Forge_of_Foes_v1.0

50 RESKINNING MONSTERS Of all the tools Gamemasters have at their disposal, few are as powerful as reskinning monster stat blocks. Reskinning a monster’s stat block lets us take the time, energy, and money invested in professionally designed monster statistics and turn them into just about any monster imaginable, quickly and easily. This brings incredible value to every book of monsters a GM owns. To reskin a monster, select an existing stat block and describe it as a completely different monster in the story and lore of the game. For example, the stat block of an ogre might be described as a powerful humanoid warrior or the thick-necked bodyguard of a local guildmaster. At its simplest, reskinning takes little more effort than finding a stat block and describing it as something else. There are layers to reskinning, however, some of which go deeper than a simple surface-level description change. This section explores those layers and the benefits that each provides. CHOOSING RESKINNABLE STAT BLOCKS As powerful as reskinning is, the process always starts with a GM finding the right stat block to reskin. An ogre stat block might be perfect for any tough and powerful humanoid, but it won’t work as well for a tentacled horror bursting out of the darkness. However, a giant octopus stat block does the trick for that horror nicely. Simpler stat blocks—those of humanoids, NPCs, animals, and giants—often work well when reskinning secondary monsters or groups of monsters. For example, the fire giant stat block easily becomes a powerful tombguardian knight. When looking to build a custom boss monster, though, think about reskinning the stat blocks of more powerful and complicated creatures—including legendary creatures. An adult red dragon stat block is a great stand-in for a powerful fire-based sorcerer boss who slashes with fiery blades (reskinned claws and bite) and huge blasts of pyro-energy (the dragon’s breath weapon). Reading the Monster Manual or your other favorite monster books offers tremendous dividends for your games. Not only does it help you identify which stat blocks will work best for reskinning, but it also fills your imagination with the lore of numerous monsters, giving you a sense of how they might fit into or help you build your adventures. COMMON RESKINNABLE MONSTERS The table on this page presents a list of common reskinnable monsters for standard nonboss creatures at several challenge ratings. The stat blocks of these creatures focus on simple mechanics, with the intention that you’ll reskin their descriptions with the flavor of the monster you create. (“General-Use Combat Stat Blocks” on page 13 contains a number of monster stat blocks built specifically for reskinning as well.) To use the table, look down the CR column to find the baseline challenge rating of the monster you need. The Example Monster column for that challenge rating lists a few easily reskinned monster stat blocks. The Reskinned Role column then shows you what monster role this stat block can most easily be reskinned into, broken out by tier of play and the monster’s role in combat (see below). The tiers of play break down into the following tiers and levels: 1st Level: Though standard 5e includes 1st level in tier 1, 1st-level characters are delicate enough that they really belong in their own tier of play. Tier 1: 2nd through 4th level Tier 2: 5th through 10th level Tier 3: 11th through 16th level Tier 4: 17th through 20th level The monster roles that these stat blocks can easily reskin into are defined as follows: Artillery: Ranged combatants who often attack with spells, and who typically have lower hit points, Armor Class, or both. Bruisers: Monsters with high hit points and relatively low Armor Class, and which hit hard. Defenders: Creatures with high Armor Class and other defenses, and which deal moderate damage. Skirmishers: Low-defense creatures which often deal high damage, and which have superior mobility. (“Monster Roles” on page 22 has more information on breaking down monsters by role.) CR Example Monster Reskinned Role 1/8 Bandit 1st-level skirmishers 1/4 Goblin, skeleton Tier 1 skirmishers 1/2 Black bear, orc, thug Tier 1 bruisers 1 Animated armor, brown bear, spy Tier 1 defenders, bruisers, and skirmishers 2 Bandit captain, cult fanatic, ogre Tier 1 defenders, artillery, and bruisers 3 Knight, minotaur, shambling mound, veteran Tier 2 defenders 5 Gladiator; air, earth, fire, or water elemental; shambling mound Tier 2 bruisers 6 Mage Tier 2 artillery 7 Giant ape, stone giant Tier 3 bruisers 8 Frost giant Tier 3 bruisers 9 Fire giant Tier 3 defenders 10 Stone golem Tier 3 controllers 11 Horned devil Tier 3 skirmishers 12 Archmage Tier 3 artillery 13 Storm giant Tier 4 skirmishers 16 Iron golem Tier 4 defenders

JACKIE MUSTO 51 You need not limit yourself to the stat blocks above, of course. These simply work well as straightforward creatures easy to reskin, suitable when you need several monsters or minions to support a more powerful boss. MODIFYING FEATURES Often, you don’t need to make any other changes to reskin a stat block into a new monster. Sometimes, though, you’ll want to add more details, whether you do it before or during the game. Powerful tomb guardians (reskinned fire giants) clearly have the undead type. But unless they’re hit with poison attacks or abilities such as Turn Undead, you can worry about adding the features associated with undead creatures as needed. You might start off by writing down those features on an index card, on a sticky note, or in whatever digital tool you use to take notes. The “Common Monster Type Templates” section of “Building a Quick Monster” on page 4 breaks down features and traits for undead and many other monster types. Additionally, the more experienced you become, the easier it gets to improvise these sorts of features on the fly. If you’re changing saving throws, adjusting attacks or abilities, or changing the scope of magical effects in a stat block, you might want to write those changes down as well. You’re only taking these notes for yourself, though, so they don’t have to be pretty. You’re the only one who needs to understand these shortcuts. ADDING FEATURES Instead of—or in addition to—modifying the features of your reskinned monster, you can add new features to an existing stat block to give a creature new mechanical flavor over and above the baseline reskinned monster. For example, you might add some fire damage onto a reskinned veteran’s Longsword attack, or give a fire giant reskinned into an undead guardian an aura that deals necrotic damage to creatures who hit the guardian with melee attacks. Monster powers built for specific sorts of creatures can help your reskinning efforts. A bugbear reskinned as a zombie is far more convincing when you give them the Undead Resilience power. A topiary in a magical guardian that comes to life in the shape of a dragon can become truly draconic with the Poison Thorns or Grasping Roots powers. “Building a Quick Monster” (page 4), “Monster Powers” (page 15), and “Monster Roles” (page 22) all present new monster power options that you can add to your foe of choice. ADD SPELL EFFECTS AND MAGIC Adding spell effects and other magical abilities to reskinned monsters is a fantastic way to customize them, granting access to hundreds of predesigned thematic sets of mechanics that can be easily applied to your monsters. You can change up any creature by giving them one or more uses of a particular spell. The reskinned giant octopus playing the part of an otherworldly horror as described earlier will be much more thematic if they can cast darkness or black tentacles. However, when adding new magical features, ensure these are features your new monster needs and can actually use. Monsters are often limited by the numbers of actions they can take, so that magic used as an action might simply replace the thematic actions that define a creature. As an example, spiritual weapon is a good spell to give an assassin reskinned as a priest, because it’s only a bonus action to cast. As such, it won’t interfere with the assassin’s ability to make Shortsword attacks fueled by their signature Sneak Attack and Assassinate traits. (“Understanding the Action Economy” on page 42 has more information on this topic.)

52 To make them even more usable, some spells can easily be converted into traits. For example, the blink spell used as an always-on trait creates a creature able to move between dimensions the way a blink dog does. A foe created from or armored by magical glass might automatically activate the mirror image spell as a trait at the end of each long rest, with that spell’s duplicates rendered as panes of glass the heroes must smash. When an ooze moves, they might leave behind the effects of a grease spell, just as a creature reskinned as a monk might be able to use jump and feather fall as inherent traits rather than spells they cast using an action or reaction. ESSENTIAL ADD-ON SPELLS The Add-On Spells table sets out a list of spells that work well as add-ons to any monster, organized by level and indicating whether the spell is focused on dealing damage, on defense, or on control. When needed, use a spell attack bonus of 4 + 1/2 CR for the monster using the spell, and a spell save DC of 10 + 1/2 CR. You might consider changing the type of action required to activate spells normally cast as an action. Letting a creature activate such a spell as a bonus action, or as one of several attacks they can make with their Multiattack action, helps them use these abilities without reducing what else they can do. Just be careful that doing so doesn’t increase a creature’s damage output significantly. (“Building Spellcasting Monsters” on page 34 has more information on this topic.) MASHING UP MULTIPLE MONSTERS One further level of reskinning involves mashing together two monster stat blocks. You can think of this process as something like using one monster stat block as a template for another. This process works best when using the more complicated stat block as a baseline, and modifying it with traits from another simpler stat block. For example, if you want a fire giant death knight, use the death knight stat block first (the more complicated of the two) and add fire giant features like Huge size and immunity to fire damage. If you’re feeling nasty, you might also bump the damage the death knight deals with their Longsword attack from 9 slashing damage to the fire giant’s 28 damage. Knowing that the fire giant is significantly bigger means that the fire giant death knight probably has more hit points than the baseline death knight. But instead of doing a lot of math to calculate new hit points with a d12 Hit Die instead of a d8, just increase the death knight hit points by 50 percent. Always remember that you’re building a one-off monster, not a creature you plan to publish. Rough changes save you time better spent elsewhere in your preparation. DESCRIBING RESKINNED MONSTERS The key to making a reskinned monster work is how you describe your new creature in the game. You’ll want to lean heavily on your narrative, focusing your descriptions on the parts of the monster you’ve reskinned most directly. Describe the aura of necrotic horror surrounding the undead fire giant. Add the details of the tattoos the thick-necked bodyguard of the guildmaster wears. Lean in heavily on the description to make a new monster come alive. Do the same thing with your narration of the reskinned creature’s attacks. If an adult-red-dragon-turned-sorcerer attacks with the dragon’s breath weapon, describe how the sorcerer’s body erupts with burning veins, and how she unleashes a blast of fire hotter than any natural source as she extends her hands toward the characters. How we narrate our monsters is critical to helping the players think past those monsters’ game mechanics. As such, it’s particularly crucial when we reskin one monster to incorporate the mechanics of another. ADD-ON SPELLS Spell Level Spell Type Action 1 Burning hands Damage Action 1 Guiding bolt Damage Action 1 Hellish rebuke Damage Reaction 1 Inflict wounds Damage Action 1 Shield Defense Reaction 1 Sleep Control Action 2 Acid arrow Damage Action 2 Darkness Control Action 2 Invisibility Defense Action 2 Misty step Defense Bonus action 2 Scorching ray Damage Action 2 Shatter Damage Action 2 Spiritual weapon Damage Bonus action 2 Web Control Action 3 Counterspell Control Reaction 3 Dispel magic Control Action 3 Fireball Damage Action 3 Lightning bolt Damage Action 3 Spirit guardians Damage Action 4 Blight Damage Action 4 Fire shield Damage Action 4 Greater invisibility Defense Action 5 Cone of cold Damage Action 6 Chain lightning Damage Action 6 Circle of death Damage Action 6 Disintegrate Damage Action 6 Harm Damage Action 7 Finger of death Damage Action

53 THE RELATIVE WEAKNESS OF HIGH-CR MONSTERS Challenging high-level characters is much harder than challenging low-level characters. It often takes more monsters than expected—and often of a higher-thanexpected CR—to push high-level characters to their breaking point. A number of low-threat monsters can kill a 1st-level character with one hit, but it’s nearly impossible for most high-threat monsters to do the same to a 20thlevel character. CHARACTER GROWTH Characters in 5e don’t just grow linearly when they increase in level. In addition to more hit points, higher attack bonuses, and increased damage, they also gain new features. They increase the number of things they can do with their actions. They gain new defenses and become more versatile, working even better as a group. Though a level ranging from 1 to 20 represents a character’s relative power, 10th-level characters aren’t just twice as good as 5th-level characters—they’re better in entirely new ways. They have spells and class features that can completely upend a battle, accomplishing with a single action what might have taken significant effort at lower levels. This faster-than-linear growth continues all the way to 20th level, and spikes at levels where characters gain additional attacks and access to more powerful spells. By 20th level, characters are able to mitigate incredible amounts of damage, and to dish out far more damage than most monsters can keep up with. Challenging a group of 20th-level characters is thus much harder than challenging a group of 4th-level characters. The game’s standard encounter-building guidelines don’t keep up. Neither does the general concept of challenge rating as 5e presents it. A CR 1 dire wolf might be an effective challenge against a group of four 1st-level characters, using the basic guidelines for what CR is supposed to represent. But against four 20th-level characters, a CR 19 balor isn’t nearly as dangerous. (See “What Are Challenge Ratings?” on page 99 for more on this topic.) THE LINEAR GROWTH OF MONSTER CHALLENGE Although players often choose optimal new spells and features as they increase in level, they continue to face monsters who use average statistics. Unlike characters, monsters largely are linear creatures. And by virtue of the way monsters are designed, any special features they gain by virtue of a higher challenge rating have a cost toward that challenge rating. Using the game’s standard monster-building rules, if a creature has the Magic Resistance trait to grant it advantage on saving throws against magical effects, that creature’s defensive challenge rating increases. If a creature has Legendary Resistance, its defensive CR goes up again. A monster’s CR increases the more special features they have—yet monsters need those features to stand any chance of challenging higher-level characters. As a result of this, monsters don’t typically hit as hard or have as many hit points as expected at higher challenge ratings. Even worse, features and traits that affect a creature’s calculated CR are often weighted high. For example, the wight has a Life Drain attack calculated into their damage output even though they can’t effectively use that attack while also attacking to full effect with their longsword. Life Drain thus pulls down the wight’s effective damage output below their challenge rating’s expected effectiveness. (An easy fix for this is to give the wight a damage boost on their Longsword attacks with the Damaging Weapon power, part of “Building a Quick Monster” on page 4, or a similar effect.) It’s also worth noting that a creature’s challenge rating is based on the idea that they hit with all attacks, and that all saving throws against their attacks and features fail. This often works out at lower levels, but the more powerful the characters are, the more easily they can avoid attacks and pull off saving throws even against high DCs. A character’s proficient saving throws go up relatively linearly as they increase in level, but all their saves get much better when they’re near a paladin ally and their Aura of Protection feature. KEEPING THREATS HIGH The more experienced you are at running 5e games, the easier it becomes to improvise challenging battles without checking any table or other reference. You quickly become aware when a monster is hitting below their expected challenge compared to the characters, at which point, you can use the other sections of this book to bring that challenge back up. The Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating table in “Building a Quick Monster,” page 4, helps you create a baseline for the expected hit points and damage of a creature at a given challenge rating. If you feel like a foe isn’t holding their own, you can adjust their hit points and damage to provide a threat more appropriate to their CR and their place in the world of your game. Beyond base damage, you can look to the monster powers in “Building a Quick Monster” (page 4), “Monster Powers” (page 15), and “Monster Roles” (page 22) to boost a creature’s effectiveness in combat. And “Monster Combinations for a Hard Challenge” (page 67) and “The Lazy Encounter Benchmark” (page 70) offer different approaches to determine encounter difficulty that scales higher as the characters increase in level.

