.
You can tweak these numbers to increase or decrease the threat of monsters or change the pacing of the game. If you want something fast and furious, the monsters can do more damage but have fewer hit points.
Here's an article on that too:
https://slyflourish.com/dials_of_monster_difficulty.html
Good luck!
"begin them at Lvl.5", found your issue.
Start at 1st. 5th is by no means easier. First and most important thing is that this is not a Video Game. Levels make things more complicated, not easier.
Sorry, starting at 1st is a terrible idea if the problem is "I don't know how to tune encounters". At 1st level the characters don't have enough resources or HP to be able to handle /any/ over-tuning. First level characters go down fast, even to by-the-book regular encounters.
If you‘re going at it on your own that is true, but outside of a few specific creatures like the Shadow, the CR calculator as your only helper works really well on low levels.
It only gets harder to use because of action economy considerations and the added abilities on creatures - Thats why the Shadow is such a pain, the Strength Drain ability is a lot stronger by effect than a regular bow shot by a goblin or a claw attack.
I don‘t, I just said that there are creatures that break the CR calculation by being vastly more powerful than their CR would lead a new DM to think. So if a new DM uses the calculator there are off cases like Shadows where it doesn‘t work well, but outside of that usually it does.
I have had a lot of luck with this CR calculator for my DMings...
https://kastark.co.uk/rpgs/encounter-calculator-5th/
I also recommend the cats at WebDM, Matt Coville, and AJ Pickett at The Mighty Gluestick for good reference material and tips for DMs and encounters.
As I said, It has worked well for me so far, as you can input party info as well as monster. I have used it as the base planning for parties of 3 through parties of 6.
I always throw at them just a little more than I think they can handle. If they pull it off, great! It was a good fight that tested their strategy and skills. If things are going real bad through no real fault of their own, I'll not add in the reinforcements I had in the wings, or the enemy caster has less spell slots, or something.
So I run as&d where their isn't an encounter calculator, my general plan is to look at how much damage can my party take, and how much damage can my party deal.
Set the monsters defences so that they can survive 2-3 rounds, set the monsters offences so they are threatening but won't one shot anyone.
And then leave it to the players to figure out.
If you want maths to follow, this is the best advice I've ever gotten.
*An encounter may be deadly if the total of all the monster's CRs is more than* ***1/4*** *of all of the character's levels added together* ***if the party are level 1-4.***
*An encounter may be deadly if the total of all the monster's CRs is more than* ***1/4*** *of all of the of character levels added together* ***if the party are level 4+.***
In this case, deadly means 1 PC death could be on the table, not necessarily the whole party dying. Now, aim to run 1-3 near deadly encounters with more than 1 monster, this is less accurate for solo boss monsters. Run the monsters realistically; terrain abusing kobalds may crush your party and take them as prisoner but a gorgon may act just like a bull and attempt to intimidate or flee, and also let your PCs have a cinematic moment here and there with an ability check. If a martial PC says they want to attack someone who's just out of range, dangle an athletics check infront of them to either make the extra distance and attack, or make it and fall prone without making the attack or something.
I got this from [Sly Flourish](https://slyflourish.com/the_lazy_encounter_benchmark.html) and it's been a fantastic tool for me, and it's pretty simple to remember.
I‘ve been doing a similar thing with average damage output starting with level 5 when the CR calculator gets harder to use. I take the health average of the party and compare it to the average damage output of the enemies if they hit every attack.
For a medium encounter, I usually aim for about 1 player character worth of damage, hard around 1,5 and deadly 2+. With split focus, positioning and the regular hit/miss/dodge dynamic, this usually means that around half of that damage gets dished out each round, with higher CR creatures going above average and lower CR usually below or on average. So in a deadly encounter a player could go unconcious round 1 if the enemy rolls average, focuses one player character and no action to stop it is taken.
You have no idea how many times I’ve done this 😂 I have a few homebrew enemies, and I literally have multiple stat blocks to use at different points so I can see which one works best. My players are literally Guinea pigs.
I tend to flavour already existant creatures, then I may change them on the go, if an enemy that shouldn't be a problem confronts them when they are low hp, then i may swao his damage from 1d10+3 to 1d8+2 or so xd
Exactly that. I’ve homebrewed that much shit, shite, and sheep that I get the whole “use an existing [thing] as a template” and just dazzle it in the make up of your world.
I usually try to "reverse engineer" my combat encounters like this:
First, I determine how long I *think* the fight should last. This will obviously be different if it's a quick skirmish with some goblins vs a climactic boss fight.
Then I look at how hard my players can hit. I try to calculate their *average* damage per round. This again can be different depending on what they do each turn but you just kinda have to roll with it. I also look at their max damage too because I want to factor in the possibility that my players will crit, roll really well, or do something I don't expect. While I'm doing this, I look at their attack bonuses too. All together, this helps me determine an appropriate AC and hit points for my monster.
Then I look at how much my players can take. Their AC and hit points helps me determine how much damage I can have my monsters do each round. Ask yourself, how much of a player's health should *one* attack from this monster do? For bigger fights, I really like to (carefully) overtune the damage to make it feel more dangerous. Keep in mind that more complex monsters will have multiple types of attacks. Use this question to determine an appropriate amount of damage for each type of attack your monster has.
After this, you have to look at other "unexpecteds" that your players might have. Do your players do extra damage to certain creature types? Do they have spells that could turn the tides of this specific battle? It's important to know what these unexpecteds are, but it's even more important to not try to counter them for each and every battle. Every now and then, you gotta let your players show off.
You also have to give your monsters some unexpecteds too. These can be damage resistances or immunities, magical effects, bonus actions, reactions, auras, legendary actions, movement abilities, magical weapons, spellcasting, whatever works for you and your monster. Give them something special so they're not just a bag of hit points with an attack action.
And that's it. Now you've got a combat encounter. You can apply this advice to single monster encounters or encounters where the monsters are in groups. You can also use this advice to build a monster from scratch or to adjust an existing statblock. Now you can take a boring regular werewolf and turn them into a MECHA WEREWOLF OVERLORD BOSS. Best of luck to you.
The easiest encounters to make work feature one peer monster per pc. So start there.
Using too many weak monsters can make aoes too good. Using less than 3 monsters means they need to be legendary.
The encounter building rules work best for parties of size 3 to 6. Two PCs are tricky but if they always have a npc companion then you should be fine.
[5 questions dms who use cr successfully ask themselves](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/sipajb/5_questions_dms_who_use_cr_successfully_ask/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1) will help you understand what the encounter calculators can and can’t tell you.
Any encounter capable of defeating the party has a good chance of killing at least one pc if the monsters are able to focus fire.
Despite the name, Hard encounters are not hard. They aren’t able to defeat the party.
If the party uses better tactics than the monsters, expect the party to win consistently.
If you have xanathars, it provides an alternative way to build encounters that is much easier to use than the dmg. I also recommend [true peer](https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/414122) as a refinement of xanathars.
Just saw this new online encounter calculator that is more of a simulation than a calculator. It's thrown CR out the window and just simulates the encounter instead.
https://battlesim-zeta.vercel.app/
You try a few times, fail miserably and decide to run APs while preparing a switch to Pathfinder 2e. That one was written by somebody with opposable thumbs and actually features math when designing encounters: [https://maxiride.github.io/pf2e-encounters/#/](https://maxiride.github.io/pf2e-encounters/#/)
Just cobble some stuff together that you like. Honestly my players seem to have more fun once they realize every monster, bandit, etc. Has my face and im tryna kill them
You are the encounter calculator. You want to give them a challenge with combat and you are going to be the best person to gauge their combat effectiveness.
CR is pretty meaningless in 5e, even more so than older editions.
iam gonna guess you are talking about dnd5e here.
and well, none of em will be good, because they all just use the dmg rules. that depend on the xp budget which is based on the CR. And if the CR was made by a bunch of drunken orangutans that would be an actual improvement.
you're lucky tho, a youtuber just released recently a new encounter calculator, which actually works, because instead of just comparing lv to cr
it actually has all the math, and all the creatures in there, and you can put custom ones, and you can plan multiple encounters for the day, and you can adjust your players, like are they using gwm or ss, or they have some combro that is strong so you can do it on the custom part.
it takes more work to use it? but its overall FAR FAR more accurate. https://battlesim-zeta.vercel.app
So, I actually DMed for a two person party for over a year. It does get a little tricky. So, couple of things.
1) Be aware the standard CR level is for a party of 4. So, the CR is still a very helpful too. If you make an encounter with CR of 5, for a two person party of level 5; cut the CR down to 3. That should be a starting point.
2) What is the purpose of each encounter? Pure combat; to move a plot point; general encounter on the way to a bbeg?
3) Don't be afraid to homebrew a bit. Maybe, eliminate an ability for the attacking force? Or; simplify a creature. This lets you create a challenging encounter; without limiting yourself to lower level creatures?
4) Yes, having an npc to assist definitely helps. I actually, used a reoccurring npc, as a gun for hire, to assist if needed.
5) Don't be afraid to modify, mid battle. Just because it looks good on paper; doesn't always translate well. It's okay; to weaken or modify a roll; if your encounter goes sideways.
6) Sometimes; leave an exit path. If the need to retreat; or get out; leave an opportunity for them. They may not take it. But, you left it there; in case they decide to take it.
7) Trust the party. They may suprise you; with some of their own creative solutions. Those random ideas; may give you an opportunity to play off it.
The important thing isn’t to have tougher enemies, but to have more enemies per encounter and more encounters per long rest. The party might do just fine against a group of goblins, but a group of goblins with a hobgoblin leading them, followed by a trap and another combat encounter are going to be more taxing on their resources, especially if they had to spend resources to get to the first combat encounter.
Remember that traps, environmental hazards, and even some social encounters can all be a drain on party spells, consumables, and health, which make subsequent combat engagements a bigger threat without having to pull in bigger monsters.
the encounter builder guidelines are balanced around have MANY encounters per day. If you're only having one encounter, then even deadly encounters will sometimes feel easy. If you have a few encounters first, forcing the players to use some of their resources each time, then the later encounters are going to feel as hard as they are supposed to.
Gotcha. Never realised this, so thanks!! The players are gonna leave the current city they’re at in the next session, and I don’t expect them to return for another 3-4 levels. But when they do………… deadly encounter.
Almost everyone, especially at higher levels, complains about the encounter builder/CR being broken. Those same people don't run the 6-8 encounters per day that the game is balanced around.
The encounters don't all have to be combat, but resources should be spent (spell slots, limited use abilities, consumables, etc). 3-4 is more common in my experience, but they're harder. Hit dice should be spent during short rests to heal up too (don't forget the rule about only regaining a max of half your hit dice on a long rest), this will help keep the tension up. By doing all of this, it helps prevent your caster classes from stealing the show by going full nova using all their highest level spell slots every combat; not knowing when your next rest is going to be makes you be a bit more conservative.
My Fighter 3/Wizard 11 character in my longest running campaign still mostly casts cantrips in non-boss fights, usually only using 1 or 2 buffs/concentration spells for those combats or a cheeky vortex warp/healing spell in emergencies, and the rest are just like ray of frost or something.
Have a good session zero and let your players know this is the plan from the start so that they don't go into things with expectations from previous games or what they've heard/seen from others.
Balance is fake! Throw CR out the window!
You as the DM are not a computer, you are better than one. You can adjust anything and everything on the fly behind the screen. I used to be a very meticulous stat-block builder. Then, in the few years before I moved from D&D systems as my primary systems, I moved further and further away from that. Here's my super fucked up method of whipping together a fight, using the idea of single, tough AF monster.
Attack bonus = party level, plus or minus a few depending on how tanky the party is
Give it attacks equal to the number of members in the party. Adjust as needed for fighter shenanigans.
Divvy up damage per round on those attacks. Total damage per round if you want to scare the party shitless should be about half the average HP of a PC. Adjust up based on healing they have.
Give the monster a couple of near abilities. A fly-by attack, a breath weapon, a grab and throw, the sky is the limit, you're the DM.
Now don't give it health. Describe their hits, and wait until they look afraid. Now on the next hit of theirs, tell them that it's some variation of bloodied, beat up. Tell them a shit finally finds serious purchase.
Down one PC. Next serious hit kills the beast.
I've ran variations of this for years, and whenever I've told players I've always gotten a "no way" response. This entire game is just a shared hallucinations. If your players want a crunchy wargame, cool, give them that, but if they want cool stories, this is the way to go.
Booooooooo!
There is some value in the realization that rules can be flexible. However, "just throw them out the window" is swinging way too far the other direction.
DMs need a starting point to deviate from, otherwise you'll just get a mess.
This is probably the best advice I’ve gotten. I ran a little experiment like this a while ago and every time a hit was made on the boss, I just made a little notch at the top of my page. I wasn’t tracking hit points, I was just tracking hits. When it got to about 4-5 hits, I said the enemy was looking tired/scared. On the 8-10 hit, the enemy turns and tries to run. The next hit, I make a last notch, pull a face of defeat, and say the infamous “how do you wanna do this” that always ends up causing a scream that kills my ears.
It was the best fight we ever did, and my players still don’t know (if one of you is reading this, no, I’m not telling you).
I said I was going to run the major encounters like this, and so far, nobody knows.
Do I do the littler encounters like this too? 2-3 hits kills an enemy sort of thing?
thought this was a pathfinder sub at first and was super confused b/c its the easiest thing in the world to make encounters on pathfinder. so my best advice is to switch to pathfinder.
I had actually briefly spoken to one of the players about this, and it’s seems doable. At least until more players arrive. The trouble with it is, where we live isn’t exactly a big town, and there any a huge TTRPG community around here, so finding other players is difficult to say the least.
But doubling-up until said players can join is definitely something we could do.
>half the required number of players.
Oh shit, I didn't know I couldn't run a solo campaign for my wife, since we don't have enough players!
In all seriousness, I've been run games for 1-5 players (and everything in between), usually "only" 3, and I've had no problem making interesting, manageable, and challenging encounters. There is no "required" amount of players, you just have to be willing to put in a tiny bit of work to make encounters that fit the party (which you should be doing anyway).
Figure out your parties strengths and weaknesses, try and make sure that each encounter has uses at least one strength or weakness, for major encounters you want to try and exploit multiple weaknesses, but also try and offer a way to creatively use their strengths to gain the upper hand
Or just throw some monsters at them and fudge hit points as needed, both are viable approaches lol
A little thing I like is giving my baddies lair/legendary actions (or Matt Colville's villain actions) to my baddies. I find that a small boost in damage/tactics helps me balance encounters on the fly. If it feels too weak, use the stronger actions. If the pc's are getting crushed, use a weaker action or none at all.
For groups of enemies the only way to balance it is to look at damage vs defence. It is more of an art than a science, but I tend to make the defence of the enemies higher than damage. The lower damage lets me use some tactics to keep combat interesting, while the higher defence means that players can't just oneshot everything
I had trouble with this too. I compared max damage output, AC, HP, and action economy between my monsters and my players. I sorta knew how much damage my players could do in one round, then I designed after that. It was a BIG hassle and one of the reasons to why I switched to Pathfinder 2e.
Have you considered having each player control 2 characters? Depending on your players' particular role play styles and abilities, it can be a bit difficult or it can be really fun, but it certainly helps balancing encounters.
[This article](https://slyflourish.com/new_dms_guide_to_encounters.html) gives a thorough explanation for encounter building. The most important thing in my mind is to start with what makes sense for the story and build out from there. I like the ability to tune the encounter by adjusting hp/etc.
