Rory Guest Post!

Arguably one of the most impactful changes in the 2024 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide is the new XP Budget table for Combat Encounters. It has three notable changes from the original 5e DMG:

• The old table had 4 categories of difficulty for encounters (Easy, Medium, Hard, and Deadly). The new table drops the old Easy encounters and has only 3 categories (Low, Moderate, High). So effectively, the old Medium is the new Low, the old Hard is the new Moderate, and the old Deadly is the new High. Considering how laughably trivial Easy encounters were, this is a pretty reasonable change.
• The notorious Encounter Multipliers table for multiple enemies has been removed. This table was designed under the premise that multiple weaker enemies are more difficult than a single high level enemy. While single enemies are uniquely vulnerable to spells like Hold Person and Polymorph, it was a fundamentally flawed premise considering the prevalence of AE spells and abilities such as Thunderwave and Fireball, and it’s removal ensures less burdensome encounter calculations and more realistic difficulties overall.
• The XP budgets start out the same (once you shift from 4 categories to the new 3), but increase at higher levels. Considering how powerful PCs become at higher levels, this is probably a good thing. For the hardest difficulties, the XP budget increases relative to the original DMG starting at level 9 and is almost double at level 20 (12,700 vs the new 22,000).

All things considered, I would say it’s pretty obvious these are all good changes. My question though, is does it go far enough?! With that in mind, let’s explore some scenarios at various tiers of play using the High difficulty, which is meant to provide a meaningful chance of death for one of more characters. We’ll have to work with the old Monster Manual, so perhaps we can revisit these numbers when the new MM is out:

• Level 1: 4 PCs would expect to face 400 XP (100X4) worth of monsters:
  • One Monster: An Ogre (450 XP) is a bit over the XP budget here, but that probably wouldn’t stop me from sending it against a party if I really wanted to challenge them. Amusingly, this is given as an example of monster that you might want to reconsider using as one hit has a good chance of taking someone out. Considering, a typical wizard has about 8 hit points at this level, and an Ogre can hit for an average of 13 damage (and a max of 20 damage), I would say this certainly has the potential to be lethal.
  • Multiple Monsters: 2 Lions (400 XP, from the new PHB), have a combined total of 44 HP, an AC of 12, do a combined 28 damage on average assuming all attacks hit, and are capable of rolling with Advantage due to pack tactics when both adjacent to the same PC. A level 1 Fighter armed with a longsword does about 10 damage per hit on average, the party has a higher AC on average, and the party likely has a combined HP of 40 or so. Doing some quick eyeballing, I could certainly see this encounter turning daily, especially if the lions happen to target the party healer.
  • VERDICT: POTENTIALLY LETHAL! Overall, I’d say these encounters are appropriately lethal for a level 1 party where PCs are uniquely vulnerable. I don’t think either of these encounters are off the table, though they should only be used if the DM and the Players are okay with a real chance of failure and/or death for the PCs.
• Level 5: 4 PCs would expect to face 4,400 XP (1,100X4) worth of monsters:
  • One Monster: A Frost Giant is a bit under budget here (3,900 XP) so perhaps you could pad this encounter out with a couple low level monsters. It does about 50 damage on average assuming it hits with both attacks using a +9 to hit. It has 15AC and 138 HP. In comparison, a typical wizard at level 5 might have 30 HP or so. A fighter at this level, might do about 19 damage assuming they hit with both attacks using a Longsword. Again, this has the potential to be lethal if the Frost Giant gets a couple lucky hits off against a wizard or rogue due to the massive damage rules.
  • Multiple Monsters: 4 Elephants (4,400 XP, from the new PHB) have a combined total of 304 HP, an AC of 12, do a combined 120 damage on average assuming all attacks hit, and can potentially knock targets prone, allowing for an additional 68 damage on average assuming all attacks hit. This fight actually seems pretty scary to me. I could easily imagine things going south for a party of PCs with perhaps 30-60 HP, and it’s not hard to imagine multiple PCs dropping in a single round before the party really has a chance to control the fight (perhaps with some well placed fireballs and some focus firing).
  • VERDICT: POTENTIALLY LETHAL! While a Frost Giant fight could certainly turn out nasty for the PCs, it’s the fight with 4 Elephants that really makes me nervous, and I could easily see this fight going poorly for the PCs, especially if the Elephants get lucky with their initiative roll (which to be fair, they probably won’t considering their -1 Initiative mod). Now, in my experience, by level 5, PCs usually start punching above their weight, already pulling out some unexpected tricks to overcome tough fights, but I would typically expect this to at least make the PCs sweat.
• Level 11: 4 PCs would expect to face 16,400 XP (4,100X4) worth of monsters:
  • One Monster: An Adult Blue Dragon (15,000 XP) is a bit under budget here, so again you would probably want to pad this out with some lower level monsters. A Blue Dragon typically opens with a breath weapon for 66 damage on average (perhaps hitting 2-3 PCs) and then follows it up with some mix of Wing Attack and/or one or more Tail Attacks for up to an additional 48 damage against 1 PC. The dragon has 19 AC and 225 Hit Points. A wizard at this level has perhaps 63 Hit Points, and a fighter probably has something like 110 Hit Points (assuming Toughness and/or a good Con). In practice, if Absorb Elements is allowed in the campaign, the wizard will almost certainly use it to halve the damage they take from the breath weapon, and the other PCs have multiple tricks to ensure a decent chance of making their saves here. A champion fighter at level 11 likely does about 35 damage a round assuming all attacks hit, though of course there are other builds easily capable of doing 50+ damage at these levels. My gut is that with all the tricks level 11 characters can pull out here, this fight is pretty unlikely to be lethal, especially since massive damage is somewhat unlikely in this scenario, though perhaps a determined DM willing to attack a downed foe could force a death here.
  • Multiple Monsters: 4 Frost Giants (15,600 XP) have a combined total of 552 HP, an AC of 15, and a combined total of 200 damage on average assuming all attacks hit with a +9 to hit. This is certainly potentially scary if the 4 Giants are all able to focus their attacks before suffering one or more casualties, but if a couple of PCs go first (which is very likely considering the -1 Initiative bonus of the giants), it’s very likely they’ll be able to impose disadvantage, hamper, or otherwise position themselves to survive the initial onslaught and then chip down their numbers fairly quickly. At these levels, most PCs are capable of hitting ACs in the 18-20 so the giants are already only hitting about 50% of the time. Considering a mix of 5th and 6th level spells along with abilities such as Sap, and even rogue abilities like Poison, I expect a typical party would be able to handle this fight without significant risk of anyone dying.
  • VERDICT: BORDERLINE! I’m not convinced either of these fights is likely to be meaningfully lethal for the PCs if they are at full strength and assuming the PCs don’t have truly rotten luck. But it’s really tough to challenge level 11 PCs, and at least numerically both these fights look a little scary. And this is assuming old MM numbers; certainly these fights seem a lot scarier if these monsters see a significant boost to their damage as is hinted by some of the monsters we have seen previewed.
• Level 17: 4 PCs would expect to face 46,800 XP (11,700X4) worth of monsters:
  • One Monster: Since we have it, let’s use the Green Dragon that was spoiled at Gen Con. We’ll assume it’s in its lair, even though that bumps its XP to 50,000. So if this fight is too nasty, we’ll cut the encounter rules a little slack. A Green Dragon has 402 HP, 21 AC, and is capable of doing about 189 HP on average a round (between attacks and reactions) assuming all attacks hit. Though it may choose to mix in some casts of Charm Monster. A wizard at this level might have as few as 96 HP, and a fighter likely has something like 200 HP. A champion fighter armed with a longsword might do 40 damage or so with a +3 weapon, though there are builds that do far more damage. And needless to say Wizards and Clerics literally have 8th and 9th level spells to draw on. Even if they don’t have obvious ways to overcome legendary resistance, spells like Mass Heal and Foresight will do a lot of work here. Not to mention nonsense like Simulacrum that essentially doubles the Wizards prowess. My gut is that unless the party has uniquely terrible Wisdom Saves with no obvious mitigation (making them vulnerable to Charm Monster, even with advantage), they will have the resources to take on this fight without any serious threat of death, but I will admit I have only run a couple really high level campaigns. It’s just my experience that when you are trying to challenge a party of PCs at higher levels, you start with something that seems impossible on paper, and this doesn’t feel that way.
  • Multiple Monsters: 4 Black Dragons (46,000 XP) have a combined total of 780 HP, 19 AC, and a combined total of 216 damage on average with their breath weapon in a 60 foot line and an additional 180 potential single target damage on average with their legendary tail attacks assuming all attacks hit. That could make for a pretty nasty alpha strike if the dragons roll well on their initiative. This certainly strikes me as a scarier fight than the Green Dragon, and my gut is that this could be genuinely nasty for an unoptimized party who rolls poorly on initiative or otherwise find themselves in a disadvantaged position, though I am quite prepared to be proven wrong.
  • VERDICT: BORDERLINE! I don’t feel comfortable truly saying these fights are truly dangerous against a 17th level party considering the massive bag of tricks they have to fall back on. The Green Dragon fight just doesn’t look like it has the numbers to be meaningfully scary, but on paper the Black Dragons look genuinely scary.

OVERALL VERDICT: SOLID IMPROVEMENT! I came into this expecting these fights to look a lot flimsier, but on first review, I would be comfortable using these numbers until I am proven wrong. And it does appear the 2024 Monster Manual will up damage numbers, making these encounters even nastier. It does appear that one monster is perhaps a bit on the weaker side with these encounter tables, whereas 2-5 monsters is likely the sweet spot between higher overall damage + survivability while not making themselves too vulnerable to area attacks and focused damage. And of course, if these types of fights prove too easy at high levels, there’s always the old stand-buy of stringing 2-3 High difficulty encounters together to drain party resources and truly challenge the PCs.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 29th, 2024 at 2:19 am and is filed under 5e D&D, advice/tools, RPG Hub. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.