Challenge Rating | Running the Game
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- čas přidán 22. 08. 2017
- Episode 44: What even is CR?
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"My right answer is not necessarily your right answer."
I think this is the best piece of DM advice.
Blatsuura that advice also works for parenting.
"the (CR)code is more like guide lines than actual rules"
GM Barbossa
Lmao
a long time ago i used to ask three questions when building an encounter
"is this cool"
"does this make sense"
"will this wipe my group"
yes
now beware there are DMs who want the answers to be yes no and yes
@@solalabell9674 i want the answer to be yes, yes, and yes.
i love building painful encounters. My last session the rogue went unconscious twice, and the party found a mimic ring that left the ranger at 1 hp. Idk why i love doing this shit, i just love it. The players do NOT trust me anymore, and will be super cautious about opening any door or chest or whatever they might be opening. Even looking at certain things has them hiding behind cover.
And i love it.
@@Eniroth my group of 6 new players and 1 old player has had 2 sessions with me so far.
In session 1:
- I downed a character
- I reduced one to 2hp with a specter attack but he passed his save
- I reduced another to 1hp with the same attack but he failed his save
Session 2 ended with 5 unconscious but stable PCs out of 7 total.
I'll tame it back in future for some combats, but holy shit was the fear of death exhilarating for the players.
@@shanekayat3217 i know, rolling dice is fun and all, but with no consequences or repercussions to poor play or bad behavior the impact of every die roll is that much lesser.
When my players now roll their dice, the tension in the air is so thick it can be sliced.
I watch this channel while feeding my one year old. She has begun to nod her head every time Matt makes a point.
Omg that is adorable
One of Matt's bonus languages is Baby.
r/thathappened
r/nothingeverhappens
@@tuptastic304 fugoff
So the undead video is to help us find the wight answer.
Get out of here.
Pronounce it in a British accent and it'll make perfect sense
I hate you
I adore this
0:31 The moment when he points to his left but the box appears over his face will forever fill me with delight. Comedy!
I used cr for a while. once my level 4 players took on an encounter that was considered deadly for a 10th level party and managed to win without a single death, one week later they tpked to an easy encounter. I no longer use cr.
My 5-man level-3 party defeated a Young Green Dragon, which I believe is CR-9. They just planned really well.
Conversely, they fought a Black Pudding last week (CR-4) at level 4 and almost got wiped.
Sometimes there's no telling what will happen! Much cooler to overpower and encounter and nerf it on the fly by playing them suboptimally or lowering their HP. Or maybe the party lands a good hit and removes a piece of armor to lower the AC.
Justin Z Two of my 6th level PCs almost got killed by a Gelatinous Cube hahaha
The thing about challenges is that sometimes even if a challenge should be easy or fair, the dice can betray you and screw you over
This past Friday, my party of six level 4 (though, each of them have some buffs to make them feel more like level 5 in power) players just fought a Wyvern Queen (see: Adult Green Dragon without legendary actions and 18 AC instead of 19) and six wyverns, with the aid of one wyvern and one level 11 warlock, who was a bit of a failure in combat anyways.
They went into this knowing it was going to be crazy hard. See, they needed the necromantic heart of the Queen to revive a recently deceased partymember in lieu of any other means of revival. They were told by the clans that hunt these wyverns that this is something rarely done, due to it's insane difficulty. But yet, they wanted to try. The alchemist artificer was able to create five potions of poison resistance, and another potion of poison immunity was obtained, which ended up being an enormous help during the fight. They got a clan to take on the majority of the wyverns while they fought the Queen and her closest wyverns.
At the end of the fight, only three partymembers were left standing, all with very low HP (one had 1HP), and no one had died. The partymember was revived.
The thing with a dragon is quite common. In Lost Mine of Phandelver, you also kill it on level 3, and it's made to be killable
@@ondrasukdol6654 The green dragon is supposed to flee at 50% health in that encounter, actually.
Hey, here is an idea: a video about the "useless" skills/proficiencies. Making them useful and/or fun.
Come up with that yourself.
Garrett Stewart Yeah. Fuck people for making requests. Who do these clowns think they are? Fans?!
Bjorn Wild if you're a DM, you should give your players some skill challenges for what you want to test. Althetics isn't used alot, give your brutes some athletics tests, try to have enemies shove them.
If someone isn't perceptive but better at investigation, give them things to investigate. These skill challenges exist for a reason, have players use them.
Keffington Bear in my game, medicine is connected to making potions, (a potion is just a fantasy drug so some medical knowledge is probably involved) and to knowledge checks based around identifying an illness. I've called for the check in a few other situations as well, but it remains something of an edge case skill.
At a stretch, Medicine could be used to judge the psychological state or health of an individual, though insight could be used similarly.
my player might ask "do I believe her?" I would have him roll insight,
"She seems to believe her statement"
"Is she crazy?"
This would be a situation for medicine as you are seeking info on illness.
The skill probably has more use in some campaigns than others, but honestly you will seldom use it more than other possible skills.
One medicine fix I am considering is 1) you need it to use a healers kit. 2) you need to use healers kit charges to use hit die to heal (ala DMG options)
Ahh, when I color correct a video, it undoes the positioning of the images. Got it figured out now, sorry for the weirdness.
The colour correction is very nice
At least your hair is cute ;)
Lol did you just heart your own comment. Love it!
Great videos keep up the good work
Where are the stronghold rules Matt?
I thought it was hilarious, and intentional!
