- Building Encounters on a Budget. You can build an encounter if you know its desired difficulty. The party’s XP thresholds give you an XP budget that you can spend on monsters to build easy, medium, hard, and deadly encounters. Just remember that groups of monsters eat up more of that budget than their base XP values would indicate (see step 4).
- In 5th Edition, outnumbering your opponent can be quite an advantage. Be very careful before putting your PCs up against a Deadly encounter, especially against lots of enemies. Why are my players finding encounters so easy? If you're using this calculator a lot, you may have found it can seem to overstate the difficulty of encounters.
- Unearthed Arcana: Encounter Building This edition of Unearthed Arcana introduces an alternative set of encounter-building guidelines for D&D. Though this approach uses the same basic math underlying the encounter system presented in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, it makes a few adjustments to how it presents that math to.
- D D 5e Dmg Table Building Encounter Free
- D D 5e Dmg Table Building Encounter Guide
- D D 5e Dmg Table Building Encounter 2017
Running a by-the-book 5e hex crawl takes practice. There are a lot of fiddly rules on different pages: you have to skip back and forth between the sections on weather, wandering monsters, getting lost, and random hex contents.
Storm King's Thunder has this sort of random encounter table on page 69. You roll a d% and consult different columns of the table depending on the environment your party is in - Forest, Grasslands, Hills/Moors, Tundra, ect.
I’ve been running hex crawls lately and I’ve boiled down the relevant rules (for me) into a single random encounter chart. Based on the current location/terrain type, the DM fills specific encounters into the chart, Mad Libs-style. The chart does the heavy lifting for determining weather events, chances to get lost, monsters both in their lair and out, surprise, and landscape features.
This chart also reminds me to run a good mix of encounter types: some monsters are friendly! sometimes you run into an inexplicable mystery of the ancient world! Many “encounters” don’t lead to combat! (Of the 12 slots on this table, you only need about 5 potential combats.) With a relatively small and varied number of possible encounters, you can design a bunch that you really want to run, instead of lots of “2d6 goblins” filler. The DM, at least, should be excited to roll on the random encounter table. Here’s my encounter chart template as a PDF.
Checking for encounters: Roll d6 four times a day: morning travel, afternoon travel, first night watch, second night watch. Any roll of 6 means that you roll on the encounter chart. (Or use the official 5e rule: roll 20, encounter on 18-20. Pretty much the same odds, but I like the traditional d6.)
Rolling on the encounter chart: Roll d12 on this chart while traveling, or d6 while stationary (for instance, while resting). The chart is organized so that stationary encounters can’t sneak up on you while you’re not moving.
1: Plot advancing creature: This means different things in different campaigns. If you’re running a campaign about the rise of Tiamat, you might populate this slot with dragons or Tiamat cultists. In my open-ended game where the characters are pursuing their own goals, I fill this slot with people or groups related to characters, like the drow assassin that’s chasing the noble. If you’re running a totally plotless hex crawl, fill this slot with a high-level monster (it potentially advances the story by killing the party!)
2: Intelligent creature: Any locale-appropriate group or creature with tool-using intelligence or higher. At night, if the characters hide their camp and don’t light a fire, treat this roll as no encounter (unless your intelligent monsters has darkvision or a sharp sense of smell). That’s the advantage the PCs get for not lighting a fire.
3: Unintelligent creature: Beasts or unintelligent monsters. Most beasts shy away from fire. If the characters are resting and have a campfire lit, treat this roll as no encounter (unless they’re fearless or fire-based beasts). That’s the advantage the PCs get for lighting a fire.
4: Ambush creature: Use stealthy creatures or creatures with special movement modes (flying, burrowing, climbing, swimming, incorporeal). All of these creatures can typically take the party by surprise, so check for surprise against the party’s Perception (rules for perception while traveling: PHB 182). If the PCs are currently using a special movement mode, populate this slot entirely with matching creatures (flying PCs may ignore almost all other encounters, but a 4 is always another flying creature.)
