All Questions
Tagged with balance encounter-design
23
questions
7
votes
1
answer
2k
views
At what level for a 4/5-player party would a CR 2-3 monster be considered a "miniboss"?
I'm working on a dungeon and I want to have a solo encounter with a single basilisk in the hallway. It isn't the last monster in the dungeon; that I'm going with a surprise, however it shouldn't be a ...
- 181
2
votes
2
answers
200
views
How to properly boost monster damage?
So here's the situation:
In D&D 4e, I have began to reduce monster's HP by a lot (at least by half or even more than that).
The reason for this, is that I realized the combat encounters can take ...
- 341
9
votes
5
answers
3k
views
How to calibrate combat encounters for high level play?
The DMG contains recommendations for the XP values of encounters that are supposed to help you create engaging but survivable combat encounters (page 82).
They work pretty well for low- and mid-level ...
- 129k
18
votes
3
answers
3k
views
How can I avoid accidentally deadly encounters from monsters that are more deadly than their challenge rating suggests?
Monster Deadliness: In the DMG (p.82) there is guidance about the calculating encounter deadliness. This is entirely based on the XP of the monsters encountered, and each challenge rating (CR) has a ...
- 129k
13
votes
1
answer
891
views
How to calculate D&D 5e challenge ratings when party has improvised weapons and no armor
I'm running a game where the players are planning to attend a grand ball. At this ball, the players will not be able to wear their armor with their finery or smuggle in their weapons. The players are ...
- 1,303
6
votes
3
answers
617
views
Balancing Encounters around a very proficient Necromancer
In a game I am a part of there is a player who considers themself a necromancer. They are fully specced and invested around the spell "Animate Dead". They are very effective and efficient at ...
- 5,854
4
votes
2
answers
483
views
Is my DM stacking the odds against us? [closed]
So, I'll set the stage. We're a party of 4, level 8 at the moment, with an allied NPC. In our most recent encounter we went up against:
~20 "minions", (<35 HP, +4 to hit)
1 Winter wolf (75 HP, +5 ...
- 41
3
votes
3
answers
660
views
How do I design balanced encounters when one PC vastly out-performs the rest of the party?
I'm having some serious balancing issues with my current campaign. Mostly due to the Barbarian. My entire party consists of the Barbarian, a Bard, and a Druid, all recently turned lvl 6. So one ...
- 115
7
votes
3
answers
850
views
How to balance encounters after the loss of the frontline fighters?
I've been running a pathfinder game for some time. Up until now I think I have done a fairly good job of balancing encounters, the party is about to reach level 7 and there have only been 2 deaths but ...
- 31k
39
votes
9
answers
10k
views
What do I do with a party that is much stronger than their level?
We're playing D&D 5E. The party consists of 5 players, all currently level 11 (however, I've noticed this problem since they were level 8).
I've been using the Goblinist random encounter ...
- 3,429
3
votes
3
answers
1k
views
How to balance combat with a couple of min/maxed characters in the party?
I have a party of 4 freshly minted level 7s for an upcoming game. 3 of the players have been playing for a while and one person is a relative newcomer to the group.
The problem I'm having is that 2 ...
- 39
0
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Balancing Different Level PCs in PVP Pathfinder Combat
I have just spent altogether too much time trying to answer a simple question in my arena combat game:
Would a level 1 group like to take on a level 4 character, PVP? How many players do you think ...
- 177
2
votes
1
answer
1k
views
How to design a boss fight for a large group without tons of minions?
My players next session will fight against a dragon opponent. The thing I am concerned is having the players gang up on the boss.
I don't desire to flood in tons of minions, the ideal fight would be ...
- 24.3k
7
votes
1
answer
2k
views
Is this Library-encounter balanced?
I'm about to run a Wizard tower. I really wanted to run a Living Spellbook from Redditor /u/StoneStrix but had to scale it down. Since low-level spellcasters are kind of hard to find, I thought an ...
- 71
1
vote
2
answers
2k
views
Balancing my boss encounter [closed]
I am planning my first GM story for a group of 7 friends and I am preparing a possible boss encounter as the climax of the story. I could use your help balancing the encounter so that it is deadly, ...
