Combat Encounters
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.
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.
Combat Encounter Difficulty
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.
XP Budget per Character
| Party's Level |
Encounter Difficulty Low |
Encounter Difficulty Moderate |
Encounter Difficulty High |
| 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:
- 1 Bugbear Warrior (200 XP)
- 2 Giant Wasps (100 XP each), for 200 XP total
- 6 Giant Rats (25 XP each), for 150 XP total
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:
-
2 Druids (450 XP each) and 9 Stirges (25 XP each), for 1,125 XP total
-
1 Wight (700 XP), 1 Warhorse Skeleton (100 XP), and 6 Skeletons (50 XP each), for 1,100 XP total
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:
-
2 Adult Red Dragons (18,000 XP each) and 2 Fire Giants (5,000 XP each), for 46,000 XP total