I have a suggestion: Flip the sentence to say "...greater than one quarter the sum total of character levels, or one half if the characters are 5th level or higher." This advice is most useful for new DMs getting their feet wet, balancing combat to avoid deadly situations matters more at early levels than at high levels, and based on the way WotC structures their campaign books I have to imagine that most D&D happens in the earlier levels. So I'm recommending acting like the "default" D&D is at levels 1-4, and levels 5+ are the "exception" to the rule. And then your newbie DMs can stop memorizing the sentence a bit earlier :)
I can't believe how effective and efficient this is. Tried it out in 4 one shots so far. It was not only the quickest balancing I have ever done, it was also absolutely fair and allowed me to roam free on which monsters to choose that would benefit the story. Also - need to balance on the fly without fudging? This is method is the way to go. You rock, Sir.
Going against the flow here, I use the DMG method for years now without any problem. It's very simple. I created a google sheets tab that makes the calculation for me and use it to create the encounter. What MOST people miss is that DMG texts around the encounter difficulty calculation also cover several qualifiers to encounter balance (I dare say even more items than what was mentioned in this video, considering optional rules are basically gamebreaking). Another thing that people usually forget (and maybe the most important) is that there is a table that shows amount of experience per day. A deadly encounter may not end up the way you imagined, but a deadly adventure day never failed my expectations!!
Really appreciative for what you do! Got my copy of Return of the Dungeon Master in the mail a couple days and it is incredible! I had to support after all the help you have given out!
Really cool Mike! I will try this out. I bought your books (Lazy DM, Return of the Lazy DM) for me and my DM who is running our games since 25 years. Now A couple of years later I am starting DMing myself with a small group of 3 Players + 1 NSC (i.e. 4 chars total). We play Rime of the Frostmaiden which is said to be balanced for 4-6 chars. However, the first encounters are all quite deadly for 4 players as I figured out. So this will help me loads to improvise, adjust and put in my addition ideas for combat from the characters backstories. Your books also helped my amazingly. Best of your advice for prepping as a new DM: outlining scenes & separating secrets/clues. Thanks! Please never give up 😉
Thanks for this, I really appreciate this advice as it cuts out a lot of the needless complexity of converting xp to CR and then looking at tables to see how much etc.... Just a simple elegant process that gets the job done
I'd love to get out and play, but my take had things like "work" and "family gatherings" that prevent us from playing. Great video! Love the advice. I'm still a CR 1/4 DM and these really help out.
Love "cinematic advantage" -- it has revitalized our game, and I don't have to worry about flanking, which I always forget anyway. But we still haven't forgotten the time when the druid transformed into a bear, swung from a chandelier and landed on a demon's head, mauling it's evil face with a critical hit.
Comparing Sum NPC CR vs PC CR via your short hand formula is amazing. Just pulled out my calculator easy budget math- then popped open the monsters guide and saw my “creative limitations”! My brain clearly got it, cant wait to test it and gage it with my pcs
So nice and simple! Balancing encounters is fine and dandy when they encounter stuff I prepped a week beforehand, but I love to improvise everything and the encounters they fall into can quickly take away that ability.
Should also say, I do something like the simple taking the exp not the multiplied exp for numbers. I try to balance on the fly and have monsters come in waves, but again, it was almost always off cr/kobold fight club base exp and almost always aimed toward the deadly level. I run six players in all three of my campaigns.
Great video. This is the first of your videos I have seen and it made me “smash that subscribe button”. I will give it a go and share it with a friend of mine that also runs a game. Have the best day.
For the last couple years, I've been using a system that has worked very well for me. I center most fights around a single threat that has the same CR as the highest level character in the group. I then have a couple stat blocks of "mooks" to fill in the difficulty. I don't have a set number, even if I think the party can handle approximately so many. I introduce them as the fight progresses, as reinforcements. This prevents a couple unlucky rolls from causing party deaths, while still keeping the threat level up. It also trains the players to hold some resources in reserve, since they're almost guaranteed to face more than they can initially see.
@@SlyFlourish it does have limitations that I still struggle with. I'm not very good at guessing strength levels where I have multiple strong enemies, which is a very desirable capability for many story reasons. I do have a couple experienced gamers to do test runs on occasionally, and I'm sure we'll work it out better eventually. Mostly, though, I DM for large groups of teenagers at a FLGS (pre covid), and the BBEG + minions approach was easy to manage, and versatile to deal with the unpredictable nature of those groups.
