The following features can make a combat encounter more interesting or challenging:
Changes in Elevation. Terrain features that provide a change of elevation (such as stacks of empty crates, ledges, and balconies) reward clever positioning and encourage characters to jump, climb, fly, or teleport.
Defensive Positions. Enemies in hard-to-reach locations or defensive positions force characters who normally attack at range to move around.
Hazards. The “Hazards” section in chapter 3 describes dangerous features, such as patches of green slime, that characters or their enemies can use to their advantage.
Mixed Monster Groups. When different types of monsters work together, they can combine their abilities—just like characters with different classes and origins. A diverse force is more powerful.
Reasons to Move. Use features that encourage characters and their enemies to move around, such as chandeliers, kegs of gunpowder or oil, and rolling stone traps.
Use the following guidelines to create a combat encounter of a desired level of difficulty.
Step 1: Choose a Difficulty. Three categories describe the range of encounter difficulty:
Low Difficulty. An encounter of low difficulty is likely to have one or two scary moments for the players, but their characters should emerge victorious with no casualties. One or more of them might need to use healing resources, however. As a rough guideline, a single monster generally presents a low-difficulty challenge for a party of four characters whose level equals the monster’s Challenge Rating.
Moderate Difficulty. Absent healing and other resources, an encounter of moderate difficulty could go badly for the adventurers. Weaker characters might get taken out of the fight, and there’s a slim chance that one or more characters might die.
High Difficulty. A high-difficulty encounter could be lethal for one or more characters. To survive it, the characters will need smart tactics, quick thinking, and maybe even a little luck.
Step 2: Determine Your XP Budget. Using the XP Budget per Character table, cross-reference the party’s level with the desired encounter difficulty. Multiply the number in the table by the number of characters in the party to get your XP budget for the encounter.
| Party's Level | Low Difficulty | Moderate Difficulty | High Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 50 | 75 | 100 |
| 2 | 100 | 150 | 200 |
| 3 | 150 | 225 | 400 |
| 4 | 250 | 375 | 500 |
| 5 | 500 | 750 | 1,100 |
| 6 | 600 | 1,000 | 1,400 |
| 7 | 750 | 1,300 | 1,700 |
| 8 | 1,000 | 1,700 | 2,100 |
| 9 | 1,300 | 2,000 | 2,600 |
| 10 | 1,600 | 2,300 | 3,100 |
| 11 | 1,900 | 2,900 | 4,100 |
| 12 | 2,200 | 3,700 | 4,700 |
| 13 | 2,600 | 4,200 | 5,400 |
| 14 | 2,900 | 4,900 | 6,200 |
| 15 | 3,300 | 5,400 | 7,800 |
| 16 | 3,800 | 6,100 | 9,800 |
| 17 | 4,500 | 7,200 | 11,700 |
| 18 | 5,000 | 8,700 | 14,200 |
| 19 | 5,500 | 10,700 | 17,200 |
| 20 | 6,400 | 13,200 | 22,000 |
Step 3: Spend Your Budget. Every creature has an XP value in its stat block. When you add a creature to your combat encounter, deduct its XP from your XP budget to determine how many XP you have left to spend. Spend as much of your XP budget as you can without going over. It’s OK if you have a few unspent XP left over. Examples are given below:
Example 1. A low-difficulty encounter for four level 1 characters has an XP budget of 50 × 4, for a total of 200 XP. With that, you could build any of the following encounters:
Example 2. A moderate-difficulty encounter for five level 3 characters has an XP budget of 225 × 5, for a total of 1,125 XP. With that, you could build either of these encounters:
Example 3. A high-difficulty encounter for six level 15 characters has an XP budget of 7,800 × 6, for a total of 46,800 XP. With that, you could build this encounter:
When creating and running combat encounters, keep the following in mind.
Many Creatures. The more creatures in an encounter, the higher the risk that a lucky streak on their part could deal more damage to the characters than you expect. If your encounter includes more than two creatures per character, include fragile creatures that can be defeated quickly. This guideline is especially important for characters of level 1 or 2.
Adjustments. A player’s absence might warrant removing creatures from an encounter to keep it at the intended difficulty. Also, die rolls and other factors can result in an encounter being easier or harder than intended. You can adjust an encounter on the fly, such as by having creatures flee (making the encounter easier) or adding reinforcements (making the encounter harder).
CR 0 Creatures. Creatures that have a CR of 0, particularly ones that are worth 0 XP, should be used sparingly. If you want to include many CR 0 critters in an encounter, use swarms from the Monster Manual instead.
Number of Stat Blocks. The best combat encounters often pair one kind of creature with another, such as fire giants paired with hell hounds. Be mindful of the number of stat blocks you need to run the encounter. Referencing more than two or three stat blocks for a single encounter can be daunting, particularly if the creatures are complex.
Powerful Creatures. If your combat encounter includes a creature whose CR is higher than the party’s level, be aware that such a creature might deal enough damage with a single action to take out one or more characters. For example, an Ogre (CR 2) can kill a level 1 Wizard with a single blow.
Unusual Features. If a monster has a feature that lower-level characters can’t easily overcome, consider not adding that monster to an encounter for characters whose level is lower than the monster’s Challenge Rating.