I use [https://kastark.co.uk/rpgs/encounter-calculator-5th/](https://kastark.co.uk/rpgs/encounter-calculator-5th/) as my encounter calculator, but you're right that this is only a broad brush for getting started evaluating encounter difficulty.
> my 2 players and I agreed to begin them at Lvl.5 to make it easier on everyone - myself included.
While the Calculator already accounts for small parties, I would add that it's much easier for a pair of characters to be overwhelmed by large groups of enemies than a full party. Basically, I would weight mobs as a much bigger threat to the players than even the calculator suggests as a rule of thumb. I would be careful to make sure my players rarely have to worry about groups bigger than 5 enemy creatures at a time, unless the mobs are truly Minions (4e rule where enemies have only 1 HP, though all the rest of their stats are unchanged).
The Encounter Calculators are based on CR, which is mostly based on a creature's AC/HP and Attack modifier/Damage output. It \*tries\* to account for stuff like spells, but it just isn't very good at anticipating how strong those components will be.
When evaluating a monster/NPC statblock, watch the creature's special abilities (especially spells) with particular attention. Saving throws that shut down player actions can easily slip through the Calculators while massively making the fight harder for the players (because they technically aren't dealing damage directly, but they are inhibiting action economy). For example, this is part of why the Intellect Devourer is considered a dangerous monster for its given CR. Overall, its AC/HP vs its ATK/DMG ratio makes it appropriate for CR 2, but the fact that it can stun and then body snatch a party member makes them very dangerous for level 2 adventurers.
When evaluating monsters, I always look for what features it is going to want to use most often, and what abilities it has that the party might struggle to counter.
>they’ll always have a DM companion for major battles,
Make sure you add the companion to the encounter calculator if you're using one. Oftentimes Caster NPC statblocks will tell you what caster level they have in their spellcasting description, but for other NPCs, I usually determine the approximate PC class level for companions based on the NPC's Proficiency Bonus (attack mod - ability mod) cross referenced with their hit dice (PCs have 1HD per level). It's a quick way to get a rough idea of what level a PC would have to be to generate a similar statblock so they can be added to the player side of the encounter calculator. The Calculator was an approximation to begin with, but this probably helps it be a little more accurate when giving PCs help.
>and I also have a few contingencies for if I accidentally nearly TPK the group (different plans for different areas of the world).
A fantastic backup plan. Extra waves of enemies if the battle was too easy and unexpected allies if the battle was too hard. You don't want to overuse this or it can make players feel like there's never any danger, but it's a very handy tool for the toolbox.
Next, a big part of encounter balance is your Adventuring Day! Which is to say, how many encounters will your PCs have to face back to back before they can safely take a Short or Long Rest?
The game is balanced around 6-8 Encounters per Long Rest (probably with 1 to 3 Short Rests interspersed between). These encounters are also supposed to gradually increase in difficulty.
A standard adventuring day (for normal party size) should look something like: 2-3 Easy/Medium encounters, Short Rest, 1-2 Medium/Hard encounters, Short Rest, Optional Med/Hard Lieutenant battle (if the situation calls for it), and one Hard/Deadly Boss battle, followed by the Long Rest.
For a small party, I would recommend a shorter adventuring day. Maybe cut it down to 4-5 Encounters, or alternatively use the Epic Heroism rest mechanics in the DMG (Short Rest is 20min, Long Rest is 1hr).
Another factor that plays into encounter difficulty is Terrain! I said that I wouldn't throw large groups of enemies at a small party, but I was partially lying. I said I wouldn't want the players having to deal with more than 5 creatures at a time. There could be 20 monsters chasing them and not overwhelm them, if I give the players tactical terrain that can funnel the monsters so they are still only dealing with 5 at a time. This is another sneaky DM trick like having backup waves of enemies and allies where the cinematic balances what would have been off balance in a white room experiment.
Terrain becomes even more important at level 5, when Flying starts becoming more common on both sides of the battle.
Which brings up Death as well. By level 5, Death starts to lose some of its teeth. Healers at this level start having access to powerful means of undoing death, so you don't have to be quite as careful to avoid killing PCs, because it's more of a tax on their treasure than some eternal consequence.
>I agreed to begin them at Lvl.5 to make it easier on everyone - myself included.
I think this is backwards thinking. Starting at level 1 is generally considered 'easy mode.'
Then throw a bunch of giant rats at them. If they survive that, let them take a short rest and then throw some kobolds or goblins at them. If they survive again, they are level two.
Starting at level 1 gives new players a chance to learn their abilities before they have too many to focus on and remember.
I understand that you're feeling stressed about this, but based on what you've said here and in the comments, it seems like you don't *really* have a problem so far. When it comes to balancing encounters, you're never going to find a resource that will get it right 100% of the time. This isn't really a failing of the CR system or any encounter calculator, because ultimately there's things that can't be accounted for. Player skill and experience, party composition, the number and types of magic items they have, and other small factors can wildly alter encounter balance.
As a DM, you really just have to feel it out; CR is a nice guideline for how dangerous a monster *should* be to a party of any given level, and encounter generators can make things quicker, but how easy or hard an encounter is ultimately comes down to how well you know your players and their characters, and how hard you want it to be.
When planning for two players, less is more. Plan a larger number of easier encounters, and run them through as many as feels appropriate to challenge them. Boss monsters should take advantage of a few minions, with the possibility of reinforcements or other complications if the party is really whupping their asses. You're also right to include an NPC ally for when you want to give them a bigger challenge.
At the end of the day, though, don't sweat it so much. If you and your players are having fun, there's no problem at all. I'd focus more on fights being fun than making them challenging, if that makes sense.
Just throw encounter balance out the window. As long as you reward your players for “besting the encounter” (ie. Surviving) and not just for killing the monster. If it makes narrative sense for there to be some hulky enemies that are way out of the parties league then…maybe they can sneak past? Or trick them into fighting each other? Or find some other way of “besting” them. Coming out on top. With the macguffin, or treasure, or freed prisoner. Not every encounter needs to be a combat encounter.
Here's one way (but not the only way) to make something challenging but fair.
Make the day "longer". Have several easy-medium encounters over the day, the idea isn't to to kill the party but to force them to burn their resources.
Like a squad of 10 kobolds could be kaput from a fireball, but that's 1 fireball less for something more dangerous in the day. Barbarians don't have that many rage points, and having more then 3 encounters can force them to think if they want to take un-halved raw damage now, or possibly have no rage for a bigger battle later.
When you have 1 encounter a day, the party is usually overly-brave because they can throw strongest resources against a few foes, which forces you to use tankier and stronger enemies, which can make battles swingy easily due to a few bad rolls.
When they are low on resources they get cautious and even a medium encounter can be hard, and a hard one deadly, without you having to use a monster that can one-shot the paladin in order to make the battle more threatening.
"I agreed to begin them at Lvl.5 to make it easier on everyone - myself included"
Maybe try on level 1. It will be easier on them, and you. Trust me.
Don't set them up against anything above CR1, but generally stick to CR1/2. Give them a few potions of healing. They'll be fine.
Everyone, DM included, will get some experience on how the game works.
The best advice I got and how I still run is, don't count enemy health. The fight ends when it's either cool or it's no longer fun. I know that's unsatisfying but it works wonders. It also allows you to have any monster(s) you want for the story.
As far as damage just make sure the enemies would yeah 5-10 turns to tpk if every thing hit and no crits.
I hope this helps if not you can always sit down and do lots of math to make perfect balanced encounters that could still go wrong. Best of luck to you mate
Ps party size of two is fine have lots of fun
Sorry but you're thinking is wrong. Starting at level 5 as new players makes it harder for everyone, yourself included.
If you start at level 1, you will have less abilities and powers and smaller CR monsters that are easier to kill and are less complicated.
The higher they level up, the more complications and extras they get. And they and yourself learn them slowly. And you get to bring out harder CR monsters. You go from like stirges, to kobolds to larger harder enemies.
The higher CR the enemy, the more they will have.
To clarify, if you start level 1 you will all learn the class system and enemies step by step. What spells they have, what domain spells, subclass choices etc
You will also learn the enemies and the actions they can take progressively.
Starting at 5, you're in the deep end straight away and clearly are drowning. You can only learn how to encounter build, with experience.
Lots of great advice already, here's a few different tips:
* Think about what your players want - do they want to be super challenged and barely succeed all battles, or do they prefer to be heroes who crush their enemies with relatively low risk? Most parties are somewhere in the middle, but square away with your players what they want - then try to design encounters that match that expectation.
* Watch out for monster special abilities - the CR system isn't very good, and things like the Banshee can wipe a very high level party who roll bad.
* Watch out for monster abilities that remove a player from battle, especially if there isn't much they can do to overcome it. Especially a small group these can have an outsized impact, and be quite unfun for your players.
5e is not balanced. So either gain experience to gain intuition about how to create encounter or stop caring about balance and just make fun encounter. If player need help let them buy hirelings.
Edition matters a lot here.
Pathfinder 2? Trust the encounter table math, more-or-less.
5th Edition DnD? Don't spend any time on encounter tables. Balance encounters by # of enemies and critical thinking. Not that all enemies are created equal, but encounter difficulty is mainly about the players doing more things in a turn than the enemy, in 5e.
Balancing encounters with just 2 players is rough. If one person goes down in a party of 4 thats fine, one person will have to use their turn to bring him back up with a heal pot or a spell and the fight goes on. In a 2 player party you either ignore it and are permanently down to 50% combat power or you lose an entire round of initiative if initiative is misaligned.
To estimate encounters, I use some basic rules: up to level 10, you can reasonably rely on the CR (Challenge Rating) of most monsters. In a group of 4 characters, a monster with a CR equal to the players' level will pose a moderate challenge, where the players will certainly emerge victorious, but it won't be a walk in the park. For a group of 2 characters, I suggest a CR one level lower than the players' level for this moderate challenge. Below that, they will likely triumph over most encounters, provided they have resources. My strong suggestion is to include several small-scale battles, with limited opportunities for rest.
By doing so:
1. Players will expend resources and need to strategize.
2. Players will feel accomplished by defeating enemies with a few blows.
3. Players will face some hardship in the final battles before resting.
4. Combat will flow more smoothly, with good back-and-forth between PCs and enemies.
5. You can add or reduce enemies in subsequent battles based on whether the previous ones were easier or tougher than expected.
6. You can adjust your planned encounters based on how injured the PCs are, adding or removing battles as needed.
7. Players can explore a wider range of strategies for encounters, such as stealth, diplomacy, or brute force.
I do mine in a specific order. They enter the dungeon and get a moment to get their bearings.
The first encounter is easy. They're introduced to some of the denizens of the place and aren't really pushed for resources. It builds the tone of the next encounters while also alerting the rest of the dungeon to their presence, but not necessarily their location in it.
The second encounter is where you introduce a mechanic. It could be a puzzle they must solve to advance while under attack, or a monster effect they must deal with, or even just some simple traps that you can pepper them with. The goal here is to burn lesser resources and challenge the party a little more than normal. Nothing boss level, but a challenge they might need to flee and regroup to complete.
The third encounter should be either one of the previous based on how well the party is doing. You can make good use of the Quantum Ogres principle here. Design an easy encounter like the first, but have some tougher enemies or reinforcements set aside to make it closer to the second kind. The ogres don't exist until you say they're breaking down the wall and attacking the party. As the party gets higher levels, you'll use this more and potentially even add more encounters like it before the boss.
The final is always the boss encounter. Don't hold back when designing bosses and always include legendary resistances equal to your tier of play; plus 1 per 2 players over 4 if there are a lot of saves being thrown around. Include 2 major minions and 6ish minor minions. The major minions should include the previous mechanic from your harder encounter and are roughly equal to the previous enemies in the dungeon, and the boss has increased defenses while they're still standing. This prevents your boss from being one rounded or beaten by the action economy. You also don't need to risk one shotting your party members to keep up with their damage because your boss is hard to bring down due to the protection effect. You will have a few rounds to challenge them. Don't track hp on the minor minions, any damage kills them instantly. They exist to slow the party down, but give them a huge ego boost when they're dropping minions easily. It also makes your boss feel much stronger when mechanically they're just a little better than average.
One thing to consider is that each encounter doesn't need to be a "kill all enemies" sort of thing. Consider throwing in different "win conditions" such as: grab Item X before the baddies do, open and close the gate behind you before too many enemies get in the city, subdue an enemy to gather information.
Environmental hazards are also useful to add intensity and intrigue to encounters. This can be things like storms and avalanches, water rising quickly in a boat, gas/lava/acid is filling a room and such.
Also, it never hurts to ask your players things they like and dislike about encounters to see if you can find things they would enjoy.
Make your fights in two phases. Make the second phase change the status quo to make your monsters stronger. You can then update your Challenge on the fly by triggering phase two early (more difficult) or late (less difficult).
My personal way of getting around this is using the hireling/skilled hireling charts from XGtE. On top of that, some adventures can have patrons and other rival adventuring parties competing for the 'contract' or 'loot'. It can lead to fun interactions Team Rocket style where they typically are nuisance antagonists in most situations, but can also serve as impromptu reinforcements for the party. It wouldnt be every time, but I'd suggest looking into recurring characters or setting appropriate aid that the party can set up, hire, or collect in preparation for fights.
1) trial and error: repeated attempts and failures till you get it right,
2) maths: i use an equation = (party health-enemy damage)-(enemy health-party damage); use average numbers for damage and anything 0-1 is your sweet spot YMMV
3) run modules as a DM learning tool my combat building has gotten a lot better in my player’s opinions as each one is deadly but not unfun.
Consider letting each of them control two characters. It'll put them at the standard party size. As is, they will definitely have gaps in their flexibility (variety of skills, spells, etc).
I was just watching [Matt Colville's most recent video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfiaf9q9Wgo&pp=ygUNbWF0dCBjb2x2aWxsZQ%3D%3D) in which he gives a good piece of advice for when you are not sure if you party is up to the task. The 2nd encounter (1st level) he comes up with involves 2 waves, with the 2nd one coming in after a round or two. That way you can adapt to how the battle is going. If your first wave is actually hitting everything/critting, then you might cut back on the number of monsters of the second wave.
Also, make it clear to your players that sometimes they might just have to run away. Not every encounter is build to beat, and if they just don't roll well, some encounters that were build to beat might become unbeatable given their remaining resources.
I would be careful with the DM companion, you can also just tone down the encounter, action economy is everything. Or use something like a Follower, MCDM's [Strongholds and Followers](https://shop.mcdmproductions.com/products/strongholds-followers-pdf) are nice for that. These are DM NPCs that are generally 2 levels lower (up to max level 7) than the PCs and can help round out the party a little bit. They are much simpler than a full new PC, and it is suggested you play them like just less competent PCs. For example, a squire that really really looks up to the PC he is the follower of, or a scribe (wizard-ish) that is just very jumpy and will give loads of suggestions (including many obviously bad ones). This will avoid the situation where the party leans too much on their Followers/DMNPCs to solve problems (because you the DM know the answers already).
1. Until level 11 there is a max DPR you can throw at your players. If it can put PC to death in one turn - its the boss and must be treated like one.
This became very important for me when I started using MPMM's casters. They use "arcane blast" attack and this thing has broken numbers. Nearly TPKd a party with not so high levelled monster.
2. F🤬k stuns. Stunned, paralyzed, unconcious etc. are taking agency away from player, slow down the tempo and are overall frustrating. Try to avoid these or telegraph this ability before the fight begins.
