>>46588980
I dont balance encouters, my player encounter what they would encounter assuming the setting was real world and their pcs were an person inside the setting

If it's a filler fight, it'll be weak things that die trivially easily. Minions, 4E called them, but I've never actually played 4E.
If it's a deadly serious battle where the players are given full opportunity to die, I typically create an anti-party of X opponents roughly parallel to the strength of the party (which itself has X units).
If it's a serious battle, but one the players are expected to win but not easily, I scale a fight that would be a lethal battle for the players, then reduce all the numbers by a third. HP, damage output, etc.

If the party did something stupid and the fight is "you've enraged the dracolich and are all going to die", well, I don't care about TPKs if they were completely avoidable and clearly indicated.

I try to at least know what the balance of my fights are. Sometimes it's okay for the players to flatten something, and sometimes the players should have to run away. But I usually want fights to be very close with the players working out winning.

For D&D 3.5, I played a campaign following the CR system to the letter but I wouldn't do it again. CR has so little accuracy that it's basically useless.

For D&D 4E, I mostly followed the CR system, though that has its warts too - my players were consistently punching above their weight, except Soldier-type monsters above your level are boring garbage.

My own homebrew had a pretty accurate CR system and I barely playtested it at all, I don't think it should be as hard as the D&D folks are making it.

Nah. It's more interesting that way, and keeps everyone on their toes.

>>46588980
I balance encounters in that I tend to populate areas with creatures I am confident the players could tackle one at a time. Then I put however many of them there as seems appropriate to the setting's current situation. If there's a bandit gang, it's got enough bandits to get by, but probably not so many that they have huge internal problems. Unless I think it would be interesting to have them infighting, in which case there may be entirely too many of them.

Keeping safe and managing threats is part of the adventure.

>>46588980
>Does /tg/ follow the encounter level rules and such for balanced fights with D&D?

They're not hard and fast "rules", just guidelines. Loose guidelines at best.

There are so many considerations and circumstances to take into account for any battle, that every DM has to adjust the battles, often on the fly, to suit the strength of his players.

Balancing an encounter is fucking stupid. Any player with half a brain will realize that the encounters are balanced, and all the suspense will wear off. Players should be uncertain as to whether a fight will be easy, or a slaughter. It builds tension.

I see a lot of 3.5 and 4e experience here. Anyone have an opinion on the encounter system for 5e?

I've only got maybe 1.5 combat monster-y PCs, so I typically build for a 1v1 fight, and then give him mooks for the others to fight.

>>46588980
I go the opposite direction and give my players a generous enough point buy, material access and hit point generation method that I can expect them to survive long enough to either win or get it through their skulls that they need to run away.

When your players have competently built PCs, it makes life easier as a GM.

>>46588980
Every encounter is deadly, or at least hard/very hard.

But there´s always some way to get rid of the enemies using the environment, if the players are smart. Too many orcs, but they´re easy to throw down the cliff with an ambush. An underground lake with a massive octopus-like creature, but they know or can find out about a plant that grows down there that is extremely poisonous and can be easily used to poison the whole lake. A bitchy undead invasion against a town they need to defend, but they have time to make fortifications and prepare the townfolk and traps, or to escape.

This way they´re always on their toes whenever I pull some enemy because they know almost every encounter can end in a TPK, and they get used to be creative.

It´s a new group with some videogame-itis. I´ll tone it down slightly as they get used to use their brains and the environment more than the numbers in their character sheets. We had a TPK in the test round (just testing mechanics and goofing around), but then they got the hang of it. So far nobody has died in the actual campaign.

>>46591289
It's a joke.

i use this for my custom campaign

http://dhmholley.co.uk/encounter-calculator-5th/

it's a sandbox campaign though, so the difficulty sort of radiates out from the starting point, but i can't control where the players go.

you need to be able to adapt. if the players encounter something that will kill them you need to be able to communicate that to them. if the players encounter things that are slightly too easy or too hard you need to be able to adjust things on the fly to keep stuff fun.

>>46594360
How?