54 RUNNING MINIONS AND HORDES A powerful sword fighter stands atop a hill, surrounded by a horde of murderous brigands. A cleric braces herself against an ancient sarcophagus, holy symbol held aloft, while hundreds of skeletons swarm around her. Five heroes stand in a narrow passageway, facing down an army of charging cultists. Fantastic stories often place heroes in the paths of dozens or even hundreds of foes. Most of us have had the experience of reading or watching as those heroes cut through the opposing hordes, sending foes flying through the air as they smash through enemy ranks. Unfortunately, the default 5e combat rules offer little practical help for running dozens to hundreds of creatures against a group of heroes. So this section offers several different approaches to running numerous low-threat creatures against a single party. These aren’t mass-combat rules in which large groups of monsters fight each other. Rather, these tips focus on a small group of powerful heroes fighting a great horde of foes. BUILD YOUR HORDE RULESET Attempting to run large groups of monsters with existing rules typically breaks down in two areas: tracking damage and managing die rolls. As such, many of the guidelines in this section focus on two things: • Rules for tracking damage done to creatures fighting as a horde. • Rules for managing attack rolls and saving throws for large numbers of creatures. These rules follow certain design constraints, which are worth understanding as you think about which rules to use: • Any rules for horde combat should handle almost any number of monsters. • Rules should use the normal 5e monster stat blocks and combat setup as much as possible. • They should be easy to implement and use. • They should focus on the fantastic and heroic battle going on in the story. • For ease of play, foes taken out during a battle (whether reduced to 0 hit points, hypnotized, made unconscious with a sleep spell, and so forth) are removed from play. • Rules shouldn’t require arduous preparation before use at the table. • They should be understandable to both players and GMs. • They should be easy to remember, so you can use them without having to reference books, tables, or articles online. There’s no perfect way to run hordes in 5e, and all of these optional rules abstract typical 5e combat in some way. Every solution requires tradeoffs. As such, some of the different approaches in this section might work better in certain circumstances than others. If you’re mainly worried about tracking damage, you might use 4e-style minions or a single damage tally to avoid managing lots of die rolls. If you find yourself needing to roll attacks or saving throws dozens of times for a group of monsters, you might use the “one quarter succeed” method or try grouping rolls together. You can even switch approaches in the middle of a battle, going with whichever rules help you meet the intent and feeling of the narrative. DESCRIBE YOUR MECHANICS Whatever rules you choose when running hordes of foes, let the players know how those rules work, so they know how to interact with the horde most effectively. Don’t surprise them when the wizard casts fireball against a group of monsters, only to realize they’re all part of one big stat block. Battles against hordes aren’t typically intended to challenge the characters in the way that waves of more potent attackers are (as talked about in “Building and Running Boss Monsters,” page 31). Instead, fighting hordes is all about cleaving through foes, blowing groups of enemies sky high, and looking awesome while doing so. LEAN INTO NARRATIVE Setting up a spectacular scene of action requires solid in-world descriptions to show the players the results of their characters’ actions. Describe

JACKIE MUSTO 55 what it looks like when a fireball spell explodes in the midst of the horde. Describe how the fighter’s blade cleaves through three skeletons, destroying them all in one fell swoop. Use in-world descriptions to make the battle against the horde feel like the cinematic action scene you want to represent. ROUND HIT POINTS When considering the hit points of creatures who are part of a horde, it’s far easier to deal with the math if you round those creatures’ hit points to the nearest 5 or 10. An average zombie has 22 hit points—so make that 20. An average skeleton has 13 hit points, so round up to 15 or down to 10, depending on how challenging you want them to be. This trick works regardless of which style of hit point tracking you choose for your horde (as discussed below). TRACKING DAMAGE 4E STYLE In the fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, a minion was a special type of creature with all the baseline statistics of a normal creature—and only 1 hit point. To offset this lack of hit points, a minion didn’t take damage if they were missed by an attack, even if that missed attack dealt damage. (Fourth edition didn’t have saving throws that worked like 5e saving throws, instead using attack rolls for weapon attacks, area-effect spells, and other damaging effects.) This meant never needing to track the damage dealt to a minion, since the first damage dealt by a hit killed them. To use the same sort of approach for a horde of 5e monsters, give those monsters the following trait: Minion. If this creature takes damage when they are hit by an attack or fail a saving throw, they drop to 0 hit points. Using 4e-style minions avoids the need to track the damage dealt to dozens or hundreds of individual foes. A minion still has their normal hit points, but those hit points act as a kind of damage threshold. Any damage dealt to a minion from a missed attack or a successful save that is equal to or greater than the minion’s hit points also drops them to 0 hit points, as does damage from autohit attacks such as the magic missile spell. Likewise, you use a minion’s normal hit points when considering the effectiveness of hit-point-dependent effects such as the sleep spell. You just don’t bother tracking those hit points as the fight unfolds. CLEAVING MINIONS You might also choose to allow the characters’ weapon attacks to cleave through minions in a horde, giving melee and ranged characters the same awesome feeling of hewing down monsters that a wizard gets by throwing a fireball spell. Whenever a character kills a minion with a weapon attack, if the amount of damage dealt by the attack is greater than the minion’s hit points, subtract the minion’s hit points from the damage dealt and let the attack carry through into the next minion in line. Repeat this process for as many minion creatures as the attack could conceivably hit, subtracting the hit points of each slain monster from the damage of the attack until no damage remains. For example, consider Avantra the paladin hewing into a horde of minion skeletons with her greatsword while using Divine Smite. Each skeleton has 15 hit points, and Avantra’s smite deals 38 damage. The first minion skeleton is destroyed automatically by the successful hit, and Avantra’s player subtracts 15 from the total damage of the attack, leaving 23. That lets the attack hew into the next skeleton, destroying that one and subtracting another 15 damage to leave 8 damage remaining. The attack then cleaves into a third skeleton, destroying that minion foe as well and reducing the remaining damage to zero. THE HORDE DAMAGE TALLY Instead of treating the members of a horde as individual creatures for the purpose of tracking damage, you can track damage done to the horde as a whole. Whenever any member of the horde takes damage, add that damage to an ongoing tally. Round each creature’s hit points to the nearest 5 or 10 to make the math easier. Then each time the tally reaches the hit points of an individual creature in the horde, the last creature damaged is killed and you reset the tally to any damage left over. Additionally, if a single attack deals enough damage to kill more than one monster, let that attack kill multiple monsters in the horde, then reset the tally.

56 For example, imagine Thorgrim the fighter and Selvara the ranger facing six zombies, each with 20 hit points. Thorgrim makes three attacks, hitting all three times and dealing 12, 21, and 18 damage on each hit. But instead of applying the damage to individual zombies, tally it up as the total damage dealt to the zombies overall—41 damage, enough to destroy two zombies. Those two drop, and the damage tally is reset at 1 point of damage remaining. Next, Selvara fires three arrows, dealing 9, 13, and 17 damage on three hits. Her 39 damage is added to the tally to increase it to 40—enough to destroy two more zombies. When tracking damage in the tally, write down the base hit points of a single creature in the horde as a reference, the number of creatures, and the current damage tally. It might look something like this: Zombies (20 hp) × 12: 4 When a horde of creatures is hit with a high-damage area attack, rather than using the tally, it’s often easier to simply remove all the creatures affected by the attack if doing so makes sense. For example, if a wizard casts fireball against twenty skeletons with 15 hit points each, it’s easier to remove all the skeletons than to figure out which ones of them might have one or two hit points remaining. MULTIPLE ATTACKS AND SAVING THROWS Based on the physical circumstances of a horde battle, it’s often the case that only a handful of foes can attack a single character, even if hundreds of those foes are in the horde. If creatures are making between four and six attacks against a single character, you can still roll individually for those attacks. But save yourself time by calculating your target number before you roll. Ask the player of the character under attack for their character’s Armor Class, and whether they plan to use any abilities or spells to boost it (such as shield). Then subtract the attack modifier of the attacking creatures to get a target number for the d20 roll—the minimum number the attacker would need to roll in order to hit normally. You roll one die for each creature attacking the character, compare to the target number, and count the successes. Multiply the successes by the amount of damage the attacking creature deals, and you have the total damage dealt to the character. Consider using the same technique when enemies make saving throws. If a single effect requires multiple creatures to make a save, ask the player for the save DC and subtract the saving throw modifier of the monster to get the target number. Roll the appropriate number of d20s based on the number of creatures affected, and see how many succeed. When a number of creatures in a horde act at the same time and force one character to make multiple saving throws, have the character make a single saving throw with disadvantage against the effect. ONE QUARTER SUCCEED With a horde of sufficient size, the number of attack rolls or saving throws needed might simply be too many. So instead of rolling for those attacks and saves, assume that one quarter of the creatures in a horde succeed on attacks or saving throws. For example, if a wizard casts hypnotic pattern in the middle of a horde of twenty raging orc mercenaries, assume that five of them succeed on the saving throw and the other fifteen are hypnotized. This “one quarter succeed” abstraction is fast enough to use for hundreds or even thousands of foes, and doesn’t get any harder to use as the number of creatures in a horde increases. You can increase or decrease the number of monsters who succeed based on the circumstances of the situation. For attacks against a character who’s particularly well armored or who casts shield, or if most or all foes have disadvantage on their attack rolls, assume that one in ten attack rolls succeed. Use the same guideline for horde saving throws if specific effects hinder the saving throws of creatures in the horde, or if something has boosted the power of the characters’ features requiring saving throws. If there’s enough variance in power level between the characters and the creatures of the horde, such as a 20th-level wizard dropping a meteor swarm spell on two hundred manes, assume that all creatures within the area fail their saving throws. A 12th-level cleric might simply destroy every skeleton surrounding them with the radiant force of their Turn Undead feature, or leave one or two survivors. Because horde battles often involve edge cases such as part of a group being caught by a hypnotic pattern spell, or a bunch of undead who are turned but not destroyed, work with your players and within the intent of your game’s narrative to adjudicate such cases as they come up. Lean into decisions that make the scene feel epic. COMBINE ROLLS If you prefer some dice rolling to anchor the action in your game, combine the foes of a horde into smaller groups, then make one attack roll or saving throw for each such group. You can put creatures into groups of four, ten, or any number that makes sense against the size of the horde. When you make one attack roll or saving throw for the group all at once, use the attack modifier or saving throw modifier of one creature in the group, and add the damage of all creatures together if the combined attack hits. For example, a cleric might use her Turn Undead feature on a horde of twenty wights. Instead of rolling twenty saving throws, combine the wights into groups of five so that each group makes one save. On a failed save, all five wights in a group are turned. Likewise, if nine wights attack the cleric, put them into groups of three, roll three attack rolls using the wight’s normal attack modifier, and combine the damage of all three wights in a group. Even though wights get two attacks each, you can combine the damage from both attacks as part of this

57 abstracted approach—14 damage per wight for 42 damage per group. You can also use this approach to make mass attack rolls, rolling two attacks for an entire horde. Each attack uses the attack modifier of the type of creature in the horde, and deals one quarter of the total damage of the horde. For example, if ten skeletons attack a paladin, you could roll two attacks at a +4 bonus (the skeleton’s attack modifier). Each attack that hits deals 12 damage—one quarter of the 50 points the ten skeletons can deal in total, with their Shortsword attacks dealing 5 damage each. Like the “one quarter succeed” guideline, this twoattack rule scales for a horde of any size, and requires just a little math to compute the total damage dealt. HORDE MONSTER STAT BLOCKS Another common approach to handle hordes of creatures is to combine multiple creatures together into a single stat block resembling a much larger creature. This lets you run hordes the same way you run any normal big monster, akin to how a swarm of rats represents multiple rats. For this approach, choose a challenge rating for the horde and build the stat block for that challenge rating. You can use the information in “Building a Quick Monster” (page 4) to build a stat block in a few minutes, or reskin an existing stat block to represent your horde. Rather than a single stat block, you can also create multiple stat blocks to represent groups within a larger horde. For example, a horde of sixty skeletons might be broken up into four group stat blocks representing fifteen skeletons each. If you’re not sure what challenge rating to use for a horde, try multiplying the challenge rating of the creatures in a horde or horde group by the number of creatures, rounding up for creatures with challenge ratings less than 1. For example, a horde of fifteen skeletons with a challenge rating of 1/4 would have a CR of 3.75, rounded up to 4. To represent a hoard of creatures, add the following trait to the base stat block of the creatures in the horde: Horde. The horde can occupy another creature’s space and vice versa, and can move through any opening large enough for the horde’s base creature to move through. The horde can’t regain hit points or gain temporary hit points. Damage dealt by the horde is halved when the horde is at half its hit points or lower. One problem with horde stat blocks is that attacks affecting a large area often work less well against singlestat-block hordes than they would against the creatures in the horde individually. For example, a fireball spell is tremendously effective against a group of ghouls, easily cutting their numbers down. But when that group of ghouls is represented by a single ghoul horde stat block, that horde remains standing even after a lot of damage. Likewise, casting hypnotic pattern on a horde of bandits either hypnotizes all of them or none of them, depending on whether the horde collectively succeeds or fails on their saving throw. You can help fix this by establishing that damaging areas of effect deal double damage, or that an area of effect controlling many creatures instead deals damage to a horde’s hit points. But this often isn’t as rewarding to the players as describing the characters actually tearing through or controlling a big pile of foes. If you use single stat blocks to represent hordes of monsters, let your players know, so they know what to expect and can choose the right actions given the mechanics you’re using for the horde. CHOOSING HORDEAPPROPRIATE CREATURES Certain foes work better in a horde than others. Often, weaker monsters make more sense for a horde than stronger ones—a good thing for the characters facing them. Your story often dictates what kinds of creatures normally attack in large groups, whether skeletons, bandits, guards, orcs, goblins, kobolds, or similar foes. If your story calls for a particularly strange horde of creatures, consider reskinning an existing horde-friendly stat block as a starting point. “General-Use Combat Stat Blocks” on page 13 offers some simple examples. If a single horde is made up of different types of creatures, use a single stat block for all those creatures, then describe them differently in the narrative. Trying to manage two separate stat blocks for multiple hordes of monsters becomes quickly complicated. For creatures with multiple attacks, combine those attacks into one attack roll that deals the creature’s total damage. For example, each veteran in a horde of veterans combines their Longsword attacks from Multiattack into one attack dealing 14 damage (or 20 damage if you decide they’re using their Shortsword attack too). Ignore bonus actions, reactions, and special attacks for creatures in a horde. If a creature deals some sort of ongoing damage, add that damage to its regular attack, but ignore other damage and effects. If a horde of creatures has a damage-dealing attack requiring a saving throw, let a character targeted by that effect make a single saving throw against it with disadvantage. SWITCH RULES AS NEEDED All the guidelines in this section are intended to make it easier for you to run large numbers of monsters. But at some point, you can stop using them when they no longer serve this purpose. This doesn’t have to be an all-at-once process, though, as many of the guidelines above can be used, and removed, independently. You might switch from using “one quarter succeed” for large numbers of monsters to “combining rolls” when fewer are in play. You might use a damage tally at the start of a horde battle, then switch to tracking damage independently when only a handful of foes are left. You might start with a single stat block used to represent a group of monsters, then “explode” that horde into a handful of individual monsters when the horde’s hit points are low enough.