I would totally wear a shirt with "peace" on the front and "out" on the back
I did the thing you told me not to do. I threw an ogre at my players, at the end of a long hallway, plenty of time to run away. They decided to set up a rope trap and fight the 20 foot tall ogre in a small cramped hallway, and well, our Monk is pink mist now. Colville leason learned, don't throw things at your players that you don't want them to fight.
breaking the same rule, the DM of a game I somewhat recently played threw a giant crocodile at the party to speed them along and get them to advance further into the dungeon... They ended up spending *three* sessions taming it instead.
20 foot tall ogre!? How many puberties did HE have!?
Have to use a giant boulder next time.
4:45 you mention using monsters tactically. This is one of the most common things I've seen with players. Players expect all enemies, be they L1 pigs or L20 wizards, to just blindly walk forward and attack. How dare my npc bards and clerics buff themselves, or rogues utilize sneak attack, or Liches cast spells...!
Yeah definitely know that feeling! Especially with monsters that have high int they know who the squishy spellcaster is. They know that the cleric is the one who keeps healing everyone keeping them alive. They would also want to win shouldn’t they fight with some level of basic tactics? Let alone a lich or archdevil or demon with 25 int or something who is above genius level intelligence?
Yeah, this is definitely something to keep in mind. Sometimes the issue is that monsters come with so many extra rules, when you add them on the spot, or when you have a bunch of different ones it's hard to use them all correctly. Sometimes the best things to do is to modify the special abilities of some creatures to something that's easier to understand and to put in practice and that you know will have some impact on the players
I've been DMing for maybe around a year now, and I've found that I actually do my best work with the bare minimum preparation and the pressure of on-the-spot improv. You've been a massive help and inspiration. Keep it comin'!
As a new DM (I've only run maybe 10ish sessions) I use exp calculators like Kobold Fight club and the such to get an idea of what to send against my players. But I have taken a liking of adding legendary actions to relatively mundane creatures whom could be bosses or leaders.
My most recent example was a revenant I had the party fight where I gave it 3 legendary actions:
1 action to punch
2 actions to "call soldiers" as he was a long dead general who would call his skeleton and shadow soldiers from their graves.
I ran the fight pretty poorly, I screwed up a few places, and they were noticed by the players. but other than those mess-ups, they enjoyed the fight and thought the mechanics behind it were pretty good.
I like to build my own monsters quite a bit already to fit narrative and make cool and meaningful encounters and story elements so I say to hell with the people that say I must follow the CR system until I'm more experienced, my players (who are mostly way more experienced than me) are enjoying what I'm dishing out and only felt cheated when I did actually cheat them in the revenant fight by doing something I shouldn't have.
I enjoyed the video and liked that you gave different views on the system rather than just saying use this or do that like some other channels do at times.
I find "Kobold Fight Club" is a good start to setting up combat encounters.
My players don't know how much they can thank Kobold Fight Club for not being tpk'd during the first few sessions i ran.
Still use it as a check to see if i might have missed something or if my thinking in an encounter is wrong.
That's actually a really cool idea for a boss! Mind if I steal that for a campaign I'm gonna start running soon?
I think that CR is great to get you started, but once you start to get the feel for what the CRs mean, you can start to build on instinct. At least, after years of DMing, that is how I have come to do it. As Matt says, do it the way that works best for you!
Leonardo Mendez Go for it, I'm glad you like the idea.
*HOLY CRAP* I was *JUST* thinking about my next encounter's CR problems, Matt! This is *VERY* timely! Thank you, and keep doing what you do!
On my end, I use an alternative CR chart I grabbed from a redditor's homebrew. *HOWEVER,* I don't compute CRs on the fly, but rather I've created several preset encounters weeks before I ran the campaign. In cases when I needed to run a truly random encounter, I go with what monsters make sense in the current location, despite character levels! If there's a dragon there, I say they see it in the distance flying or sleeping, to give them enough time to decide whether to flee or fight.
6:30 I'm not sure I like the idea of randomly deciding on the amount of enemies the party should face based on their current state (As you put it, well rested or having good intel). The reason is that I think it punishes the party for planning ahead, conserving their resources and/or trying to discover something about their enemy.
If they know you'll give them a fitting amount of enemies based on how prepared they are, then why would they bother preparing? I feel it discourages planning ahead and maintaining spell slots/abilities, and actively punishes the party when they think ahead, which isn't something you want as a DM.
I tend to agree with you. I think Matt is more into fudging die rolls and selling the players an illusion, because he finds the results more fun. But I'm more the type to decide what makes sense for an encounter area completely independent of the party. I throw away CR but I dont weigh the scene based on the current party state or readiness. Therefore any encounter may be easier or harder than might make the encounter an epic scene; but that's ok. Our group is more simulationist in style.
This really does seem like a matter of preference and GM style, a battle between simulation and story. I'm pretty sure I've fudged HP in every battle I've run, I find it more entertaining and satisfying if every fight(within reason) is a winnable struggle. But some people prefer occasionally mopping the floor or throwing themselves at impossible odds, but personally if I feel the GM has a responsibility not to waste peoples time, to me it should be short or epic.
@DM Blackwall I think that's a pretty good and seamless way of making an encounter easier, at least compared to directly adding/removing enemies, but personally, as a player, I'd feel a bit cheated if the DM was contriving an easier encounter for me because I acted rashly or got bad rolls. I prefer to feel like I've earned my victories fairly, and I think making an encounter easier just cheapens the whole thing.
