5E challenge ratings


4th Edition


I've come to the view that the 'experience point budgets' of 5E are a little lightweight. Granted most of my experience is at the far end of the bellcurve (I'm currently running a 2PC game) but I have a feeling it would be worse with the more usual 4 PCs.

The two of them are now tenth level and they are routinely demolishing encounters which are "deadly" according to the DMG guidelines.

I'm converting a PF adventure and have occasionally found myself falling into the trap of relying too much on direct substitution (PF seems to me to assume a party-versus-one BBEG, whereas I think 5E works better with multiple foes). Nonetheless, even if I boost the number of enemies significantly beyond the experience point budgets suggested in the DMG, I seem to struggle to provide much of a martial challenge.

Has anyone else found the same?

I'm now habitually boosting the monsters' offensive abilities, just to provide an element of risk - nonetheless, I dont think they've ever really been at risk of defeat since around 2nd or 3rd level - the one exception was an encounter with a full-on Vampire. With such a small party, I steer clear of domination effects as a general rule - in that case though, they were hell-bent on attacking someone obviously superior to them, so I let the chips fall where they may (one of the PCs was dominated and subsequently written out of the campaign, the other fled).


I'm constantly putting my PCs up against deadly encounters (which they still mow through). I've got 5 pcs with stats that are a little above the standard array.

I killed two pc's early on. They were level 2-3 (They split the party...) but since then I've felt that I haven't chalanged them much at all.


You need to keep in mind that 5th ed assumes that players go through many combat per day.

Read "deadly" as "will drain lots of resources". If the PCs are fresh, they will bulldozer through the encounter with relative ease. I don't know if that was the intent, but it has been my experience with 5e as well.

When you relentlessly throw encounters at the PCs and force them to manage their "long rest" abilities, the CRs are a bit closer to what they should be.


We're finding that the two 'base attacks' are pretty good - a fighter/rogue with a handcrossbow and the crossbow expert + sharpshooter feats and a barbarian (who died and has been replaced by a paladin). Their damage output is pretty phenomenal even without using many daily resources given the monster ACs are not increasing particularly rapidly.

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We have a party of 6 (my hill dwarf Life cleric, and an elf rogue arcane trickster archer, human ranger hunter archer, human wizard diviner (mostly blasts), human eldritch knight dual-wielding battle axes, and a half-orc barbarian with a magical halberd) and we just hit level 9.

We're doing a conversion of the Rise of the Rune Lords, and it's been pretty challenging. No deaths, but plenty of death saves. The DM really challenges us, mostly by manipulating when we can rest. Also, he's not afraid of taking the kid gloves off and once put us against 50 or 60 ogres--before the barbarian joined us! And we didn't use cunning tactics and elaborate trickery. We just picked some defensive ground and put them through a ranged weapon grinder, with my dwarf Dodging and bonus-action healing.

PS: some of those ogres had fighter levels, and a few were special spell chuckers. We were level 5 or 6.


SmiloDan wrote:

We have a party of 6 (my hill dwarf Life cleric, and an elf rogue arcane trickster archer, human ranger hunter archer, human wizard diviner (mostly blasts), human eldritch knight dual-wielding battle axes, and a half-orc barbarian with a magical halberd) and we just hit level 9.

We're doing a conversion of the Rise of the Rune Lords, and it's been pretty challenging. No deaths, but plenty of death saves. The DM really challenges us, mostly by manipulating when we can rest. Also, he's not afraid of taking the kid gloves off and once put us against 50 or 60 ogres--before the barbarian joined us! And we didn't use cunning tactics and elaborate trickery. We just picked some defensive ground and put them through a ranged weapon grinder, with my dwarf Dodging and bonus-action healing.

PS: some of those ogres had fighter levels, and a few were special spell chuckers. We were level 5 or 6.

This is kind of what I mean - 5 level 5/6 PCs against 50-60 ogres (some with fighter levels and spellcasting). That's way beyond the "deadly" level of encounter according to the DM's guide.

Obviously I can always makes things tougher (I've started assuming maximum hit points which has helped) however, I was querying the encounter design rules - using those (including the 'number of encounters per day' assumptions and the expected frequency of short rests) seems to yield very easy encounters, in our experience.

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We've had several encounters where multiple if not all PCs are down to single hit points. We fought 3 Huge giants with class levels while down to just cantrips. We once relied on the ranger to do the emergency healing. We had one session where the DM rolled TWO double 20s.

That said, we've also had some encounters where nobody got hit.

The terrain saved us in our battle against 60 ogres. We were supposed to run, and initially did, but then we were able to squeeze in a long rest and do it again with spells prepped. It killed the NPC allies we had, too.


Not sure how it went down in your game, but that ogre fight should be one of the PCs' choosing, with multiple options to approach, use of different tactics, etc. If the PCs just charge in, guns blazing, yeah, it has a potential to be a bloodbath. When we ran through it in Pathfinder, my PCs used a good combination of tactics and spells to make it fairly easy for them, but the tension from the fight came in keeping their squishier allies alive (and they almost lost one of them. He was one negative HP from death and managed a 20 on his stabilization check.) and if they had just charged in, it probably would have been very ugly.

