I am having trouble wrapping my head around encounter building

[Idward Evanhand]

Can someone provide some examples as to how to set up xp for monsters and other encounters? The book has charts and tables but no real example of building monster encounters for a verity of party sizes or levels.

The adversary level just has a note for party level, great, but it doesn't tell me how they build this up. For example is it a 1 to 1 monster/pc? or a single monster of level 1 is the same as a party of level 1.

How about when the party is 6 or 7 players? I rarely ever have 4 players in my group it is usually at least 5.

Monsters in the monster manual don't have xp associated with them so it must be some sort of relative scoring system. But that is the piece that isn't clear to me.

[thenobledrake]

Step one is decide on how much of a threat you want the encounter to be. There are descriptions on pages 488 and 489. This decision sets the budget you are aiming for, as noted on Table 10-1.

For example, a moderate encounter has a budget of 80 - but that's for a 4-member party. To scale an encounter to 5 characters, you add 20 to the budget (but not to the reward given to each character)

Next comes filling in the encounter's budget by choosing monsters. Each monster chosen has an XP value relative to the party's level, shown on Table 10-2.

To continue the example, if we're building an encounter for 5th level characters, 5th level monsters would be worth 40 XP each. However, since we're aiming for an encounter budget of 100 XP we would be better served with one level 5 monster (for 40 XP) and two level 4 monsters (30 XP each for being party level -1 in level). And the encounter would give each PC the 80 experience that a moderate encounter is worth (at least, what it's worth when hitting the exact budget)

If needing to scale up for even more players, you just add another iteration of the "character adjustment" column of Table 10-1 for each (but again, you don't increase the XP reward actually given by the encounter past what it would be if there were only 4 characters).

[Tender Tendrils]

Pretty much as thenobledrake describes it. You just follow the entries on the relevant tables, while referencing the relative levels of the monsters to the players to figure out how much xp they cost. Keep in mind that the xp budget of the encounter isn't necessarily the amount of xp the players get from the encounter.

[Idward Evanhand]

Alright, let us see if I have my math correct.

Party of 6 players and I want to have a big patrol they will stumble onto. The party level is 3 and I want this to be an extream encounter. So That is an XP budget of 160+40*2 (240).

Monsters
Level 4 Gnoll Sargent XP:60*1
4 Level 2 Gnoll hunters XP:30*4
6 Level -1 War Dogs XP: 10*6

Hits 240 XP in the budget and then I award 240 XP for the fight? If I were to add in a Gnoll Cultist XP 40, totaling a 280 XP budget spent would I still award 240? It seems like the XP award would be 280 in this case.

Or if I were to remove two of the dogs now the XP would be 220, I would then award 220?

[RoastCabose]

Idward Evanhand wrote:

Alright, let us see if I have my math correct.

Party of 6 players and I want to have a big patrol they will stumble onto. The party level is 3 and I want this to be an extream encounter. So That is an XP budget of 160+40*2 (240).

Monsters
Level 4 Gnoll Sargent XP:60*1
4 Level 2 Gnoll hunters XP:30*4
6 Level -1 War Dogs XP: 10*6

Hits 240 XP in the budget and then I award 240 XP for the fight? If I were to add in a Gnoll Cultist XP 40, totaling a 280 XP budget spent would I still award 240? It seems like the XP award would be 280 in this case.

Or if I were to remove two of the dogs now the XP would be 220, I would then award 220?

You're close, but not quite. You would still award 160xp, because it is an extreme encounter. Character adjustments don't effect the xp given. Also, you don't have to match your budget exactly, just close. Always give the xp value for the encounter type.