5: Beneficial creature: There are actually a few good monsters in D&D, along with friendly adventurers, kobold bands looking for a new king, and suspicious traders with valuable information to sell. You could roll d4 on this chart to find out what kind of beneficial encounter this is.
6: Weather: If you make the standard 4 random encounter checks per day, you have about an 8% to 12% daily chance to hit bad weather. (The DMG weather chart gives a 15% daily chance of heavy precipitation. Of course, this is probably lower in practice because few DMs roll on the weather chart every day.) Feel free to use any place- and season-appropriate weather that challenges or inconveniences the characters in some way, or use the official weather rules in the DMG p. 109. Possible weather inconveniences: while exposed to the weather, you can’t benefit from a long rest; low visibility forces a Survival check to avoid becoming lost; fords and valleys are flooded.
7. Lair: Locale-appropriate bad guys (or beasts) live here. Usually lairs are where creatures keep their treasure. This could also be a dungeon entrance. No matter the level of the PCs, I make 1 in 6 lairs contain monsters with more than 10 HD/level/CR. Alert PCs shouldn’t run into a cave without scouting first.
8. Survival Check or Hazard: The rules for getting lost (DMG 105) are vague: a Survival check is made “when you decide it’s appropriate.” Consider this encounter slot a reminder. Characters might get lost because of detours, low visibility, or hazards. Hazards include rockslides, quicksand, etc, all detailed in the DMG p. 110.
9. Path Choice: Take a forest shortcut? Ford the river or caulk the wagon? The tradeoff might be apparent (safe path vs. quick path), or a Survival check, or good reasoning, might be needed to reveal which choice is best.
10. Beneficial location: Typically, this means a friendly settlement or homestead (1 in 6 chance of being bigger than a village). Random settlement rules are on DMG 112. In the uncharted wilds, this might instead mean a treasure or natural resource, or a magic resource like a stand of healing herbs or a teleportation circle, or (valuable late in the day) a defensible place to camp.
11. Ruin: One cool thing about the 5e assumptions is that ruins seem to be about as common as civilized spots. A ruin might be a lair or the entrance to a dungeon, but it might just be an abandoned village or castle, an ancient monument (DMG 108), or a weird locale (DMG 109) that hints at lost history beyond the scope of the adventure.
12. Tracks: It’s cool when the PCs gather information that lets them make informed decisions about their surroundings. Roll d12 on this table; there are tracks, noises, glimpses, or other signs that lead to (or let the PCs avoid) that encounter or location.
OK, so much for the chart explanation. Now here’s an example chart that I’ve made for my campaign, and some blank ones in case you want to print them up and use them.
ENCOUNTER CHART FOR THE WILD HILLS:
1: Plot advancing creature: Depends on the group. Let’s say a monk who’s challenging the monk PC to duel for an available position in the heirarchy: someone murdered the Grand Master of Flowers.
2: Intelligent creature: A paladin from a well-known paladin order. He tells the PCs that he has fought through Hell and returned with a book of devil truenames, and he is fleeing from a pack of vengeful devils. He will accept any help: fight his pursuers (encounter 5); escort him to his destination, which is a holy priory; take his book from him for safekeeping; etc. He is actually a blackguard and he is on his way to sell the book to a devil in a ruined priory.
3: Unintelligent creature: Ghosts of an extinct dwarf clan. They snipe at the party with their ghostly flintlock rifles; from their ancient dwarven curses, it appears that they think the PCs are goblins. They are nearly mindless and cannot be reasoned with. When down to 1/2 HP, each starts retreating to a jumble of bones and treasure in a valley about a mile away. If the bones are blessed, the ghosts will rest.
4: Ambush creature: Hungry wyvern family; will try to fly off with the first PC casualty. Target horses preferentially.
5: Beneficial creature: A troop of paladins searching for the blackguard who stole their book of devil truenames. They will bless and heal friendly PCs and will offer a reward for the book’s return.