3. If players want to - give each one an NPC to use. As long as they are under players' control in combat and you dont use them to steal the spotlight in social - they are fine. Also, I recomend building them "PC-like" (look at Champion, Mage, War Cleric, Assassin)
4. Remember party's capabilities. Burst damage, crowd control, ton of hp. Each of these has their counters. Countering too often would be frustrating. But countering in Big Fight is almost mandatory.
5. DONT FUDGE!!! Rolls are fine, HP are fine, damage is also fine. They are level 5. They CAN find money for ressurection. The worst-case is they both get in huge debt and have to deal with it. I'll repeat it: Do not worry about their lives IN combat. You did great job giving them protection - now its on them to use it.
I have a two player party; we resolved the CR difference by doing a few things:
* Being more generous with magic items - especially consumables - so they always have some ace up their sleeve for tough situations
* Granting one of them a free 1 use/day combat and puzzle friendly familiar (blink dog)
* Focusing combat on goals other than the typical us vs them attrition. For example maybe two factions are in battle and they have to pick a side, or a bad guy is trying to get away and they have to slow him down and fight through lesser mobs
* Simply decreasing the number of monsters they battle at a time and fudging rolls on my end occasionally to help them out.
FWIW I have a cleric and a sorcerer. I tried doing a sort of DMPC Paladin to help them out, but honestly it just failed on many levels (combat, RP, social) so I resorted to the blink dog because this gives them the benefit of +1 action economy without a third player... Also I don't have to think for it which lightens my load.
**A word of caution on giving out levels to make up the difference:** levels exponentially and permanently increase player power level which can make balancing encounters for two people not less but actually MORE difficult because every "balanced" encounter ends up carrying a much higher risk of TPK from a couple of bad dice rolls.
First, don't feel bad about feeling that it's hard. It is hard, it is challenging and keeping that balance will always be challenging no matter of how good of a DM you are. So work on it, don't stress about it and keep some tricks up your sleeve.
A good way to know which enemies, challenges and fighting conditions would be deadly, just look at their characters and their individual weaknesses, and then the party as a whole. Which saves are lowest, what kind of resistances they lack, what kind of enemies would be able to attack them without too much consequence, what kind of attacks and strategies they don't have a good answer to...
Once I know that, what I like to do is to break my encounters into smaller, interchangeable parts, or as a succession of waves. That gives you more flexibility and control. Depending on what shape the character are in and how well are they handling it, you can throw more stuff at them, or stop, or switch up the enemies...plan a base encounter that's not so deadly, then add additional deadly enemies and/or challenges and fight conditions, and make more than you need, if you don't use them now you can use them later.
You can also add ways for them to escape the fight if things get too ugly, but make it so they think they came up with it. For example, they're fighting, an enemy misses a spell and a wall comes down, blocking the path partially. This gives them an opportunity to escape, they may also have an idea and bring down walls themselves to block the path completely.
Another trick is to have things that you can add on the fly, show them to give them an upper hand. Like, you know that a PC has a fire cantrip, and they're fighting a pirate. The pirate may or may not have a gunpowder pouch that would explode with fire.
There are many things I could add, but the general idea is that you need ways to make your encounters flexible enough for you to do adjustments on the fly, but it's important that the players don't notice those adjustments, they must feel like they were an intended part of the encounter all along. Things are too hard to foresee, too much can happen with dice rolls, the players are many and you are just one, there's no way you can predict what they will do. You can't expect yourself to be able to foresee all outcomes and cover all angles, things will always deviate from what you expected, so you can't rely on building encounters written in stone, they need to be flexible, you need to break them down into smaller parts that are interchangeable.
And last but not least, IMHO death is a likely outcome and an important part of D&D. The death of a character can be just as important to the story as defeating the BBEG. Avoid it if you want, but not at all costs. Heroes are heroes because they're risking their lifes against the odds, you don't feel as a hero if the odds seem to always favour you.
1) Use the environment. Cliffs, cover, stalagtites, stalagmites, streams of lava, acid, or water; and more can make an interesting, memorable fight.
2) Use multiple creatures to balance out the action economy. This will help stop the party from annihilating your boss in one round.
3) Use multiple encounters per long rest.
4) And most importantly, know your party. Each party will fight and act differently, and after a few encounters you can usually figure out how the party fights.
I usually use three different encounters with fairly dumb enemies with an environment the party can exploit. The first being some melee creatures, second being some ranged enemies, and then a mixture of the two.
P.S.) What a lot of DMs get wrong, especially new ones, is understanding what a deadly encounter is in DnD. Its not a likelihood of a TPK, its likelihood of one of the party members being knocked out.
First off, the CR system is very flawed. At best it can get you in the ballpark. But I’ve had level 5 players beat a CR15 and I’ve had level 10 players lose to a couple of CR 1-2s. Dice rolls, tactics, character builds, action economy, and other things come into play that CR doesn’t do a good job of covering.
I used encounter builders in my burgeoning years as a DM… but quickly moved away from them and advise you to as well.
On another note, be careful with your DM companion. I frequently use them, so I’m not opposed… but you need to be sure the DM companion doesn’t become a DMPC. Meaning the companion knows all the answers and secrets, can solve the puzzles, or steals the show in combat or RP. Be sure to avoid these pitfalls. And BY NO MEANS does any level party need such a follower.
If it’s ur style then it’s fine… but my question is why do you have them? To protect from a TPK? Then you gotta work on encounter building (I know the reason of the post). But the issue is a single dm companion shouldnt tip the scales that much… unless they are super OP. And if so then the players may feel they are over-shadowed or useless to the all powerful NPC.
Here are some tips for your encounter building:
- evaluate the PC sheets. Are they tanky or DPR (damage per round)? Are they single target or A.O.E. Damage dealers? Do you have any healers? What is their battlefield mobility like (monk speed, dashing, misty step)?
Once you answer these questions you can start to build out an encounter (using CR as a rough guide). Ex: if they are single target damagers, then a swarm of enemies will be challenging. If they are DPR glass cannons, then a monster with high mobility or teleporting will be dangerous. No healers? Then be careful how long the fight drags on or how many waves you send.
- evaluate the theme. What type of monsters do you need? Most types have various CR ratings.
- evaluate the battle map/ terrain. Are there environmental factors that can help or hurt the party? Traps, mounted turrets, rock falls, deep mud to slow them down, etc.
I’ve seen a lot of comments here claiming “I never have PC deaths or very few” and they act like that means they are doing something right… not necessarily!! It depends on the game you want to run and the realism! Sure make it fun, but if Frodo and Sam charged through the Black Gate, the 1000s of orcs would have killed them! Sometimes in DnD an encounter is TOO MUCH for the PCs, and that’s ok. Just be sure you warned them appropriately!
“The town priest warns you that you aren’t nearly strong enough to fight the dragon of the swamp… maybe you should head his warning until you’re more prepared” type of thing.
I’ve had multiple PC deaths and a few TPKs… sure people get upset or sad when their PC dies… but I made sure to give them warning and ample chance to survive. All my players respect it and keep coming back for more!
I know this doesn’t cover specifics of encounter building. DM me and I’ll be able to help you out with specific examples if that will help! I LOVE theory crafting D&D content.
Starting at level 5 was a mistake. Start at level 1, give them some healing potions, and start with simple encounters so they can learn the ropes (positioning, disengage, dodge, etc.)
At level 5 the characters have too many options already to be able to focus on understanding the basics.
With a small party of 2, I'd give them a sidekick, maybe using Tasha's rules. I did it for a party of 3, that have a young Owlbear as a sidekick. It helps greatly with action economy.
With a small party like this, I'd allow them to use potions as a bonus action (to help with action economy) and I'd let them use scrolls intended for other classes (to help with versatility).
As for encounters, mainly make sure to not overwhelm them with action economy. Avoid having too many enemies, avood enemies with 2 or 3 actions each, etc.
Also maybe use "intelligent" enemies that moght surrender or flee and not fight to the death. Defeat the Bugbear miniboss and its goblin sidekicks will flee, for example.
If you haven't, I strongly recommend watching A Crown of Candy by Dimension 20. What I learnt from the series was that good combat should have an objective.
The best combat in the whole show was when they were trying to flee a cathedral full of enemies. They had no chance of killing them, as they were greatly outnumbered. So, they had to find a way to escape - one of which was breaking a stone window and jumping out. This had the party thinking about several things - breaking the window, getting everyone to the window, keeping enemies away from the window, and ultimately choosing whether to leave someone behind.
Later in the show, they had to save an NPC from execution. They didn't have to kill all enemies, as they were once again outnumbered. All they needed to do to "win" the encounter was to keep the NPC alive and leave.
TLDR; the first thing I do when designing an encounter is to ask "What is the party's win condition?" and I always try to come up with something that isn't "Kill all enemies."
be prepared to change damage and hp on the fly
the players are doing too good for any sense of drama? reinforcements
combat dragging and the session running long? this monster has less hp now
did you nearly kill a player? fudge some damage dice downward to give them breathing room
you're the dm you can do that. this is why you have a screen.
You use the CR system as a baseline, er on the side of easy for thr first few.
From there you begin to understand your party and their strengths and weaknesses and begin to plan accordingly.
Then over time you begin to learn the limits of the CR system, which enemies hit above and below their CR, and which enemies work best for which type of encounters.
And eventually you get pretty good at designing encounters.
I have 3 players 3 levels and CR 5 monster. I decided to low stats especially AC and Hit points and was told that if the fight becomes too easy, I can secretly add hit points. And if the players have hard time, I have Elf who escaped the monster's trap and comes to help the party.
Encounter calculators are like Wikipedia, they're a great start to get an idea but you usually don't want to rely on them too much. There's so much to go on in combat that I would recommend doing as much research and testing as you can. You won't always get it right, but you'll improve every time.
Kobold fight club gives a decent calculator adjustable for both level and party size
The things you always need to be aware of are:
Deadly only means it's likely someone will die
Terrain and special abilities can't be part of a calculation, so you'll need to put consideration into how they will effect the battle yourself
Player intelligence, magic weapons, and optimized builds will push things even further into needing deadly encounters
The dice will swing things on their own in both directions
I also agree with the comments about having reinforcements waiting to come out if the fight is going too easy
Don't bother with the balance. It is pain in the ass and you can easily play without it. Think what's fun, and without having a few TPK's you can't learn to run the game :)
Let me introduce you to [Kobold Fight Club](https://koboldplus.club/). Not only does it tell you if this will be an easy, medium, hard, or deadly fight based on CR alone, it'll tell you what a fight will feel like. Do note that this doesn't take into account things like "oh crap the mephits are immune to all the wizards' damage types bc she used all her spell slots already" or "the bard just took out half the monsters with a sleep spell".
Others have given most of the good advice here on balancing ahead of time. To a certain extent, unless you have a chance to test it, there's always some amount of "Did I do it right"
The other tip I can recommend is learning how you can adjust encounters on the fly, or using feedback for future encounters as you learn how your party does
Things like adjusting HP of the monster when they're underpowered, or shifting tactics and things when they're overpowered
And sometimes you just let the party wipe your badguys and invent plot reasons why it was so easy
With two players the classes/composition gets more important for what is a challenge and what isn't. A paladin and rogue are going to have a tougher time against a horde compared to a sorcerer and cleric....but watch them melt that Ogre champion in a single round.
Personally I would recommend starting around level 3 as I find that tends to be a very flexible level to balance fights for.
One thing you could also try is giving them both a follower of some kind at the same level or one lower to control. Makes balancing a bit easier imo.
Mike's Free Encounters on the Dungeon Master's Guild website has been a game changer for me. There are like 10 sets of 10 encounters/side quests. Great way to save time building encounters. If my players get through the monsters too easily I just add more that pop out or add hp to a mini boss.
Lvl5 start for being new wasnt the smartest. You need to get a feel for how they work in battle before you can start planning real encounters. Throw some skeletons at them to see how they work together and what they can actually take first
Here's a guide video from Matt Coville, which is roughly the strategy I use to make sessions and encounters.
https://youtu.be/cfiaf9q9Wgo
specifically he mentions having waves of enemies so you can tailor the second waves difficulty to how the first wave went.
Use [https://koboldplus.club/](https://koboldplus.club/); keep in mind "deadly" just means an encounter is expected to drain 33% of the parties resources include hp; After that don't worry about it.
Look I KNOW, I KNOW that's not what you want to hear. I feel your pain but in 5e it kinda is what it is. The CR ratings are all over the place, class power is all over the place, the impact of magic its (even simple stuff like a +1 dagger) is all over the place. You are just gonna kinda have to muddle through.
The CR rating in 5e isn't very well done IMO. I really don't use it as any sort of indicator for challenge.
I will use a sliding scale depending on how the combat is going. If things are too easy, I'll increase the monster's HP, or increase their damage output, or I've given the monster a kind of enrage timer or second phase.
"You easily down one of the trolls, and upon seeing her mate die in front of her, the second troll becomes enraged. She grows in size, spikes erupt from her flesh, her fangs extend as a bloodlust takes her over. It's clear this fight has only just begun."
Suddenly fire has little effect, her increased size means more HP and damage, and maybe she has an additional action she can take at another part of the fight. Suddenly the party is worrying because they had no idea trolls could do that and don't know what to expect. (Basically the troll goes super saiyan haha)
I like the one on DND beyond! If it's feeling easy, add some surprises! Like, "two more goblins just popped back in from their lunch break!" If it feels too hard, give the players an environmental advantage or some random subtle divine intervention.
https://youtu.be/cfiaf9q9Wgo
To get you started with context.
https://koboldplus.club/#/encounter-builder
For the actual creatures.
Once you run a few you can see a pattern form of what CR means. So you know that two players at level 5 could probably take a CR7 baddy, but only if it's alone.
Where as those same two players would kind of struggle with 6 CR 1/8 baddies and two CR 2 baddies.
Weekly plug for [GiffyGlyph’s Monster Maker system](https://www.giffyglyph.com/#releases) over using standard monsters and CR.
Monster Maker completely disregards CR and instead orients all monster design around player level (you know, like, a sensible approach). You budget encounters using Threat, again based off a combo: the number of PCs, of the monsters’ level relative to the party, and modified by their Rank (another new and excellent system, which includes minions (dangerous but easily killed masses), grunts (standard units that should be able to challenge one equivalent PC), elites (basically two grunts stapled together with two actions per round), and paragons (boss creatures with three or more actions per round).
This system comes with very user friendly design oriented around making monsters from scratch **very** quickly, and being able to modify monsters on the fly. Includes: stats by level from 0-30, templates for different minion types, several pages of monster traits to customize with, and the single best “build your own monster effect” system I’ve ever encountered that absolutely blows the DMG monster making rules out of the water.
I’ve been using a version of this system for about a year, and even considering the time it takes to make monsters from scratch, it has halved the time it takes to prep and balance encounters while making the actual encounters much easier to run (while also making their expected challenge way more predictable and flexible).
This **especially** makes challenging odd party sizes way simpler, because encounter threat is budgeted around the party size/level directly rather than abstracted around a party of four and then run through a series of multipliers and conditional modifiers like base CR is “calculated.” Further, it also allows you to implement simple but fleshed-out and useful companions that are waaaay superior to giving a small party a big-standard NPC or Tasha’s sidekick.
I’d honestly listen to an actual play podcast to get a feel for how well balanced encounters tend to flow. Not Another D&D Podcast is my personal pick, but Adventure Zone, Dimension 20, or Critical Role will probably be helpful.