@@SlyFlourish Revisited this video today because I'm converting some pathfinder modules over to 5e. The short rest mechanic really changes things! How many encounters using this balancing mechanism do you recommend per day, assuming they start the day fully rested and have the opportunity short rest once or twice? Obviously story first, but the 6 to 8 encounters recommended in the DMG seems incorrect.
New DM here...just stumbled upon this after my last dndbeyond "deadly" encounter lasted 10mins and 3 fireballs. I think i'll give your method a try...it's so easy that i could almost cry if it works with a certain reliability
How do you only have 24K views? This is excellent information especially for new DMs. I hope WOTC steals some of your ideas to make the next edition more streamlined.
The DMG system has always been a pita for me, so I switched to Xanathar as soon as I could. However, I've noticed that those numbers are not always correct, particularly when fighting solo monsters. I think I'll give your system a shot and see how it works.
I think the biggest failing of the monster manual is that it just fundamentally underestimates how incredibly powerful 5th edition player characters are at any level above like third. Often at level 9 or above, you can just straight up double the CR budget against some parties for a standard encounter and it won't feel that much harder.
How to fix CR's and bounded accuracy. In the 90's we had the same problems. Its easy, use the D4 thru the D12 as minus modifiers to the DC. Using the minus D12 mod on CR 25-30 creature makes it 5% to 60% harder per player, per round. Respectively, a D4 minus mod makes the creature 5% to 20% harder.
Learning how to challenge your players without throwing them into a woodchipper every time is just something you learn. It’s a skill like anything else in life.
between long rests I normally run 1-2 easy encounters and either 2 medium encounters or 1 hard encounter before I throw a deadly encounter at the PCs. I do balance the deadly encounters though for how beat up the party was at the beginning.
When you say the monster CR total is 26 and the (PC CR total)/2= 25, you say "but they're 10th level, so they'll be fine". You contradict your own system because their level IS how we got to 25. Great video and some of the most straightforward advice re: encounter difficulty. Another factor to consider is spell selection. Did the spellcasters jump to the big gun spells at 5th level? Because if they instead chose Tongues, Tiny Hut, Water Breathing, and Clairvoyance, they are not much more potent in combat than they were at 4th, and they may lag behind the other party members for a while if this is the case. As you say, know your group, and adjust. PS. I just bought Return in paper format. Well done! This will be a book I reread every once in a while when I feel like I need a boost.
I am about to throw an yuan-ti assassin and several mobs (4 cultists and 3 broodguard) against a 4th lvl party of 4 with a CR2 Blue Guard Drake (with high HP and Multi-attack) who have depleted all their spell slots in the previous fights, had a single short rest but which have ridiculous AC (lowest is a 17!) and access to potions. It's an ambush to steal back an item they took and to try and eliminate them. I'm aware this is likely deadly so nerfs I've already made is the mobs have 10hp (and I might lower it further - they're not supposed to survive being hit.) I've limited the assassin's poison weapons (Con save dc12) to only his crossbow which he'll use once and discard to favour the rapier I've given him about half health and he'll suffer fall damage entering the scene. I think that is enough nerfs to for a pure melee battle with cantrips. If it starts to go sideways I've some patrolling nightswatch guard veterans that can rescue them. If they turn up, the assassin will attempt to flee. And the vererans can take the wounded to the Houses of Healing - and they loose time to catch up with yuan-ti. I will analyse this encounter using Sly's method and see if I limit further the number of mobs but I think that should be about right for a combination of threat/difficulty revealing for the first time some of the threat the yuan-ti pose to the party and those around them.
How do you adjust the “Deadly benchmark” when you go from two characters to six characters since a larger party has a better chance of defeating enemies than a small one?
The math accounts for it since you're summing up all character levels. If its two level 5 characters, the benchmark is 5 but if its six level 5 characters, the benchmark is 15. It doesn't handle the triangular-shaped power bump that comes from character synergy but its all a loose system at best anyway. If they're having an easy time, increase the character level input by 1 or more.
As Sly mentioned: Large parties tend to be significantly more powerful than smaller ones, not only because of action economy, but also because of a higher chance of specific synergies (like Order cleric + any rogue, for example). You can't really calculate that - like with levels of optimization or levels of magic items. I would simply bump up the difficulty a bit if you: a) Have a party of more than 4 characters, b) have well optimized characters (strong subclasses, smart feat selections, good multi-classing etc.), c) have characters with strong synergies and/or d) have characters with exceptionally strong magic items for their level (wands with charges of offensive spells, Boots of Flying, early +2 weapons, early +1 armors etc.)