6: Weather: Unseasonal snowstorm which follows and surrounds a pack of 7 ravenous winter wolves. Under moonlight, the wolves turn into 7 cursed and miserably cold brothers.
7. Lair: A small tribe of sheep-raising ogres, unusually well-supplied with wool kilts, led by Queen Morag, a relatively industrious and intelligent ogre. If the party seems too powerful to kill, she’ll offer to hire out her warriors as mercenaries (100 GP a day or best offer).
8. Survival Check or Hazard: A miles-wide area of canyons and plateaus. It’s easy to get lost or hit a dead end in the canyons, while staying on the plateaus requires crossing the occasional abyss.
9. Path Choice: Entrance to a long tunnel which leads in the general direction of the PCs’ travel, but descends. Various side passages lead back to the surface while the main tunnel goes to the underdark.
10. Beneficial location: An empty tower with ominous gargoyles up top. They’re actually non-animate stone gargoyles. However all the wood floors are rotten and will collapse under more than #500 weight (characters get saves to avoid falling). The top floor (unless it’s damaged) has a weather-stained permanent summoning circle which can be activated to summon an imp who will answer one question per day: the imp can cast Scry to try to answer the question. Before answering each question, the imp will demand the answer to a personal question about the asker’s life.
11. Ruin: A sloping round tower, three hundred feet tall, completely solid (no inside space). An outside spiral staircase leads to a thirty-foot-wide platform on top, protected by battlements. On the platform are the signs of many old campfires. This is a safe place to camp (except in lightning storms). The bottom of the tower has a gnawed appearance because local peasants have removed stones for their building projects.
12. Tracks: An unseasonal path of quickly-melting snow which leads to encounter 6.
1: Plot advancing creature: Depends on the group. Let’s say a monk who’s challenging the monk PC to duel for an available position in the heirarchy: someone murdered the Grand Master of Flowers.
2: Intelligent creature: A paladin from a well-known paladin order. He tells the PCs that he has fought through Hell and returned with a book of devil truenames, and he is fleeing from a pack of vengeful devils. He will accept any help: fight his pursuers (encounter 5); escort him to his destination, which is a holy priory; take his book from him for safekeeping; etc. He is actually a blackguard and he is on his way to sell the book to a devil in a ruined priory.
3: Unintelligent creature: Ghosts of an extinct dwarf clan. They snipe at the party with their ghostly flintlock rifles; from their ancient dwarven curses, it appears that they think the PCs are goblins. They are nearly mindless and cannot be reasoned with. When down to 1/2 HP, each starts retreating to a jumble of bones and treasure in a valley about a mile away. If the bones are blessed, the ghosts will rest.
4: Ambush creature: Hungry wyvern family; will try to fly off with the first PC casualty. Target horses preferentially.
5: Beneficial creature: A troop of paladins searching for the blackguard who stole their book of devil truenames. They will bless and heal friendly PCs and will offer a reward for the book’s return.
6: Weather: Unseasonal snowstorm which follows and surrounds a pack of 7 ravenous winter wolves. Under moonlight, the wolves turn into 7 cursed and miserably cold brothers.
7. Lair: A small tribe of sheep-raising ogres, unusually well-supplied with wool kilts, led by Queen Morag, a relatively industrious and intelligent ogre. If the party seems too powerful to kill, she’ll offer to hire out her warriors as mercenaries (100 GP a day or best offer).
8. Survival Check or Hazard: A miles-wide area of canyons and plateaus. It’s easy to get lost or hit a dead end in the canyons, while staying on the plateaus requires crossing the occasional abyss.
9. Path Choice: Entrance to a long tunnel which leads in the general direction of the PCs’ travel, but descends. Various side passages lead back to the surface while the main tunnel goes to the underdark.