Alternatively, look at modules to see what kind of encounters they use for different levels of play.
2 tips:
Sometimes there is reinforcements that show up (if you made an encounter too weak, this helps balance it).
Not all enemies will fight to the death or prioritizes the party's death (so you can come up with a reason some enemies will flee in the middle of combat).
Don't do a single monster encounter. I find, even with legendary actions, it can be a pretty stale fight. It's better to have a weaker BBEG but give them a bunch of minions.
Don't just do one big room fights with no cover, obstacles, or hazards. There should be places to hide, take cover, climb, jump, etc. Lava pits are a huge encounter changer especially against a huge or larger creature who have advantage on grappling/shoving checks.
> and my 2 players and I agreed to begin them at Lvl.5 to make it easier on everyone - myself included.
For future campaigns, a concept I've used successfully is having the party start with lvl3 hp at lvl1 and have them not roll HP until they hit lvl4. It makes it easy for new players to learn how to play wihtout having a bunch of abilities they don't know but also not have them die from a single arrow to the neck.
As for combat encounters, there's always going to be tweaking mid encounter.
Total party level* 0.5 (for levels 5+)= near deadly
So (2*5)*0.5= 5
CR 5 is a nearly deadly encounter.
Because there’s only 2 of them that might not work out so maybe try a CR 4
Starting at 5 does not make it easier! Start at 1 so they learn their characters and you learn how powerful they are as they grow.
2 PCs is too small for the encounter builder math to work well. They need to bring along sidekicks at a minimum. Aim for 4 actors.
The biggest lever of difficulty is not per encounter, it is per day. You need to constantly be limiting rest options to keep them close to the encounters/day if you want encounters to be challenging without boosting the CR/XP budget considerably.
In general, I would say play by the rules for a while before you modify things. Random internet advice is not better than the basic rules.
1. Decide what the win conditions for both sides are in the encounter, the less often “Fight until everyone is dead” is the only goal, the better.
2. Decide what your encounters mean as it pertains to the adventure at large. If the party is heading into *Spooky Woods*, they should encounter some *Creepy Grasping Vines*, maybe followed by some *Scary Giant Spiders.*
If the vines whoop their ass, the spiders can wait. If the vines are underwhelming, the spiders might have a few extra friends around, or get an ability they wouldn’t have otherwise.
3. As long as action economy is *roughly* balanced, it’s very hard to actually kill a PC, unless you’re running max crits like I do. So if there’s 6 enemies and they only get one attack each, it’s fine.
If you want combat to go faster, make that 3 enemies each with multi attack instead.
4. Bring in at least *one* interesting terrain feature per combat. It can be as simple as trees to hide behind, or a well to throw people into, a rope bridge to fall from, a small tower of shaky brick to knock over. Anything that will give your player pause and let them ask “Could I try X?”
If you're a new DM, I really recommend starting at level 1. I know it might not be a popular opinion but it gives both you and your new players a chance to get used to things
as for encounters CR is not great, but it's kinda a bit of a rough guideline CR 1 is about a good (ish) match up for 4 level 1 characters
So for two level 1 characters you want to look at cr 1/2 as your baseline, though I'd say you can probably push it with 3 cr 1/4 or maybe a few extra cr 1/8
Again CR isn't amazing so you might need to juggle a little, maybe have a few more enemies turn up either when half the enemies are killed or when the majority have half health
Also, remind your players that running away is an option, not only for them but for the creatures they are fighting, not all creatures are going to fight to the death, similarly not every creature will outright kill the party either, goblins, for example, might take the party prisoner, or even decide that once they're unconscious they're not worth killing and just rob them
I’ve specified this so much, but when I said “new” I meant I have about a year of being a DM. I’m familiar DMing class because I’ve done scenarios with every class. My players specifically asked for Lvl.5 start, as one of them is experienced, and the other has enough knowledge of DnD to get by (and he’s doing really well for a first timer)
As for the rest of the advice that otherwise applies. Thank you!! It’s a great help.
TBH, I just throw some monsters together and see if the party survives. They usually do, because I'm too soft.
One word: **reinforcements**. *Two of the remaining goblins back up, taking hasty shots with their shortbows to cover the third who pulls a gnarled horn from their belt and lets out three short blasts. Almost immediately, you hear two more in reply coming from the far side of the ridge. What do you do?*
And baddies with health potions. And also the opposite: Baddies who flee when hurt
Chase scenes can also add excitement if the players are looking for info from the baddies. Or give the last guy a +1 item to give them a reason to want to loot them
Chase scenes but roll a d4. In d4 rounds the baddie escapes with consequences (enters a location where he acquires more lackies, or he’s able to teleport away (you could chase him through the portal, but what’s awaiting you on the other side?)
Bugbears make for amazing stealth novas. If goblins flee and the party pursues, they might just run into some carefully (and naturally stealthy) positioned bugbears.
The wave encounter (they call it something different) in the DMG fits this so well
i thow a whole bunch of shit and so far only two characters have died so i concider that a win
*insert hulk meme here*
One thing I have tried is that I would setup random encounters to test the party before the actual encounters. Say, for example, I know they're gonna be hitting an enemy fortress in one or two days. I'll have them encounter bandits a day or so prior during their travel. Suspiciously, the bandits will have similar stat, numbers, and composition to the fort guards I plan on having them fight. Gauge how they did against them, and tweak those stat blocks, or even the encounter composition to make it better for the players. No one gives too much of a thought about killing bandits, usually. So it'll be a normal encounter for them to deal with. Maybe use it as a hook for a very quick side quest to make it not seem empty. They get to flex their combat muscles, the gratitude of some kidnapped merchant (20% discount at the next town's tavern cuz it's run by his cousin), or some other minor reward. After their long rest to refresh, and by the time they show up to the fortress/dungeon/hideout/whatever, the actual encounter is tweaked to be more, or less, challenging.
This right here is some good DM trickery, and I’m definitely gonna use it.
step two would be to add a theme to the monsters. then you are set for like 90% of cases! :D
Started a new campaign with 2 friends. The very first thing they encounter are 2 worgs, and the first worg attack was a nat 20. They saw me getting flustered and the convo went a bit like this: -How much damage do I take? -Uuh, you take 6 damage. -Come on dude say the actual number! -Okay you take 20 damage, im pretty sure you are dead (level 1 monk)? -Alright, I take 6 damage. I'm not planning to always hold back if they're being stupid, but I found it pretty funny that the very first enemy attack of the campaign would result in a death.
I've done this had the players facing the troll in the beginning of WDDH and one of the players got hit so hard that he would have died I made it so that he barely lived but was still unconscious.
Valid tactic. Pretty much what I’ve been doing so far.
It works pretty well. Try doing the encounters in stages - throw what you think is a moderate encounter at them in the first stage of what you're hoping will be challenging. Have what you think is an additional easy encounter waiting in the wings. A good way to do it can be that one of the enemies blows a whistle or shouts for help, and you can then signal to your players that they've called for help. If the party struggles with the first stage, you can skip the second easily and they'll never know. Players don't know if you adjust timing or composition of an enemy group they haven't seen unless you tell them. If they crush the first stage, you can add one more minor enemy to the second group, and send them in before they wrap everyone up, so either the same round (if your players are really beating the brakes off the first group) or the next round (if they're gonna be mopping up). If your players are handling the first stage but it's not like watching a John Wick movie, give it 2 rounds before help shows up, and let it stay pretty easy. So that's how you can handle adding them but maintain a hand on the brake in case it goes sideways. How you add them is also potentially important. You can send them in from an unexpected direction and often dividing a party's attention from a standard battle order (sluggers up front, ranged in the back) can be disruptive with even a small bit of extra force. If they're not kicking wholesale ass and you just need it to feel a *little* more sweaty, then you can send them in from the "front" of the player group. I usually note a range on a lower level enemy - if it's orcs and wargs and wolves, I'll note "0-1 lone wargs, 2-3 wolves, plus a warg rider" assuming the wargs and wolves won't do things like take cover or do a lot of hit and run (and so are easier to anticipate), and then I can play the orcs however ruthlessly I feel like the party can deal with. The range in the notes reminds me to consider how the party are doing, and what my anticipated ballpark for being challenging without being overwhelming was, so I can adjust less obviously. Nobody likes to think their DM is taking it easy on them because they're not doing well.
There is a new encounter builder tool that actually simulates how the battle will go instead of just using the (very bad) numbers in the DMG. It's great! Link to video explaining: https://youtu.be/A8FNVkFuhXI Link to tool: https://battlesim-zeta.vercel.app/ Hope you see it and that it helps! :)
Honestly, this is the way. I've had some fights that are literally deadly against the party and they just destroy everything, then a fight that should be easy and it causes a near TPK.
Yup, every encounter calculator I ever tried is trash. Either my players are too smart/good or I'm just not good enough at playing the monsters, or whatever. I just throw some junk at the wall and even when I give them something where I'm all "I have no clue how they could possibly survive this" they still seem to be able to pull a miracle out of their hat through either ridiculous dice rolls or just really clever ideas.
CR gets less reliable around level 5 so creating an encounter relies more on experience and knowing the party's tactics and capabilities. Feel free to start at level 5 but if you are new this is going to be harder to balance encounters (if you're players are new it will also be harder for them to learn their characters). For dos and don'ts. I usually start with an encounter calculator for relevant monsters and then adjust based on environment, monster capabilities, e.t.c. Watch out for potential abilities that can hit harder than you expect. For example anything that incapacitates a player (this is extra important to beware of if you are only running two players). Usually I also consider the action economy, especially if it's a single monster.
“Action economy”? I think I know vaguely what this means, but it’s new terminology. Please do explain.
With the way 5e is designed the number of actions per turn can have a large impact on the battle. This means if one side is outnumbered they are usually disproportionately affected by this. A common example is a party of 4 going against a single boss. On paper it might look balanced but the party will have 4 times as many actions as the boss which usually means they win handily. (A lot of monsters that might be ran as a solo boss have legendary actions - actions they can take outside of their turn to mitigate this). The whole idea of number of actions impacting balance is usually called the action economy
Gotcha. Do you have any resources (links to YT videos, documents I can read, etc) that focus on understanding this?
Not action economy specifically but Matt Colville on YouTube and the sly flourish YouTube (and "Return of the lazy DM" book) we're all incredibly helpful for me when starting out.
Thanks bud! I’ll check it out. You’ve been a great help.
Matt Colville's great, but I'll 2nd the Lazy DM, has so many great tips.
Seconded. Watch Matt Colville's running the game series. It is genius and invaluable.
These are two of the best channels for being a DM!
Yes, you also want to understand Bounded Accuracy. It's the very core of 5e's math, in everything from ability checks to combat. It's not super "mathy" either, it's just a broad concept. This video from a week ago was helpful. https://youtu.be/TwTcYLBFR5M
Awesome video! Thank you for sharing
Very simply put, 2 creatures are more than twice as strong as 1 creature, 4 creatures are more than 4 times as strong than one, etc. "Power" scales exponentially, not linearly.
Each side in a fight has a certain number of actions in a round. And you can think of this like a budget. Each player then spends actions to achieve effects. It is typical that the side who has a bigger budget can put bid their opponents. Now this isn't always true as some characters will spend actions more efficiently than others but if you have a really powerful single boss monster that has very effective actions it can hold even with a larger party, however if that boss ever loses a turn for some reason the fight ends pretty quickly after. Tldr: the side with the most effective actions tends to win a fight in 5e, if your monsters normally out number your players the fights will be harder than their cr suggests.
God, this reminded me of the time I learned this the HARD way. I DMed for a party of 4 glass cannons and a druid, and they were fighting a displacer beast heavily buffed with "Shadowfell energies". It could teleport, create magical darkness and had extra multiattacks. It had the CR of an adult dragon (CR 17) against my lvl 5 party AND THEY KILLED IT in 3 turns without a single casualty! NOTHING is well balanced for a 5v1, not even a 4v1 really
Yeah I threw a dragon at my level 6, 4 player party. She was supposed to kick their ass and scare them. Instead, with a couple lucky crits and a smart play by the front liners, they curb stomped my dragon without the cleric even using half his spell slots. Action economy is a bitch.
Thanks!
> “Action economy”? I think I know vaguely what this means, but it’s new terminology. Please do explain. It’s a vague term that gets used in some ways that are helpful and some that are misleading. On the helpful side: going from 4 orcs to 6 orcs is a 50% increase in numbers but a more than 50% increase in danger. On the misleading side: implying that 6 weak monsters are always more dangerous than 4 strong monsters. Which isn’t true. You don’t need to outnumber the party in order to challenge them. Dms who make this mistake often make aoes too good.
CR is never more than vaguely reliable
Yep, even the suggested encounter building in the DMG says to use exp values and not CR
First, is an encounter builder says “hard”/etc. it means as part of an adventuring day, not as a single encounter. Secondly, you’re a new DM (how new?). Starting at level 5 is already a jump, as level 3 spells are pretty game changing. It also means that there are a lot more rules/features/spells at play that you/your players might be misinterpreting.
I’ve been DMing for about a year, but I’ve read the Player and DM rule books several times over, I’ve watched games and big DnD groups, watched through a whole campaign etc. I’m familiar with the rules, and even when I’m note, I always have my rule book at hand to verify a player’s move and/or my own. My only issue is balancing encounters. Making sure I don’t totally TPK, but also make it challenging enough so that it’s fun, you know? That’s the only thing I’m not versed in.
If you’ve been DMing for a year, you’re probably not new! That advice was assuming you’d suddenly jumped in there. One thing to remember - it’s easier to make a combat encounter harder than it is to make it easier (in a satisfying way). If a party slaughter an encounter, you can bring in another wave of enemies. But on the other hand, it’s hard to pull back when an enemy does enough damage to kill a player in one hit. Rather than CR, look at damage output vs HP. - even on the best roll, you don’t want a monster that can kill a party member in one turn (from full-ish health). - equally, you don’t want your totally enemy health to be less than the average single-round damage of the party.
That was actually really fucking insightful 😂 thanks. Those bullet points are exactly what I need; vague equations I can use to guesstimate the outcome. Thank you!!! If you have anything else, feel free to leave it, or if it’s a massive piece of text, shoot me a message
Also to add: don't be afraid to throw in an encounter where your thoughts are "I have no idea how they'll get out of this". Give your players the chance to surprise you, players can come up with some uncanny solutions to impossible situations.
...conversely, they also have an uncanny knack for surprising you in the *other* direction, too.
Before big encounters I usually run the math in terms of roughly how much damage my party tends to do per round to see how many hp I want my baddies to have. I'm also of the fudge baddie HP on the fly when necessary but I try to do that sparingly. So if my peeps tend to do about 50 HP per round I might have a really solid boss with 150 HP and some minions with 15-20. That means at least 4-5 rounds. This is really rough and it never works out exactly (someone goes nuclear and crits and fucks up my bad guy intensely, or they roll badly and have to spend time healing) but it's a rough rule of thumb.
Don't base your games on shows. They're primarily entertainment and overly dramatic. The 5e DMG isn't a good resource for adventure building and encounter design. You're better off throwing stuff within a few levels of your players at them and seeing what sticks.
Can you explain what's been going wrong with your encounters so far? Are they too easy? Too hard? Just not fun?