Still, to each their own. I totally get why you'd change a situation to suit a party's condition, and why it might even be beneficial in some cases to do so.
It won't punish any one because you don't punish in game and you don't tell them (manipulation is the best tool a game master have in entertaining).
I think a good counter argument is that you could adjust encounters if you believe they haven't prepared enough (or reward them for preparing a lot). So if the level of preparation is good and they've been very smart -- you can reward them for that. But if they haven't prepared much and you get the feeling they are getting lazy, you can reasonably 'punish' that behavior
That Undead video looking like Half-Life 3 status right now.
Bro have I ever let you down?
Matt go to bed it's 3 am (love your work)
Matthew Colville, Nope. Not yet!
At 10:23 I went to wipe something off my screen at the exact place that Matt recoiled from and it actually scared me.
"No ad here at the end for my books..." That is an ad Matt lol.
I was fortunate enough to DM for the first time with a group more experienced than me, and when I mentioned CR they all pretty much immediately said not to use it and just build encounters I thought would be fun. Worked pretty well for us!
all tools are great, but Matt is completely right that you need to change for players. start will the basics and the tools and you will learn from there what to do. the stress will be much less as well
Matt, I just want to thank you so much for making these videos. I really appreciate all of your words of advice as well as opinions and encouraging new DM's to think for themselves. I started DMing for my friends (none of us had every played before this) a few months ago (also I homebrewed the whole campaign and setting) and I watch all of your videos and they have really helped me be a free-thinking DM! I have borrowed some ideas of yours and come up with other really cool ones that my players love! I owe a lot of it to you and your dedication to making really well thought out videos that explain how to think for yourself rather than just use the exact ruleset and everything. Thanks so much!
No book ads? Am I the only one worrying about Matt now?
Eh I don't want folks to get burned out with that stuff.
It's been a few videos now.
It's either he forgot, he was too lazy to do it, or he decided not to plug his books every time.
Matthew Colville man, I think people understand that a living needs to be made. You're not being like "if you guys buy 10 books this week, I'll put out another video!" You just nicely remind people in a no pressure way "hey, if you like this thing I do you may like this other thing I do". No problem with that.
+Matthew Colville Love your books, and I can't wait for fighter to come out. I even made d&d character based on the green order knights. Plus I gave a friend of mine your books for his b-day and so far he is liking it. Sorry for the Fanboying.
Just going to say - I've never had a problem with your book ads at the end. They're never demanding, always friendly and polite, and makes it clear that this is a thing that goes both ways - we pay money for a book we may well enjoy, that money goes to you and you use it to make other things we may well enjoy. No objections here.
I came to this video wanting to know how the CR works.... I left wanting to just throw monsters at my PC's and just see what sticks. This was a great advice video. Thanks Matt!!
I like how Matt saying "no ad for my books" is inadvertently an ad because it makes you more curious not being told about that kind of thing.
Great video! I've been DMing for a month now, and this series has helped me a ton. More than anything, it's taught me to focus on making each session fun, challenging and dramatic, rather than following every rule, roll, and procedure to a t. I think having bullet point rather than scripted encounters is a perfect example of player-focused thinking.
"On the fly" is where I live best. I enjoy a healthy amount of prep work, but as you say, just in bullet point form. At times I've had to create a scenario out of thin air because I just simply did not have time to prep the week before. I wouldn't recommend this all the time, however, they turn out to be some of the most memorable and empowering sessions of the year. Cheers.
This was the best video thumbnail in a while. Keep up the gesticulations and facial expressions, Matt!
I gave up the CR system in the 2nd or 3rd session of 5e. When my group came across some orcs I ended up just going with 1 orc for each player + a couple of extra orc warlocks. I did this primarily because the group size could change session to session so it was just easier to use my gut and throw down a bunch of enemies that I figured would be around about decent challenge for the PCs at the table.
I love the idea of planning possibilities instead of results. That's how I DM and I feel more confidence having someone else say it! Thanks Matt!
just ran my first session as a dm thank you Matt for these videos to help make that happen
Hi! Six years late to the party but first time DM coming up this Sunday. I just wanted to say I found this discussion very comforting, so THANK YOU!
Another great video! Thanks for all the help. Started playing with the family. With your videos, I have the confidence to facilitate an enjoyable family game time. I'm still learning the rules but because of you, I don't let the rules get in the way of having fun. Thank you very much.
I love your channel, have played/DM'd since the very box back in 74. I took a eight year break but now running a new group in 2e. It is really good to see you purting this out for new DM's, and there is still so much intrest in tabletop RPG.
I have this whole playlist downloaded to my phone via the youtube app and I continually rewatch videos on the way to and from work. Listen to, really. But either way, it spurs my creativity and keeps my brain occupied while doing the mind-numbing work I have to do. Thanks Matt!
Hey Matt, just wanted to thank you for doing this series. I've actually been following it for some time but now that I am actually sitting down and starting my first campaign its become invaluable to me. It also helped me to realize that certain things I wanted to do that many old school players see as to "video gamey" such as having sandbox quest hubs and larger conditional quests that grant things like new classes, archetypes and special items are actually perfectly acceptable things to do in your campaign. Despite not having run a game since 2nd edition (I used to run Dragonlance alot) I am really excited to show my players this new world I created from scratch. And I think without this series on what tools to use (such as hexographer and dungeonographer) I would have been really lost.