10. Beneficial location: An empty tower with ominous gargoyles up top. They’re actually non-animate stone gargoyles. However all the wood floors are rotten and will collapse under more than #500 weight (characters get saves to avoid falling). The top floor (unless it’s damaged) has a weather-stained permanent summoning circle which can be activated to summon an imp who will answer one question per day: the imp can cast Scry to try to answer the question. Before answering each question, the imp will demand the answer to a personal question about the asker’s life.
11. Ruin: A sloping round tower, three hundred feet tall, completely solid (no inside space). An outside spiral staircase leads to a thirty-foot-wide platform on top, protected by battlements. On the platform are the signs of many old campfires. This is a safe place to camp (except in lightning storms). The bottom of the tower has a gnawed appearance because local peasants have removed stones for their building projects.
12. Tracks: An unseasonal path of quickly-melting snow which leads to encounter 6.
![D D 5e Dmg Table Building Encounter D D 5e Dmg Table Building Encounter](https://theiddm.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/dmg-npc1.png?w=640&h=843)
The final improved Monster Quick Stats Table, if you want to skip the rest of the math and reasoning behind it.
How to use:
You should get a “Medium” difficulty fight if you create as many monsters as there are player-characters, of the same level. If you have three level 4 players, create three level 4 monsters. For easier fights, make the monsters outnumbered. For harder fights, make the players outnumbered.
To make the difficulty steps more granular, use lower-level monsters, or “Minion”-type monsters that go down in one hit no matter what and deal half the damage of the “base” monster. Stats can also be adjusted by 25% up or down.
For bosses, a solo boss monster would still have the AC, attack bonus and saving throws of a same-level monster, but multiply the HP against the number of players. If you have four players, the boss should have 4x the HP, or ~120 HP for a level 2 monster. The idea is that it’s going to absorb the attacks of the entire party, so it has to have the hit points to match.
For DPR, it should in theory also be multiplied by the number of players, but the full damage cannot be dealt against individual players, or else it’s going to one-shot them. Use minions (MMO “boss adds”) to virtually spread out the damage, use telegraphed attacks that the players can avoid, such as novas and line-attacks with warnings, use AOEs, use spells and abilities that can be countered/interrupted, and so on and so forth.
Background:
The basic idea for 5E’s CR system is: A single monster of CR x should be an appropriate challenge for 4 player-characters of level x
I thought “if that’s the baseline, then shouldn’t it be possible to restructure their stats so that a single monster of CR x-4 will be an appropriate challenge for a single player-character of level x?” This would have the advantage of greatly simplifying encounter building: If you have three characters at level 5, then a Medium encounter would simply be three monsters at level 5
To build on the idea, I was already able to previously figure out that 5E still uses the same “players have a 60% chance to hit a same-level monster, while monsters have a 40% chance to hit a same-level player” paradigm that existed in 4th Edition (and possibly 3rd, though I didn’t check that far back).
Step 1: Hit Points
The conclusion I came to was that if 5E had already inherited all those other design decisions, then we could try applying the “4 hits to kill” ratio to avoid the 5E DMG’s pitfall of DMG-created monsters being big boring bags of HP.