58 RUNNING SPELLCASTING MONSTERS Whether an NPC mage or priest, or a monster innately channeling potent magic, spellcasting foes create great flexibility for a GM wanting to challenge players and characters in combat. But that flexibility comes at a cost. Spellcasting is one of the most complicated subsystems in the game, which can make running spellcasting creatures a challenge. Even stat blocks that focus the magic of creatures and NPCs into one or two fully broken-out key features usually come with a list of other spells the foe can use. But because using one of those spells often means a GM needing to look up its details, a foe’s key features can end up overused, while potentially interesting spells from the spell list languish. The following guidelines can help create a better experience running spellcasting foes. LEARNING MAGIC Whenever you review the stat blocks of your favorite spellcasting creatures, whether as part of game prep or just for fun, make yourself familiar with their spells by making notes on those spells. The act of making notes, whether handwritten or electronically, reinforces memory in a much stronger way than simply reading. So by taking down the details of interesting spells on index cards or in an app, you help to fix those details in your memory— even as you give yourself a useful tool for playing and adjudicating those spells on the fly. GMs who have the ability to see stat blocks and look up spells electronically might not see the value in this. But consider that clicking through to read the full text of wall of force creates a need to parse out the important information from the spell description, which takes time. However, making a note saying, “Any angle; dome or sphere 10-foot radius; flat surface ten times 10-by-10; immune to all but disintegrate” gives you that information at a glance when you need it quickly. A SUITE OF SPELLS Throughout multiple editions of the game, a number of spells have become classics—because they work. Fireball, lightning bolt, command, hold person, wall of force and many more are the cornerstone of combat spellcasting, and appear in numerous creatures’ stat blocks. So when you’re making notes on the spells of your favorite creatures, keep an eye out for spells that appear over and over again, as well as spells you think should be used more often. Then use the notes you make for those selections as a suite of combat-friendly spells you know, like, and can use easily in your game. As GMs, we often put a certain amount of pressure on ourselves to make sure every combat encounter feels unique, but don’t let that force you into using unfamiliar spells that can slow down play and make running combat a chore. On the other side of the table, the players of clerics, wizards, and warlocks will be making use of repeat castings of spiritual weapon, eldritch blast, and fireball encounter after encounter without a care, so cut yourself the same slack. In a pinch, a spellcasting creature you haven’t had time to fully prep can make use of spells from your creature caster suite even if those spells aren’t normally on their spell list. Just make sure that the spells you use match the level of spells normally available to the creature. QUANTITY AND VARIETY The number of spells in your creature casting suite is up to you, but try to have enough that you can go a few encounters—or even a couple of sessions—without repeating yourself. In an ongoing campaign against death cultists, two encounters against mini-boss high priests who favor flame strike might feel flat. But if one priest specializes in flame strike while the other loves to harry foes with insect plague, you keep the characters and the players on their toes. MIXING THINGS UP Knowing that you have your creature casting suite set up and ready to run, you might then pick one new and unusual spell to prep in each session. By being able to deal quickly and easily with most of the spells your foes use, having to reference one spell while under the stress of running combat is an easier task. And who knows? If you have fun with that new spell, it might become another addition to your creature casting suite for future games. SPELL SKINS “Reskinning Monsters” on page 50 talks about the ease and usefulness of reskinning stat blocks to let them pose as new and unique creatures. Even if you’re not reskinning any other part of a stock creature, reskinning spells is a particularly easy way to add new combat spice to familiar foes. This technique works well with the spells of your creature caster suite, which can be quickly reflavored to make it feel as if foes have access to an even wider range of magic. DAMAGE TYPES Trading out damage types is the first and most straightforward approach to reskinning spells. Enemy mage casting fireball? Been there, done that. But when that mage unleashes sphere of ruin, a reskinned fireball that deals necrotic damage, the fight potentially gets a bit more interesting.

59 Each of the standard damage types is intrinsically connected to many classic spells, so swapping damage types makes a unique statement about a creature’s magic. Likewise, changing up damage is a great way to work with a theme for spellcasting foes, whether it’s dark priests primarily channeling necrotic damage, elemental-adjacent creatures favoring cold and fire damage, or an order of storm mages specializing in destroying enemies with thunder and lightning. Damage Type Example Spell Acid Acid arrow, acid splash Bludgeoning Arcane hand, control water Cold Cone of cold, ice storm Fire Burning hands, fireball Force Disintegrate, magic missile Lightning Lightning bolt, shocking grasp Necrotic Blight, finger of death Piercing Insect plague, spike growth Poison Cloudkill, poison spray Psychic Feeblemind, phantasmal killer Radiant Guardian of faith, sacred flame Slashing Blade barrier, wall of thorns Thunder Shatter, thunderwave SAVING THROWS Changing up saving throws is another easy way to mix things up spell-wise, and can go hand-in-hand with retooling damage. Spells whose effects need to be physically avoided, including acid, cold, and fire damage, often make use of Dexterity saving throws. But if you finetune the description of a spell’s effect so that it instead overwhelms targets with destructive power, a Strength or Constitution save can represent trying to shrug off the worst effects of the spell. Mental saving throws can also be easily swapped around, with only a subtle difference between a character calling on Intelligence to resist their mind being overwhelmed, Wisdom to keep their will focused, and Charisma to remain grounded in their sense of self. Saving Throw Good for… Strength Resisting crushing effects, ignoring forced movement Dexterity Rolling with area-effect damage, avoiding hurled effects Constitution Resisting necromantic or poison effects, maintaining bodily autonomy Intelligence Resisting illusions, shrugging off psychic effects Wisdom Resisting charms, shrugging off mind control Charisma Resisting spiritual effects, shrugging off emotional control AREAS OF EFFECT Many classic offensive spells are tied to specific types of areas, from fireball’s 20-foot-radius sphere to fear’s 30-foot cone. Changing up a spell’s area is thus an easy way to make it feel as though a spellcasting creature has a special edge. When you change a spell’s area, just make sure you keep the number of possible targets roughly the same so as to not seriously increase or decrease the threat of the spell. In general, when a spell targets only creatures standing on a level surface, as opposed to flying creatures who might stack on top of each other in the area of effect, you can use the following table to convert different types of areas. To use the table, look for the area of the spell you want to convert in the leftmost column, then read across to the cell under the type of area you want to convert to. Cone Cube or Square Cylinder, Sphere, or Circle Line* Cone — Size ÷ 2 Size ÷ 2 Size × 3 Cube or square Length × 2 — No change Length × 6 Cylinder, Sphere, or Circle Radius × 2 No change — Radius × 6 Line* Length ÷ 3 Length ÷ 6 Length ÷ 6 — * These conversions assume a line 5 feet wide. For each additional 5 feet of width, divide the line’s length by 2. For example, the 20-foot-radius area of a fireball or ice storm spell could be converted to a 40-foot cone, a 20-foot cube or square, or a 120-foot line that is 5 feet wide. VARIETY, NOT PUNISHMENT In the course of reskinning spells to mix things up in combat, be careful that these approaches don’t end up accidentally—or intentionally—punishing characters for their defensive strengths. If all foes cast their spells with areas of effect that conveniently fill whatever room the characters are in, it’ll start to feel punitive. Likewise, if the rogue has Evasion and the barbarian has resistance to everything except psychic damage, a lot of fun gets sapped from the game when enemy spellcasters tee up mindball and cerebral bolt instead of fireball and lightning bolt, dealing psychic damage and calling for Intelligence saving throws round after round.

60 USING NPC STAT BLOCKS Of all the monster stat blocks GMs have at their disposal, NPC stat blocks offer tremendous utility. Because many games prominently feature nonplayer characters as villains and opponents, a crafty GM can squeeze the most value out of NPC stat blocks with a few simple guidelines. INHERENTLY RESKINNABLE STATS Though any monster stat block can be easily reskinned into a unique creation, NPC stat blocks make particularly useful baselines for reskinning because of their general utility. Simply change the creature type and the flavor, and you can easily turn an NPC into an undead horror, an otherworldly fiend, a commanding goblinoid, or many other monstrous foes. (“Reskinning Monsters” on page 50 has more information on this topic.) NPC stat blocks are likewise easy to reflavor. Change their weapons, their armor, and their mannerisms and you have an entirely new NPC. Every veteran can be unique, with personalized armor and a sword tied to a distinct history. Reskin and reflavor an NPC spellcaster’s spells and damage types, and you can quickly create acidic sorcerers, ooze-worshiping cultists, psionic adepts, and archmages of the infinite void. Such changes are often easy enough to do in your head, making it easy to improvise unique foes during your game with the same simple NPC stat block. BUILD MONSTROUS NPCS It’s easy to forget the wide range of potential creature types you can wrap over an NPC stat block. Humans, elves, dwarves, and the other common humanoid ancestries are obvious choices for NPCs, but goblinoids, orcs, drow, giants, skeletons, zombies, and ghouls fit just as easily. Making a quick change to a monster’s type, and adding an ancestry trait if desired, is all that’s needed to turn a common NPC stat block into a huge range of potential foes. You can also look to the monster powers presented in “Building a Quick Monster” (page 4), “Monster Powers” (page 15), and “Monster Roles” (page 22) for further quick customization. TEMPLATING For more utility from NPC stat blocks, consider using them as templates that can be customized with the traits of other creatures—or vice versa. This is a great way to add a social role to a monster, or to give monstrous foes the feel of having class levels. Want to turn a typical duergar into a duergar veteran? Take the duergar’s most defining traits and add them to the veteran stat block. Want to create a stone giant archmage? Take the archmage’s Spellcasting feature and add it to the stone giant stat block. A doppelganger scout, a goblin noble, a troll priest—any such combination gives you a huge range of options to turn existing monsters into foes who feel more like characters. When mashing up stat blocks in this way, add features of the simpler or weaker stat block to the baseline stat block of the more powerful or complex creature. In the case of the stone giant, their physical ability scores, Armor Class, and hit points are higher than the archmage’s, so it’s easier to add a high Intelligence and spellcasting (the primary feature defining the archmage) to the stone giant stat block than it would be to take the baseline archmage and add the stone giant’s dominant features. WORRY LESS ABOUT CR If you can’t find an NPC stat block at the exact challenge rating you want, it’s often easier to just use the nearest existing stat block that fits the story of the NPC. A few points of CR up or down doesn’t make a huge difference in the story. If you’re worried an encounter might be too easy or too hard, you can add more NPCs or reduce their numbers as you need. You can go especially far with the baseline CR 3 veteran stat block, which serves well against characters as low as 2nd level (with the veteran serving as a powerful elite foe) all the way to 15th level (where hordes of veterans still provide a challenge). If you want to fine-tune an NPC’s stat block for a different challenge rating, you can use the Monster Statistics by Challenge Rating table in “Building a Quick Monster” (page 4) to upgrade or downgrade an NPC like any other stat block. Just replace the NPC’s hit points and attack numbers with those in the table for your desired CR. Recalculate their damage either by changing their number of attacks or replacing those attacks with the attacks in the table. Likewise, if the NPC has attacks or features that require a saving throw, replace the stat block’s save DC with the table’s value. ADD ONE SPECIAL TRAIT To make nonplayer characters stand out, use a default NPC stat block but add one unique feature for particular NPCs. Maybe you change a mage’s fireball into an acidic or necrotic blast. Or you could create a corrupting sphere spell that creates a temporary hole in the world, through which demons claw at those trapped within—still doing fireball-appropriate damage, but with some fancy reskinning. A veteran serving a necromancer might bathe her blades in necrotic flames, dealing an extra 3 (1d6) necrotic damage on each hit. A psionic spy might add 7 (2d6) psychic damage to their Shortsword attack. Or to make NPCs even more memorable, you can use any of the monster powers in “Building a Quick Monster,” “Monster Powers,” or “Monster Roles,” tailoring a generic stat block even more for the story you want to share.