I also want to encourage other DM's out there to not be afraid to create new classes and archetypes. Alot of people think of that as a potential nightmare for balancing but what I ended up doing was basing alot of my abilities and spells around things that exist in the game already but maybe with another class. So the only real danger is giving that player too many tools, not tools that are too powerful. The important thing is that it made my players feel so excited to try out stuff that was made just for them. Basically, be a river to your people.
Deciding which monsters to use and then punching the numbers to figure out how many to include in the encounter is fun for me. (And I'm not even an accountant.) With everything that's going on in a session and everything I need to keep track of, I'd rather not try to wing building an encounter on the fly.
I definitely agree: there is no right way. Different things work for different people.
I love you Matt. Your Videos are fantastic in every way. Please never stop making content.
I started playing D&D coming up to 2 years ago, I was 27 and had always played tabletop wargames. I wish I had started with DnD sooner.
I have been DMing for a little over a year now and absolutely love your videos. So often I totally agree with what you say or find that I do these exact things without thinking. Your videos are a hugely useful resource. Thank you
Matt, you touched on this in a recent interview and I'm glad you went into more depth in this video. I have a big episode coming up for a campaign I've been running for 20 years now. I'm running this session for my friends that run the convention this weekend in Los Angeles. I'm going to steer away from my xp budget system and run my encounters more loosely like you described, buy I'll also use more of your teachings by giving the players clues ahead of time so that they can plan for tough encounters.
I think that I will let the group know that the encounters ahead will be tougher and I also plan to have an important NPC reiterate this within the game just to make sure they aren't surprised when the time comes.
Great advice and I look forward to more stuff like this from you in the future.
I used CR in 5e for a year and a half. I never felt comfortable with it, and I never felt it was accurate. Some 'deadly' encounters were over in a few rounds with little damage to the party, and other, simpler encounters were grueling and dangerous.
But, in using it, in questioning and investigating it and my encounters, I became much more familiar with the bones of 5e. Now I'm confident that CR is garbage, and I'm confident in my ability to read the powers and stats of a creature and make my own decision about what and how many enemies belong in an encounter. I needed that time with CR to teach me the questions I need to ask myself about what makes a good encounter.
There's still plenty more for me to learn, though.
As someone who started with 5e and started DMing after only a couple sessions as a player I found the xp guidelines in the DMG very valuable. Not for making the best encounters but for really getting to know some important aspects of the system before messing around with things myself. Stuff like breaking up the day into 5-7 encounters with 2 anticipated short rests led to some very railroaded adventures at the start, but teaches attrition and how important it is to various classes. Stuff like the adjusted xp table teaches how important bounded accuracy is and how powerful groups of enemies can be. Once you got the hang of the basics it's much easier to create adventures that focus on the situation as opposed to the encounters.
Also learned that many creatures in the MM have poorly calculated CR ratings when compared to the build a monster guidelines so it got me into the practice of editing each creature's stat block manually, which has come in handy a lot at the higher levels because it's made choosing the creature first and editing the stat block to make it more level appropriate really simple in most cases.
One of the things I really enjoy about your videos is that you encourage not necessarily listening to you. I see a lot of people on Facebook who hate your channel because they don't agree with you, but for me that's part of why I like it. Of course I don't agree with everything but most of your advice is solid, including this, I never used CR because it seemed like a lot of tedious work especially balancing for a 10 person party.
I swear I've noticed a trend where you open with "So I was in the middle of working on X video when I had an idea for this video".
It's... interesting to see.
I think exploring typical characteristics for Brutes, Controllers and Artillery might make for an interesting episode. "What are you looking for in a good artillery type monster?"
I bought your books, currently about halfway through Priest. It's very good so far! I love the little twists that separate the world from others.
"I have a lot of wrong answers in my head." - Sums me up perfectly regardless of the question.
First, I love your work! This series is awesome. Regarding this video, I would add that encounters should not always be at the same level of difficulty for a given party. I build some encounters to be easy, some moderate, some very hard, and some impossible requiring retreat. I mix them to tell a story and make the world more real within the fantasy setting.
Thank you for this. I spent 30+ years playing AD&D, and have only in the last year converted to 5e. In AD&D, I could put together an encounter easily by feel and experience. Trying to learn the CR system was tough, and my encounters always came out much easier than I intended.
I'm gonna try your looser version, which is closer to my AD&D approach. And your idea of having enemies in reserve will help me control the difficulty a little better. Thanks!
I really enjoy your videos, thank you for making them. I would also enjoy seeing an animated video of your campain.
I just discovered your channel recently and I love it! I've applied a lot of your ideas in my campaign notes and I can't wait to see how it goes.
On another note, when I started watching your videos I swore up and down I recognized your name and then you mentioned TRS. I work in the industry and spent some time with Evolve. Small world I suppose!
I'm 90% with you here. I also ignore challenge rating, and I've every old-school in that I see all the rules outside of character creation as optional. (In my last game I didn't even give monsters HP, I just wrote down the damage they took and decided by fiat when they were "bloodied" and thus at half HP) To counterbalance this, I offer the player 5 extra feats at character creation, under the assumption that "you're going to need them." If they want to fudge their stats, like for some reason in their character backstory, that's fine as long as it applies to all players at the table. I care about balance among the players, so no one is more powerful than their fellow adventurers. As for the monsters, I can control them, and the challenge rating can [insert obscene gesture here].
I've never understood those GMs who complain that their players are overpowered. If the players are curb-stomping the encounters, just add more enemies. That's what rituals, summoning spells, and wandering monsters are for. If the encounter is too much for the team, they always have the option to flee. The villain will mock them for doing so, but they get to live.