So I began with a few baselines for a “standard” character:
* A Fighter
* with their primary stat set to 15 STR using the standard array
* 15 STR becomes 16 STR due to being a human, for a +3 modifier
* 16 STR increases to 18 STR by level 4, for a +4 modifier
* 18 STR increases to 20 STR by level 8, for a +5 modifier
* It is assumed that all other Ability Score Improvements are used to either buy better stats elsewhere, or to buy additional feats, in keeping with the 3rd Edition idea that a Fighter is entitled to more of those instead of actual abilities
* a 1d8 weapon is being used as the best one-handed martial weapon – if the Fighter chooses to dual-wield or use a two-handed weapon, then their damage goes up, so the monster dies quicker, which is good and to be expected since they made a conscious choice to want to deal more damage. Otherwise, they could use a shield, which trades away the better damage of dual-wielding/two-handed weapons for increased AC
* The Fighter earns his extra attacks at levels 5, 11, 16, 20, and this is factored into his Damage-per-Round
* with their primary stat set to 15 STR using the standard array
* 15 STR becomes 16 STR due to being a human, for a +3 modifier
* 16 STR increases to 18 STR by level 4, for a +4 modifier
* 18 STR increases to 20 STR by level 8, for a +5 modifier
* It is assumed that all other Ability Score Improvements are used to either buy better stats elsewhere, or to buy additional feats, in keeping with the 3rd Edition idea that a Fighter is entitled to more of those instead of actual abilities
* a 1d8 weapon is being used as the best one-handed martial weapon – if the Fighter chooses to dual-wield or use a two-handed weapon, then their damage goes up, so the monster dies quicker, which is good and to be expected since they made a conscious choice to want to deal more damage. Otherwise, they could use a shield, which trades away the better damage of dual-wielding/two-handed weapons for increased AC
* The Fighter earns his extra attacks at levels 5, 11, 16, 20, and this is factored into his Damage-per-Round
Monster HP is therefore set at [Damage-per-Round * 4]
The big, big assumption I am making here is that the Extra Attacks of a Fighter are roughly equivalent to all other class abilities. That’s basically what a Champion already is, so I don’t think it’s too out there
That gives us the following table:
So far so good – we’ve accomplished the goal of creating monsters with significantly less HP than what the DMG recommends, and while there are some levels that have exactly the same HP levels because our standard character hasn’t increased his baseline performance, that can be smoothed out like so:
Step 2: Armor Class
For AC, the DMG’s suggested stats already give us a good baseline:
Being more precise about a 60% chance-to-hit would require a +1 bump to AC across the board. There’s a few places where it looks like the table is off by 2 AC or more, but it’s just because of a mismatch in exactly when a player is supposed to increase their primary stat modifier, since we’re still only off by 1 at level 20.
Step 3: Attack Bonus
For a monster’s attack bonus, it becomes much trickier: The problem is that proficiency does not apply to player AC, and the player has no means of increasing their AC outside of class abilities, which leaves us with three main options:
1. Halt monster attack progression at +5 by level 4, giving monsters a 40% chance to hit against AC 18
2. Take the DMG’s recommended monster attack progression, and assume that the DM will hand out a total of +5 AC from magic items over the course of the game such that players will top-out at AC 23
3. Take the DMG’s recommended monster attack progression, but do not hand out additional AC from items, and simply assume that players will be able to deal with the increased monster hit chance. A level 20 monster would have a 65% chance to hit a player with AC 18
2. Take the DMG’s recommended monster attack progression, and assume that the DM will hand out a total of +5 AC from magic items over the course of the game such that players will top-out at AC 23
3. Take the DMG’s recommended monster attack progression, but do not hand out additional AC from items, and simply assume that players will be able to deal with the increased monster hit chance. A level 20 monster would have a 65% chance to hit a player with AC 18
I chose to simply keep the DMG’s attack progression, with notes on when a player would be “owed” additional AC if the DM wants to play it that way.
Step 4: Damage (per round)
This requires that we establish some more assumptions for our baseline character
* CON stat set to 14 using the standard array
* 14 becomes 15 due to being human, for a +2 modifier
* 15 becomes 17 by level 12, for a +3 modifier
* 17 becomes 19 by level 16, for a +4 modifier
* 19 becomes 20 by level 20, for a +5 modifier
* Maximum HP at level 1 is [10 + CON modifier], with subsequent levels giving an additional [6 + CON modifier] HP
* Healing from Hit Dice is [6 + CON modifier], with 1 Hit Die at level 1, and 1 additional Hit Dice being gained per level
* 14 becomes 15 due to being human, for a +2 modifier
* 15 becomes 17 by level 12, for a +3 modifier
* 17 becomes 19 by level 16, for a +4 modifier
* 19 becomes 20 by level 20, for a +5 modifier
* Maximum HP at level 1 is [10 + CON modifier], with subsequent levels giving an additional [6 + CON modifier] HP
* Healing from Hit Dice is [6 + CON modifier], with 1 Hit Die at level 1, and 1 additional Hit Dice being gained per level
This gives us the following chart:
But watch what happens if I take the Damage-Per-Round numbers from the DMG, and divide it against the player’s total HP reserves:
D D 5e Dmg Table Building Encounter Free
This is a problem. The damage numbers are still roughly calibrated with an assumption that a monster can kill a player in 4 hits, but without 4th Edition’s healing surges, there is no way that that model is going to work – since the damage numbers are including the healing you can get from hit dice, the players are going to be tapped out after one fight no matter what. They can probably stretch it out to 2 or 3 fights if they kill monsters before they ever get their 4 licks in, but certainly not the 6 to 8 encounters recommended by the rules.