61 BOSSES AND MINIONS When creating a boss battle, thinking about which bosses pair well with which minions can be a great starting point. You can use the table below to match up minions and bosses in a number of classic adventure environments. For unique bosses, look to “Building and Running Boss Monsters” (page 31), as well as the monster powers in “Building a Quick Monster” (page 4), “Monster Powers” (page 15), and “Monster Roles” (page 22). Boss CR Boss Environments Minions 1 Goblin boss Caves, mountains Goblins, worgs 2 Bandit captain Cities, sewers, ruins Bandits, spies, thugs, berserkers, gladiators 2 Cult fanatic Cities, ruins Cultists, bandits, thugs, dretches 2 Ettercap Caves, ruins Giant spiders 2 Ghast Ruins, crypts, cities, sewers Ghouls, zombies 2 Gnoll pack lord Plains, caves, ruins Gnolls, hyenas 2 Ogre Ruins, caves Orcs, goblins 2 Sea hag Coves, swamps, grottos Giant constrictor snakes, crocodiles 3 Bugbear chief Keeps, fortresses, ruins, caves Bugbears, goblins, worgs 3 Green hag Forests, swamps Bullywugs, giant toads, giant constrictor snakes, imps, quasits 3 Winter wolf Frozen mountains, frozen ruins Dire wolves, ice mephits 4 Banshee Ruins, crypts Specters, skeletons 4 Bone naga Ruins, crypts Skeletons, specters, wights 4 Ettin Mountains, ruins, caves Ogres, orcs 4 Lamia Ruins, towers, caves Jackalweres 4 Lizard king/queen Swamps, sunken grottos Lizardfolk shamans, lizardfolk, monitor lizards 5 Hill giant Mountains, ruins, caves Ogres, orcs, bugbears, goblins, cave bears 5 Night hag Ruins, crypts, Lower Planes Hell hounds, quasits, manes, shadow demons 5 Sahuagin baron Coves, grottos, underwater ruins Sahuagin priestesses, sahuagin, reef sharks, giant octopuses, krakens 5 Wraith Ruins, crypts Flameskulls, specters, wights 6 Hobgoblin warlord Ruins, keeps, fortresses Hobgoblin captains, hobgoblins, bugbears, goblins, worgs 6 Mage Towers, cities Animated armor, imps, acolytes, flesh golems, veterans 6 Medusa Ruins, caves Basilisks, giant constrictor snakes, death dogs 7 Oni Ruins, caves, cities Hobgoblins, orcs 8 Frost giant Frozen mountains, frozen ruins Yetis, young white dragons, polar bears, winter wolves 9 Fire giant Volcanoes, caverns Hell hounds, young red dragons, salamanders, azers, fire mephits 9 Glabrezu Lower Planes, ruins, towers Barlguras, chasmes 10 Aboleth Caverns, coves, lakes Chuuls, cult fanatics, hydras, NPCs (enthralled), sea hags 11 Efreeti Ruins, volcanoes, cities, deserts Fire elementals, salamanders, fire snakes 11 Horned devil Lower Planes, ruins, towers Barbed devils, bearded devils, spined devils 12 Archmage Towers, cities Animated armor, imps, cambions, demons (any), elementals, golems 13 Adult white dragon Frozen mountains, frozen ruins Yetis 13 Vampire Ruins, crypts Vampire spawn, giant bats, dire wolves, specters, wights 14 Adult black dragon Swamps, sunken grottos Giant crocodiles, trolls, bullywugs, lizardfolk, kuo-toa 15 Adult green dragon Forests, ruins, caverns Treants, elves 15 Mummy lord Ruins, crypts Mummies, skeletons, wights, cult fanatics 16 Adult blue dragon Deserts, ruins, towers Air elementals, mages 16 Marilith Lower Planes, ruins, towers Hezrous, vrocks 17 Adult red dragon Mountains, volcanoes, ruins, caverns Fire elementals, kobolds 17 Death knight Crypts, ruins, Lower Planes Wights, wraiths, liches, flameskulls, nightmares, revenants 19 Balor Lower planes, ruins Mariliths, glabrezus, goristros, cambions, cult fanatics 20 Ancient white dragon Frozen mountains, frozen ruins Abominable yetis 20 Pit fiend Lower planes, ruins, towers Horned devils, bone devils, erinyes 21 Ancient black dragon Swamps, sunken grottos Giant crocodiles, trolls, bullywugs, lizardfolk 21 Lich Ruins, towers, crypts, caves Death knights, iron golems, wraiths, mages 22 Ancient green dragon Forests, ruins, caverns Treants, elves 23 Ancient blue dragon Deserts, ruins, towers Air elementals, mages 24 Ancient red dragon Mountains, volcanoes, ruins, caverns Fire giants, fire elementals, kobolds

62 EVOLVING MONSTERS Players usually feel safe assuming that a monster is exactly what the characters see. But what if that monster changes partway through a fight? An evolving monster starts out one way, and then at a specific point in the narrative, raises their threat level significantly. When a monster evolves, GMs are able to catch players by surprise and crank up an encounter’s excitement. The evolution keeps player interest high and communicates a shift in story. Something caused this monster to suddenly change, with new and exciting capabilities! Evolving monsters change the assumptions made about an encounter. For example, players and characters alike know that goblins are skirmishers and easily defeated. But if a goblin drinks a potion and is horribly transformed into an enormous ooze, the nature of the confrontation changes significantly. The threat might feel mechanically similar to an encounter with a goblin and an ooze companion who enters combat once the goblin falls or flees. But the emotional reaction of the players is different. Though any player can enjoy the surprise that comes of seeing a monster in a different light, evolutions work especially well for when experienced players become accustomed and even bored by familiar creatures. DEVELOP A STRONG CONCEPT Not every monster should evolve. This technique should be used sparingly, and with a strong concept that will feel right to the players. So think through that concept and the reasons for the evolution. STORY Verisimilitude is important, whether the concept is mundane or supernatural. A goblin drank a potion and turned into an ooze … but why did that potion have such a powerful effect? An encounter always works better if the story concept is strong. Perhaps a group of goblin zealots have taken over a tower once inhabited by an eccentric wizard who collected oddities. Stating this up front establishes the story. Mundane evolutions can be just as exciting. A crab might molt, shedding their carapace to grow in size and become more formidable (though probably with a lower Armor Class). A huge spider might have hundreds of baby spiders on their back, something seen in nature. Then when the spider is hurt, the spiderling swarms advance to change the nature of the fight. Evolving monsters can let you make use of powerful story material, including rebirth, divine transcendence, foolish deals with malevolent forces, or a character taken over by their baser emotions. Such a story can appeal to the players, becoming a significant campaign development, and reinforced through your descriptions of the evolution. A shelled creature might change color before they molt. A creature with the power of rebirth might boast of their immortality and call upon otherworldly magic before being reduced to 0 hit points. FIFTEEN EVOLVING MONSTERS The following ideas can be used to work up evolvingmonster encounters around many standard types of foes, or as inspiration for creating encounters of your own. Ritual of Transformation. A spellcaster stands within a ritual circle, and is transformed when the ritual is complete. Character actions could change the efficacy of the evolution, perhaps transforming the caster into a different creature than what was intended. Undead Host. An undead creature holds another creature inside them, either living or undead, which emerges once they are defeated. Incorporeal Shift. A corporeal undead refuses to fall, rising from apparent destruction as an incorporeal evolved form—a death knight becoming a powerful wraith, perhaps. Cursed until Death. A monster bears a curse that has transformed them, and that is ended when the characters kill them. This causes the villain to transform into their original form, whereupon they attack again in a state of fear and anger, unable to remember what happened. Sudden Curse. Desperate to defeat the characters, a creature foolishly grabs a cursed magic item or artifact and becomes transformed by it. Molting or Shedding Skin. A juvenile kraken might molt their shell to become an adult, or a giant snake could shed their skin to become even larger. Youthful Vitality. A foe begins a fight as old and frail, but magic in the area begins to rejuvenate them, improving their statistics every other round. Extraplanar Pact. A foe has made a pact with a fiend or other extraplanar entity. The entity either rewards or punishes the foe by transforming them in the middle of battle, or when the foe dies. Wild Magic. Magic in the area is out of control, and changes one or more foes. It might be possible for the characters to undo the change, or even to benefit from it. Power Armor. The foe climbs into a large suit of magic armor partway through the fight, gaining powerful capabilities. THE 2016 D&D OPEN When designing this competitive event, Teos combined a puzzle with an evolving monster. The characters found themselves in a room, sealed with an enormous gnomish contraption containing a metal tarrasque which looked certain to defeat them. Except that each time the characters solved a short puzzle or riddle correctly, the gnomish contraption reassembled the metal creature into a different, easier threat. The next-to-last form? A flumph. The final form? A helpless upside-down flumph.

CARLOS EULEFÍ 63 Escaped Meal. A creature has swallowed another creature, which they cough up when hurt sufficiently. Both creatures now attack the characters, unless the heroes can win the newly appeared foe to their side. Empowering Meal. A creature gains the powers of creatures they consume—such as a dragon who swallows an NPC spellcaster and now can cast their spells! Shapechanger. A creature changes shape into a powerful new form when a fight starts to go against them, or was previously shapechanged and reverts to their true form during battle. Illusion Drops. A creature’s appearance is merely a facade, which they use illusion magic to maintain. Once they realize that fighting is the only option, the creature drops the illusion and reveals their true form and actual capabilities. Parasite. A creature is controlled by a parasite. When defeated, the parasite emerges from the creature and attacks—trying to gain a new host. Remembered Power. A foe has repressed memories, letting them tap into their true strength even though they don’t remember having such capabilities. Primal Fury. When wounded, a creature taps into a primal state of being to become more ferocious. Reversible Strength. Due to powerful magic or some other effect, a foe begins a fight far stronger than the characters. The characters can reverse the effect, letting the foe devolve to a form that can be defeated. MECHANICS Because evolving monsters is a technique to be used sparingly, you want the mechanics of that evolution to be evocative and significant. The mechanical change reinforces the story and the seriousness of what has taken place. STATISTICAL EVOLUTION First, think through the type of evolution and what it represents. Is a creature becoming larger? Are they changing type, such as from humanoid to elemental? What capabilities should the new form have? Depending on the nature of the evolution, you might simply swap creature statistics entirely. A goblin mage becomes an ogre. A dwarf noble becomes a fire elemental. Or you might borrow aspects of one stat block, combining them with the other. For example, you might use the noble stat block but add the fire elemental’s resistances, immunities, and Fire Form trait, as well as having all the noble’s attacks deal fire damage. You can also apply new features or actions using monster powers, as found in “Building a Quick Monster” (page 4), “Monster Powers” (page 15), and “Monster Roles” (page 22). Monster powers are specifically designed to be exciting and to surprise players, as well as to communicate story. TRIGGER Think about how the evolution should be triggered. Does it happen when the creature is reduced to half their hit points? When reduced to 0 hit points? When a ritual is complete, or on the second round of combat? The trigger should always fit the story, and should feel inevitable—but shouldn’t feel like you’re trying to fool the characters. If SHAKE UP THE FAMILIAR Scott points out that players can easily become overly familiar with common monsters, either because they’ve fought them several times or because those players are also GMs with a high level of monster knowledge. Turning a known commodity into an evolving monster is an easy way to transform familiar foes into something new and exciting. But think about adding some kind of clear visual indication—an unusual piece of equipment, an eldritch tattoo, strange demeanor or behavior, and so on— to hint to the players that this isn’t the monster the characters are used to.

64 the players feel as though their characters should have been able to stop the evolution before it was triggered, a fight might become frustrating rather than exciting. Foes might evolve a single time, or more than once. The evolution could be permanent, or something the characters can prevent or reverse. In the latter case, think through what circumstances would allow this, and which of a monster’s mechanical aspects (such as stat block features) might be lost based on how well the characters succeed on undoing the effect. Foreshadowing a trigger helps establish the story. A villain warns the characters not to strike them down, with their death triggering the transformation, of course. A huge creature has a swollen belly, and striking them causes them to cough up a meal that also attacks the characters. ENCOUNTER DYNAMICS Statistical changes can result in major changes to the dynamic of the encounter. A foe who becomes part spider might be able to walk on the ceiling, avoiding traps and hazards on the battlefield. A foe who becomes part fire elemental can ignore the river of lava in a cavern. Consider matching the evolution with an environment that makes the most of the change, but do so in a way that doesn’t make the battle much harder for the characters. In some cases, a transformation might involve tradeoffs. The monster might gain new abilities, even as they lose former resistances or gain new weaknesses. Either way, though, the expectation is that whatever narrative device allowed a foe to evolve can’t be used by the characters to gain similar benefits. Evolutions are meant for monsters. Monster statistics are different from character statistics, and evolving characters in the same way can have an impact on game balance. Thankfully, there are plenty of other ways to help the characters even the odds against a foe who is suddenly more formidable, as discussed in “Building Engaging Encounters” on page 76, and making use of the monster powers in “Building a Quick Monster” (page 4), “Monster Powers” (page 15), and “Monster Roles” (page 22). RESOLUTION Evolving a monster can be more than just a fun, oneoff change. It can tie into your campaign or drive up its stakes. A young noble who went missing has been transformed by terrible studies encouraged by the cult threatening the local area. A power that changes people into devils in one encounter might affect other creatures as well, prompting the characters to find the catalyst for the transformation and stop others from being exposed to it. The story impact of an evolution can merit providing some extra time after combat ends so the characters can analyze what took place and learn from it. Story implications, such as an aberrant spy among the nobility, might result in the characters coming up with ideas to detect or counter any other such spies. Think about what manner of resolution works best to make an evolution a strong part of the story. ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE Mike notes that the environment might change along with a monster’s evolved new form. The world might fall away into a void, or rocks could start dropping from the ceiling as a creature’s evolution disrupts the physical nature of the area around them. A transformation into a fire elemental might set a room ablaze. Such unexpected changes create a truly epic scene. DESIGNING VERAGON When writing the book Fantastic Lairs, Mike, Scott, and fellow designer James Introcaso wanted to provide powerful foes even for the highest-level characters. One such foe was Veragon, a demon-touched ancient gold dragon who was intended to do the impossible—work as a solo monster capable of truly challenging a group of 20th-level heroes. Anyone who’s run 20th-level encounters knows how hard it can be to challenge such characters, who have so many resources at their disposal and so many tricks up their proverbial sleeves that any lone monster, no matter how big, is at a disadvantage. A big part of addressing that challenge was having Veragon evolve as he faced the characters. The dragon has a tremendous 546 hit points, enough to keep him alive even after multiple paladin smites and rogue sharpshooter sneak attacks. For half the battle, he acts as a “standard” ancient gold dragon, though with a big pile of spells he can cast. But when reduced to half his hit points, Veragon turns into something else as his demon-touched nature takes hold. Suddenly, the dragon is throwing around the finger of death spell twice per round, even while surrounded by an aura that chews through characters like a never-ending circle of death spell. But one trick that makes this approach work is that Veragon becomes simpler to play when he switches forms, focusing on those new abilities and his regular attacks, and no longer having all his spells at his disposal in phase two of the fight. Veragon isn’t a simple monster by any means, but when building your own evolving monsters, always keep in mind how to balance increased power with making your monster easy to run at the table. Evolving monsters don’t just need to add new things. They can often take some things away as well.

