Like most things D&D has it’s various factions when it comes down to certain topics within the game. Such as Critical Role good or bad?, are Challenge Ratings useful?, theatre of the mind verses tactical combat. The list goes on.

Both sides of the discussion, and it usually is a discussion, rarely have I seen these things turn into all out flame wars, have good supporting arguments usually, and are on the whole polite and respectful.

In this post I’m going to talk about how I create encounters for my sessions. Which as you may have gathered by the first couple of paragraphs might just fall into that category of being a controversial subject.

In the DMG they go into great detail about making sure an encounter is balanced.

The DMG has you calculating the XP threshold of your party of adventurers, adding up the XP of monsters being used, and other maths things just to work out of what you want to do falls into the difficulty level of the encounter you want to give your party.

In XGE an alternative method is presented, still reliant on CR, but simpler to follow and quicker to use. (I think the Lazy DM uses the idea behind the tables presented here for his own quick encounter builder.)

As a new DM (which I am) it’s great that there is a way presented for me to create an encounter, despite it seeming overly complicated. Although I do like the four difficulty levels for describing how dangerous an encounter is. It just seems great as a way to help plan the encounter, and make sure that the encounters are varied in their challenge to the players. You shouldn’t be constantly throwing just deadly encounters at the players (unless your intention is to TPK them) or just easy encounters. The sessions would quickly become boring and monotonous. Varying the difficulty level of the encounters encountered allows for an ebb and flow that can build tension and excitement, and moments of relief. Which keeps the game interesting for everyone.

I fall into the camp that chooses which monsters to use for the encounter not on their CR, but on do they make sense story wise to be there.

For me this helps present a more cohesive, immersive adventure to the players. And for those experienced players used to seeing level appropriate monsters based on CR a few surprises.

Naturally if you are using higher level monsters you will need to adjust them to be more inline with the level of the party they are going up against (I’ve summed that process up in a previous post). But before I do that I use the tables created by The Lazy DM to see what ratio of that monster I should be using with the party based on it’s CR rating. I may still need to adjust the stats a little because I want to use more or less of the monsters depending on the encounter I have planned.

I think if I remember correctly The Lazy DM mentioned somewhere (in a blog post or YouTube video) that his tables should fall into the hard encounter difficulty level. So based on those tables and my adjustments I have a rough idea of the encounters difficulty. Which may see me fiddling with quantities or stats, or even adding new monsters to move that encounter difficulty to the desired level.

In my session notes and the adventures I’ve shared on here you will notice that I only give the monsters name(s) for the encounter. I don’t give how many there are in that encounter (the odd occasion I have though before anyone points it out). Yes I know that for my session that my party are at level X, but I don’t know what level other people (if they use what I have created) will be using with it. So even though I may have in my mind while creating the adventure this is aimed at a tier 1 party of 4 adventurers. I think it should be usable by more powerful parties. I basically leave it up to the DM running the adventure to decide the difficulty of the encounter they want to throw at their party. They have the monsters that fit thematically, story wise for the encounter. The rest is up to them.

So that’s how I work. I’ve found a system I like, that works for me. It may not work for you. That’s fine. I don’t think any two DM’s are the same. Find what works for you and don’t let anyone tell you are wrong. But don’t stop learning and trying new things, and tweaking what you do. Become a magpie, pick and choose the nuggets of information you like and horde them away in your DM’s nest.