The one area I disagree with you is in your love of 3rd edition. Sorry, I'm very much a 4th ed fan, as I hate having to babysit my players at the low levels. Every system of D&D before 4th made 1st level characters too weak for my taste. (I know that's personal taste, and thus entirely subjective) My philosophy is to give the players as much power as they need to fall in love with their character, and then throw things at them that offer a challenge at their power level.
I also believe one should force the PCs to interact with the world on a more personal (rather than violent) level, with a private estate, a list of friends, family, employees, pets, etc. I'm considering writing up a set of rules for D&D for social class advancement, "leveling" your relationship with the various factions in the game, and building a power-base (mansion, castle, floating island palace, etc.) where your family and various employees (maids, butler, gardener, farm-hands, etc) all live and work, to draw the players more into the non-dungeon crawling parts of the game.
Actually, come to think of it, maybe I should get off the internet and start writing it.
Matt had a video though where he specifically said almost all players will die fighting rather than retreat in his experience. I think that is true as well.
In 10 years of running games, players have only ever completely avoided combat (record is 6 sessions in a row), or died to the last fighter, retreat isn't really an option. I've even started campaign with the header of, "remember, retreat is always an option, so you can always use it", just to have them wipe themselves on a BBG they hunted down too vigorously.
Also, the 5th ed. DMG has rules for renown/relationship advancement stuff that actually gives a very solid guideline in my experience.
Hey Matt. I am a new DM and have played about 5 sessions (thanks for your inspiration I love it so much!)
I have found it really helpful to use the CR as a basis for helping me develop encounters but then I always adapt them on the fly depending on what will be the most fun/realistic for the players.
But I also really like your challenge to us at the end and will look to give it a go soon! :)
Love your work though mate It is some of the most helpful and enjoyable Dnd content on the internet!
I love the advice this guys gives. I would love to game at this table. Personally I shoot encounters from the hip many times and I found this works really well and makes the game fun. When I used the encounter system, I found my group was able to fight up a proverbial weight class more than they came up short. At the end of the day, what I love about this series of advice, is have fun and change things to fit your group
I used the CR rating system to build the encounter with the goblin shaman in one-shot you designed at the start of this series. It was going to be a bugbear, the goblin shaman and a goblin boss, came out as a "challenging" rating. But this didn't take into account they had been through the two encounters prior with no long rest. The ranger tried to lure them out of the room but wonderfully failed their deception check so the bugbear attacked them instead, taking the injured ranger down. It became obvious that had I continued with the encounter I designed it would've been a tpk. So as they hadn't actually looked into the room before trying their deception and didn't know how many goblins they were dealing with, when the door opened the goblin boss never came into existence. The bugbear and the paladin duked it out while the shaman and the wizard had a magic duel. It was close, but the remaining players won, the ranger sadly perished failing all 3 death saves and another pc failing a medicine check. The lesson, until the players actually see what they are fighting you can monkey with the combatants to your hearts content.
Also I'm happy this video came out today as I actually just caught up on all of the "Running the Game" videos yesterday after only recently finding them.
I just wanted to stay thanks. I played a long time ago and wanted my kids to enjoy their imaginations more than playing video games; your videos help stir my imagination to in turn stir theirs. There are a lot of good channels out there, but you are a breath of fresh air; when it seems that everyone on CZcams is trying to go to patreon you are still here. P.S. I think 2, 3, 5 years ago when people first started getting views on CZcams they were probably happy, now most are just out for the money.
I used to use challenge rating quite a bit in my earlier DMing days, but after watching your videos I decided to, just as an experiment, just throw it out and see what happens and use encounters that made sense. I DMed for a party of 3 lvl 1 characters and they ended up fighting a young Black Dragon along with like 6 or 7 Lizardfolk. Obviously an encounter that wouldn't ever happen witht he CR 'budget'. They however, managed to recruit some goblins (just like 3 members of a tribe that had been kidnapped by the Dragon for a meal) and used stealth and tactics to be able to actually kill every single creature including the Black Dragon itself. Granted all the goblins died in a single breath weapon and I believe one of the players were taken down during the fight but still it's easily the most memorable encounter yet and its thanks to you Matt, so thanks ^^
TL;DR 3 lvl 1's killed a black dragon and half a dozen lizardfolk and they only fought them because of matts videos and twas awesome.
I got an incredibly useful piece of advice from Web DM, and that was that once your players reach 5th level, it doesn't really matter much what you throw at them.
At that point the number and power of tools that your players have at their disposal is so great that there are few problems that they won't be able to find some way to deal with. This obviously isn't 100% true, and I would never throw something like an arch devil or ancient dragon at my 5th level players, but what is true is that the reliability and usefulness of the CR system begins to fall apart around 5th level, and only gets worse as the players level up.
I still like to use the CR system (I like the one in Xanathar's guide) as a guideline, but I'm no longer terribly worried about throwing something a few levels above my players' recommended CR in front of them. When that does happen it's usually an incredible fight, but my players still manage to pull through it.
I also recommend to new DMs that if you have a larger group like I do (5-6+ players) it is a good idea to give your key big-bad guys max HP. This is a simple way to ensure that even if they roll poorly on initiative, they'll still get to last at least one round to get to use some of their abilities or have a chance to escape, rather than just getting screwed by the players' action economy advantage.