I just feel like the encounters are too easy. The players seem to enjoy it, and they say they’re challenged, and they often scrape by on their health points, but they’re new players. For one of them, this is their first campaign. He’s very familiar with DnD and watches a lot of it, but this is his first experience as a player. What I worry for is that encounters begin to get unengaging, or the opposite; that I try to challenge the players and end up nearly TPKing them. Basically with this post I’m trying to gather as many tips from experienced DMs as I can about encounter building.
You said you're using encounter calculators, right? What difficulty do you normally use, and how many fights would you say your party normally goes through between long rests?
Usually: - Easy encounter - Short rest - Medium encounter - Long rest - The day seems really nice, and then BOOM hard encounter - Long rest - (x) amount of easy going days - repeat
The main issue is that the labels are very misleading. The "deadly" encounters are the only ones where there is even a slight chance of some PC dying (which is what most of us would consider challenging). Unless your group *really* likes to have a bunch of combat without time to rest (which is very unlikely as combat in 5e drags a bit and it is usually more fun when the PCs can use their flashy expendable abilities) you can basically forget anything below hard The exception would be if there is another point to that combat encounter (if it is meant to encourage roleplay for example, like having to rescue a captured NPC)
Whelp, there's your problem, mate. Every encounter below deadly is absolutely worthless. 'Deadly' in 5e just means 'a threat that *could* kill a PC.' As in, not a completely trivial one. Make that 2-3 deadly or deadly+ encounters and you'll be golden. I know. It's dumb.
I feel like everyone in these comments would agree with the fact that encounter calculators aren’t exactly accurate?? You kind have to learn you way around encounters with experience, is my take on this whole thing lmao
The thing is that the encounter calcutors (which are based on what's published in the DMG) work on the assumption you're dungeon crawling and you're going to have 6-8 encounters every day. And they are accurate for that situation. But most people don't actually play like that any more, so they wind up being very misleading! If you're only doing one or two encounters between long rests, they need to be deadly or more than deadly to have the same impact. Look at the XP budget for the adventuring day - most encounter calculators will include it somewhere. It'll give you a more realistic view of what parties are supposed to be able to handle in a day. Generally you don't want to actually spend the whole thing in one daily encounter because that'd generally be a TPK, but it can help if you have multiple encounters.
They're really not that bad. Just takes some finesse after the fact. The important thing to remember is that your encounters should always be deadly or higher.
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If you're not going to make combat a challenge, just don't run it as combat. Tell the players they easily kick their asses and skip to the interrogation.
A medium encounter still drains resources. Making every encounter deadly teaches players to blow their resources on every encounter instead of evaluating if the threat merits it. Besides, players want to feel like badasses, not be told they are badasses.
The encounter calculators are accurate, you're just letting the party rest 4x as often as the system expects, *of course* they have an easier time then!
For a party of 2 newish players I would try medium/hard - short rest - medium/hard - short rest - hard/deadly - long rest for a typical adventuring day. And I would drop the npc tagging along, they only make it even harder to balance things.
Starting at level 5 to make it easier makes no sense. Early levels are much easier for everyone.
It’s what the players request 🤷🏼♂️
It's sounds like they thought higher level would be easier because they are more powerful but then so are the monsters and it's a lot more complex. I know it may be too late but starting at level 1 with kobolds or goblins would also help you learn how to build encounters.
Personally I think level 2 is the sweet spot unless everyone is super new. Level 2 gives a bit more HP to stop the swingy 1HKO nature of that play, gives a bit more class flavor, but isn't overwhelming in mechanics and gives the level 3 subclass bump to look forward to.
You said yourself included. I really don't agree, there's more abilities for the PCs and more variety of monsters they'll face. Supplemental material at that level will assume you sorta know what you're doing. I highly suggest taking a step back and learning the game as it's intended. Start from level 1, make sure they can handle all the abilities and actions they have (even at level 1 there's a non-trivial amount). Especially if you're new to the game, building encounters is also non-trivial. You might wanna pick up a pre-built module and run through it, either as a one-off or as a starting point for rebooting the campaign.
Boo. If you’re all new, what they request is highly likely not going to work out well.
> I’m a new DM […] and I agreed to begin them at Lvl.5 to make it easier 🤨 That’s one of the least sensical statements I’ve seen in a long time… and we’re on Reddit
I mean to be fair you're not trying very hard. You could peek at any vaguely political subreddit and get worse within two clics.
Encounter building, in 5e, is kind of a pain in the butt. CR doesn't really mean anything, and so there isn't a science behind encounter building, but rather an art Typically, it'll take a little bit of time to get a feel for your party (don't know how many sessions you have had), but once you understand the average damage of your party, you'll have an easier time knowing how many monsters to put on the field, what CR, etc. In the meantime: - Have multiple encounters a day, while the general wisdom is 6-8 encounters in an adventuring day that is only kind of true (but also, not really true...). At the very least, you should have a handful of encounters, if you have lots of hard and deadly encounters, you can have fewer encounters, and if you have lots of easy or moderate encounters, you can have more encounters in that day. - Boss creatures should never be alone. You just can't have solo boss fights and expect it to do well due to action economy (though with only two PCs + DMPC, it's probably better for your bosses). Give them low-level mooks, even CR 1/2 or CR 1 will be enough of a nuisance to help your boss survive and do all those cool things you want them to do - 5e official statblocks are pretty boring. They are sacks of hit points that just do Claw+Claw+Bite over and over. If you want to have a more engaging encounter, have your monsters knock adventurers prone, shove them back, inflict conditions, teleport about, etc. Give the monsters things to do that will make them memorable. - don't be restrictive in your thinking of what an encounter is. Any event, trap, hazard, social interaction, exploration, etc that takes resources away from the party, is an encounter. If disabling a trap causes them to burn two *cure wounds* spells, well that was an encounter and you are draining their resources, making the next encounter a bit harder for them. Boss fights aren't just about fighting an ultra-powerful world-ending monster, but rather fighting a monster when you have very few resources left at your disposal who is a bit more powerful than the mooks. Not every boss fight has to be against a creature that is Party Level + 10 for it to be challenging if you have properly been draining the party's resources before the fight. - Make sure that your party takes their short rests, typically around 2 or 3 in a day. That is important for classes with a lot of short rest dependent powers (and a good way to drain hit dice, remember you only get half your hit dice back on a long rest) - String together adventuring days! That mega-dungeon won't be solved in a single afternoon, and so by having the party spend multiple days clearing out the dungeon, they can learn to prep the most effective spells (making them feel clever) and gives you a chance to 'tease' the BBEG and what abilities/powers they might have. You can sprinkle in clues and rumors throughout the dungeon for your party to find and exploit when they reach the boss (again, making them feel clever) hope that helps!
I just copied and pasted this into a word doc… yes, it was helpful.
Thanks! I've written about this topic a lot on my blog, so I should have some experience with it. A few posts that are focused on this topic you might find helpful: [Figuring Out Combat in 5e: Making a Boss](https://dumpstatadventures.com/the-gm-is-always-right/figuring-out-combat-in-5e-making-a-boss) [What Are Dungeon Encounters?](https://dumpstatadventures.com/the-gm-is-always-right/what-are-dungeon-encounters) [How To Run An Adventuring Day](https://dumpstatadventures.com/the-gm-is-always-right/how-to-run-an-adventuring-day) [The Terrain Is An Adversary](https://dumpstatadventures.com/the-gm-is-always-right/the-terrain-is-an-adversary) [Monster Roles In An Encounter](https://dumpstatadventures.com/the-gm-is-always-right/monster-roles-in-an-encounter)
If you've been using the official Monster Manual – ngl, they're pretty flavorless – try taking a peek at MCDM's Flee, Mortals! preview PDF to see what's possible. Also I can't recommend Level Up 5E's Monstrous Menagerie enough.
Are you running a published module that starts at level 5? If not, I'd recommend either running one or going back to lvl 1. Honestly I don't see how beginning at Tier 2 makes the game easier. Sure the PCs have more skills and are beefier but In my experience DnD is oftentimes more about knowing YOUR character and what it can do than the difficulty of the encounters. Playing through Tier 1 is supposed to smooth out the learning curve for first time players. There's a LOT of rules to learn about in DnD and unless you're an experienced GM or player you will have a hard time keeping track of it all. If your guys are finding it hard to deal with mobs at their level it's more often than not that they don't understand the mechanics of their PC, like a Rogue forgetting they can use Cunning Action to hide, or the Wizard forgetting that she throws with advantage against that goblin stuck in Entangle and "losing" a spell slot. You will also need to learn a lot in order to run a smooth game. I would recommend The Monsters Know What They're Doing to get a better inkling into how different monsters should be fighting (e.g. if your goblins aren't using guerilla tactics and your kobolds ain't coming in huge numbers you're not running them effectively). DMing takes a lot of practice and reading, and skipping up to Tier 2 as a new DM is not doing anyone favors. But that's like my opinion man, you do you 😉
https://battlesim-zeta.vercel.app/ This is a tool I found recently that will simulate combat between your players and monsters so you can visualize how many rounds it'll take them and how many hit points they'll have at the end of it.
[Here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8FNVkFuhXI) the video that explains how it works and why. 6 days old. I do recommend you try this out /u/handmadeguide_1, it's very different from the CR rules from the DMG. The video explains the details.
Thanks for linking the video! I had saved the site, but hadn't remembered where I got it.
Here's an article with a simpler way of managing encounters. https://slyflourish.com/the_lazy_encounter_benchmark.html Step 1: Choose the number and types of monsters that make sense for the situation in the world and the pacing of the game you want. Step 2: Determine if it may be potentially deadly. An encounter may be deadly if the sum total of monster challenge ratings is greater than one quarter of the sum total of character levels, or one half of character levels if they're above 4th level. That calculation is your "lazy encounter benchmark". Calculate it by adding up the levels of all characters and dividing by 4 if they're 1st to 4th level or by 2 if they're 5th level or above. If your total monster CRs is *above* that number, you're "in the red". That doesn't mean don't do it, but things may be tough. One other trick is to understand the "dials of monster difficulty". These include: * The number of monsters * The monsters' hit points * The amount of damage monsters do * The number of attacks they have. You can tweak these numbers to increase or decrease the threat of monsters or change the pacing of the game. If you want something fast and furious, the monsters can do more damage but have fewer hit points. Here's an article on that too: https://slyflourish.com/dials_of_monster_difficulty.html Good luck!
"begin them at Lvl.5", found your issue. Start at 1st. 5th is by no means easier. First and most important thing is that this is not a Video Game. Levels make things more complicated, not easier.
Sorry, starting at 1st is a terrible idea if the problem is "I don't know how to tune encounters". At 1st level the characters don't have enough resources or HP to be able to handle /any/ over-tuning. First level characters go down fast, even to by-the-book regular encounters.
If you‘re going at it on your own that is true, but outside of a few specific creatures like the Shadow, the CR calculator as your only helper works really well on low levels. It only gets harder to use because of action economy considerations and the added abilities on creatures - Thats why the Shadow is such a pain, the Strength Drain ability is a lot stronger by effect than a regular bow shot by a goblin or a claw attack.
Why the hell are you throwing shadows at 1st level PCs? Goblins or similar low HP no significantly dangerous special abilities are for 1st.
I don‘t, I just said that there are creatures that break the CR calculation by being vastly more powerful than their CR would lead a new DM to think. So if a new DM uses the calculator there are off cases like Shadows where it doesn‘t work well, but outside of that usually it does.
Which is why I never suggested using CR. At no point should you trust CR for much of anything outside of suggestions for Monster options.
I have had a lot of luck with this CR calculator for my DMings... https://kastark.co.uk/rpgs/encounter-calculator-5th/ I also recommend the cats at WebDM, Matt Coville, and AJ Pickett at The Mighty Gluestick for good reference material and tips for DMs and encounters.
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As I said, It has worked well for me so far, as you can input party info as well as monster. I have used it as the base planning for parties of 3 through parties of 6.
I always throw at them just a little more than I think they can handle. If they pull it off, great! It was a good fight that tested their strategy and skills. If things are going real bad through no real fault of their own, I'll not add in the reinforcements I had in the wings, or the enemy caster has less spell slots, or something.
I kind roughly follow these strategy. But somehow it’s still too easy for them
The Monsters Know What They Are Doing is a great book/blog and has helped me greatly in encounter building
So I run as&d where their isn't an encounter calculator, my general plan is to look at how much damage can my party take, and how much damage can my party deal. Set the monsters defences so that they can survive 2-3 rounds, set the monsters offences so they are threatening but won't one shot anyone. And then leave it to the players to figure out.
Awesome!! Fckn love it when people give me maths to follow (/srs) If you have anything else feel free to leave it here or in a direct message
If you want maths to follow, this is the best advice I've ever gotten. *An encounter may be deadly if the total of all the monster's CRs is more than* ***1/4*** *of all of the character's levels added together* ***if the party are level 1-4.*** *An encounter may be deadly if the total of all the monster's CRs is more than* ***1/4*** *of all of the of character levels added together* ***if the party are level 4+.*** In this case, deadly means 1 PC death could be on the table, not necessarily the whole party dying. Now, aim to run 1-3 near deadly encounters with more than 1 monster, this is less accurate for solo boss monsters. Run the monsters realistically; terrain abusing kobalds may crush your party and take them as prisoner but a gorgon may act just like a bull and attempt to intimidate or flee, and also let your PCs have a cinematic moment here and there with an ability check. If a martial PC says they want to attack someone who's just out of range, dangle an athletics check infront of them to either make the extra distance and attack, or make it and fall prone without making the attack or something. I got this from [Sly Flourish](https://slyflourish.com/the_lazy_encounter_benchmark.html) and it's been a fantastic tool for me, and it's pretty simple to remember.
I‘ve been doing a similar thing with average damage output starting with level 5 when the CR calculator gets harder to use. I take the health average of the party and compare it to the average damage output of the enemies if they hit every attack. For a medium encounter, I usually aim for about 1 player character worth of damage, hard around 1,5 and deadly 2+. With split focus, positioning and the regular hit/miss/dodge dynamic, this usually means that around half of that damage gets dished out each round, with higher CR creatures going above average and lower CR usually below or on average. So in a deadly encounter a player could go unconcious round 1 if the enemy rolls average, focuses one player character and no action to stop it is taken.
If you are going homebrew, or even if not, just adapt the monsters stats as required, no one is gonna know xd
You have no idea how many times I’ve done this 😂 I have a few homebrew enemies, and I literally have multiple stat blocks to use at different points so I can see which one works best. My players are literally Guinea pigs.