65 THE COMBAT ENCOUNTER CHECKLIST Sometimes all a game needs is an interesting location and some cool monsters to fight, setting up a combat encounter that a GM might build right at the table. The characters go somewhere, everyone decides it’s time for a fun fight, and you whip something up. Or you determine that, given the circumstances going on in the story, it’s time for the characters to run into some opposition, and you’re off to the races. (“Building a Quick Monster” on page 4 and “General-Use Combat Stat Blocks” on page 13 are great resources when you’re building those kinds of on-the-fly encounters.) Sometimes we need more, though, particularly for big set-piece battles or boss fights. When it’s time to build an interesting and dynamic encounter, the following checklist can help determine what options a big combat might need: • Interesting monsters • A fantastic location • Zone-wide effects • Traps and hazards • Advantageous positions • Interactive objects • Cover • Difficult or fantastic terrain • A goal No battle needs all these things, but it’s worth running through the list to see which options fit the sort of combat scenario you’re putting together. INTERESTING MONSTERS For a big, self-contained combat encounter, a single monster usually won’t do it. Even several monsters of the same type might not prove interesting enough for a big fight. Complex, climactic battles often work best with two or three creature types that work well together—big bruisers up front and powerful artillery in the back, for example. (“Monster Roles,” page 22, has more information about choosing foes this way.) However, having more than three types of creature in any one battle is going to be hard to manage. As such, designing a big set-piece battle is also a great time to think about waves of monsters (talked about in “Building and Running Boss Monsters,” page 31). A FANTASTIC LOCATION An empty, 50-foot-square room doesn’t lend itself to an interesting set-piece battle. We want fantastic rooms with interesting shapes, lots of room to move around, and a cool environment for the characters to spend time in. Great self-contained fights are like theme parks where the characters can climb up big statues, swing from chandeliers, and dance across elevated platforms. Whether you’re playing online or in person, you can purchase battle maps showing off interesting locations, or might find maps that cartographers have released for free. Build a library of cool maps that inspire your players to enjoy the scenery while they’re kicking ass. However, you want to ensure that your fantastic location isn’t too big. It’s no fun to have a character spend multiple rounds running to the far side of an arena—only to arrive just in time to watch the other characters drop the big bad to the mat. Let all the characters get to the meaty part of a location in two moves at most. ZONE-WIDE EFFECTS Sometimes a combat environment has a big ongoing effect—something that impacts all the creatures in the area, no matter where they are. Such zone-wide effects can make a fight more interesting, as with any of the following examples: • Unholy energy in a crypt makes healing magic only half as effective as normal. • Supernatural fire negates any creature’s resistance to fire, and turns immunity to fire into resistance. • Psychic wailing forces each character to succeed on a DC 10 Constitution check to successfully cast a spell. • Periodic bolts of lightning strike, with each creature in combat having a 1-in-4 chance of being struck at the start of their turn. • An arcane rift causes each damaging spell cast in a fight to deal an extra 2d6 force damage. • An aura of bloody rage fills the area, granting each combatant advantage on attack rolls. • A rift to a realm of chaos causes all spells to trigger a wild magic surge. • The god of blood infuses all melee attacks with an extra die of damage. • A rift in space-time lets a creature swap places with an enemy within 60 feet if that enemy fails a DC 12 Wisdom saving throw. • A thick fog makes it impossible to see creatures more than 30 feet away. Avoid zone-wide effects that are just plain annoying. Having creatures fall down a lot because of icy floors sounds fun—until all the characters are lying on their backs and the players are wishing they’d never entered the fight in the first place. Likewise, certain effects hurt some classes more than others. Disadvantage on attack rolls hurts martial combatants more than spellcasters. Limiting movement hurts melee attackers, while limiting visibility hurts ranged attackers. Be aware of when a zone-wide effect affects some characters more than others, so that you can change it up if needed. TRAPS AND HAZARDS Certain parts of a battlefield might contain traps or hazards. Some of these might be easily seen, such as

66 bladed pillars or spike-lined pits. Others might come as a surprise, such as a trap door over an acid pool. Characters with high passive Wisdom (Perception) scores might notice hidden traps automatically, or you might give each character a chance to make a Wisdom (Perception) check requiring no action—maybe even rolling on their behalf—to detect a trap before stumbling into it. Make sure these traps matter if you’re going to put them in an encounter. Traps that are too far out of the way might never come into play. Likewise, it can be fun for players to spring traps on their opponents, so don’t use them only as a threat against the characters. ADVANTAGEOUS POSITIONS Getting the characters to enter an arena (literal or metaphorical) and move around can be hard. Advantageous positions give them a reason to do so. Areas of high ground where they can gain cover against their foes—and perhaps advantage on attacks—are highly sought after by ranged attackers. Arcane circles that infuse a spellcaster’s magic with greater power might draw wizards into a room. This approach can turn a whole encounter into a fun game of “king of the hill” as the characters and their enemies fight for superior position. “Building Engaging Environments” on page 79 has more ideas on this topic. INTERACTIVE OBJECTS Make sure that the battlefield features some interactive objects. This can include any physical features the characters can manipulate and use to their advantage in a fight, including things like the following: • Crumbling statues that can be easily toppled • Pillars that collapse part of the ceiling • Chandeliers upon which to swing • Ballistae the characters can use to fire upon their foes • Obelisks infusing the villain with power until they’re destroyed • Levers that physically or magically transform parts of the battlefield • Catapults that can hurl allies to the far side of the fight • Cranes lifting heavy objects that can be dropped onto foes • Fiery cauldrons or braziers ready to tip over • Deep wells into which enemies can be dumped COVER Shattered pillars, crumbling statues, destroyed furniture, fallen trees, and other forms of cover can help break up the otherwise open terrain of a big battleground. When you drop in these elements of cover, be sure that the players understand the advantages of hiding behind them. For bonus points, tie the history of the location and other secrets and clues to these elements of cover. It’s not just a statue—it’s a statue of the forgotten god Gan, lost in history and now seeking just one follower to pull their spark of divinity from the edges of infinite darkness. DIFFICULT OR FANTASTIC TERRAIN Different areas of a location might have some sort of terrain feature that can impact the fight. Difficult terrain is the easiest option, making it challenging but not impossible to take certain routes across the battlefield. But other areas of interesting terrain can also shake up a physical encounter. Icy floors where the characters might slip don’t work well as a zone-wide effect, but can be great in specific areas, forcing the characters to avoid those areas as they move. Any of the following terrain features can make a big battle location more interesting: • A crumbling bridge over a deep crevasse • Spikes of sharp glass that cut creatures when they fall or are forced to move through them • Jets of flame that randomly erupt • Swampy land that belches forth poisonous gas when crossed • Oiled surfaces that cause creatures to slide across them uncontrollably. • Electrified floors that deal damage to creatures at the start of each turn • An area filled with antigravity magic that causes creatures to fall to the ceiling • An ethereal rift where creatures become invisible and insubstantial • Pockets of shadow where characters have their life energy drained away • An area of antilife magic where living creatures gain vulnerability to necrotic damage A GOAL Finally, think about what objective an encounter might have beyond simply taking out all the enemies. What might the characters do to “complete” the encounter? The following sorts of goals work well in a big set-piece encounter: • Stop a ritual before cultists summon a demon. • Recover an artifact and escape with it. • Kill the boss, but don’t worry about their minions. • Activate a gateway and escape through it. • Recover a prisoner. • Steal secret plans. • Destroy a powerful monument. • Activate the four altars around a temple site. • Close a magical gateway and prevent the villain’s escape. • Destroy a doomsday device before it blows up the multiverse. This topic is touched on in more detail in “Building Engaging Encounters” on page 76, and “Exit Strategies” on page 91.

JACK KAISER 67 MONSTER COMBINATIONS FOR A HARD CHALLENGE When GMs design encounters, we often have a concept that includes the number of foes the characters will face. An encounter might feature a squad of four monsters going against the characters one-to-one, or perhaps a larger force of six or eight swarming the heroes. Or maybe we want a stronger creature, acting as a boss or captain, with only a few other creatures to back them up. And, of course, it’s always fun for characters to face a single dangerous foe. This section provides guidelines for combining creatures of different challenge ratings to enable these various concepts. Simply pick your concept, consult the appropriate table for the number of characters in your game, look up their average character level, and you have the monster challenge ratings you need to build different types of encounters and boss scenarios. You can then use the many other tips in this book to make encounters unique, including “Building and Running Boss Monsters” for any of the boss scenarios on the tables. HARD CHALLENGE LEVEL MONSTER COMBINATIONS The challenge ratings in the tables are geared toward creating encounters that are a hard challenge (see “Defining Challenge Level” on page 105). The encounter concepts are set up along specific lines, reflecting some of the most common—and fun—combinations of foes. One Monster. The leftmost column notes the challenge rating expected for a solo creature whose statistics and capabilities can build a hard challenge. As discussed in “Building and Running Boss Monsters” (page 31) and “Understanding the Action Economy” (page 42), running an encounter for a single solo monster is always tricky. So use the advice in those sections to ensure that an intended solo creature is up to the challenge. Two, Four, Six, Eight, or Twelve Monsters. The other columns under Monsters of the Same CR allow you to challenge the characters with a number of creatures of the same CR, and usually of the same type. For example, a hard challenge for four 4th-level characters could constitute six scouts (CR 1/2) or two ogres (CR 2). Using creatures of the same type allows you to quickly and simply tell a story as the characters find themselves in an ogre market cavern, a caravan under attack, the room with mimics, and so forth. Using the same monsters also lets you focus on a single stat block for ease of play. One Boss + X Monsters. Encounter concepts often suggest a group of creatures led by a more formidable leader. Each of the Boss Scenarios columns pairs up one boss and a number of subordinates of lower challenge rating. For example, a group of four 3rd-level characters could face one boss of CR 2 and two subordinates of CR 1/2—perhaps an ogre explorer and the two rust monsters they’ve befriended. The rightmost column under Boss Scenarios builds encounters with eight minions, two lieutenants of a higher challenge rating, and one boss whose CR is higher again. USING THE TABLES To build encounters using the tables, follow these steps: • Select the appropriate table, based on the number of characters in the party—four, five, or six. • In the leftmost column of the selected table, find the row containing the average character level for all the characters. (To find the average, add up all the characters’ levels, then divide by the number of characters and round down.) • Follow that row to the column containing the encounter concept you wish to use. For example, to create an encounter with one boss and three lesser monsters, you’d go to the 1 Boss + 3 Monsters column.

68 FOUR CHARACTERS (HARD CHALLENGES) Monsters of the Same CR Boss Scenarios Character Level 1 2 4 6 8 12 1 Boss + 2 Monsters 1 Boss + 3 Monsters 1 Boss + 4 Underlings 1 Boss + 2 Lieutenants + 8 Minions 1 1 1/2 1/8 1/8 0 — 1/2 + 1/8 (x2) 1/2 + 1/8 (x3) 1/4 + 1/8 (x4) — 2 3 1 1/2 1/4 1/8 0 1 + 1/4 (x2) 1 + 1/4 (x3) 1 + 1/8 (x4) 1/2 + 1/4 (x2) + 0 (x8) 3 4 2 1/2 1/2 1/4 1/8 2 + 1/2 (x2) 2 + 1/4 (x3) 2 + 1/4 (x4) 1 + 1/4 (x2) + 0 (x8) 4 5 2 1 1/2 1/2 1/4 2 + 1 (x2) 2 + 1/2 (x3) 3 + 1/4 (x4) 2 + 1/4 (x2) + 0 (x8) 5 8 4 2 1 1 1/2 4 + 2 (x2) 4 + 1 (x3) 4 + 1 (x4) 3 + 1/2 (x2) + 1/4 (x8) 6 9 5 3 2 1 1/2 5 + 2 (x2) 4 + 2 (x3) 5 + 1 (x4) 4 + 1 (x2) + 1/4 (x8) 7 10 6 3 2 1 1/2 5 + 3 (x2) 5 + 2 (x3) 6 + 1 (x4) 4 + 1 (x2) + 1/2 (x8) 8 12 7 3 3 2 1 7 + 3 (x2) 5 + 3 (x3) 6 + 2 (x4) 4 + 2 (x2) + 1/2 (x8) 9 12 8 4 3 2 1 7 + 4 (x2) 6 + 3 (x3) 6 + 3 (x4) 5 + 2 (x2) + 1/2 (x8) 10 14 8 4 3 2 2 7 + 5 (x2) 6 + 4 (x3) 7 + 3 (x4) 5 + 2 (x2) + 1 (x8) 11 16 9 5 4 3 2 8 + 5 (x2) 6 + 5 (x3) 9 + 3 (x4) 6 + 3 (x2) + 1 (x8) 12 18 11 6 5 4 2 9 + 7 (x2) 8 + 5 (x3) 8 + 5 (x4) 7 + 4 (x2) + 1 (x8) 13 19 12 7 5 4 3 11 + 7 (x2) 10 + 6 (x3) 10 + 5 (x4) 8 + 4 (x2) + 2 (x8) 14 20 13 8 6 4 3 11 + 8 (x2) 10 + 7 (x3) 10 + 6 (x4) 8 + 5 (x2) + 2 (x8) 15 21 14 8 7 5 4 12 + 9 (x2) 10 + 8 (x3) 10 + 7 (x4) 9 + 5 (x2) + 2 (x8) 16 22 15 9 7 5 4 12 + 10 (x2) 11 + 8 (x3) 11 + 7 (x4) 10 + 6 (x2) + 3 (x8) 17 24 16 10 8 5 5 14 + 10 (x2) 11 + 9 (x3) 11 + 8 (x4) 12 + 6 (x2) + 3 (x8) 18 26 17 11 8 6 5 14 + 12 (x2) 12 + 10 (x3) 12 + 9 (x4) 13 + 7 (x2) + 4 (x8) 19 27 19 11 9 7 5 15 + 12 (x2) 14 + 10 (x3) 13 + 9 (x4) 13 + 8 (x2) + 4 (x8) 20 29 19 12 9 7 5 15 + 13 (x2) 14 + 11 (x3) 13 + 10 (x4) 14 + 8 (x2) + 5 (x8) • The entry you cross-referenced notes the challenge ratings of the creature or creatures in your encounter. If a multiplier is indicated, that’s the number of monsters for the preceding CR. For example, wanting to challenge four 3rd-level characters with the encounter concept of one boss and three monsters yields an entry of “2 + 1/4 (×3).” This indicates that you want one CR 2 creature acting as the boss, and three CR 1/4 creatures acting as subordinates. • Choose your monsters! If you’re building a quick encounter, the recommendations in “Monsters by Adventure Location” (page 72) are a good starting point. SCALING ENCOUNTERS Each of the tables is intended to build a hard encounter (see “Defining Challenge Level” on page 105). However, you can easily build encounters with other challenge levels in mind by adding or subtracting a modifier to the party’s average character level: • For a deadly challenge: +1 or +2 • For a medium challenge: −2 • For an easy challenge: −4 For example, when building an encounter for four 10th-level characters, you could use the row for 8th-level characters to create a medium challenge. In all cases, be cautious with scaling. Encounters of certain types and at certain levels will be harder or easier than the approximation would indicate. Always be prepared to adjust encounters on the fly (with “Monster Difficulty Dials” on page 27 providing great advice on this topic). DON’T HANG ON TOO TIGHT It’s good to keep in mind that the guidelines in this section aren’t perfect for every group and every situation. Building combat encounters will always be an art, not a science. As such, the tables can give you a rough idea about what combination of monsters you might use in an encounter and what challenge rating might be appropriate for a hard challenge level. But so many variables—not the least of which is the incredibly random d20 roll—can affect the outcome of an encounter that no two battles ever run the same. Your own experience with your players and their characters almost always offers a better gauge of how any given combat scenario might play out. As such, always treat the advice in this section and the rest of Forge of Foes as loose guidelines, not fixed rules.