Instead, I would recommend recalibrating the DPR numbers against a player’s maximum HP only, disregarding their Hit Dice healing:
Step 5: Saving Throws
The best saving throw that a target can come up with would be if it’s against their primary attribute AND they’re proficient at it, which would give them a 65% chance to save and this would keep pace exactly with a spellcaster’s spellcasting attribute and proficiency bonus (basically roll an 8 or better to save).
At the same time, the proficiency bonus of a spell comprises somewhere between 40-50% of the total saving throw bonus.
Instead of trying to come up with a way to capture the 12 different ways that a saving throw could go, my idea for abbreviating the process would be to have a Best / Good / Bad system: the best would be the primary stat+proficiency as I had mentioned, a Good saving throw that’s 66% of Best to represent either a tertiary stat with proficiency or a high stat without proficiency, and a Bad saving throw that’s 33% of best to represent no proficiency and a non-primary stat. It should be familiar to veterans of the Fort/Ref/Will save, and is quick-and-dirty enough that you can make your mind up on the spot for what the save is going to be as the Wizard casts their spell.
That leaves us with this final table:
I also threw in a Minion / rough CR 1/8 equivalent in there. The DPR margin against a level 1’s HP is so low that that should actually be 1 DPR.
Final Rule Zero note: These figures are by no means intended to be set in stone, because player skill is a factor, campaign tone is a factor, and party composition is a factor. But, at the very minimum, the approach I’m proposing should:
A. allow you to produce monsters and encounters faster than RAW
B. allow you to produce monsters and encounters that will require less tinkering and roll-fudging than RAW
B. allow you to produce monsters and encounters that will require less tinkering and roll-fudging than RAW
To the last point I would add:
1. This model means you don’t need to fuck around with the “experience-budget” encounter building guidelines
2. You’re effectively implementing a houserule that eases up on the deadliness of the early levels, but doing it all on the DM side so that your players will not have to fundamentally change their understanding of the rules
3. You’re avoiding the pitfall of a single boss monster getting overwhelmed by an action economy advantage
Finally, while I would encourage you to “flavor” the monsters to set them apart from one another (Kobolds can Disengage as a Bonus Action), doing so wouldn’t require you to mess around with the stats/level/CR of the monster like it would doing it by the DMG’s RAW monster construction rules.
D D 5e Dmg Table Building Encounter Guide
September 2015 update: Based on feedback I’ve received from people who were kind enough to try these out in actual games, I’d like to throw in some additional notes:
D D 5e Dmg Table Building Encounter 2017
- The DPR assumptions were made with Fighters in mind, which are a d10 hit dice class. If you feel that you might need to drop damage further to account for whatever group composition or (un)optimization the table has, feel free to drop the DPR by another 20%, which should recalibrate damage against d8 hit dice classes.
- The HP assumptions were made with a 4-hits-to-a-kill in mind. If you still find this too slow, feel free to reduce them further, with no need to “compensate” with adjustments to any other stat.
- Starting at level 3-4, consider splitting up a monster’s DPR across multi-attacks. That is, a level 4 monster with a target DPR of 9 can make two attack rolls per turn, dealing 4 damage per hit. Or even call the first attack roll 4 damage claws and the second attack 5 damage bites or something.