E011 How I Balance Encounters in my D&D Campaigns

[@TJF-e5t]

nice video. those sites look a lot easier than doing the math by hand.

[@YawdroGaming]

It's definitely a whole lot quicker and cleaner. Those sites were lifesavers (literally, for my players!) when I found them. It allows me to be able to pivot. Thanks for watching!

[@dylanbielen]

How accurate do you find the "Easy, Medium, Hard, Deadly" categories in the encounters? I've played with a few of these before, and always felt that "Hard" wasn't actually too hard, at least on paper.

[@YawdroGaming]

I typically don't think an "easy" encounter is really worth running. I think in the last campaign, I mentioned something like, "Wolves assaulted the party, but you made short work of them. No initiative required." So I more or less break it down to medium, hard, deadly, and "tread lightly". Obviously, tread lightly is probably a run or talk your way out of, and this could be the case if the encounter was hard or deadly but the party was very depleted. So maybe think of it as a sliding scale. Hard encounters are usually very manageable if you have all your resources. They can be completely trivialized in some circumstances. Deadly encounters are usually kind of swingy depending on resources and whether or not the party has magic items. Remember, the Dungeon Master's Guide numbers do not anticipate magic items.

[@OSS-m9z]

Does this apply for the 2024 DMG? I imagine it would because I don't think it changes the CR ratings.

[@YawdroGaming]

As far as I can tell from reading the books, yes, it should still apply. I'm still running 2014, at least until the new monster manual releases and I can digest it all. Be aware that at higher CRs, monsters are going to be doing a LOT more damage per round. I honestly don't know how it's going affect my table, but we're planning on going pretty high in level this game, so we might find out together!