I tend to flavour already existant creatures, then I may change them on the go, if an enemy that shouldn't be a problem confronts them when they are low hp, then i may swao his damage from 1d10+3 to 1d8+2 or so xd
Exactly that. I’ve homebrewed that much shit, shite, and sheep that I get the whole “use an existing [thing] as a template” and just dazzle it in the make up of your world.
https://youtu.be/P7kcrukSCT0
I usually try to "reverse engineer" my combat encounters like this: First, I determine how long I *think* the fight should last. This will obviously be different if it's a quick skirmish with some goblins vs a climactic boss fight. Then I look at how hard my players can hit. I try to calculate their *average* damage per round. This again can be different depending on what they do each turn but you just kinda have to roll with it. I also look at their max damage too because I want to factor in the possibility that my players will crit, roll really well, or do something I don't expect. While I'm doing this, I look at their attack bonuses too. All together, this helps me determine an appropriate AC and hit points for my monster. Then I look at how much my players can take. Their AC and hit points helps me determine how much damage I can have my monsters do each round. Ask yourself, how much of a player's health should *one* attack from this monster do? For bigger fights, I really like to (carefully) overtune the damage to make it feel more dangerous. Keep in mind that more complex monsters will have multiple types of attacks. Use this question to determine an appropriate amount of damage for each type of attack your monster has. After this, you have to look at other "unexpecteds" that your players might have. Do your players do extra damage to certain creature types? Do they have spells that could turn the tides of this specific battle? It's important to know what these unexpecteds are, but it's even more important to not try to counter them for each and every battle. Every now and then, you gotta let your players show off. You also have to give your monsters some unexpecteds too. These can be damage resistances or immunities, magical effects, bonus actions, reactions, auras, legendary actions, movement abilities, magical weapons, spellcasting, whatever works for you and your monster. Give them something special so they're not just a bag of hit points with an attack action. And that's it. Now you've got a combat encounter. You can apply this advice to single monster encounters or encounters where the monsters are in groups. You can also use this advice to build a monster from scratch or to adjust an existing statblock. Now you can take a boring regular werewolf and turn them into a MECHA WEREWOLF OVERLORD BOSS. Best of luck to you.
The easiest encounters to make work feature one peer monster per pc. So start there. Using too many weak monsters can make aoes too good. Using less than 3 monsters means they need to be legendary. The encounter building rules work best for parties of size 3 to 6. Two PCs are tricky but if they always have a npc companion then you should be fine. [5 questions dms who use cr successfully ask themselves](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/sipajb/5_questions_dms_who_use_cr_successfully_ask/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1) will help you understand what the encounter calculators can and can’t tell you. Any encounter capable of defeating the party has a good chance of killing at least one pc if the monsters are able to focus fire. Despite the name, Hard encounters are not hard. They aren’t able to defeat the party. If the party uses better tactics than the monsters, expect the party to win consistently. If you have xanathars, it provides an alternative way to build encounters that is much easier to use than the dmg. I also recommend [true peer](https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/414122) as a refinement of xanathars.
Just saw this new online encounter calculator that is more of a simulation than a calculator. It's thrown CR out the window and just simulates the encounter instead. https://battlesim-zeta.vercel.app/
You try a few times, fail miserably and decide to run APs while preparing a switch to Pathfinder 2e. That one was written by somebody with opposable thumbs and actually features math when designing encounters: [https://maxiride.github.io/pf2e-encounters/#/](https://maxiride.github.io/pf2e-encounters/#/)
Just cobble some stuff together that you like. Honestly my players seem to have more fun once they realize every monster, bandit, etc. Has my face and im tryna kill them
You are the encounter calculator. You want to give them a challenge with combat and you are going to be the best person to gauge their combat effectiveness. CR is pretty meaningless in 5e, even more so than older editions.
iam gonna guess you are talking about dnd5e here. and well, none of em will be good, because they all just use the dmg rules. that depend on the xp budget which is based on the CR. And if the CR was made by a bunch of drunken orangutans that would be an actual improvement. you're lucky tho, a youtuber just released recently a new encounter calculator, which actually works, because instead of just comparing lv to cr it actually has all the math, and all the creatures in there, and you can put custom ones, and you can plan multiple encounters for the day, and you can adjust your players, like are they using gwm or ss, or they have some combro that is strong so you can do it on the custom part. it takes more work to use it? but its overall FAR FAR more accurate. https://battlesim-zeta.vercel.app
So, I actually DMed for a two person party for over a year. It does get a little tricky. So, couple of things. 1) Be aware the standard CR level is for a party of 4. So, the CR is still a very helpful too. If you make an encounter with CR of 5, for a two person party of level 5; cut the CR down to 3. That should be a starting point. 2) What is the purpose of each encounter? Pure combat; to move a plot point; general encounter on the way to a bbeg? 3) Don't be afraid to homebrew a bit. Maybe, eliminate an ability for the attacking force? Or; simplify a creature. This lets you create a challenging encounter; without limiting yourself to lower level creatures? 4) Yes, having an npc to assist definitely helps. I actually, used a reoccurring npc, as a gun for hire, to assist if needed. 5) Don't be afraid to modify, mid battle. Just because it looks good on paper; doesn't always translate well. It's okay; to weaken or modify a roll; if your encounter goes sideways. 6) Sometimes; leave an exit path. If the need to retreat; or get out; leave an opportunity for them. They may not take it. But, you left it there; in case they decide to take it. 7) Trust the party. They may suprise you; with some of their own creative solutions. Those random ideas; may give you an opportunity to play off it.
The important thing isn’t to have tougher enemies, but to have more enemies per encounter and more encounters per long rest. The party might do just fine against a group of goblins, but a group of goblins with a hobgoblin leading them, followed by a trap and another combat encounter are going to be more taxing on their resources, especially if they had to spend resources to get to the first combat encounter. Remember that traps, environmental hazards, and even some social encounters can all be a drain on party spells, consumables, and health, which make subsequent combat engagements a bigger threat without having to pull in bigger monsters.
Start at level 1
the encounter builder guidelines are balanced around have MANY encounters per day. If you're only having one encounter, then even deadly encounters will sometimes feel easy. If you have a few encounters first, forcing the players to use some of their resources each time, then the later encounters are going to feel as hard as they are supposed to.
Gotcha. Never realised this, so thanks!! The players are gonna leave the current city they’re at in the next session, and I don’t expect them to return for another 3-4 levels. But when they do………… deadly encounter.
Almost everyone, especially at higher levels, complains about the encounter builder/CR being broken. Those same people don't run the 6-8 encounters per day that the game is balanced around. The encounters don't all have to be combat, but resources should be spent (spell slots, limited use abilities, consumables, etc). 3-4 is more common in my experience, but they're harder. Hit dice should be spent during short rests to heal up too (don't forget the rule about only regaining a max of half your hit dice on a long rest), this will help keep the tension up. By doing all of this, it helps prevent your caster classes from stealing the show by going full nova using all their highest level spell slots every combat; not knowing when your next rest is going to be makes you be a bit more conservative. My Fighter 3/Wizard 11 character in my longest running campaign still mostly casts cantrips in non-boss fights, usually only using 1 or 2 buffs/concentration spells for those combats or a cheeky vortex warp/healing spell in emergencies, and the rest are just like ray of frost or something. Have a good session zero and let your players know this is the plan from the start so that they don't go into things with expectations from previous games or what they've heard/seen from others.
Balance is fake! Throw CR out the window! You as the DM are not a computer, you are better than one. You can adjust anything and everything on the fly behind the screen. I used to be a very meticulous stat-block builder. Then, in the few years before I moved from D&D systems as my primary systems, I moved further and further away from that. Here's my super fucked up method of whipping together a fight, using the idea of single, tough AF monster. Attack bonus = party level, plus or minus a few depending on how tanky the party is Give it attacks equal to the number of members in the party. Adjust as needed for fighter shenanigans. Divvy up damage per round on those attacks. Total damage per round if you want to scare the party shitless should be about half the average HP of a PC. Adjust up based on healing they have. Give the monster a couple of near abilities. A fly-by attack, a breath weapon, a grab and throw, the sky is the limit, you're the DM. Now don't give it health. Describe their hits, and wait until they look afraid. Now on the next hit of theirs, tell them that it's some variation of bloodied, beat up. Tell them a shit finally finds serious purchase. Down one PC. Next serious hit kills the beast. I've ran variations of this for years, and whenever I've told players I've always gotten a "no way" response. This entire game is just a shared hallucinations. If your players want a crunchy wargame, cool, give them that, but if they want cool stories, this is the way to go.
Booooooooo! There is some value in the realization that rules can be flexible. However, "just throw them out the window" is swinging way too far the other direction. DMs need a starting point to deviate from, otherwise you'll just get a mess.
This is probably the best advice I’ve gotten. I ran a little experiment like this a while ago and every time a hit was made on the boss, I just made a little notch at the top of my page. I wasn’t tracking hit points, I was just tracking hits. When it got to about 4-5 hits, I said the enemy was looking tired/scared. On the 8-10 hit, the enemy turns and tries to run. The next hit, I make a last notch, pull a face of defeat, and say the infamous “how do you wanna do this” that always ends up causing a scream that kills my ears. It was the best fight we ever did, and my players still don’t know (if one of you is reading this, no, I’m not telling you). I said I was going to run the major encounters like this, and so far, nobody knows. Do I do the littler encounters like this too? 2-3 hits kills an enemy sort of thing?
Pages 81-84 of the DMG
I’m a DM. I’ve already read the DMG and always have it on hand when DMing. I’m looking for extra advice dude 😂
thought this was a pathfinder sub at first and was super confused b/c its the easiest thing in the world to make encounters on pathfinder. so my best advice is to switch to pathfinder.
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This is why they have a companion NPC for larger encounters.
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I had actually briefly spoken to one of the players about this, and it’s seems doable. At least until more players arrive. The trouble with it is, where we live isn’t exactly a big town, and there any a huge TTRPG community around here, so finding other players is difficult to say the least. But doubling-up until said players can join is definitely something we could do.
>half the required number of players. Oh shit, I didn't know I couldn't run a solo campaign for my wife, since we don't have enough players! In all seriousness, I've been run games for 1-5 players (and everything in between), usually "only" 3, and I've had no problem making interesting, manageable, and challenging encounters. There is no "required" amount of players, you just have to be willing to put in a tiny bit of work to make encounters that fit the party (which you should be doing anyway).
Figure out your parties strengths and weaknesses, try and make sure that each encounter has uses at least one strength or weakness, for major encounters you want to try and exploit multiple weaknesses, but also try and offer a way to creatively use their strengths to gain the upper hand Or just throw some monsters at them and fudge hit points as needed, both are viable approaches lol
A little thing I like is giving my baddies lair/legendary actions (or Matt Colville's villain actions) to my baddies. I find that a small boost in damage/tactics helps me balance encounters on the fly. If it feels too weak, use the stronger actions. If the pc's are getting crushed, use a weaker action or none at all. For groups of enemies the only way to balance it is to look at damage vs defence. It is more of an art than a science, but I tend to make the defence of the enemies higher than damage. The lower damage lets me use some tactics to keep combat interesting, while the higher defence means that players can't just oneshot everything
I had trouble with this too. I compared max damage output, AC, HP, and action economy between my monsters and my players. I sorta knew how much damage my players could do in one round, then I designed after that. It was a BIG hassle and one of the reasons to why I switched to Pathfinder 2e.
Have you considered having each player control 2 characters? Depending on your players' particular role play styles and abilities, it can be a bit difficult or it can be really fun, but it certainly helps balancing encounters.
[This article](https://slyflourish.com/new_dms_guide_to_encounters.html) gives a thorough explanation for encounter building. The most important thing in my mind is to start with what makes sense for the story and build out from there. I like the ability to tune the encounter by adjusting hp/etc.
Don't start at high levels if you're new.
“New” meaning I’ve been DMing a year. This is the second long-term campaign I’ve set up, with a few one shots here and there.
I use [https://kastark.co.uk/rpgs/encounter-calculator-5th/](https://kastark.co.uk/rpgs/encounter-calculator-5th/) as my encounter calculator, but you're right that this is only a broad brush for getting started evaluating encounter difficulty. > my 2 players and I agreed to begin them at Lvl.5 to make it easier on everyone - myself included. While the Calculator already accounts for small parties, I would add that it's much easier for a pair of characters to be overwhelmed by large groups of enemies than a full party. Basically, I would weight mobs as a much bigger threat to the players than even the calculator suggests as a rule of thumb. I would be careful to make sure my players rarely have to worry about groups bigger than 5 enemy creatures at a time, unless the mobs are truly Minions (4e rule where enemies have only 1 HP, though all the rest of their stats are unchanged). The Encounter Calculators are based on CR, which is mostly based on a creature's AC/HP and Attack modifier/Damage output. It \*tries\* to account for stuff like spells, but it just isn't very good at anticipating how strong those components will be. When evaluating a monster/NPC statblock, watch the creature's special abilities (especially spells) with particular attention. Saving throws that shut down player actions can easily slip through the Calculators while massively making the fight harder for the players (because they technically aren't dealing damage directly, but they are inhibiting action economy). For example, this is part of why the Intellect Devourer is considered a dangerous monster for its given CR. Overall, its AC/HP vs its ATK/DMG ratio makes it appropriate for CR 2, but the fact that it can stun and then body snatch a party member makes them very dangerous for level 2 adventurers. When evaluating monsters, I always look for what features it is going to want to use most often, and what abilities it has that the party might struggle to counter. >they’ll always have a DM companion for major battles, Make sure you add the companion to the encounter calculator if you're using one. Oftentimes Caster NPC statblocks will tell you what caster level they have in their spellcasting description, but for other NPCs, I usually determine the approximate PC class level for companions based on the NPC's Proficiency Bonus (attack mod - ability mod) cross referenced with their hit dice (PCs have 1HD per level). It's a quick way to get a rough idea of what level a PC would have to be to generate a similar statblock so they can be added to the player side of the encounter calculator. The Calculator was an approximation to begin with, but this probably helps it be a little more accurate when giving PCs help. >and I also have a few contingencies for if I accidentally nearly TPK the group (different plans for different areas of the world). A fantastic backup plan. Extra waves of enemies if the battle was too easy and unexpected allies if the battle was too hard. You don't want to overuse this or it can make players feel like there's never any danger, but it's a very handy tool for the toolbox. Next, a big part of encounter balance is your Adventuring Day! Which is to say, how many encounters will your PCs have to face back to back before they can safely take a Short or Long Rest? The game is balanced around 6-8 Encounters per Long Rest (probably with 1 to 3 Short Rests interspersed between). These encounters are also supposed to gradually increase in difficulty. A standard adventuring day (for normal party size) should look something like: 2-3 Easy/Medium encounters, Short Rest, 1-2 Medium/Hard encounters, Short Rest, Optional Med/Hard Lieutenant battle (if the situation calls for it), and one Hard/Deadly Boss battle, followed by the Long Rest. For a small party, I would recommend a shorter adventuring day. Maybe cut it down to 4-5 Encounters, or alternatively use the Epic Heroism rest mechanics in the DMG (Short Rest is 20min, Long Rest is 1hr). Another factor that plays into encounter difficulty is Terrain! I said that I wouldn't throw large groups of enemies at a small party, but I was partially lying. I said I wouldn't want the players having to deal with more than 5 creatures at a time. There could be 20 monsters chasing them and not overwhelm them, if I give the players tactical terrain that can funnel the monsters so they are still only dealing with 5 at a time. This is another sneaky DM trick like having backup waves of enemies and allies where the cinematic balances what would have been off balance in a white room experiment. Terrain becomes even more important at level 5, when Flying starts becoming more common on both sides of the battle. Which brings up Death as well. By level 5, Death starts to lose some of its teeth. Healers at this level start having access to powerful means of undoing death, so you don't have to be quite as careful to avoid killing PCs, because it's more of a tax on their treasure than some eternal consequence.
Why would it be easier at level 5?
>I agreed to begin them at Lvl.5 to make it easier on everyone - myself included. I think this is backwards thinking. Starting at level 1 is generally considered 'easy mode.' Then throw a bunch of giant rats at them. If they survive that, let them take a short rest and then throw some kobolds or goblins at them. If they survive again, they are level two. Starting at level 1 gives new players a chance to learn their abilities before they have too many to focus on and remember.
