Burials of Teganshire Post 16 of 30

Yesterday we provided context for this post in picking apart D&D 5E’s balance problems—there are problems, and some of those problems are systemic. The fundamental issue on the table (literally haha) is that D&D is a game, and games require challenges. However, Fifth Edition of D&D contains mechanics that beneath the surface cause the game to stagnate, and also lacks practical guidance outside of combat concerning player dynamics.

We won’t be the first person to write about this and offer solutions, and we won’t be the last—but here is our take. This essay provides two solutions: game table changes, and encounter and monster changes.

Practical Solutions: Game Table Changes

Since the dawn of the game table, player dynamics, the interaction between players (and the DM), is the primary attribute in making the game challenging, or not.

That’s what makes the game so fun! It’s a social game. So let’s make some social solutions before we dive into mechanics.

Increase Player Agency

Increasing player agency, and thereby “Table Agency” removes the work burden from the DM of making sure each and every interaction with the game world has a homogenized difficulty. In the campaign, via the game world, there needs to be encounters and situations the players can “break into jail” and fail at.

We could go on-and-on about this topic (see: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=D%26D+player+agency) but suffice it to say “Dungeon Master as a Referee” (vs. “DM as a Story-Teller”) is going to go a long way in having players decreasing DM workload as they are the ones driving the story.

We’re not here to beat the Player Agency Dead Horse™. Just realize it’s the real game balance mechanic of D&D, the players’ ability to:

• Have their PCs fail (deadly encounters the DM places)
• Wander into a wrong place (static places in the world above their ability to emerge victoriously)
• Fall to the whims of the dice not working in their favor (random encounter at the wrong place/wrong time)

If the players can’t fail, they don’t have agency.

Set Expectations Ahead of Time

Session 0 (https://duckduckgo.com/?q=D%26D+Session+0) is the opportune place to declare:

• The game world has deadly static, random and status quo encounters
• The players have the latitude to make choices that can get their PCs killed
• Players are expected to use combined arms to overcome challenges
• The campaign about to begin is more challenging than the last one
• What PC classes will not be of much use in the campaign, so players will know which PC choices will be only role-playing centric
• The campaign has mechanics to deal with PC death (see below)

Alleviate PC Death by Planning on It

• Start using hirelings and henchmen—if a PC dies, the player can switch to playing one of those characters for the evening
• Have backup character sheets ready to go, both premade by the DM and premade by the players. One possibility is the players make the hirelings and henchmen character sheets
• Don’t sacrifice gameplay for the story, even if the PCs are driving the story. That is, if the current situation would make a new PC come into play seem silly, then it’s best to be silly rather than excluding a player. Then after a session, the player and DM can work on bringing a new PC online
• Have a plan for what happens if everyone dies—the TPK. The idea is to have, as the DM, some predetermined direction, even if it turns out to be wrong, rather than be caught going—uh, what now for the game?
  This includes what happens in the campaign world and what happens at the table. Shoot for that player commandery that D&D builds so well—the game table heading to the pub to salute the fallen PCs and toast a game well played, even in defeat
• Recognize that some players don’t care about their PCs living and dying; they care about playing well with what they have. Other players care about playing a specific PC, rather than about playing the game with expertise.
  Work with the players that invest time into their PC to also spend time in that PC’s legacy. In other words, have character-story driven players also contribute to their immediate world (friends, relatives, in-game spouses, etc.) beyond their PC, with the expectation that if the PC dies, the new PC comes from this work

Periodically Use Grim Story Mechanics

There’s nothing like showing, rather than telling game difficulty:

• Secretly work with a player before the campaign starts to have that player die a messy death in Session One (ala MCDM’s The Chain)
• Privately work with a player who decides they don’t like their PC to die a messy death in the game in a believable way
• Use a “life is unfair card” (sparingly) that when the players send their henchmen to go do something (let’s run a henchmen adventure!), all the henchmen die in an encounter so dark and grim, your players vow revenge (really, only do this once) on the spot

Embrace Failure Conditions

Often people play D&D where failure in the module equates to a game that halts because there is no other condition than victory. When a DM designs a static encounter or even uses a commercial product, not having failure conditions predisposes against challenges. This is another instance of “Balance the Game Outside Combat.” Find more about that, and practical advice with failure conditions, here: BoT Post 10: When the PCs Lose the Players Will Win—the Hero’s Journey.

Practical Solutions: Encounter and Monster Changes

The previous blog post described the various issues around D&D 5E’s Challenge Rating system. Let’s put what we know to good use. D&D 5E supports a lot of flexibility, even when using online tools such as D&D Beyond, or various encounter generators.

Avoid Attrition Encounters

D20 is famous for its formulaic adventure design in Living worlds. Which is fine, because players know what is in store for them (far from me to declare Wrong Fun). They went something like this: 2 small encounters, a skill challenge, a short rest, BBEG showdown.