Another recommendation I'd give is that if you want to throw some harder encounters at a party below 5th level, then consider trading some of their offensive power for defensive power. That way you're less likely to have a TPK on your hands, but still have an enemy who can stick around long enough to have a fun and interesting fight. My favorite example of this is when my 4th level players faced a Drow Wizard who was the BBEG of that story arch. I decided to make the Wizard 5th or 6th level, but instead of giving them a really powerful offensive spell that could easily TPK the party (like fireball), I gave him Blink, which was very effective and made the fight harder and more interesting without the threat of the huge damage power spike that normally comes with 3rd level spells.
Thanks for this video, it's a topic very close to my cold, barren GM-heart :) I ran a Pathfinder group for years now and somewhere during that time I came to use pretty much the same eyeballing method Matthew's advising here, because of all the obvious reasons and also because nobody's got time to waste on CR systems that break down at each individual gaming table half the time.
Curious to see the length of the undead video when even Matt calls it beefy. Looking forward to a 9 hour undead master's class!
One thing I've learned when using the challenge rating system is that you have one important variable that you can use to tweak the challenge rating on the fly: HIT POINTS. If it looks like the enemy is doing too well against your players and you want them to survive, then nudge his hit points closer toward the minimum. Too easy: then raise it closer to the maximum.
I dropped using CR for anything than the KFC index search, like Matt. My husband and best friend are quite good at tactics to the point where deadly encounters by the book were straight up trivial for them. I tried experimenting to see if there was some calculation I could use instead. Like double deadly encounter (Nope), triple ( /handwaggle), encounters for groups 1, 2 or 3 levels higher (nope, nope). Double-Double was too much. I wasted so much time on figuring out a system. Winging it is the way to go.
Ran my first game Saturday. The party almost died to zombies but they all survived by a hair. It was really epic and this video helped allot thanks Matt.
Matt, been an on-and-off DM since the early eighties and I agree with many of the things you point and counterpoint. One of my long-time friends and a player in my current 5E campaign has life advice that applies to almost anything, including the debate going on here..."Everything in moderation--including moderation." He wasn't the first to say it, but dang, have I found it to be true. Keep the great content going. And thanks.
Right now I'm running an Aliens campaign based off, you guessed it, the movie Aliens. Basically the ENTIRE thing is juryrigged. There's an obscure book that I pull slightly from but I hand made the character sheets and enemies, and most of the weapons. Since most of the enemies are very weak and the guns very strong, it makes it so much easier to create encounters. Granted there are different enemies, such as tanks and long range units, but it makes it simple. It's also probably my second favorite part of running a game.
And I never used CR, I always just decided to make an encounter that could be dealt with not just by brute force but by tactics and planning.
One important thing to keep in mind is that even going strictly by the CR won't give you a good estimation of how hard the fight will actually be. In my recent campaign probably my hardest encounter was with a CR5 boss and 2 CR2 minions while my 4 players were level 6. The players walked into this fight not having rested in a while so 2 of them were pretty low on health. It ended up being a pretty close fight. Meanwhile one of the easiest encounters happened when they were level 4 and fought a cr5 water elemental. Both encounters occured in a narrow hallway without a lot of room to fight. The difference? One encounter had multiple threats to watch out for while the other only had one. In 5e the amount of enemies being fought matters a lot more than the cr system takes into account. Strictly by the cr system, the water elemental should have been a pretty tough fight. But because they only had to worry about one, they could just perpetually run away from it and chip away with cantrips and ranged weapons. The action economy is very important in 5e and it's very important to keep in mind.
You covered a lot. I agree that CR can be used to identify a creature group; however, that still is only one factor in encounter difficulty. Another thing to consider in encounter building is how long the encounter may last in real time. I've come to target a number of enemy creatures equal to the party size + or - 2 to keep the encounter relatively short. I then use the Daily XP in the DMG to scale the encounter. I've built experience in this process to get a good idea of how my players address some encounters and how well I run the enemy such that I know of a minimum daily XP value I want and I have a rough idea of a maximum daily XP value for any one encounter. These encounters are setup on the map and documented with Excel. It's then up to the players to determine how they want to address the encounter when given a decent amount of foreshadowing.
I tend to use a CR budget for the first session of every campaign - I'll have an encounter of each difficulty as stated in the DMG, normally going from trivial to deadly. I find it's a very useful way to gauge how capable my players are. After that, the only thing that CR determines for me is the amount of XP I award them, and to give me an idea of what kind of monsters to throw at them. Currently, I have a party with two highly experienced players who know how to work together in a thematic and character-driven way, and they crush any encounter I throw at them. I regularly set encounters with CRs way above what would be considered "deadly," and often they breeze through as a result of them knowing full well what their characters can and would do, as well as a knack for interacting with my environments to skew fights in their favour. I really can't praise them enough, but the point I want to make is that I wholeheartedly agree that you should not feel that you need to stick to 'rules' on CR and encounter building. It's all situational.
Besides, they're more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.
I threw 4 chuuls at my lvl 4 party where there was a lot of room and they saw them coming and it was a cake walk, then I threw 1 gelatinous cube and 2 oozes in a narrow hallway where they were surprised and it was almost a tpk. Environment and preparation determine a cr more than anything. That's why I play it loose and on the fly
Another great video. I gave up on the CR system beyond the broadest of ideas of how deadly a creature is a long time ago. At this point I just run the world where things are where they make sense and then give my players the tools to know what they are getting into and decide if it's worth the risk.
