5e '24 vs '14 - Encounter Planning

[paneerakbari]

Getting around to comparing the '14 and '24 versions of one of my most-referenced sections of the DMG: Combat Encounter Planning.

In DMG14, this starts on page 82; DBG24 starts it on page 114.

We have a pretty sizable change right off the bat: the '14 concept of “Adventuring Day XP” seems to be removed entirely in '24. For the uninitiated, this was intended as a per-character budget of XP gained from all sources before needing a long rest, assuming two short rests during the day. Since it’s now gone, I won’t bother describing it beyond saying that it was, as implemented, nonsensical - we’re probably better off for abandoning it.

The next big change is that '24 presents three difficulty levels (Low, Moderate, High) to DMG14’s four (Easy, Medium, Hard, Deadly). Based on the descriptions and thresholds, '24 dropped the “Easy” difficulty and re-labeled the old “Medium” into “Low.” The textual descriptions of the '24 difficulties are otherwise equivalent as in '14.

The budget thresholds are consistent with each other through Tier 1 and begin to diverge at different levels for each difficulty: Low at 8, Moderate at 6, High at 9. Here’s a visualization:

The dashed lines are the '24 budgets, '14 in solids, and using the same colors (sorry, I know color-based encoding isn’t as accessible as I’d like) for corresponding difficulty levels between year versions.

It’s pretty clear that '24 curves the difficulty quite differently, and higher, than '14, especially for Tier 3 & 4 play, but this isn’t the whole picture.

DMG14’s encounter guidance included XP adjustment multipliers based on the counts of monsters and party members. Applying those adjustments could get pretty bonkers at the edges, and was fairly tricky to build into a general use calculator (I actually did just that in a Rails app!). Under that system, the XP value of seven monsters against a party of 4 adventurers would get a 2x multiplier, presumably to try and quantify the effect of a numerical advantage. Similarly, a single monster squaring off against that party would have its XP halved (for calculating difficulty).

DMG24 has no adjustments for monster and party headcounts, though! It will be interesting to see how that plays out for encounter designers. It’s fairly common to design around one or two “boss-like” enemies with a CR at or slightly above the average party level (APL) and supply them with minions or reinforcements of much lower CR to try and split the party’s focus.

[paneerakbari]

Here’s an example from a recent session:

At my Luna Park Adventurers League table, we had seven players. Six were at character level 9 (at least I believe so), and a relative newcomer at level 6.

Consulting the encounter budgeting tables, I get the following full-party XP thresholds:

• '14, Deadly: 15,800
• '24, High: 17,000

Mind, the High and Deadly difficulties begin to diverge at level 9, so that difference is based on just a single level for 6 PCs - at higher levels the difference would be much greater.

They were fighting the following monsters:

• 4 Spined Devils (CR 2, 450 XP)
• 2 Armanites (CR 7, 2900 XP)
• 1 Narzugon (CR 13, 10000 XP)

That sums to 17,600 XP from monsters - just a hair over the DMG24 budget for High difficulty. Using the '14 thresholds, I have to apply a 1.5x multiplier because there are ten enemies and 7 party members (it’s a whole table-and-text reference, p. 82), which scales the enemy XP up to a whopping 26,400 - a difference roughly equivalent to adding a CR 12 monster like an Erinyes or Arcanaloth!

So how did it turn out? The party had to resort to some healing effects, crowd-control tactics to keep enemies off the weaker members, and one party member was near 0HP after the last enemy turn of what became the final round.

A particularly astute GM might recognize that statement: it’s a rough restatement of the '24 Moderate difficulty!

There are some limitations to the comparison: these monsters had multiple resistances, monsters did not all enter the fight at once, it’s a single anecdotal incident, the party had just completed another combat encounter with no recuperation, and this encounter included a non-combat objective.

What are you all seeing with the updated encounter design rules? Did you even know that guidance existed (you know who you are )

[RasputinPGrendel]

I make every encounter deadly. I don’t care as it seldom matters. If I make it easy or moderate it serves a specific purpose, to drain the PCs before setting up something bigger or for setting the environment, it may also give PCs an opportunity to get some swings in and learn to work together. I don’t like dropping random monsters into places that environmentally or narratively don’t belong. The MM does not provide enough options in my opinion so you have to get creative building your own foes or borrow stats from other creatures. Maybe I just don’t use enough demons or devils in my campaigns. I don’t know.

[paneerakbari]

It comes down to the expectations and preferences of the table for me, and I count myself as one of those players, an equal among peers.

Don’t get me wrong, when I sit down to play a video game that difficulty selector goes straightaway to the highest level. I’m not afraid of an absolutely punishing combat experience. I’m not wild about being eliminated from the table because of a character death, but I don’t expect punches to be pulled. Monsters are often intelligent or vicious (or both) enough to go straight for the kill.

What I don’t particularly enjoy is the simplistic “just keep hitting it” button-mash experience of many combats. In other words, the sort of encounter that is best described by CR- and XP-based planning tools.

As a GM, I don’t want the party obsessively ten-foot-poling every tile in the hallway; rolling dice at every closed door is a drag; mimics aren’t actually treasure-chest-shaped: they can’t hold anything; constant ambushes of ready monsters make me question their sanity.

Encounter designers (and I mean specifically “of the published hardcover variety”) write boring whack-a-beast templates in perfectly-square, single-level rooms and I’m not interested in that for myself.

We can have interesting encounters with objectives, that tell their own stories, running frantically down corridors - it doesn’t all have to be the endless, senseless, mindless flesh thumping of Avengers: Infinity War.

We can have combats settled with the steel equivalent of a cross look, and we can have brutal bloodbaths that strongly suggest “you shouldn’t have come here,” and we can everything in between, beside, and around the corner from those two ends because they’re all valid and good as long as they’re agreed to and wanted by the people sitting down to play them together

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edit to add: and, yeah, I pretty much make every encounter a High difficulty level for the same reasons, and because I want combat to be a freaking deterrent that the party actively works together to figure out some way of avoiding