All possible encounters should have some semblance of verisimilitude—they are in the game because the game world, not adventure design, arranges their placement. Example:

Wanted Ward and June, two serial killers working as a team, are hiding at the bottom of an abandoned castle dungeon as they know the PCs are on their tail. More sinister murderers than kobold trap experts, they manipulate beasts and an aberration to populate the complex and set some traps to the best of their ability, trying to buy some time.

Are those beasts and traps attrition? They could be. But then again, the PCs could by-pass them. Or they could use the monsters to their advantage and send them against the evil duo. Or they could get creative and draw the pair out into the open.

Either way, the totality of the two villains here should stand on their own. Everything else is window dressing for the campaign world. In other words, the two villains give it their all in the final encounter. The PCs arriving there fresh is part of the game. If they stumble into every trap, do battle with every monster, make mistakes, that’s their issue to deal with.

Not the DM’s.

Use Non-Lethal Encounters to Enrich the Game, not just the (PCs) Story

Sometimes, dealing damage isn’t about anything other than:

• Humor
• Adding detail to the campaign setting
• Letting players blow off steam
• Experimentation

In one campaign, I have “island foxes,” a trio of foxes with unique capabilities. They can talk, but they’re foxes. They are brats. They can teleport from one island to the next. They will steal the PCs’ food. Laugh at them for no reason. They can do damage by shooting a firebolt out of their eyes.

Fox: “Hey, hey, PC. Want to see something funny?

PC: “Sure?”

Fox: (shots the PC with a firebolt)

Fox: Yeeeeeeahhh BOOOOOiiiiii!

PC: (rolls initiative)

Foxes: “Hahahahahaha!”

Foxes: (teleports away)

They are there only for comedic value and to reinforce that the world of the fey can be dangerous. The island foxes don’t have a challenge rating at all.

Man, I love those foxes. But I digress.

Avoid Artificial Restrictions on the Number of Deadly Encounters Per Short/Long Rest

Sometimes:

• The dice go bad
• The PCs make a mistake
• A singular PC makes a mistake
• The party doesn’t make any mistakes, but the circumstances conspire against them
• A player complained the last encounter was too easy

Et cetera. At some point, the DM needs to cross a Rubicon: is this a story-telling narrative with rails laid by the DM? Or are the players reacting organically and making choices, good or bad, and it’s their world?

If the players have agency, balance by encounter restriction in such a flexible system such as 5E is not possible. Embrace the difficulty.

Make Meaningful Encounters Deadly: The Math

Some attributes need tweaking to making a tailored encountered deadly in a balanced way—we’re not talking about populating the game world, but putting together an encounter for an adventure.

APL + 3 to +5

Take the average party level and add 4, and then add monsters until the CR becomes Deadly, plus or minus one CR.

This is your baseline. Either one monster with Legendary or Villain actions (see below) or several monsters in the CR equals APL +3 to +5.

Adjusting for More than Four PCs

For every PC or henchmen or player run combatant in the party, add an additional monster at the parties APL, plus or minus one CR.

 So if you have six players at APL 6, adding two monsters, both at CR 5 (not combined!) to the mix.

Why? The CR system breaks down with the action economy. Within the scope of a Hard to Deadly encounter (using the math in the Monster Manual), players have a distinctive advantage over monsters of the same level. The game doesn’t account for this (it tries and fails), and that’s okay because most tables do not have more than four players.

But if they do, well, playtesting reveals that as long as the monsters you add are above the party’s average level (APL), adding a monster on par with their APL compensates for the dramatic change in the action economy. More on the action economy below.

Final Adjustment

When all is said and done, here’s the time to make sure that 1) the encounter is at APL +4 or more and 2) adding monster numbers because the monster design itself is weak, especially if the DM does not want to change the monsters’ design.

Make Meaningful Encounters Deadly: The Design

Putting together an encounter balanced for that right amount of difficulty also relies on design.

Adjust the Encounter for Crowd Control

Some parties’ class combinations have crowd control built-in, such as a warlock, wizard, or stun-moving monk. Some parties do not.

However, any party class combination can do crowd control, it’s just that some will be better at it than others.

Assume the party is doing crowd control, the hard way or the easy way: either place monsters at different ends of the map or add lower-level monsters to harass the party, regardless of what it does to the Challenge Rating.

The party doesn’t do crowd control? Well, that’s their problem, not yours. Surviving to run away and having a learning opportunity is an excellent motivator for combined arms paly.

Adjust the Encounter for Ranged Attack Opportunities

If the encounter has a mixed set of monsters, then some of those monsters need ranged options, especially if they are intelligent. If they are just a bunch of dumb animals, it makes sense to compensate for their lack of ranginess by having them move faster than usual (“These two tigers are ravenous!”) or some other adjustment such as invisibility, flying, incorporeal, or other nasty conditions.

Adjust the Encounter Terrain and Setting

If it’s difficult terrain, not a terrain built into the monsters’ CR already, then either leave the encounter difficulty as is or adjust one CR downward. But only one.

Traps make an excellent terrain adjuster, especially if a PC manages to push a bad guy into one.