69 FIVE CHARACTERS (HARD CHALLENGES) Monsters of the Same CR Boss Scenarios Character Level 1 2 4 6 8 12 1 Boss + 2 Monsters 1 Boss + 3 Monsters 1 Boss + 4 Underlings 1 Boss + 2 Lieutenants + 8 Minions 1 1 1/2 1/4 1/8 0 0 1/2 + 1/4 (x2) 1/2 + 1/8 (x3) 1/4 + 1/8 (x4) — 2 4 1 1/2 1/4 1/8 0 1 + 1/2 (x2) 1 + 1/4 (x3) 1 + 1/8 (x4) 1/2 + 1/4 (x2) + 0 (x8) 3 5 2 1 1/2 1/2 1/4 2 + 1/2 (x2) 2 + 1/4 (x3) 2 + 1/4 (x4) 1 + 1/4 (x2) + 1/8 (x8) 4 6 3 1 1 1/2 1/4 3 + 1 (x2) 3 + 1/2 (x3) 3 + 1/2 (x4) 2 + 1/4 (x2) + 1/8 (x8) 5 9 5 2 2 1 1/2 5 + 2 (x2) 4 + 2 (x3) 5 + 1 (x4) 3 + 1 (x2) + 1/2 (x8) 6 11 6 3 2 1 1/2 6 + 3 (x2) 5 + 2 (x3) 6 + 2 (x4) 4 + 1 (x2) + 1/2 (x8) 7 12 7 4 3 1 1 7 + 3 (x2) 5 + 3 (x3) 6 + 2 (x4) 4 + 2 (x2) + 1 (x8) 8 13 8 4 3 2 1 7 + 4 (x2) 7 + 3 (x3) 6 + 3 (x4) 5 + 2 (x2) + 1 (x8) 9 14 8 5 3 2 1 8 + 4 (x2) 7 + 4 (x3) 7 + 3 (x4) 6 + 2 (x2) + 1 (x8) 10 15 9 5 4 3 2 8 + 5 (x2) 8 + 4 (x3) 8 + 4 (x4) 6 + 3 (x2) + 1 (x8) 11 17 11 6 5 4 2 10 + 6 (x2) 9 + 5 (x3) 8 + 5 (x4) 6 + 4 (x2) + 2 (x8) 12 19 12 7 6 4 3 11 + 7 (x2) 10 + 6 (x3) 9 + 5 (x4) 8 + 4 (x2) + 2 (x8) 13 20 13 8 7 5 3 11 + 8 (x2) 11 + 7 (x3) 10 + 6 (x4) 9 + 4 (x2) + 2 (x8) 14 22 14 9 7 5 4 11 + 9 (x2) 12 + 7 (x3) 10 + 7 (x4) 10 + 5 (x2) + 2 (x8) 15 22 15 9 7 5 4 12 + 10 (x2) 12 + 8 (x3) 12 + 7 (x4) 11 + 5 (x2) + 2 (x8) 16 24 16 10 8 6 4 12 + 11 (x2) 11 + 9 (x3) 11 + 8 (x4) 11 + 7 (x2) + 2 (x8) 17 25 17 11 9 7 5 15 + 11 (x2) 13 + 10 (x3) 14 + 8 (x4) 12 + 7 (x2) + 3 (x8) 18 27 18 11 9 7 5 15 + 12 (x2) 14 + 10 (x3) 13 + 9 (x4) 12 + 8 (x2) + 4 (x8) 19 28 20 12 10 8 6 15 + 13 (x2) 14 + 11 (x3) 13 + 10 (x4) 13 + 9 (x2) + 4 (x8) 20 29 20 13 10 8 6 16 + 14 (x2) 15 + 12 (x3) 14 + 11 (x4) 14 + 9 (x2) + 5 (x8) SIX CHARACTERS (HARD CHALLENGES) Monsters of the Same CR Boss Scenarios Character Level 1 2 4 6 8 12 1 Boss + 2 Monsters 1 Boss + 3 Monsters 1 Boss + 4 Underlings 1 Boss + 2 Lieutenants + 8 Minions 1 1 1 1/4 1/4 1/8 0 1 + 1/4 (x2) 1 + 1/4 (x3) 1 + 1/8 (x4) — 2 5 2 1/2 1/2 1/4 1/8 2 + 1/2 (x2) 2 + 1/4 (x3) 2 + 1/4 (x4) 1/2 + 1/4 (x2) + 1/8 (x8) 3 7 3 1 1 1/2 1/4 3 + 1 (x2) 3 + 1/2 (x3) 3 + 1/2 (x4) 1 + 1/2 (x2) + 1/4 (x8) 4 8 4 2 1 1/2 1/2 4 + 2 (x2) 4 + 1 (x3) 4 + 1/2 (x4) 2 + 1/2 (x2) + 1/4 (x8) 5 10 6 3 3 1 1 7 + 3 (x2) 7 + 2 (x3) 6 + 2 (x4) 3 + 1 (x2) + 1/2 (x8) 6 12 8 4 3 2 1 7 + 4 (x2) 6 + 4 (x3) 6 + 3 (x4) 3 + 2 (x2) + 1 (x8) 7 13 9 5 4 2 1 8 + 5 (x2) 7 + 5 (x3) 7 + 4 (x4) 5 + 2 (x2) + 1 (x8) 8 15 11 6 4 3 2 8 + 6 (x2) 8 + 5 (x3) 8 + 4 (x4) 6 + 3 (x2) + 1 (x8) 9 16 12 6 4 3 2 9 + 6 (x2) 8 + 6 (x3) 10 + 4 (x4) 6 + 4 (x2) + 1 (x8) 10 17 13 7 5 4 2 10 + 7 (x2) 9 + 6 (x3) 10 + 5 (x4) 7 + 4 (x2) + 1 (x8) 11 19 14 8 6 4 3 12 + 8 (x2) 11 + 7 (x3) 12 + 5 (x4) 8 + 4 (x2) + 2 (x8) 12 20 16 9 7 5 3 14 + 9 (x2) 13 + 8 (x3) 12 + 7 (x4) 9 + 5 (x2) + 2 (x8) 13 21 17 10 8 6 4 14 + 10 (x2) 13 + 9 (x3) 12 + 8 (x4) 10 + 6 (x2) + 2 (x8) 14 23 17 10 8 6 4 15 + 10 (x2) 15 + 8 (x3) 13 + 8 (x4) 9 + 7 (x2) + 2 (x8) 15 24 18 11 8 6 4 15 + 11 (x2) 15 + 9 (x3) 12 + 9 (x4) 9 + 7 (x2) + 3 (x8) 16 25 19 11 9 7 4 15 + 12 (x2) 15 + 10 (x3) 13 + 9 (x4) 11 + 7 (x2) + 3 (x8) 17 27 20 12 10 7 5 16 + 13 (x2) 16 + 11 (x3) 15 + 10 (x4) 11 + 7 (x2) + 4 (x8) 18 28 21 13 11 8 5 18 + 14 (x2) 17 + 12 (x3) 15 + 11 (x4) 12 + 8 (x2) + 4 (x8) 19 29 21 14 11 8 6 18 + 15 (x2) 16 + 13 (x3) 15 + 12 (x4) 13 + 9 (x2) + 4 (x8) 20 30 22 15 13 9 7 20 + 16 (x2) 18 + 14 (x3) 16 + 13 (x4) 13 + 10 (x2) + 5 (x8)

70 THE LAZY ENCOUNTER BENCHMARK Forge of Foes offers multiple ways to think about and plan combat encounters in your game. But this section sets out a simple calculation you can keep in your head to give you a gauge of the difficulty of an encounter. This “lazy encounter benchmark” isn’t perfect or precise. Rather, it’s a tool for getting a rough sense of the potential challenge of a combat encounter—and for recognizing when an encounter crosses over from challenging to potentially deadly. Think of it like a tachometer measuring how fast the engine is running in a car. If you go beyond the limit defined by the benchmark, you’re “in the red”—pushing to a point where your encounter might be more than the characters can handle. USING THE BENCHMARK The primary calculation of the lazy encounter benchmark compares the challenge ratings of monsters with the levels of the characters in the following way: An encounter might be deadly if the sum total of monster challenge ratings is greater than 1/4 of the sum total of character levels, for characters of 1st to 4th level; or greater than 1/2 of the sum total of character levels, for characters of 5th level or higher. What exactly does “deadly” mean in this context? “Defining Challenge Level” on page 105 explores this topic in detail, but it can be easily summarized. In a deadly encounter: • Most characters might lose more than half their hit points. • Several characters might go unconscious. • There’s a chance that one or more characters might die. For example, imagine an encounter pitting five 4thlevel characters against four ogres of CR 2. To see how dangerous this fight might be, add all the character levels together and divide by 4 (because they’re lower than 5th level), giving a result of 20 ÷ 4 = 5. Now compare that result to the sum of monster challenge ratings, with four CR 2 ogres giving a total of 8. Because 8 is more than 5, this could be a potentially deadly encounter. Above 4th level, you divide character levels by 2 instead of 4 because of the extra resources and synergies characters gain at 5th level and higher. Going back to the previous example, if the characters were 5th level instead of 4th, their total levels would be 25. The benchmark gives a result of 25 ÷ 2 = 12 (rounded down, as usual in the game). The four ogres still have a total CR of 8, and with 8 less than 12, these fifth-level characters aren’t likely to find this a deadly fight. As another example, consider six 8th-level characters facing three CR 11 horned devils. Dividing the total character levels of 48 by 2 gives a result of 24. Adding up the challenge ratings of the horned devils gives you 33. So with 33 much higher than 24, that’s a potentially deadly fight. Still, even when a calculated benchmark suggests that an encounter might be too tough, that doesn’t mean you should automatically change things up. The lazy encounter benchmark is there to give you a warning sign that your encounter might be into the danger zone where it becomes more than the characters can handle. But your own experiences with the characters and players should ultimately tell you whether you should change things up or not. The lazy encounter benchmark intentionally doesn’t provide specific measurements for easy, medium, or hard encounters. Instead, think of it like an analog gauge. The lower the total monster challenge ratings are compared to the benchmark calculation from character levels, the easier the battle might be. The higher the total monster challenge ratings are above the benchmark, the deadlier the battle might be. OPTIONAL SCALING FOR HIGHER LEVELS As characters rise in level above 10th, their increased power and synergies mean that you might find the benchmark becomes less accurate about representing the potential deadliness of encounters. If this is the case in your games, you can scale up the benchmark equation for higher-level characters with the following variation: An encounter might be deadly if the sum total of monster challenge ratings is greater than 3/4 of the sum total of character levels, for characters of 11th to 16th level; or equal to the sum total of character levels, for characters of 17th level or higher. Explore this option only if it feels as though encounters assessed using the original benchmark are consistently WRITE DOWN THE BENCHMARK RESULT Because the benchmark result only changes when the characters increase in level, you can write it down and keep it in your notes. If you’re going to have five 8th-level characters in your next several sessions, you can write down “Lazy Encounter Benchmark: 20” and reference that when throwing monsters together for an encounter. It’s especially useful to keep this number in front of you when improvising encounters during a session.

71 underpowered for your group. But if you need it, this option sets the benchmark for truly dangerous encounters at the highest levels, where characters of great heroic capability might face several powerful creatures in a single battle. THE CR CAP FOR A SINGLE MONSTER Although the lazy encounter benchmark uses the total challenge ratings of all monsters in an encounter, it doesn’t take into consideration the maximum challenge rating for any single monster, either alone or with a group. For that, you can use a different benchmark calculation to describe when a single monster of a particular challenge rating might represent a deadly challenge for characters of a given level, whether battled alone or in a group: A single monster might be deadly if their challenge rating is equal to or higher than the average level of the characters, or 1.5 times the average level of the characters if the characters are 5th level or higher. TUNING THE BENCHMARK Given the many different circumstances that can affect character power and encounter difficulty, you might want to tune the benchmark calculation up or down to serve as a more accurate guideline for your own group. To do so, simply increase or decrease the number of characters you use to calculate the sum total of character levels, treating that as a dial for tuning the benchmark for your own group. For example, if a party in your campaign has companion NPCs who make combat easier, or if characters employ spells that often remove monsters from combat, you can pretend the group consists of six characters instead of their actual five and calculate the benchmark that way. Likewise, if a group regularly gets into trouble in encounters where the sum total of monster CR is well below the benchmark, pretend the party has four characters instead of five. OTHER CONSIDERATIONS Many circumstances can change how challenging an actual combat encounter might be. All of the following examples set up types of encounters that often play out more easily than the lazy encounter benchmark might suggest: • The fight features significantly more characters than foes. • The characters’ goals in an encounter can be achieved without eliminating all the foes from the fight. • The environment favors the characters. • The monsters come in waves instead of all at once. • Foes are distracted or in disadvantageous positions. • The monsters are all surprised, or all act after the characters in initiative. • The characters have spells or features well suited for taking out foes. • The players engage in excellent tactical behavior and synergistic strategies. • The characters are well rested and coming in fresh. • The characters have an arsenal of powerful magic items. • The characters have useful companions. Likewise, the monsters might be favored over the characters in the following types of encounters: • The monsters outnumber the characters. • The characters are surprised by the monsters. • Foes have advantageous position. • The terrain favors the foes. • The monsters fight with a strong tactical synergy. • The characters are coming in well worn by previous fights and have no chance to rest. As you make use of the benchmark, you’ll soon come to recognize when the circumstances of a combat encounter might steer it toward an easier or harder fight. ALTERNATIVE BENCHMARK An alternative approach to the lazy encounter benchmark lets you compare monster challenge ratings and character levels with a single straightforward formula, as follows: To assess the strength of the characters relative to the monsters they face, take the sum total of all character levels and divide by 4. Then multiply that number by the characters’ tier. At 1st tier (levels 1 to 4), the benchmark is simply the total of all character levels divided by 4. But as characters rise in level and across the tiers of play, they experience three distinct bumps in power at 5th level (the start of the second tier, multiplying the benchmark by 2), 11th level (the start of the third tier, for a ×3 multiplier), and 17th level (the start of the fourth tier, for a ×4 multiplier). In a broad sense, characters of the second tier can be thought of as effectively twice as powerful as characters of the first tier, with characters of the third and fourth tiers increasing in power yet again. However, as with the default versions of the benchmarks, it’s important to remember that increasing the multipliers for the third and fourth tier is optional, and should be done only if you find that encounters created with the ×2 multiplier aren’t keeping up to the characters.

