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Hey! I'm developing a homebrew campaign and I'm struggling to create encounters. What I've been able to find just from general searches seems to say that 1 CR 3 monster would be an appropriate challenge for a 4 person party of level 3 characters (Using this example as this will be the starting level for the campaign, not that that is relevant.)
However, actually looking at the monsters they seem to be about as strong as a single character (With exceptions, i.e: dire wolves, wights, etc.) This feels like it would make for an underwhelming fight as a whole, maybe even making the party feel overpowered (Not a scenario I desire) so I was hoping for someone to be able to help clarify this or give suggestions/tweaks.
Should I be giving them several, stronger lower level monsters? Several monsters of their CR? Singular monsters of higher CR? Or is the system designed for a slow wear of singular monsters over multiple encounters? Any help is greatly appreciated!
Encounters with a total CR equal to the average party level of a 4 man group (APL from now on) are generally considered to be a basic encounter that drains a small amount of party resources but is otherwise nonthreatening. Typically, a party might come up against a few of these encounters, mixed together with other encounters that are of a higher difficulty, over the course of an adventuring day.
Encounters with a CR of APL+1 or APL+2 are common and reasonable to throw at your party. An APL+3 encounter is often very challenging and should be used sparingly, or as a boss encounter/climax. No matter what, you want to have encounters with multiple creatures, usually with individual CRs lower than the APL. Important or boss monsters can have individual CRs of higher than the APL.
I strongly encourage you to pick up a Pathfinder adventure path, module, or scenario and take a look at how they've structured their encounters. I started DM-ing by trying to build encounters 'blind' and in retrospect I should have started off by learning from Paizo.
CR = APL aka the CR 3 against the party of 4 at lv4 is an appropriate fight that is in the player's favor and should use like or so 25% of their daily resources.
A CR+3 fight aka a CR 6 against your lv3 party SHOULD STILL be in the players favor of winning and use most of their daily resources.
It's not till a CR+4 fight that the odds of the player winning reach 50/50. (a CR+4 fight would be having the party fight their exact clones)
So yes, a CR 3 against a party lv3 will be an "easy" fight since it's heavily in the players favor and should run very little risk of death.