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im working on a campaign and im still new at being a DM ive played more times then i cant count but DM ive only done once but i made the creatures way to powerful for my party so am curious to what a good rule of thumb would be for determining what creatures to face my pc's depending on their lvl. for example say i have 4 lvl 5 pc's what type of creature should i face them with that will be challengeing but not totally destroy them. so what im asking is what challenge ratings are good for what lvls.

It gets a little iffy based on quantity and power of creatures.

So first, quality-

Look at the Challenge Rating of a creature,

-4 Less than the PC's = Effortless
-2 Less than the PC's = Easy
-1 Less than the PC's = Easy Challenge
-Equal to PC's = Moderately Challenging
-1 More than the PC's = Hard Challenge
-2 More than the PC's = Extremely Hard
-4 More than the PC's = Near impossible (use only with like "final boss" esq monsters).

Now, that's not a perfect rule of thumb considering it's based on the average strength of a party. Your party might have characters crossing feats from various books and supplements to min/max their characters and make them even tougher than usual.

My suggestion, if you use random encounters, never go more than the "Equal to PC's level" line. Stronger monsters aren't usually meant for random encounters unless themed (I.E. if you have a random chance for a plot based encounter, that's different than a couple of goblin thugs demanding gold).

For dungeons, a lot of "Easy Challenging" and "Moderately challenging" monsters are appropriate, but you should also throw in a couple of Hard or extremely challenging ones. Not a lot, just a couple. And of course, if you have a monster "Boss" at the end, go for the Near impossible area.

As for quantity, it's much harder to do. It's really kind of a judgment call. For every 2 creatures of the same type you have, you can increase the challenge rating by 2. So like 2 CR 10 creatures would be CR 12, four of them would be CR 14, six would be CR 16, etc etc. But that's not always true. For instance, a party of 4 average 20th level characters would likely not be able to take 2 CR 18 creatures.


Oh and lastly, remember that these are monsters I'm talking about. Not every creature with a CR, just ones with regular old fashioned hit dice. NPC's with class levels are a MUCH different story.

I find that once past lvl 4, my parties can handle things about one to two CR's higher.
Mu suggestion is that you use CR = party level, and sometimes use your DM-abilities: if it's going to easy, add +2 to everything of the monster. (Saves, AC, HP per hitdice, attack, damage,...) or if it goes to hard, substract 2. I'm not saying that this is perfect, but it can help balance things a bit.

ok well that gives me somewhat of an idea to base things on now wouldn't NPCs just be close to the partys lvls maybe just a few lvls higher depending on the number of PCs now im not talking about a boss just say like a boss' henchmen or some thing of that nature.

Lord_Chaos wrote:ok well that gives me somewhat of an idea to base things on now wouldn't NPCs just be close to the partys lvls maybe just a few lvls higher depending on the number of PCs now im not talking about a boss just say like a boss' henchmen or some thing of that nature.

Considering they don't get near the same amount of gold, an NPC of an equal level to a PC is not the same power.

When you have a large party (more than 4), increase the challenge by adding monsters, not by making them more powerful.