Quite honestly, from skimming through the encounter-building section of the DMG, I accidentally used CR's as a range and completely skipped over the more strict system. It's been going well, but I've quickly figures out that using them as a range can limit the types of encounters you make. Not in a bad way, but if you pull a CR 5 monster from the book, your instinct is to pull more CR 5 monsters, and like you explained in the video a more interesting encounter comes from using the Infantry-Captain idea. The only thing I really struggle with is passing intel to the players.
Our DM has stepped up creatures in encounters, because our party/parties work well together. So we tend to exceed CR-system setups. Throwing more at us allows our DM to push us, rather than us typically not being challenged as much. We are all fine NOT dying (unless it serves the story), but the threat is always there that one of us may not come out well on the other side. And that makes it feel better than if he gave us a straight challenge rating.
Most of us have played various RPGs for decades, so we know the subjects very well...and feel more badass when winning when we know we might not.
Matt, I coach a college forensics team. The best competitors have everything memorized, but also can adapt.
I got so freaking giddy when you called it forensics and then called it speech and debate. My team made that transition in branding a while ago. Haha
The xp budget has actually got exactly how well rested the characters are in mind, but that's hidden just a couple of pages further in under "The Adventuring Day," where you have another budget. The easy-medium-hard-deadly scale actually has this other budget in mind, which you find out pretty quick if you go throwing a deadly encounter at a freshly rested party after about level 3 or so.
Rather, the game expects about 12 easy encounters, 6 medium encounters, 4 hard encounters, or 3 deadly encounters, with two short rests thrown in there, before the entire day counts as easy/medium/hard/deadly. 3 deadly encounters between long rests will have a pretty high probability of killing one or more characters while 6 medium difficulty encounters between long rests will stretch party resources just enough.
6 combats in a day probably sounds crazy, but actually plug in the numbers and a medium encounter is just gonna be a couple of wolves or spiders and such a weak encounter won't even deal any damage half of the time... but six in a row would probably beat the fighter up too much to safely push on.
That said, I really like that "I'm not beholden to the encounter building rules, so if the fight is too hard just run away from the monsters" style, and I'm trying to get comfortable enough with just guessing how hard to make fights so that I can start doing that.
If you aren't sure, you can always give a quick estimate, guess low, and have a surprise flank assault if things seem to go too quick
I usually use the CR system to calculate the encounter level and always worked for me. Hard encounters are hard and medium encounters are medium. The problem comes when the players are fighting only 1 creature.
I've had this problem too. The experience of having that one menacing and scary creature as a boss, is something that I think a lot of DM's want to give their players though, and it feels like, based on the CR system in 5e, that you're always putting something more lethal in front of them than you actually are, and thus it always feels too easy.
CR is pretty useful for new DMs, but I agree that it's something you can put down and pick up as you get more comfortable. I was a rather nervous person and downright anxious about DMing, so it was nice have something to hold on to as "it's in the rules!" As I got more confident (and eventually medicated) I learned to read the encounter and my players on the fly. Honestly, fudging monster HP is a great way adjust an encounter without ruining immersion. "Why did those shades die so fast?" "Oh, they weren't TRUE shades, merely distant echoes of a greater darkness. Bum bum bum!" *foreshadowing!*
I love both ways. When prepping an adventure or writing a DMs Guild module I manually use the Challenge Rating/XP Budget to designate a "this is the standard version of this encounter" but I do throw it all out the window when actually running a game, using the CR only as a gauge, especially when players initiate a fight that wasn't in the notes. I think knowing how the CR system works is helpful because now I can draw up encounters on the fly.
I'm prepping for a campaign as a first time DM. Love that I found this, cause it basically says my method of prepping an encounter isn't wrong :)
watching this in 2023, him talking about Brutes, Controllers, and Artillery, is like listening to historical sources predict events that actually go on to happen. Like someone predicting mobile phones in the mid 20th century.
Thanks Matt for the videos, I watched most of them in last few weeks after I saw you on geek and sundry video. Now I feel inspired to run a dnd campaign in couple of weeks
Keep the videos coming
I've been anxiously awaiting your new video! You are one of three Channels for which I've turned on notifications.
New dm (and player) here, I just had vastly different outcomes for two encounters "of the same adjusted value". I like the on the fly this creature makes sence here and is cool style. If it's too difficult, the players can run away. They had to in the first encounter when reinforcements showed up and they were at 3 hp each. If you find an encounter is going to easy just bring in a few stragglers to add to the opposing force, if it's too hard bring in an ally to aid the party or a third party to distract and divide the enemy or give them a mysterious plot reason for some to leave that the players may want to follow up on. Thank you for your take on CR and encounter crafting and difficulty estimation.
I learned how off CR can be through our first campaign. For 1, having 5 instead of 4 players totally skews things, which is fine since CR is advertised as being for 4 players.
But things can get thrown off by other variables too. My players were constantly punching above their level. We just finished the campaign, they went to fight Yeenogu at level 11, the martials low on health and the casters somewhat low in resources. They beat him, 1 death, I even doubled his health. It was fun though! I learned a lot throughout the campaign in how to plan fights for them.
OMG you are my spirit animal!! Everything you just said about CR is exactly how I've been doing it since 3E as well! Glad to know I'm not crazy or alone. LOL
Love this. It's your story on discovering relativity. Context in the game will provide story and fun
I once spent a few days, several hours each day, building a whole dungeon from scratch. I used the CR system to plan and understand what the players would be facing, how much experience they would receive, and what level they would rise to by the time they met their next challenge. For that dungeon, this system worked amazingly!
