What is an Encounter in D&D?
An encounter is when players experience or are faced with something difficult or hostile. Most of the time in D&D 5e, this “something difficult or hostile” is a monster or dangerous situation.
While some encounters may be focused around stealth-based missions or skill challenges, in this article we will be sticking to combat encounters in which our players are entering initiative with other monsters or NPCs.
This article is meant to provide a number of encounter building guidelines in order to keep your players engaged, tax their resources, and make them think outside the box.
1. Know How to Use Challenge Rating (CR)
If you compare the table on MM 9 to the table on DMG 82, you can see that this is roughly consistent with the encounter building rules. The DMG does not provide the sort of easy, shortcut rules of thumb that the 4e DMG provides for tossing together an encounter just by eyeballing the CR of the monsters involved.
“CR is imprecise, and any precision it has diminishes the higher the character level”
– Chris Sims, D&D Monster Manual developer
– Chris Sims, D&D Monster Manual developer
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What is Challenge Rating?
Challenge Rating (CR) is a way D&D 5e represents the difficulty a party will have facing a creature.
This seems simple enough, but CR is one of the most misunderstood things when it comes to DMs building encounters in 5e. Most DMs check the character level, open up the 5e Monster Manual and find a Monster with CR matching the parties level and then complain that their players easily dealt with the encounter.
Well, what can you do about 5e’s CR being an imperfect system? You could always crank up the CR dial and hit your players with an Adult Dragon at level 5 but, if we look at this under the assumption of wanting our players to live through encounters (which we typically do), Challenge Rating takes on a whole different meaning.
How to Use Challenge Rating
Instead of thinking about 5e’s CR as how deadly an encounter is, it’s best to think of it as how draining an encounter it is. Players in 5e have a lot of resources at their disposal, so hitting them with an encounter that matches their CR is going to get progressively harder for them as they use up spell slots and hit dice.
Building encounters in 5e using CR works, but only if you remember to sap your players of their resources.
2. Take Away Player Resources
The 5E Dungeon Master’s Guide states that a regular party of 4-5 Adventurers should expect 6-8 Medium or Hard combat encounters per day, with about two short rests.
Now this may seem like a lot, but building encounters around the philosophy of taking your player’s resources away helps mitigate the two extremes that can arise otherwise:
Making Encounters Too Hard
In order to pose a challenge to players using a limited number of encounters you have to build the encounter to be potentially deadly every time. If you overshoot your encounter building, you run the risk of killing your PCs or causing your players to not have fun fighting an “unwinnable encounter”.
Making Encounters Too Easy
On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you undershoot while building your encounter, you run the risk of the encounter being too easy. This would, again, not make for a fun experience as players do not feel a sense of urgency or danger in the encounter. This is usually the main issue when DMs build encounters using D&D 5e’s CR mechanic but do not stick to the recommended number of encounters.
Tips for Building a High Number of Encounters
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It is best to run a higher number of Medium to Hard encounters as it will take away the many resources players have access to like Hit Dice, high level spells, powerful abilities or magical items.
Once the players are starved of these resources, they are forced to think about each encounter more carefully and become strategic in their actions.
One thing to note about throwing a lot of encounters at your party: While the challenge level may reach a more desirable balance, it can get boring fighting hordes of the same enemies on the same terrain. Ensure that your encounters mix and match monsters, include interesting terrain, and have objectives more nuanced than “go here and kill that”.
3. Action Economy is King
Another big problem D&D 5e’s CR mechanic has when it comes to balancing encounters is the number of actions that are available to monsters vs players.
If you build an encounter based around one badass monster and a group of 5 PCs, the PCs could potentially have fives attacks for every one of the monsters. This is no good for building difficult, engaging encounters that stress the resources of the party.
What we would suggest is building encounters to have a slightly less buff “main opponent” with several minion type creatures. Building encounters in this way will divert the players damage dealing capabilities and allow for more of a threat of overwhelming the party.
Another way to deal with the disproportionate actions available to monsters vs players is to use Legendary and Lair Actions. These special actions are reserved for more badass monsters but can be easily homebrewed for other monster when building encounters.
D D 5e Dmg Table Building Encounters
4. Don’t Forget About the Environment
The environment is always important when it comes to engaging and challenging 5e encounter building. A great example of this can be seen by looking at the cannon fodder of the Monster Manual: Goblins.
Goblins alone aren’t very exciting. They are the vanilla ice cream of monsters. If you build an encounter where a bunch of Goblins ambushing your party on the open road, the encounter is going to be uninspired at best (unless you’re just starting the Lost Mines of Phandelver Adventure).
What would happen if you built an encounter in which the players were walking in a canyon and some goblin archers popped up on the ridge above while other goblins attacked from the front and back? This encounter just got a whole lot more interesting. Building encounters with enemies in which they utilize the environment to their advantage can tax player resources more heavily and make them think outside the box to overcome the encounter.
5. Switch Up Your Monsters
Mixing and matching monster types is a great thing to remember when encounter building.
If you don’t believe us, think back on one of the greatest fantasy movies ever, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.
When the party alerts the Orcs to their presence in Moria, the Fellowship would have had a fine time dealing with the Orcs that rushed Balin’s Tomb. Sure there were a lot of low CR Orcs, but the Fellowship dealt with them eventually. In order to make the Fellowship feel challenged, they could have thrown more Orcs at them, but watching Aragorn cut down Orcs for an hour and a half would have become tiresome. Instead, to make things interesting, the Orcs brought in a high CR Cave Troll that, when combined with the low CR Orcs, really made our heroes use all of their resources and cunning to survive.
The same holds true when encounter building in DnD. If you throw one big baddie at your players, the action economy has the potential to be completely one sided. This can cause a monster that was meant to be a challenge to turn into a monster that gets killed in one round of Initiative.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, if you build an encounter that has a lot of low level minions, PCs could easily deal with them or become bored and frustrated if there are enough to actually overwhelm them.
How to Mix and Match Monster Types When Building Encounters
Start by looking at the level of your party members. For the sake of this exercise, let’s say they are Level 5. Instead building the encounter around one CR 5 Troll, you can throw 8ish Challenge ¼ Gobins and a Challenge 3 Bugbear Chief.
Not only will this provide more variety in the encounter, but it could change up the goals of the encounter. Maybe the goblins will run if the Bugbear Chief is killed? Maybe the Bugbear Chief stands back and tactically orders the goblins around the battlefield?
Building an encounter with a mixed bag of creatures also offers an awesome chance to use monsters to further your story or increase immersion in the environment. The Dungeon Master’s Guide offers a great Monsters by Environment table that can help you narrow down which monsters make sense to add when encounter building.
6. Switch Up the Objective
Most DnD combat ends with one side killing the other. While this certainly works in a number of scenarios but a good way to take these encounters up a notch is to make the players or NPC/Monsters have a goal that doesn’t necessarily have to end in everybody else dying.
A couple different objectives you could use for player when encounter building:
- Prevent a quick monster from escaping
- Get to a certain location before a timer runs out
- Escort a noncombatant through a hostile zone
A couple different objectives you could use are for the NPC/Monsters when encounter building are:
- Raise an alarm
- Capture a party member, then retreat
- Protect a mage long enough to open a portal
Encounter Building Like a Champ
We hope you’ve enjoyed these tips to help step up your encounter building! Keep in mind, these tips are general guidelines to engage players, challenge them to think outside of the box, and manage their resources effectively.
Hope you liked the article! If you have any questions or feel we’ve missed anything go ahead and post a comment below. If you like our content subscribe to Arcane Eye!
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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.
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.