>>46595507
Not him, but literally the first monster in the monster manual - the Aarakocra - is CR 1/4, flies, throws javelins, and can summon CR 5 Air Elementals. That's a TPK for level 1 adventurers twice over.

>>46598016

Dumbass, they can only summon one air elemental, after three turns, and only if there's like 5 of them.

They also have to all be concentrating on the summon to do so, so one hit and boom, they're either rolling perfect or they have to do it all over again.

If you're going to shit on the system, at least know what you're talking about first.

>>46588980
I have a large group of 8 players so balancing for them was hard at first (5e). After they breezed through my first encounters I started using Kobold Fight Club to find out what is a good fight but they still managed to get through relatively unscathed when Kobold Fight Club said it should be hard. Now I pretty much always just throw deadly level encounters at them. They're a smart group so they still survive and its much more exciting. If it really is too tough for them I'll sort of rebalance on the fly with environmental hazards that hamper the enemy and if its too easy Ill just make enemy reinforcements show up. Working pretty well so far.

>>46599591
They can fly. They have no reason to engage the party until after they've successfully summoned an air elemental.

And flying + ranged weaponry is still a party wipe for level 1 characters anyway.

the written rules for balancing encounters are garbage because they assume the PCs will fight with the same strategies as the monsters and that the DM will only follow RAW.

--For a melee monster: make its AC low enough that the crappiest melee PC can hit it 60%-80% of the time. Give it enough HP to survive around 5-10 hits from the most damaging melee PC, and give it and avg damage such that it can take down the tank in 5-10 hits (adjust CMB and damage appropriately, IE if you double the monsters damage make it hit half as much). Reduce or increase numbers accordingly if you wish combat to go faster or shorter.
--Minions should go down in one hit and should have low enough AC to be hittable 75%+ of the time.They should do enough damage/have enough CMB to take out the weakest PC in 5-10 hits (again, adjusted higher or lower based on how fast/lethal you want combat to be)
--Caster monsters are tougher and require a solid understanding of the spells. Stuff like Magic Missile is pretty safe since it always hits (so you can factor out AC calculations) and have a very small avg dmg. In general limit your casters to roles like damage dealer, healer, support, etc.
--As you get a better grip on the system it gets easier to tinker with how you structure your encounters. Generally try to mix it up every encounter and challenge your PCs. If the encounter is basic filler my opinion would be it shouldn't exist. I also don't ascribe to the "give one PC a chance to shine every encounter and one PC should have a tough time", it should be possible to design encounters where every PC has something to do, even noncombat ones.
--Make the environment matter. Add hazards other than "difficult terrain". Water, obscuring walls, bridges, height changes, all sorts of shit
--Don't be afraid to fudge HP as it's the most difficult thing to gauge

>>46599674
Doesn't that make every fight a little samey? You're never putting your players in a position where they
>have an easy victory due to luck or excellent preparation
>get chased off with their tails between their legs

>>46599818
>hur durr level 1 PCs don’t have bows

>>46595507
It's even worse than 3.x's system - CRs don't tell you much as different factors go into the calculation, so at equal CR you find creatures with vastly differing capabilities. Plus IMO bounded accuracy is something that makes the game worse, but I know many 5e fans like it so good for them I guess.

More tha a system for encounters, what I like is games that have functional guidelines for statting creatures based on PC level/difficulty. 4e is the obvious example, but systems like that have started appearing also in other games (the latest World of Darkness for example). As a GM, I want to know if the monster I'm statting will be hard to fight or not, and being able to eyeball it requires a lot of experience (and does not always work).

>>46599818
You're assuming the DM has the group of Aarakocra hanging around off screen to summon an Air Elemental (CR5) before attacking, and then claiming it was really a CR 1 fight because it they were 'only' against 5 Aarakocra?

My campaign doesn't have as many fights as most, and the ones there are are usually boss fights so I try to make them reasonably challenging. Filler encounters are a waste of everyone's time.

>>46602006
Most players really are that stupid, they'll never have ranged weapons unless they find them.

>>46606403
Most classes start with some form of ranged weapon.