As they went from room to room, puzzle to monster, challenge to riddle, they progressed only a tiny bit faster than was plotted. This was because I inserted a minor mechanic an old DM of mine used, rewarding individual players for little discoveries or sticking to their character mindset when the player knew what was going to happen.
There were three sections to the dungeon, and each was positioned so the party would be encouraged to explore in order. Unfortunately, a trapped and poisoned door was more interesting than the open hallway, so they skipped the second section and died in the first room of the third section. Part of the reason they died was because all of the treasure rewards for section 1 and 2 were near the end of section 2, so they didn't get the gear they needed for the last section.
hehe, me an accounting major listening to this and thinking, What? Using a budget to create an encounter sounds amazing! Then he mentioned that only accountants would enjoy that. Guess this confirms I made the correct career choice lol
I have a suggestion for newer GMs that don't know how hard an encounter to make. Plan for three outcomes. In the early stages of a given fight, foreshadow something. Announce that a shadow passes above, or that there is a rumbling sound, or a scratching, or whatever, perhaps every turn or two reference it. If the heroes are doing way too well, to a degree that you believe they would find unsatisfying, then that foreshadowed thing can represent "reinforcements," an add-on you planned ahead for to up the challenge slightly (without making it unfair). The "rumble" was a second beast moving into position. If the players are really messing it up, if they will die in an unsatisfying manner and hope seems lost, maybe the rumble is helpful. Maybe the floor drops out beneath some of the enemies, killing or weakening them. Maybe they set off a trap (that never existed before that moment). Maybe some bigger monster comes in and east one before wandering off. So long as it's a fun event, the foreshadowing earlier should make it palatable to players, you set up that something was going on, and something happened that turned a bad situation into a fun one. And if the players do just fine, not too dominant and not too defeated? The rumble just foreshadows a later encounter, or maybe _after_ they win it an event happens as a dramatic flourish, like a wall explodes, exposing a secret room.
Matt, you are a natural teacher. "Running the game" makes me a little bit better every day.
I never played D&D before but . . . I wanna play a campaign with this guy.
I've created a few encounter and I like the idea to modify the monster stats. Yesterday there was a flesh golem for an inexperienced level 3 group, so I weaked him (fewer HPs, fewer + attack, change immunities to resistances). But then a 4th friend joins the group for a one shot and he was experienced. So the weakened flesh golem was now an original one and it was perfect timed. CR is for me just an orientation (oh a cool looking bone devil...ok, he is CR 11, maybe use them in a "more epic" scenario later) and not a formula to use.
Thanks for the video =)
Been DMing for a few years here - Pathfinder, into 5e - and I've very rarely even refered to CR.
Sometimes it's useful for dungeon-building, or as a quick way to gauge the lethality of a creature you're unfamiliar with.
But really, I'd recommed starting off slow with D&D in general. If you've never played before, and you're worried about Total Party Kills, grab your friends, throw together a one-shot, and try some of those creatures that sound interesting to you.
If everyone dies - it's fine. It's a one-shot. As long as it's dramatic and everyone's had fun, nobody will mind. A 1st level party failing a sneak check on trying to sneak past an Orc guard, then legging it into a room filled with skeletons (that you had planned as seperate encounters) and getting creamed, is still a dramatic story. Chances are, everyone's going to have an opportunity to try to turn the tide, and if you're creative with the narration, it'll be great fun.
But really, my recommendation is just HAVE FUN. It's a game. =)
I agree with you. Really good DMs develop their own brand of DM Horse Sense and their own instincts for what's doable and what's too difficult.
When Matt has been planning the undead video for ages and he is still planning, you know it'll be an extremely long video. Get keen lads.
I just had this discussion yesterday with a couple of my players. Started the campaign using CR system, and they all complained that the encounters were too hard. Stopped using it and started throwing higher level enemies at them and now they complain less and feel the encounters are more fair.
I remember in my first session as a dm I threw an ogre against my first level party. Only two of them were in the room with it and the other three were off somewhere else because they thought it was would be best to split up. I had the ogre set up so that he was asleep, but behind him were two treasure chests that had some stuff in it (this was a secret room that the rogue in the group just happened to stumble across) and so the rogue's first instinct was to try and deal with ogre quietly and to try and kill it before it wakes up. Unluckily the cleric walked into the room wearing his heavy armour and woke the beast up, but the rogue had successfully hidden behind some boxes. After the first combat round I had thought that pitting this party against an ogre was a bad idea, as with one swing he knocked the cleric down to 2 hp from his 12 that he had. And then they did something interesting. The rogue had decided to poison one of his arrows and shot it at the ogre, he hit him and the poison came into effect. So it made hitting the cleric much harder giving him enough time to heal. And after a couple rounds the cleric and the rogue managed to kill it, the rest of the party came by and saw what happened. None of these people have ever played dnd before this time, and at that moment I hooked them into it for a long time. (sadly we stopped playing around our 25th session because of some troubles with the paladin :/)
also one time I put them against a death knight at 4th level.... earlier in the adventure they had found this magic crystal looking thing and decided to fuck with it, so I decided to tie the death knight to the crystal and so when they encountered him he was a lot slower, so he only had one attack, and he had no spells. Suffice it to say they killed him and his minions pretty quickly.
Yep, yep, and yep. Tried CR a couple of times, took me longer than I wanted, and ended up changing it on the fly anyway. Makeup of the party and the magic items make a big difference I think. I like the idea of infantry, captains, and boss though; will use that. Thanks Matt
Player: this fight isn't legal
DM: I will make it legal