Thanks. I had to make a spreadsheet to calculate encounters before. One note: there should probably also be a single creature CR ratio to single PC level for larger groups. A group of 8 5th level characters up against a single CR 20 creature has a good chance of several members dying, if not a full TPK. Given your numbers and the fact that D&D is geared toward a 4 person group, I'd say for 4th and down, no single creature CR should be higher than the average party member level. For higher levels, no single creature CR should be higher than the average party member level x2. Also, would you still calculate the CR for NPC's with levels as CR = 1/4 their level? What about a creature with character levels ... do they stack linearly? Or does the limitation of action economy reduce their effective CR? (CR of greater source plus half lesser, for example)
Keep in mind that the FIRST step is choosing the right type and quantity of monster regardless of CR. It’s unlikely to be a CR 20 monster at 5th level. The benchmark isn’t used until after that step and it’s still accurate since it tells you that, yes, it’s likely deadly.
I like this but for deadliness determination instead of CRs of the monsters vs. PCs can I use the total hit dice of the monsters vs. PC's? I'm an OSR grognard so I don't use CRs.
...another point you mentioned was how much work the DM does, make the players track and total their own damage/spell/kills/ect per session. Then award xp that way, as an example 1:1 damage to xp. I also love having the player roll their own damage. This frees up the DM for other things....
I'm a fairly new DM and have no idea how to balance encounters. My party of 4 lvl4 high dps (Artificer, Eldritch Knight, Fighter, Monk) decimated an Adult Oblex (CR5) in 2 rounds. It was not deadly at all.
Is it sketchy when the players level up from level 4 to level 5? I have 5 players, so our deadly-encounter benchmark is 5 before levelling up and 12.5 afterwards. I know this is a loose guide but the jump is a little scary.
In terms of determining the threshold in comparison to the CR's given to a monster, do you think that this math transitions well to the scaling of a different system like Pathfinder or Starfinder?
You'd have to figure out roughly what level they are. CR isn't an exact match for level. Level is usually higher than the CR. That said, if you add CR, it may work well enough. It'll just be low.
Level 15 characters are pretty powerful. They’ll probably have an easier time with “deadly” battles. You can probably go beyond the half of total character levels at that point.
I am running a D&D campaign and need some help with encounter building. I will give you my rules for building an encounter. Here are the rules: 1. For characters of at least 5th level: • An encounter is considered deadly if the sum of the character levels divided by 2 is less than or equal to the sum total of the monsters’ Challenge Ratings (CR). 2. For characters of 4th level or below: 3• An encounter is considered deadly if one fourth of the total character levels is less than or equal to the sum total of the monsters’ CR. An encounter is hard if it 3/4 of a deadly, medium if it half of a deadly and easy if it is 1/4 as deadly If you understand the rules, ask me the following questions one at a time and let me respond to each 1. how many characters are in your campaign 2. What level are the players currently 3. What difficulty do you want the encounter to be (deadly, hard, medium or easy) 4. What’s the minimum number of monsters 5. What’s the environment After you have collected all the information , build the encounter and list the appropriate number of each monster. Try to include at least 1 higher CR and a few minions of lower CR Make a table with the following columns : number of, monster name, individual challenge rating, total challenge rating. Make a separate row for each monster. Include a header that shows total number of monsters and a footer with the total challenge rating
So... I just never use the monsters from the monster manuals and don't use CR other than as a super basic guideline. Most (though definitely not all) of the monsters are kinda boring and need tweaks to be interesting 😟
Look at Monster. Looks hefty? +1 CR because WotC Gamedesigners are not good in giving proper CR. Looky very underwhelming? -1 CR. Are your player relatively new or bad in combat situations (like, acting very very stupid?) +1 CR per Monster. Per Feat you add +1 CR Level below 5 (Good groups: /4, bad groups /4,5) Level at 5 or higher (good groups /2, bad gropus /2,5) Bad doesn't mean "idiots" or whatever. It just means they're not as tactical as some people can be at times. This formula helps me much better. If you add maps and/or mechanics that could be potentially leading towards a more hefty fight? +1 cr (total, not per monster). Stay crunchy.
Group quality is definitely a thing. One factor of that is the age of your players in my experience even veteran high school age players are not as "good" as less experienced adults.
Isn’t the Sly Flourish way always about being lazy and doing as little as possible as a GM for prep or consistency? Why is this video any special in that regard?