72 MONSTERS BY ADVENTURE LOCATION This section offers quick starting points for building encounters, in the form of tables that cover a broad range of foes in twelve types of common adventure location. The tables serve four purposes: • They show which creatures might inhabit a particular adventure location. • They highlight foes appropriate for a given level range in that location. • They show which foes might naturally pair up with other foes. • They offer example relationships between creatures and suggest what they might be doing in a location. Though you can use the setups in the tables directly, you’ll get even more value from them by customizing your own list of foes for these common locations and scenarios—or by adding environments and scenarios that fit the specifics of your campaign. “Choosing Monsters Based on the Story” (page 113) and “Building Engaging Environments” (page 79) both offer thoughts on determining which creatures make sense for a situation or location. Each line in the “Example Encounters” column contains an example encounter with multiple monsters. You can decide how many monsters are appropriate given the scenario, the number of characters, and their level. Monsters who are in bold represent potential bosses for an encounter. ANCIENT RUINS Level Example Encounters 1st • A thug leads bandits intending to rob a caravan. • A shadow shifts in the darkness among a handful of arisen skeletons. 2nd to 4th • A pair of bugbear entrepreneurs uses goblin actors as bait to seek adventurers as prey. • A banshee orders specters to recreate their former beautiful life. • A gnoll pack lord leading gnolls and hyenas hunts an escaped prisoner. • A death dog protected by wolves lairs in a ruined cave. • A lamia served by jackalweres dwells in an illusory paradise. 5th to 10th • A bugbear chief leads bugbear and goblin brigands from an obsidian throne. • A cyclops matriarch leads fanatically loyal ogres. • A medusa dwells in a mausoleum, surrounded by petrified heroes and protected by death dogs. • An oni in a posh den is guarded by loyal spirit naga storytellers. 11th to 16th • An adult blue dragon is guarded by clay golems in a jeweled lair. 17th to 20th • An ancient blue dragon protected by stone golems and air elementals dwells in the shattered remains of a tower. CRYPTS, CATACOMBS, NECROPOLIS Level Example Encounters 1st • A pair of skeletons rises from a pile of crawling claws. 2nd to 4th • A lost ghost wanders, surrounded by specters. • A bone naga rises from an obsidian sarcophagus to command a host of skeletons. 5th to 10th • A mummy lord entombed in a cold-iron sarcophagus is guarded by mummies and wights. • A pair of wraiths float above unholy urns surrounded by vengeful specters. 11th to 16th • A vampire in a gilded tomb is guarded by howling dire wolves and served by vampire spawn. 17th to 20th • A lich in an unhallowed laboratory is protected by loyal death knights and iron golems. CITY SEWERS Level Example Encounters 1st • A wandering zombie is covered by a swarm of rats. 2nd to 4th • An erudite ghast weaves fantastic tales to their ravenous ghoul followers. • A spy is guarded by unscrupulous bandits while awaiting the arrival of a contact. • An otyugh luxuriates in a watery pit, surrounded by concealed gray oozes. • Wererats make a show of feeding prisoners to their giant rat pets. SEEDY CITY STREETS Level Example Encounters 1st • A giant rat and the swarm of rats that travels with them are feeding on a dead body. • A thug and a pack of bandit toadies are waiting for someone to rob. 2nd to 4th • A spy assisted by thugs has been hired to steal something from the characters. • A bandit captain with berserker bodyguards and bandit followers is easily insulted. • A cult fanatic leads cultists who have summoned ravenous dretches into the world. 5th to 10th • A mage commanding veterans is seeking something the characters seek as well. • A bandit captain protected by hired gladiators and veterans seeks the characters with an offer they can’t refuse. • A careful assassin backed up by spies and thugs hunts the characters.

73 WIZARD’S TOWER Level Example Encounters 1st • A loyal imp commands a squad of guardian flying swords. 2nd to 4th • A summoned succubus or incubus directs animated armor serving as guards. 5th to 10th • Apprentice mages command elementals and flesh golems. • An important chamber is guarded by two flameskulls and a number of helmed horrors. 11th to 16th • An impatient archmage is protected by two stone golems in an arcane laboratory. 17th to 20th • A lich studies the multiverse while protected by bound balors and iron golems. VOLCANO LAIR Level Example Encounters 5th to 10th • A fire giant with pet hell hounds commands an azer to dig for them. • A trapped efreeti uses fire elementals to fight for freedom. 11th to 16th • An adult red dragon served by salamanders demands fealty from the characters. 17th to 20th • An ancient red dragon worshiped by fire giants awakens from slumber. ABYSSAL KEEP Level Example Encounters 2nd to 4th • A night hag and their pet quasit schemes within a chamber guarded by hell hounds. • A summoning circle disgorges a barlgura and a clot of dretches. 5th to 10th • A glabrezu commands from a throne flanked by chasmes. 11th to 16th • A marilith, their cambion advisor, and a number of hezrou servants guard a planar gateway. 17th to 20th • A balor, a servile archmage, and a squad of glabrezu soldiers guard an artifact. DARK FORESTS AND FETID SWAMPS Level Example Encounters 1st • An elf cultist hunts prey with bloodthirsty wolves. 2nd to 4th • Two ettercaps and their giant spiders stalk adventurers. • An ettin warlord commands a host of orc mercenaries. • A green hag lurks in an old hut with a pet giant toad, and is guarded by loyal bullywugs. • A werewolf prowls the shadows with their dire wolf companions. 5th to 10th • An orc war chief commands a force of ettin and orc scouts based in a ruined keep. 11th to 16th • An adult black dragon commands a host of trolls made loyal through fear. • An adult green dragon lurks in a dead forest, protected by shambling mounds. 17th to 20th • An ancient black dragon dwells in a sunken bog filled with giant crocodiles. • An ancient green dragon rules from an ancient wooden throne guarded by loyal treants. HELLISH CITADEL Level Example Encounters 2nd to 4th • A bearded devil draws lemures through a portal connected to the river Styx. • A barbed devil and a host of imps keep watch on enemy forces. 5th to 10th • An armored erinyes commanding a host of spined devils prepares for war. • A horned devil leading bearded devil soldiers guards an oracular sphere. 11th to 16th • Ice devil wardens and bone devil guards protect a valuable prisoner. 17th to 20th • Pit fiend commanders and horned devil lieutenants use scrying crystals to get the drop on the characters. FROZEN FORTRESS Level Example Encounters 5th to 10th • Frost giant hunters enjoy the sport of their remorhaz pet stalking commoners. • The bone-cluttered cave of an abominable yeti is guarded by winter wolves. 11th to 16th • An adult white dragon is served by loyal frost giants. 17th to 20th • An ancient white dragon lairing atop an inaccessible peak is worshiped by generations of abominable yetis. DEEP CAVERNS Level Example Encounters 1st • A cockatrice pecks at a crumbling statue, while stirges linger above. • A giant bat surrounded by swarms of bats skulks in the shadows. 2nd to 4th • Darkmantles and piercers lurk in pools of shadow. • A worg-riding goblin boss commands a squad of goblin hunters. 5th to 10th • Basilisks and cockatrices lair in a hall full of petrified adventurers. • A cloaker lurks above a pack of hook horrors disemboweling a dead bulette. • Ropers and darkmantles hang above a waterfall, competing for prey. SUNKEN GROTTO Level Example Encounters 1st • A lizardfolk hunter is teaching their trained giant crabs how to hunt. 2nd to 4th • A sea hag commands loyal kuo-toa to set up an effigy to a fictitious god. • A lizardfolk king with a lizardfolk shaman advisor commands a clan of lizardfolk from a coral throne. 5th to 10th • An aboleth in a swirling pool is guarded by chuuls and worshiped by enthralled veterans. • A sahuagin baron watches a pack of sahuagin fight water weirds. • A sahuagin priestess feeds sacrificial victims to giant crocodiles. 11th to 16th • A kraken rules a deep-sea trench, surrounded by reverent water elementals.

74 FABIAN PARENTE MONSTERS AND THE TIERS OF PLAY How combat plays out against specific types of monsters in D&D and other 5e games changes depending on the level of the characters. Character power progression isn’t smooth and linear across levels. Rather, it spikes at particular levels, potentially changing the outcome of a battle dramatically. As an example, the jump from 4th to 5th level gives melee characters twice as many attacks, while spellcasters gain access to spells such as fireball, significantly raising a party’s damage output overnight. Recognizing when and how these changes take place can help GMs understand and prepare for these shifts in game play. 1ST LEVEL Though not identified as its own tier of play in the fifth edition core rules, games at 1st level are entirely different from games at later levels. Characters of 1st level have few resources—hit points in particular. Creatures of CR 1/2 can kill 1st-level characters with a single critical hit, and 1st-level spellcasters have few spells able to control more than one or two monsters. When designing combat encounters at 1st level, be wary of using foes higher than CR 1/4, and lean toward running fewer monsters than characters. A CR 1/2 creature might make a decent boss monster for 1st-level characters, but a CR 1 monster might knock characters unconscious with a single hit—or even kill them completely. Even when running a published adventure for 1st-level characters, take note of the encounters it offers. Many such adventures include potentially deadly encounters at 1st level, so adjust them accordingly by running lower-CR monsters and fewer of them. Creatures of CR 1/8 to CR 1/2 work well for 1st-level characters, including bandits, cultists, and skeletons, with maybe a thug for a boss. (The “Running 1st Level Adventures” sidebar in this section offers more thoughts on this topic.) 2ND THROUGH 4TH LEVEL At 2nd through 4th level, encounters most often play out as expected for a heroic fantasy roleplaying game. Characters are robust enough to face a range of monsters and not get killed. Most characters have a single attack, or sometimes two if they fight with a weapon in each hand. Spells usually target one or two creatures. Combat encounters of 2nd to 4th level are often the easiest to balance compared to other levels of play. Characters of 2nd through 4th level can typically handle a group of monsters from challenge rating 1/8 to CR 1, a pair of monsters of CR 2 or 3, or a single monster up to about CR 5. Great foes at these levels include all of those appropriate for 1st-level characters, along with ogres, scouts, dire wolves, and veterans. Cult fanatics, hags, vampire spawn, ettins, and lamias can work well for bosses at this tier. 5TH TO 10TH LEVEL At 5th level, character power spikes up. Fighters can attack twice, and can double that double attack with Action Surge. Spellcasters gain access to spells such as fireball, spirit guardians, and hypnotic pattern. As characters rise above 5th level, their capabilities increase quickly. Monks get Stunning Strike. Spellcasters learn spells able to take out a foe with a single failed saving throw, including banishment and polymorph. At 5th level and above, you can no longer trust a lone nonlegendary monster to challenge a group of characters. Often a single spell, class feature, or volley of attacks can incapacitate or kill any such creature. Against large groups of foes, a casting of fireball or a use of Turn Undead can end the fight. Get comfortable with this change to how your encounters are going to play out, and use lightning rod monsters (page 44) to let the characters show off these potent capabilities without ruining your fun. At these levels, the heroes’ defensive capabilities increase as well. Characters can fly, turn invisible, or block off entire sections of the battlefield with spells like wall of fire. Healing becomes plentiful. Paladins can protect entire parties with their defensive features. Even lower-

75 level defensive features such as the shield spell can be used more often with a larger number of available spell slots. At 5th level and above, a GM’s understanding of the capabilities of the characters and how those capabilities relate to a monster’s stat block is vital to building challenging encounters. (See “Reading the Monster Stat Block,” page 102, for more on this topic.) Creatures who challenge characters at 5th level and above (roughly CR 4 and up) are usually more complicated than those of lower challenge ratings. Hard encounters put together using default encounter-building rules might be less challenging than expected. Characters of 5th to 10th level can often take on hordes of foes of CR 1/4 to CR 1. They can usually survive battles against groups of CR 2 to CR 5 monsters, small groups of CR 6 to CR 10 foes, and single monsters up to CR 15. Great foes at this tier include young dragons, giants, mages, and lower-CR demons and devils. Bosses can include medusas, lower-CR adult dragons, mid-CR demons and devils, and maybe even an archmage. 11TH TO 16TH LEVEL At 11th level, characters become superheroes. They have huge amounts of resources at their disposal to handle the hardest monsters in the game. The heroes’ ability to control or incapacitate foes continues to increase, along with their ability to dish out tremendous amounts of damage. The variance in power and capabilities between different groups at these levels of play is wide. Challenging battles can take significantly longer to run than those of lower levels. Monsters who feel like a good challenge often end up easier to defeat than expected, and characters at this level can often take out a single powerful boss with ease. Likewise, the characters have numerous options to mitigate the damage their foes deal—made worse by the fact that many published monsters appropriate for these levels deal too little damage for their challenge rating. (See “The Relative Weakness of High-CR Monsters,” page 53, for more on that topic.) Characters at these levels can often take on large groups of monsters of up to CR 3, medium-sized groups of CR 6 to CR 10, small groups of CR 11 to CR 14, and single opponents of up to CR 21. Good foes at this tier include all of those mentioned previously, along with ancient dragons, higher-CR giants, liches, and high-CR demons and devils. And even at a high CR, a boss monster almost certainly wants some friends to defend against the characters. 17TH TO 20TH LEVEL From 17th level up, the characters are just short of god-like. They travel across worlds. They can often easily defeat any single monster of any challenge rating unless the GM customizes that monster to face them. Characters at the highest levels have the strongest defenses imaginable, letting them absorb tremendous amounts of damage and wave off most detrimental effects. To build challenging encounters at these levels, GMs must customize those encounters around the powers and capabilities of the characters, and such battles can take a long time to run. (“Building Challenging High-Level Encounters,” page 86, has information and advice on these sorts of encounters.) At these levels, characters can take on huge numbers of foes below CR 5, large groups of CR 6 to CR 10, mediumsized groups of CR 11 to CR 15, and bosses of CR 22 and above. Characters at these levels can fight—and triumph over—any monster in 5e, even when partnered with other monsters. RUNNING 1ST LEVEL ADVENTURES At 1st level, 5e isn’t just effectively its own tier—it almost feels like its own game. Game play at 1st level feels different than at just about any other level. Characters have far fewer resources at their disposal. Fewer tactical options, fewer hit points, and often less experience as a player. Many groups love this style of play, something we see with D&D-inspired games that identify as part of the Old School Renaissance, hearkening back to a time when characters were at greater risk of death, and players had to trust to their wits rather than their characters’ die rolls and class features to overcome challenges. As a GM running a 1st-level 5e game, you have some choices about how you want to handle this very different play style. First, you can get through that level quickly. Mike often quips that 1st level should be a crucial conversation and a fight against a giant rat. Then boom, the characters are 2nd level and can begin their adventuring careers in earnest. This takes the game past its initial potentially deadly stage, and into the heroic-fantasy style of play faster. At 2nd level, character hit points go way up in relation to the damage their foes can deal, and new class features unlock to give characters more agency in situations that might have crushed their 1st-level selves. Alternatively, you can design adventures specifically for this level of play. The guidance in this section can help you think about which monsters of specific challenge levels work best to not wipe out 1st-level characters. Or you might decide to have the stripling adventurers focus more on challenges in the world than combat encounters. Create opportunities for the characters to sneak around, so that maybe they drop a big pile of logs on those pesky bandits instead of facing them head on. Your 1st-level games can also focus on roleplaying, letting the characters engage with important NPCs before heading off on more dangerous missions. Alternatively, you can embrace those earlier days of fantasy roleplaying where death was around every corner. Many people love 1st-level 5e games for this very reason. Two shortbow attacks from a skeleton can put an average character into the dirt, and a critical hit from an ogre can turn even the toughest fighter or barbarian into a red splotch on the wall. Whichever approach you choose, discuss the style of the game you plan to run with your players ahead of time. Find out if they want that grim and dangerous 1st-level adventure, or if they’d prefer to have their stern conversation and giant-rat fight before their real heroic journey begins.