Players should be able to compensate for difficult terrain outside of battle–that’s the instance where you want to leave the CR as it. “Surprise difficult terrain!” is when the CR adjusts downward.

Adjust the Encounter for Party Magic Items or Other Effects

This happens more frequently in other versions of D&D as 5E does an excellent job of providing magical items that are cool but still within the bounded accuracy design.

However, there could be instances where the party obtains an overpowering item, effect, or the game world or adventure has arranged for things to go the PCs way.

Here’s where the DM needs to do more design than math. Adding a monster to the encounter with the ability to negate that effect or item is cheezy. However, adding some dangerous monsters, beyond the CR, for the player with the magic item in question to use? That is cool. And the player will love it.

Players can forget to use an item (just tell them), the PC with the thing can be incapacitated or drop from an unlucky roll, etc. That be the breaks. And before anybody throws a yellow flag on this play, the same thing happens to bad guys—all the time.

Adjust the Encounter for Player Expertise

Some players are just good at what they do. If that’s the case, the DM should:

• Consider giving the monsters a temporary effect that makes sense in the context of the game world-such as the cults sipping on what is effectively a potion of haste, giving them all haste during the battle. After six rounds of this monkey business, they all die
• Add a Hard encounter right after the Deadly one concludes
• Add a CC expert to the monster roll
• Add an evil object to the encounter that radiates a curse for the PCs, or a bless to the monsters
• Or both (warning: that’s difficult!)

Make Meaningful Encounters: Balance the Action Economy

And here we come to the balance issue of all balance issues, the action economy.

The Action Economy is a game term to describe how characters are allocated a certain mummer of actions per turn (used by the game’s overall mechanics). This is where things are indeed mathematically tricky for the players or the monsters. If monsters act 40 times a round and the PCs 15 (including bonus and reactions), well, that’s gonna be a problem. The reverse is also accurate, and if anything makes a DM wonder why things were so easy for the players despite the CR, there you go.

The D&D action economy is a popular topic: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=D%26D+Action+Economy

Heat up the Action Economy with Design

Give your bad guys reactions and bonus actions. To compensate for the added complexity of the monster, make sure what they can do as an action is limited to four or fewer things, and that includes casting a singular spell. Make the 5E “cut to the chase” design work for you.

This is not to say having a monster with a lot of actions to choose from is wrong. But it’s challenging to do that all the time. The more actions a monster has, the more experience and prep time a DM needs to run that monster.

Heat Up the Action Economy by Favoring Mixed Monsters

I wanted to make an encounter that was “semi-deadly” in that I wanted it to go south if the PCs made mistakes, but I also wanted the PCs to win the battle without running away (this was a journey of discovery to advance one of the player’s PC plots). They were five Level 6 PCs. I added:

• A CR 8 Monster: a custom aberration
• Two CR 5 red slaads

This is a deadly encounter. However, if I wanted it to be an iffy encounter, I would have added three CR 5 red slaads, as the paladin did precisely what she was supposed to do—she burst damaged the aberration. Again, the goal here was to not have the PCs get into a position where they run away. I wanted the encounter to be severe but survivable, but notice I didn’t do that by making it a Hard encounter. I just made it less Deadly with the maths. They still could have suffered a PC death—and almost did.

Why was I assured of victory for the party? Because they were way ahead of the Deadly encounter’s action economy. Adjusting the action economy one way or the other is a way to achieve balance or other goals.

Heat up the Action Economy with Villain Actions

What’s a villain action, you might ask? Watch this video, and it explains all. I’ve seen Matt use it and I’ve also used it, and it rules. Literally!

Ahem, sorry. Rule of thumb: pretend the monster is only going to last three rounds. Design accordingly.

Heat up the Action Economy with Legendary and Lair Actions

If your monster seems legendary, make it one. That’s 5Es approach to heating up the action economy and making legendary monsters a rip-roaring epic battle.

Overused, however, it deadens the impact.

And for that truly epic encounter, give your Legendary monsters Villain actions. In their lair. So the PCs have to contend with:

• Action-Reaction-Bonus Action
• Villain Action
• Legendary Action
• Lair Actions
• Bonus: added minion actions

A Balanced Conclusion

This essay proposed two approaches to making your game balanced: changes to the game table and a host of functional changes to apply CR math, monster/encounter design, and the action economy.

If the players feel the game is teetering on a knife’s edge, and only a combination of skill and teamwork can save them from the villains’ villainy and the capricious whims of the dice—the game has achieved balance.

I leave you with the cover of our next module, which you should back on Indiegogo if you have not already. Crossbow Man and his companions hiding behind him are going to face a challenge. In playtesting, the monster usually brought down half the party before succumbing. In one instance, it brought down all the PCs except one, and that PC was the benefit of an NPC heal built into the encounter. The players were surprised, and when they won, they felt like they had achieved something meaningful and good.

One group high-fived. At that moment, the game was theirs, not ours.

Crossbow Man, I salute you. You are braver than I.

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