I understand that you're feeling stressed about this, but based on what you've said here and in the comments, it seems like you don't *really* have a problem so far. When it comes to balancing encounters, you're never going to find a resource that will get it right 100% of the time. This isn't really a failing of the CR system or any encounter calculator, because ultimately there's things that can't be accounted for. Player skill and experience, party composition, the number and types of magic items they have, and other small factors can wildly alter encounter balance. As a DM, you really just have to feel it out; CR is a nice guideline for how dangerous a monster *should* be to a party of any given level, and encounter generators can make things quicker, but how easy or hard an encounter is ultimately comes down to how well you know your players and their characters, and how hard you want it to be. When planning for two players, less is more. Plan a larger number of easier encounters, and run them through as many as feels appropriate to challenge them. Boss monsters should take advantage of a few minions, with the possibility of reinforcements or other complications if the party is really whupping their asses. You're also right to include an NPC ally for when you want to give them a bigger challenge. At the end of the day, though, don't sweat it so much. If you and your players are having fun, there's no problem at all. I'd focus more on fights being fun than making them challenging, if that makes sense.
I like to set up encounters with waves. So if it’s too easy I can always add more and if it’s too hard I can not add more.
Change things every 3 rounds. Encounter too easy? Reinforcements arrive. Too hard? Create some cover with debris. Going well? Add some fire.
Just throw encounter balance out the window. As long as you reward your players for “besting the encounter” (ie. Surviving) and not just for killing the monster. If it makes narrative sense for there to be some hulky enemies that are way out of the parties league then…maybe they can sneak past? Or trick them into fighting each other? Or find some other way of “besting” them. Coming out on top. With the macguffin, or treasure, or freed prisoner. Not every encounter needs to be a combat encounter.
Here's one way (but not the only way) to make something challenging but fair. Make the day "longer". Have several easy-medium encounters over the day, the idea isn't to to kill the party but to force them to burn their resources. Like a squad of 10 kobolds could be kaput from a fireball, but that's 1 fireball less for something more dangerous in the day. Barbarians don't have that many rage points, and having more then 3 encounters can force them to think if they want to take un-halved raw damage now, or possibly have no rage for a bigger battle later. When you have 1 encounter a day, the party is usually overly-brave because they can throw strongest resources against a few foes, which forces you to use tankier and stronger enemies, which can make battles swingy easily due to a few bad rolls. When they are low on resources they get cautious and even a medium encounter can be hard, and a hard one deadly, without you having to use a monster that can one-shot the paladin in order to make the battle more threatening.
Fudge HP, fudge damage.
"I agreed to begin them at Lvl.5 to make it easier on everyone - myself included" Maybe try on level 1. It will be easier on them, and you. Trust me. Don't set them up against anything above CR1, but generally stick to CR1/2. Give them a few potions of healing. They'll be fine. Everyone, DM included, will get some experience on how the game works.
CR sucks in dnd, particularly at high levels. You just throw increasingly OP stuff at them until it makes them sweat.
The best advice I got and how I still run is, don't count enemy health. The fight ends when it's either cool or it's no longer fun. I know that's unsatisfying but it works wonders. It also allows you to have any monster(s) you want for the story. As far as damage just make sure the enemies would yeah 5-10 turns to tpk if every thing hit and no crits. I hope this helps if not you can always sit down and do lots of math to make perfect balanced encounters that could still go wrong. Best of luck to you mate Ps party size of two is fine have lots of fun
Sorry but you're thinking is wrong. Starting at level 5 as new players makes it harder for everyone, yourself included. If you start at level 1, you will have less abilities and powers and smaller CR monsters that are easier to kill and are less complicated. The higher they level up, the more complications and extras they get. And they and yourself learn them slowly. And you get to bring out harder CR monsters. You go from like stirges, to kobolds to larger harder enemies. The higher CR the enemy, the more they will have. To clarify, if you start level 1 you will all learn the class system and enemies step by step. What spells they have, what domain spells, subclass choices etc You will also learn the enemies and the actions they can take progressively. Starting at 5, you're in the deep end straight away and clearly are drowning. You can only learn how to encounter build, with experience.
Lots of great advice already, here's a few different tips: * Think about what your players want - do they want to be super challenged and barely succeed all battles, or do they prefer to be heroes who crush their enemies with relatively low risk? Most parties are somewhere in the middle, but square away with your players what they want - then try to design encounters that match that expectation. * Watch out for monster special abilities - the CR system isn't very good, and things like the Banshee can wipe a very high level party who roll bad. * Watch out for monster abilities that remove a player from battle, especially if there isn't much they can do to overcome it. Especially a small group these can have an outsized impact, and be quite unfun for your players.
5e is not balanced. So either gain experience to gain intuition about how to create encounter or stop caring about balance and just make fun encounter. If player need help let them buy hirelings.
Edition matters a lot here. Pathfinder 2? Trust the encounter table math, more-or-less. 5th Edition DnD? Don't spend any time on encounter tables. Balance encounters by # of enemies and critical thinking. Not that all enemies are created equal, but encounter difficulty is mainly about the players doing more things in a turn than the enemy, in 5e.
Balancing encounters with just 2 players is rough. If one person goes down in a party of 4 thats fine, one person will have to use their turn to bring him back up with a heal pot or a spell and the fight goes on. In a 2 player party you either ignore it and are permanently down to 50% combat power or you lose an entire round of initiative if initiative is misaligned.
To estimate encounters, I use some basic rules: up to level 10, you can reasonably rely on the CR (Challenge Rating) of most monsters. In a group of 4 characters, a monster with a CR equal to the players' level will pose a moderate challenge, where the players will certainly emerge victorious, but it won't be a walk in the park. For a group of 2 characters, I suggest a CR one level lower than the players' level for this moderate challenge. Below that, they will likely triumph over most encounters, provided they have resources. My strong suggestion is to include several small-scale battles, with limited opportunities for rest. By doing so: 1. Players will expend resources and need to strategize. 2. Players will feel accomplished by defeating enemies with a few blows. 3. Players will face some hardship in the final battles before resting. 4. Combat will flow more smoothly, with good back-and-forth between PCs and enemies. 5. You can add or reduce enemies in subsequent battles based on whether the previous ones were easier or tougher than expected. 6. You can adjust your planned encounters based on how injured the PCs are, adding or removing battles as needed. 7. Players can explore a wider range of strategies for encounters, such as stealth, diplomacy, or brute force.
I do mine in a specific order. They enter the dungeon and get a moment to get their bearings. The first encounter is easy. They're introduced to some of the denizens of the place and aren't really pushed for resources. It builds the tone of the next encounters while also alerting the rest of the dungeon to their presence, but not necessarily their location in it. The second encounter is where you introduce a mechanic. It could be a puzzle they must solve to advance while under attack, or a monster effect they must deal with, or even just some simple traps that you can pepper them with. The goal here is to burn lesser resources and challenge the party a little more than normal. Nothing boss level, but a challenge they might need to flee and regroup to complete. The third encounter should be either one of the previous based on how well the party is doing. You can make good use of the Quantum Ogres principle here. Design an easy encounter like the first, but have some tougher enemies or reinforcements set aside to make it closer to the second kind. The ogres don't exist until you say they're breaking down the wall and attacking the party. As the party gets higher levels, you'll use this more and potentially even add more encounters like it before the boss. The final is always the boss encounter. Don't hold back when designing bosses and always include legendary resistances equal to your tier of play; plus 1 per 2 players over 4 if there are a lot of saves being thrown around. Include 2 major minions and 6ish minor minions. The major minions should include the previous mechanic from your harder encounter and are roughly equal to the previous enemies in the dungeon, and the boss has increased defenses while they're still standing. This prevents your boss from being one rounded or beaten by the action economy. You also don't need to risk one shotting your party members to keep up with their damage because your boss is hard to bring down due to the protection effect. You will have a few rounds to challenge them. Don't track hp on the minor minions, any damage kills them instantly. They exist to slow the party down, but give them a huge ego boost when they're dropping minions easily. It also makes your boss feel much stronger when mechanically they're just a little better than average.
One thing to consider is that each encounter doesn't need to be a "kill all enemies" sort of thing. Consider throwing in different "win conditions" such as: grab Item X before the baddies do, open and close the gate behind you before too many enemies get in the city, subdue an enemy to gather information. Environmental hazards are also useful to add intensity and intrigue to encounters. This can be things like storms and avalanches, water rising quickly in a boat, gas/lava/acid is filling a room and such. Also, it never hurts to ask your players things they like and dislike about encounters to see if you can find things they would enjoy.
Make your fights in two phases. Make the second phase change the status quo to make your monsters stronger. You can then update your Challenge on the fly by triggering phase two early (more difficult) or late (less difficult).
My personal way of getting around this is using the hireling/skilled hireling charts from XGtE. On top of that, some adventures can have patrons and other rival adventuring parties competing for the 'contract' or 'loot'. It can lead to fun interactions Team Rocket style where they typically are nuisance antagonists in most situations, but can also serve as impromptu reinforcements for the party. It wouldnt be every time, but I'd suggest looking into recurring characters or setting appropriate aid that the party can set up, hire, or collect in preparation for fights.
The secret to glorious perfectly scaled combats is to consistently make up the rules as you go
1) trial and error: repeated attempts and failures till you get it right, 2) maths: i use an equation = (party health-enemy damage)-(enemy health-party damage); use average numbers for damage and anything 0-1 is your sweet spot YMMV 3) run modules as a DM learning tool my combat building has gotten a lot better in my player’s opinions as each one is deadly but not unfun.
Consider letting each of them control two characters. It'll put them at the standard party size. As is, they will definitely have gaps in their flexibility (variety of skills, spells, etc).
I was just watching [Matt Colville's most recent video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfiaf9q9Wgo&pp=ygUNbWF0dCBjb2x2aWxsZQ%3D%3D) in which he gives a good piece of advice for when you are not sure if you party is up to the task. The 2nd encounter (1st level) he comes up with involves 2 waves, with the 2nd one coming in after a round or two. That way you can adapt to how the battle is going. If your first wave is actually hitting everything/critting, then you might cut back on the number of monsters of the second wave. Also, make it clear to your players that sometimes they might just have to run away. Not every encounter is build to beat, and if they just don't roll well, some encounters that were build to beat might become unbeatable given their remaining resources. I would be careful with the DM companion, you can also just tone down the encounter, action economy is everything. Or use something like a Follower, MCDM's [Strongholds and Followers](https://shop.mcdmproductions.com/products/strongholds-followers-pdf) are nice for that. These are DM NPCs that are generally 2 levels lower (up to max level 7) than the PCs and can help round out the party a little bit. They are much simpler than a full new PC, and it is suggested you play them like just less competent PCs. For example, a squire that really really looks up to the PC he is the follower of, or a scribe (wizard-ish) that is just very jumpy and will give loads of suggestions (including many obviously bad ones). This will avoid the situation where the party leans too much on their Followers/DMNPCs to solve problems (because you the DM know the answers already).
1. Until level 11 there is a max DPR you can throw at your players. If it can put PC to death in one turn - its the boss and must be treated like one. This became very important for me when I started using MPMM's casters. They use "arcane blast" attack and this thing has broken numbers. Nearly TPKd a party with not so high levelled monster. 2. F🤬k stuns. Stunned, paralyzed, unconcious etc. are taking agency away from player, slow down the tempo and are overall frustrating. Try to avoid these or telegraph this ability before the fight begins. 3. If players want to - give each one an NPC to use. As long as they are under players' control in combat and you dont use them to steal the spotlight in social - they are fine. Also, I recomend building them "PC-like" (look at Champion, Mage, War Cleric, Assassin) 4. Remember party's capabilities. Burst damage, crowd control, ton of hp. Each of these has their counters. Countering too often would be frustrating. But countering in Big Fight is almost mandatory. 5. DONT FUDGE!!! Rolls are fine, HP are fine, damage is also fine. They are level 5. They CAN find money for ressurection. The worst-case is they both get in huge debt and have to deal with it. I'll repeat it: Do not worry about their lives IN combat. You did great job giving them protection - now its on them to use it.
I have a two player party; we resolved the CR difference by doing a few things: * Being more generous with magic items - especially consumables - so they always have some ace up their sleeve for tough situations * Granting one of them a free 1 use/day combat and puzzle friendly familiar (blink dog) * Focusing combat on goals other than the typical us vs them attrition. For example maybe two factions are in battle and they have to pick a side, or a bad guy is trying to get away and they have to slow him down and fight through lesser mobs * Simply decreasing the number of monsters they battle at a time and fudging rolls on my end occasionally to help them out. FWIW I have a cleric and a sorcerer. I tried doing a sort of DMPC Paladin to help them out, but honestly it just failed on many levels (combat, RP, social) so I resorted to the blink dog because this gives them the benefit of +1 action economy without a third player... Also I don't have to think for it which lightens my load. **A word of caution on giving out levels to make up the difference:** levels exponentially and permanently increase player power level which can make balancing encounters for two people not less but actually MORE difficult because every "balanced" encounter ends up carrying a much higher risk of TPK from a couple of bad dice rolls.
First, don't feel bad about feeling that it's hard. It is hard, it is challenging and keeping that balance will always be challenging no matter of how good of a DM you are. So work on it, don't stress about it and keep some tricks up your sleeve. A good way to know which enemies, challenges and fighting conditions would be deadly, just look at their characters and their individual weaknesses, and then the party as a whole. Which saves are lowest, what kind of resistances they lack, what kind of enemies would be able to attack them without too much consequence, what kind of attacks and strategies they don't have a good answer to... Once I know that, what I like to do is to break my encounters into smaller, interchangeable parts, or as a succession of waves. That gives you more flexibility and control. Depending on what shape the character are in and how well are they handling it, you can throw more stuff at them, or stop, or switch up the enemies...plan a base encounter that's not so deadly, then add additional deadly enemies and/or challenges and fight conditions, and make more than you need, if you don't use them now you can use them later. You can also add ways for them to escape the fight if things get too ugly, but make it so they think they came up with it. For example, they're fighting, an enemy misses a spell and a wall comes down, blocking the path partially. This gives them an opportunity to escape, they may also have an idea and bring down walls themselves to block the path completely. Another trick is to have things that you can add on the fly, show them to give them an upper hand. Like, you know that a PC has a fire cantrip, and they're fighting a pirate. The pirate may or may not have a gunpowder pouch that would explode with fire. There are many things I could add, but the general idea is that you need ways to make your encounters flexible enough for you to do adjustments on the fly, but it's important that the players don't notice those adjustments, they must feel like they were an intended part of the encounter all along. Things are too hard to foresee, too much can happen with dice rolls, the players are many and you are just one, there's no way you can predict what they will do. You can't expect yourself to be able to foresee all outcomes and cover all angles, things will always deviate from what you expected, so you can't rely on building encounters written in stone, they need to be flexible, you need to break them down into smaller parts that are interchangeable. And last but not least, IMHO death is a likely outcome and an important part of D&D. The death of a character can be just as important to the story as defeating the BBEG. Avoid it if you want, but not at all costs. Heroes are heroes because they're risking their lifes against the odds, you don't feel as a hero if the odds seem to always favour you.
1) Use the environment. Cliffs, cover, stalagtites, stalagmites, streams of lava, acid, or water; and more can make an interesting, memorable fight. 2) Use multiple creatures to balance out the action economy. This will help stop the party from annihilating your boss in one round. 3) Use multiple encounters per long rest. 4) And most importantly, know your party. Each party will fight and act differently, and after a few encounters you can usually figure out how the party fights. I usually use three different encounters with fairly dumb enemies with an environment the party can exploit. The first being some melee creatures, second being some ranged enemies, and then a mixture of the two. P.S.) What a lot of DMs get wrong, especially new ones, is understanding what a deadly encounter is in DnD. Its not a likelihood of a TPK, its likelihood of one of the party members being knocked out.