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Yeah, we have some rather... impetuous... player characters.

We were lucky enough to fight from on top of a ridge, so they could only come at us in groups of 5 or 6. Granted, that let the remaining 44 ogres throw Large javelins at us.

Fortunately we're also a relatively heavily ranged party (ranger, rogue, blaster wizard, eldritch knight), so they were able to pick them up as they came at us wave after wave. My dwarf cleric (full plate and shield) blocked the approach while Dodging with a spiritual guardian spell going to cause 3d8 to the ogres that failed their Wisdom save, and using healing word as a bonus action to keep my allies alive. AC 20 with Disadvantage to hit me made me REALLY tanky, so only a few javelins hit me.

It was pretty harrowing, but we survived.

Well, the PCs survived. Our NPCs didn't quite make it....


The ogre javelins were kind of a joke in Pathfinder, since they needed to use their pathetic Dex to try to hit. They still managed to land a few but the party wasn't really frightened by them.

Rise of the Runelords:
My party sent the the rangers in through the tunnels to smoke out the shocker lizards, which went running out into the keep. Meanwhile, their halfling oracle with a ridiculous stealth score stealth-flew into the keep and lit the old barracks on fire. As the ogres were disctracted by the fire and horde of shocker lizards, the party HALO jumped from the top ridge into the keep, using Featherfall to not splatter themselves and started laying into the ogres. The oracle, meanwhile was staying hidden and strategically-targeted silent Murderous Command spells to get the ogres fighting among themselves anywhere there wasn't a leader ogre to keep them in line.

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DOH! I just realized those javelins probably already had Disadvantage because they were beyond short range. :-O


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Kalshane wrote:
Not sure how it went down in your game, but that ogre fight should be one of the PCs' choosing, with multiple options to approach, use of different tactics, etc. If the PCs just charge in, guns blazing, yeah, it has a potential to be a bloodbath. When we ran through it in Pathfinder, my PCs used a good combination of tactics and spells to make it fairly easy for them, but the tension from the fight came in keeping their squishier allies alive (and they almost lost one of them. He was one negative HP from death and managed a 20 on his stabilization check.) and if they had just charged in, it probably would have been very ugly.

Hah, SmiloDan has conveniently omitted the fact that the party DELIBERATELY solicited that particular fight, basically calling out the entire Fort's worth of Ogres instead of tackling it room to room. It was one of those DM moments where you just have to pause, take a deep breath, and get ready to roll a lot of dice. The party's tactics were sound though, they picked probably the best spot in the area to defend, and even though they ended up beating a hasty retreat in the end, I had to rule that the losses suffered by the ogres so weakened and demoralized them that they ended up abandoning the fort. It also gave me a chance to try out the chase rules in the DMG, which was fun.

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Well, we kept making bad decisions in all the rooms. Like not checking a bunch of doors, reaching a dead-end, and then making LOUD NOISES which drew out mobs of giants from all those doors!

At least we keep things interesting....


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One of the challenges early on with converting RotRL was getting a handle on what CR creatures constitute a challenge for the PCs. 5E resources are a big deal, so having an adventure with one big solo bad guy is very different from what the PCs can handle in a string of encounters, like when exploring a dungeon. So, that lion the PCs run into in the woods on the way to the dungeon is a whole different thing. For whatever reason, PF adventures feature a whole lot of solo monsters, and just doing a straight conversion is going to result in a cake walk. A PF solo encounter for 10th lvl PCs is going to be 9-12 CR. in 5E, it needs to be 14-16. Party level plus 50% is usually a safe bet, plus adding in a few legendary abilities will make the fight more interesting and less of a slog.

Fortunately, the DMG makes conversion easy, as you can eyeball what a CR 15 monster should be at in terms of hp, AC, DC, dmg, etc. It takes all of a minute or two to make that lion into something that'll challenge the PCs. Barring conversion, simply increasing the number of enemies faced makes encounters drastically more deadly.

Another thing I have to watch with converting RotRL is the sheer number of combat encounters they load the adventures up with. Unless you want your sessions to be literally one fight after another, you're best off cutting some of them. I typically cut about 20-30% of the grinding out of the adventures, which I think keeps focus on the story as opposed to tactics. XP isn't a problem, as I award the total available for finishing an adventure regardless of what was actually killed, provided the PCs accomplished the actual objective.


My experience with solo fights has definitely mirrored yours. I think the 'experience point budgets' given in the DMG used to build encounters are too small and that the accompanying multiplier based on the number of creatures is too generous.

It's easy enough to tweak (maximum hit points for solo creatures is a quick-and-dirty fix which has worked well at our table) and I'm finding the problem is reduced if I put the party up against half a dozen enemies.

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TheRavyn has done a really good job of keeping the fights exciting. Usually there are multiple monsters, and even 2 or 3 different types. And usually the different types of monsters fight differently. The last fight was a powerful wizard with a glabrezu and 3 vrocks. The glabrezu tanked, the vrocks did hit and run stuff (doing lots of poison stuff, I think poisonous clouds too!), and the wizard blasted us like crazy.

I had to keep bless up to give save bonuses for all the poison going on.

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