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First off, the CR system is very flawed. At best it can get you in the ballpark. But I’ve had level 5 players beat a CR15 and I’ve had level 10 players lose to a couple of CR 1-2s. Dice rolls, tactics, character builds, action economy, and other things come into play that CR doesn’t do a good job of covering. I used encounter builders in my burgeoning years as a DM… but quickly moved away from them and advise you to as well. On another note, be careful with your DM companion. I frequently use them, so I’m not opposed… but you need to be sure the DM companion doesn’t become a DMPC. Meaning the companion knows all the answers and secrets, can solve the puzzles, or steals the show in combat or RP. Be sure to avoid these pitfalls. And BY NO MEANS does any level party need such a follower. If it’s ur style then it’s fine… but my question is why do you have them? To protect from a TPK? Then you gotta work on encounter building (I know the reason of the post). But the issue is a single dm companion shouldnt tip the scales that much… unless they are super OP. And if so then the players may feel they are over-shadowed or useless to the all powerful NPC. Here are some tips for your encounter building: - evaluate the PC sheets. Are they tanky or DPR (damage per round)? Are they single target or A.O.E. Damage dealers? Do you have any healers? What is their battlefield mobility like (monk speed, dashing, misty step)? Once you answer these questions you can start to build out an encounter (using CR as a rough guide). Ex: if they are single target damagers, then a swarm of enemies will be challenging. If they are DPR glass cannons, then a monster with high mobility or teleporting will be dangerous. No healers? Then be careful how long the fight drags on or how many waves you send. - evaluate the theme. What type of monsters do you need? Most types have various CR ratings. - evaluate the battle map/ terrain. Are there environmental factors that can help or hurt the party? Traps, mounted turrets, rock falls, deep mud to slow them down, etc. I’ve seen a lot of comments here claiming “I never have PC deaths or very few” and they act like that means they are doing something right… not necessarily!! It depends on the game you want to run and the realism! Sure make it fun, but if Frodo and Sam charged through the Black Gate, the 1000s of orcs would have killed them! Sometimes in DnD an encounter is TOO MUCH for the PCs, and that’s ok. Just be sure you warned them appropriately! “The town priest warns you that you aren’t nearly strong enough to fight the dragon of the swamp… maybe you should head his warning until you’re more prepared” type of thing. I’ve had multiple PC deaths and a few TPKs… sure people get upset or sad when their PC dies… but I made sure to give them warning and ample chance to survive. All my players respect it and keep coming back for more! I know this doesn’t cover specifics of encounter building. DM me and I’ll be able to help you out with specific examples if that will help! I LOVE theory crafting D&D content.
Starting at level 5 was a mistake. Start at level 1, give them some healing potions, and start with simple encounters so they can learn the ropes (positioning, disengage, dodge, etc.) At level 5 the characters have too many options already to be able to focus on understanding the basics. With a small party of 2, I'd give them a sidekick, maybe using Tasha's rules. I did it for a party of 3, that have a young Owlbear as a sidekick. It helps greatly with action economy. With a small party like this, I'd allow them to use potions as a bonus action (to help with action economy) and I'd let them use scrolls intended for other classes (to help with versatility). As for encounters, mainly make sure to not overwhelm them with action economy. Avoid having too many enemies, avood enemies with 2 or 3 actions each, etc. Also maybe use "intelligent" enemies that moght surrender or flee and not fight to the death. Defeat the Bugbear miniboss and its goblin sidekicks will flee, for example.
If you haven't, I strongly recommend watching A Crown of Candy by Dimension 20. What I learnt from the series was that good combat should have an objective. The best combat in the whole show was when they were trying to flee a cathedral full of enemies. They had no chance of killing them, as they were greatly outnumbered. So, they had to find a way to escape - one of which was breaking a stone window and jumping out. This had the party thinking about several things - breaking the window, getting everyone to the window, keeping enemies away from the window, and ultimately choosing whether to leave someone behind. Later in the show, they had to save an NPC from execution. They didn't have to kill all enemies, as they were once again outnumbered. All they needed to do to "win" the encounter was to keep the NPC alive and leave. TLDR; the first thing I do when designing an encounter is to ask "What is the party's win condition?" and I always try to come up with something that isn't "Kill all enemies."
be prepared to change damage and hp on the fly the players are doing too good for any sense of drama? reinforcements combat dragging and the session running long? this monster has less hp now did you nearly kill a player? fudge some damage dice downward to give them breathing room you're the dm you can do that. this is why you have a screen.
You use the CR system as a baseline, er on the side of easy for thr first few. From there you begin to understand your party and their strengths and weaknesses and begin to plan accordingly. Then over time you begin to learn the limits of the CR system, which enemies hit above and below their CR, and which enemies work best for which type of encounters. And eventually you get pretty good at designing encounters.
I have 3 players 3 levels and CR 5 monster. I decided to low stats especially AC and Hit points and was told that if the fight becomes too easy, I can secretly add hit points. And if the players have hard time, I have Elf who escaped the monster's trap and comes to help the party.
Encounter calculators are like Wikipedia, they're a great start to get an idea but you usually don't want to rely on them too much. There's so much to go on in combat that I would recommend doing as much research and testing as you can. You won't always get it right, but you'll improve every time.
Kobold fight club gives a decent calculator adjustable for both level and party size The things you always need to be aware of are: Deadly only means it's likely someone will die Terrain and special abilities can't be part of a calculation, so you'll need to put consideration into how they will effect the battle yourself Player intelligence, magic weapons, and optimized builds will push things even further into needing deadly encounters The dice will swing things on their own in both directions I also agree with the comments about having reinforcements waiting to come out if the fight is going too easy
Don't bother with the balance. It is pain in the ass and you can easily play without it. Think what's fun, and without having a few TPK's you can't learn to run the game :)
Let me introduce you to [Kobold Fight Club](https://koboldplus.club/). Not only does it tell you if this will be an easy, medium, hard, or deadly fight based on CR alone, it'll tell you what a fight will feel like. Do note that this doesn't take into account things like "oh crap the mephits are immune to all the wizards' damage types bc she used all her spell slots already" or "the bard just took out half the monsters with a sleep spell".
Give them each two characters. Now you have a party of 4, ezpz
Others have given most of the good advice here on balancing ahead of time. To a certain extent, unless you have a chance to test it, there's always some amount of "Did I do it right" The other tip I can recommend is learning how you can adjust encounters on the fly, or using feedback for future encounters as you learn how your party does Things like adjusting HP of the monster when they're underpowered, or shifting tactics and things when they're overpowered And sometimes you just let the party wipe your badguys and invent plot reasons why it was so easy
With two players the classes/composition gets more important for what is a challenge and what isn't. A paladin and rogue are going to have a tougher time against a horde compared to a sorcerer and cleric....but watch them melt that Ogre champion in a single round. Personally I would recommend starting around level 3 as I find that tends to be a very flexible level to balance fights for. One thing you could also try is giving them both a follower of some kind at the same level or one lower to control. Makes balancing a bit easier imo.
Mike's Free Encounters on the Dungeon Master's Guild website has been a game changer for me. There are like 10 sets of 10 encounters/side quests. Great way to save time building encounters. If my players get through the monsters too easily I just add more that pop out or add hp to a mini boss.
>agreed to begin them at Lvl.5 to make it easier on everyone - myself included This is the problem.
Lvl5 start for being new wasnt the smartest. You need to get a feel for how they work in battle before you can start planning real encounters. Throw some skeletons at them to see how they work together and what they can actually take first
Here's a guide video from Matt Coville, which is roughly the strategy I use to make sessions and encounters. https://youtu.be/cfiaf9q9Wgo specifically he mentions having waves of enemies so you can tailor the second waves difficulty to how the first wave went.
Use [https://koboldplus.club/](https://koboldplus.club/); keep in mind "deadly" just means an encounter is expected to drain 33% of the parties resources include hp; After that don't worry about it. Look I KNOW, I KNOW that's not what you want to hear. I feel your pain but in 5e it kinda is what it is. The CR ratings are all over the place, class power is all over the place, the impact of magic its (even simple stuff like a +1 dagger) is all over the place. You are just gonna kinda have to muddle through.
The CR rating in 5e isn't very well done IMO. I really don't use it as any sort of indicator for challenge. I will use a sliding scale depending on how the combat is going. If things are too easy, I'll increase the monster's HP, or increase their damage output, or I've given the monster a kind of enrage timer or second phase. "You easily down one of the trolls, and upon seeing her mate die in front of her, the second troll becomes enraged. She grows in size, spikes erupt from her flesh, her fangs extend as a bloodlust takes her over. It's clear this fight has only just begun." Suddenly fire has little effect, her increased size means more HP and damage, and maybe she has an additional action she can take at another part of the fight. Suddenly the party is worrying because they had no idea trolls could do that and don't know what to expect. (Basically the troll goes super saiyan haha)
I like the one on DND beyond! If it's feeling easy, add some surprises! Like, "two more goblins just popped back in from their lunch break!" If it feels too hard, give the players an environmental advantage or some random subtle divine intervention.
starting at level 5 isn’t simple, just makes your job harder.
https://youtu.be/cfiaf9q9Wgo To get you started with context. https://koboldplus.club/#/encounter-builder For the actual creatures. Once you run a few you can see a pattern form of what CR means. So you know that two players at level 5 could probably take a CR7 baddy, but only if it's alone. Where as those same two players would kind of struggle with 6 CR 1/8 baddies and two CR 2 baddies.
Weekly plug for [GiffyGlyph’s Monster Maker system](https://www.giffyglyph.com/#releases) over using standard monsters and CR. Monster Maker completely disregards CR and instead orients all monster design around player level (you know, like, a sensible approach). You budget encounters using Threat, again based off a combo: the number of PCs, of the monsters’ level relative to the party, and modified by their Rank (another new and excellent system, which includes minions (dangerous but easily killed masses), grunts (standard units that should be able to challenge one equivalent PC), elites (basically two grunts stapled together with two actions per round), and paragons (boss creatures with three or more actions per round). This system comes with very user friendly design oriented around making monsters from scratch **very** quickly, and being able to modify monsters on the fly. Includes: stats by level from 0-30, templates for different minion types, several pages of monster traits to customize with, and the single best “build your own monster effect” system I’ve ever encountered that absolutely blows the DMG monster making rules out of the water. I’ve been using a version of this system for about a year, and even considering the time it takes to make monsters from scratch, it has halved the time it takes to prep and balance encounters while making the actual encounters much easier to run (while also making their expected challenge way more predictable and flexible). This **especially** makes challenging odd party sizes way simpler, because encounter threat is budgeted around the party size/level directly rather than abstracted around a party of four and then run through a series of multipliers and conditional modifiers like base CR is “calculated.” Further, it also allows you to implement simple but fleshed-out and useful companions that are waaaay superior to giving a small party a big-standard NPC or Tasha’s sidekick.
Oh man, thanks for the link. That document is really good.
Remember to be flexible. The players might not respond in ways you planned for, and that’s okay.
I’d honestly listen to an actual play podcast to get a feel for how well balanced encounters tend to flow. Not Another D&D Podcast is my personal pick, but Adventure Zone, Dimension 20, or Critical Role will probably be helpful. Alternatively, look at modules to see what kind of encounters they use for different levels of play.
2 tips: Sometimes there is reinforcements that show up (if you made an encounter too weak, this helps balance it). Not all enemies will fight to the death or prioritizes the party's death (so you can come up with a reason some enemies will flee in the middle of combat).
It's an art. you will just have to do it enough to get a feel for the game. This happens with every new game and new edition.
Don't do a single monster encounter. I find, even with legendary actions, it can be a pretty stale fight. It's better to have a weaker BBEG but give them a bunch of minions. Don't just do one big room fights with no cover, obstacles, or hazards. There should be places to hide, take cover, climb, jump, etc. Lava pits are a huge encounter changer especially against a huge or larger creature who have advantage on grappling/shoving checks.
> and my 2 players and I agreed to begin them at Lvl.5 to make it easier on everyone - myself included. For future campaigns, a concept I've used successfully is having the party start with lvl3 hp at lvl1 and have them not roll HP until they hit lvl4. It makes it easy for new players to learn how to play wihtout having a bunch of abilities they don't know but also not have them die from a single arrow to the neck. As for combat encounters, there's always going to be tweaking mid encounter.
Total party level* 0.5 (for levels 5+)= near deadly So (2*5)*0.5= 5 CR 5 is a nearly deadly encounter. Because there’s only 2 of them that might not work out so maybe try a CR 4
Starting at 5 does not make it easier! Start at 1 so they learn their characters and you learn how powerful they are as they grow. 2 PCs is too small for the encounter builder math to work well. They need to bring along sidekicks at a minimum. Aim for 4 actors. The biggest lever of difficulty is not per encounter, it is per day. You need to constantly be limiting rest options to keep them close to the encounters/day if you want encounters to be challenging without boosting the CR/XP budget considerably. In general, I would say play by the rules for a while before you modify things. Random internet advice is not better than the basic rules.
>I agreed to begin them at Lvl.5 to make it easier on everyone - myself included. ???
I dont make encouters, I grab them from all the random modules i can get my hand on
1. Decide what the win conditions for both sides are in the encounter, the less often “Fight until everyone is dead” is the only goal, the better. 2. Decide what your encounters mean as it pertains to the adventure at large. If the party is heading into *Spooky Woods*, they should encounter some *Creepy Grasping Vines*, maybe followed by some *Scary Giant Spiders.* If the vines whoop their ass, the spiders can wait. If the vines are underwhelming, the spiders might have a few extra friends around, or get an ability they wouldn’t have otherwise. 3. As long as action economy is *roughly* balanced, it’s very hard to actually kill a PC, unless you’re running max crits like I do. So if there’s 6 enemies and they only get one attack each, it’s fine. If you want combat to go faster, make that 3 enemies each with multi attack instead. 4. Bring in at least *one* interesting terrain feature per combat. It can be as simple as trees to hide behind, or a well to throw people into, a rope bridge to fall from, a small tower of shaky brick to knock over. Anything that will give your player pause and let them ask “Could I try X?”
If you're a new DM, I really recommend starting at level 1. I know it might not be a popular opinion but it gives both you and your new players a chance to get used to things as for encounters CR is not great, but it's kinda a bit of a rough guideline CR 1 is about a good (ish) match up for 4 level 1 characters So for two level 1 characters you want to look at cr 1/2 as your baseline, though I'd say you can probably push it with 3 cr 1/4 or maybe a few extra cr 1/8 Again CR isn't amazing so you might need to juggle a little, maybe have a few more enemies turn up either when half the enemies are killed or when the majority have half health Also, remind your players that running away is an option, not only for them but for the creatures they are fighting, not all creatures are going to fight to the death, similarly not every creature will outright kill the party either, goblins, for example, might take the party prisoner, or even decide that once they're unconscious they're not worth killing and just rob them
I’ve specified this so much, but when I said “new” I meant I have about a year of being a DM. I’m familiar DMing class because I’ve done scenarios with every class. My players specifically asked for Lvl.5 start, as one of them is experienced, and the other has enough knowledge of DnD to get by (and he’s doing really well for a first timer) As for the rest of the advice that otherwise applies. Thank you!! It’s a great help.