76 DANNY PAVLOV BUILDING ENGAGING ENCOUNTERS An engaging encounter is one that makes the players take notice. They lean forward in their seats. They talk to each other excitedly. They come up with plans, interact with scene elements, and stay focused as the scene develops. But how do we achieve this? This section looks at the types of elements in an encounter that can serve as sources for engagement. It then discusses the types of engagement we can tie to those elements, evoking in the players a desire to take action. WHAT DOESN’T ENGAGE? Many aspects of a fantasy roleplaying game are fun but not necessarily engaging. This is especially true of the many repetitive elements of the game. A spellcaster attacks with their cantrip. A rogue hides. The dwarf fighter attacks with her battleaxe. Players can do these things, have fun, and be disconnected from play at the same time. A player might roll their dice, then go back to their phone. Similarly, an encounter element can fail to engage. A trap fires an arrow, but the players smartly conclude that it isn’t a priority and agree to ignore it for a time. That’s fine if the role of the trap was solely to add a bit more damage. But it’s lackluster if the trap was supposed to engage the players. Likewise, a GM might imagine an encounter with a pack of gnoll reavers as fearsome, but can clearly see that the players aren’t on the edge of their seats. Monster concepts, and even monsters with fun stat blocks, are sometimes not enough engagement on their own. ENCOUNTER ELEMENTS PROVIDING ENGAGEMENT To create an encounter to which the characters can fully respond, it’s good to break the encounter down initially into its component parts. Think about which elements can fit your encounter concept—but be aware that you don’t want to overwhelm the encounter with too many engaging elements. Rather, look for the specific elements that match the feel of the encounter best. ENCOUNTER PREMISE The premise of an encounter dictates from the start how significant it is for the players. An encounter with goblin religious zealots might or might not be engaging. An encounter with the zealots who attacked the caravan from a previous scene? Much more engaging. FOES Certain monsters and types of monsters can provide engagement in their own right. They might have surprising features, story importance, interesting roleplaying potential, or other compelling aspects. ACTIONABLE FEATURES Encounter features that can be manipulated catch the eye of players and characters alike. The more the interaction feels rewarding, necessary, or interesting, the greater the engagement. A rewarding feature is one that provides a benefit in combat. A statue might look obviously unstable as it looms over a foe—inviting the characters to topple it onto that foe. An enemy spellcaster lobs spells from a raised platform, but a block-and-tackle can allow a character to reach the top of the platform. Archers fire on the party from an unreachable position, but furnishings can be

77 turned on their sides to provide cover. The clearer the payoff of a feature, the more likely the engagement. Necessary features are ones that the characters immediately understand they must make use of during an encounter. For example, planks next to a ravine must be turned into a bridge to get to the other side to reach enemies. Magic pillars must be interacted with to bring down a force field protecting a spellcaster. A vial of liquid labeled “Sleep Potion” appears near a huge monstrosity who appears impervious to spells and weapons. Interesting features are those that are as much fun for the players to figure out as for the characters—or sometimes even more so. If an angry beast is held in a cage and the key is in the lock, it isn’t clear whether letting the beast loose will help the party—but it sure is interesting! A lever on a wall bears a sign saying: “Pull when in danger.” An unlabeled potion sits on a table halfway between the foes and the characters, and the foes appear intent on seizing it first. LOCATION AND TERRAIN The location of an encounter can easily drive engagement. A battle across a ravine filled with molten lava tends to wake the players up. A choice between using a swaying rope bridge to cross a ravine or take a longer but safer path around it forces a decision. BENEFITS AND TREASURE The presence of an obvious benefit engages players. To reach the golden chest, the foes must first be defeated. A noble shouts a promise of a reward if the characters save them from an imminent threat. A foe fights with a glowing longsword that promises unusual power to the character who claims it. TYPES OF ENGAGEMENT As you consider sources of engagement for your encounters, also consider what types of engagement those encounter elements can provide. STORY RELEVANCE Story relevance ties one or more encounter elements to the arc of the adventure or the campaign. This relevance is often tied to the encounter premise, but it can link to other encounter elements as well. During a battle with ruffians in a city, a character notes a foe’s tattoo—a symbol associated with the secretive cult the party has been trying to find. Suddenly, the foe has story relevance. Similarly, a battle on the edge of a ravine filled with molten lava can take on story relevance when a character spots an important item they need sitting perilously close to the edge of the ravine. Story relevance can be an important add-on to random encounters, even beyond what such encounters can tell the characters and players about the world. Players pay attention when a random encounter features a direct connection to the villain they’ve been chasing, a clue they need to obtain, or an NPC they care about who is in peril. PERSONAL OR GROUP GOALS An encounter has greater engagement when it ties to goals the players and their characters care about. A specific player might have a backstory to which an encounter element can be tied. A long-lost journal, information about a missing sibling, or a clue to the location of a treasure they once lost can all engage individual characters. The characters might also have goals as a group. Needing to earn the trust of a city’s rulers might be necessary to gain permission to build a keep in the area. So if the characters happen upon a spy who just murdered one of those rulers, the stakes are that much more engaging. AN ADVANTAGE OR OPPORTUNITY Encounters can provide clear boons the characters can utilize or turn to their advantage. A barrel of lamp oil is discovered, one room away from an enormous troll. A chandelier has a rope tied to it, ready for someone to swing across the area. A cavern features only sleeping foes, who stay that way if the characters can cross the debris-strewn floor without making noise. THE UNEXPECTED An encounter can grab everyone’s attention when an encounter element is surprising or unusual—especially the encounter premise. Approaching a guardroom, the characters hear goblin and human guards having a heated argument that threatens a fight. In response, the players can discuss how to use the conflict to their advantage as they try to sneak past—or to goad the two sides into fighting each other. Surprises can also be revealed during an encounter. A young kraken might molt, shedding their skin and becoming larger and more capable as you add several new features to their stat block. Or an earthquake might strike underground, threatening to throw all the characters into a lava-filled ravine. In a dungeon, a foe pulls a lever and a wall begins to drop, closing off access to the treasure in 2 rounds unless the characters can reach it or stop the wall’s descent. Foes can also provide surprises by revealing information as they fight. What does the paladin do when an assassin says she’s tired of serving evil and offers to follow them? START STRONG Especially for experienced players with a wide knowledge of what standard monsters can do, Scott likes to have monsters who play against type or immediately show off unusual traits or abilities. This strong start can dial up the engagement in a hurry.

78 MYSTERIOUS OR INTRIGUING A mysterious encounter element is a promise that something will be revealed during the encounter, often in exchange for interaction and engagement. When a skeleton on the ground has an arm stretched toward one of three levers sticking out of the wall, the characters and players can discuss what this means. They can seek out clues to tell them more, and hopefully learn enough to make the exercise feel rewarding. When facing creatures made of shadow, interacting with a glowing source of light in the center of the room is likely to interest the characters. Likewise, when fighting an invisible foe in a chamber full of looking glasses and spectacles, the characters should be quick to suspect that interacting with those objects might let them discover a way to reveal that foe. TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE Characters and players can have fun interacting with a situation that feels like an obvious setup. The players might second-guess themselves and trigger the setup anyway, or they might find clever ways to turn the situation against others. For example, a dungeon doorway leads into an open-air garden, the warm sun visible overhead. That can’t be possible, and the characters know it. Or an enemy on the far side of a room might flip a lever that activates a trap. Another lever near the characters has an inscription on the wall above it that reads, “Turn Off Trap”—but the characters might suspect that pulling that second lever will only make the trap worse. IMPENDING DOOM An obvious problem that gets worse over time creates pressure and begs for action. An hourglass secured to a wall rotates, the sand slowly running out—but what must the characters do in response? A shadowy form pushes against a membrane, threatening to break through at any moment. A gang of kobold inventors are assembling a huge trap or weapon, and will be able to use it against the heroes in just a few rounds. Such clear signs of impending doom provide a clarion call to action. FORESHADOWING When the characters have heard of a particular monster or dungeon feature ahead of time, finally reaching that foreshadowed element makes a big impression. A torn journal in a dungeon corridor might record the account of other adventurers who barely survived “the deadly scythe room.” Several rooms later, the characters find a chamber filled with swinging scythes, making that encounter feel more engaging and less random because of the earlier warning. PROVOCATION OR CHALLENGE A villain appears in court and whispers a challenge, daring the characters to strike them down. An ogre bellows that no foe has ever forced her to yield. A band of goblins wear shirts saying “Unbeatable Goblin Fight Club.” Such provocations demand responses from the characters, and make a scene more memorable. HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH? An encounter with no engagement can be boring. An encounter with too much engagement can be overwhelming. When thinking about encounter elements that can create engagement, try to think through the perspective of the players when their characters first enter the encounter. How much information is presented initially? How much additional information is presented as the encounter progresses? Is needing to process that information likely to help the characters during the encounter? Or will it cause the players to become disengaged because they can’t keep track of everything going on around the party? As a rule of thumb, select no more than two or three types of engagement for an encounter, and apply them sparingly. One goblin warlord issuing a challenge can create a memorable scene. But that scene loses engagement if the characters are already trying to swing on a chandelier, disarm a trap, and save a beloved NPC. Similarly, if every goblin in the war band issues a challenge to different characters, the engagement becomes repetitive and harder to track. Less is more! Engagement can also be overwhelming for you as a GM. When GMs have to track too many variables, it can become harder to also look after all the other parts of the game, including roleplaying the foes, remembering character backstory, and running monsters tactically. Using whatever level of engagement you’re able to run most effectively will help make that engagement fun for you too. As you create encounters and try out different methods for increasing engagement, also keep an eye on what works for your group. Some players like a simpler game, while others will embrace complexity and enjoy trying to track all the things they can do in an encounter. Over time, you can modify your approach to find the best common-ground fit between your preferred style and that of your players. FORESHADOWING VILLAINS Mike likes to let characters hear tales of particular villains ahead of time. The characters might encounter a captive, who tells of the fearsome gnoll captain Argvon the Black Foot. When the characters later encounter a fearsome gnoll with one black foot, they excitedly anticipate a challenge!

79 BUILDING ENGAGING ENVIRONMENTS Engaging environments are ones in which the terrain, features, layout, and other elements excite players and characters alike. In this section, we take a look at the locations we choose for our battles, and the art of encouraging the characters to interact with the environment. REINFORCING STORY When designing an encounter, consider the natural habitat of the foes in that encounter. The right environment can reinforce the theme of the encounter and enhance the story by creating a more realistic and engrossing setting. For example, in an encounter with several giant apes, it’s almost mandatory for the encounter area to include trees and vines from which the apes can swing down and attack. Such an environment provides engagement as the characters deal with the apes’ ability to climb out of reach and move from branch to branch. Even if an expected or ideal environment isn’t available, you can play off the baseline concept. Giant apes in a canyon could climb rocky pillars and navigate narrow rock ledges, providing the same advantages and attack options outside of a forest environment, and helping the story resonate with and engage the players. However, when selecting an environment, make sure that what fits the story doesn’t hinder the fun. An encounter with giant frogs in pools or a swamp makes great sense. But if the pools are so deep that the characters can’t easily approach the frogs, the encounter could become frustrating. Adding giant lily pads increases engagement and reduces frustration, while still presenting the thematically appropriate challenge. TACTICAL ENGAGEMENT An environment that provides a tactical advantage almost always creates engagement. This can be true regardless of whether the environment favors the foes, the characters, or both. When providing a tactical advantage, think of the benefit and how it might be countered, as with the examples below. (You can find additional ideas for engagement in “Building Engaging Encounters” on page 76.) FORMATION What the characters see when an encounter starts informs how they approach the encounter. If ten kobolds are in the center of a room, the characters might opt to initially engage with area spells and effects. Melee characters lacking those options will rush forward, engaging the closest foes. But if five of the kobolds are in the center of the room and five are farther back using bows, the tactics change. Area spells are still useful, but the characters might want to divide their tactics, with some going after the kobold archers. Likewise, spreading all ten kobolds around the room, perhaps in groups of two, forces the characters to split up. This could leave them open for a surprise the kobolds have planned, such as getting ready to use nets or standing on the far side of concealed pit traps. For all these options, needing to decide what to do can engage the players, encouraging them to develop strategies and communicate with each other. MOVEMENT An excellent skill to develop as a GM is understanding how an encounter drives, facilitates, or impedes movement. Consider an encounter with interesting features, but in which the monsters quickly run up to the characters and the fight ends up centered on the doorway into the area. To avoid this, consider the width of the entrance and the distances between the door, the foes, and the engaging aspects of the environment. Moving foes back from the entrance allows characters to get fully inside an encounter area. In many cases, it can be advantageous to start an encounter without obvious foes, making it more likely that the characters will enter the area—after which combat can begin. Gargoyles might wait until characters start to explore the interior of an old temple before revealing themselves. A group of gnoll sentries can enter a great hall from another door once the characters reach the center of that area. Once an encounter is underway, provide incentives to entice characters to move. An engaging environment can help, but think through all the lines of travel that exist in an area. Are there bottlenecks where fights will impede movement? Are there enough ways to reach key areas of the encounter? How many 30-foot moves are required to reach those key areas? You don’t necessarily want to remove all elements that impede the characters, but providing ways to speed up travel or bypass bottlenecks can encourage movement. Forced movement can also provide good engagement. A monster who can use telekinesis, grasping tentacles, or some other means of dragging characters closer to desired locations (including closer to themself) ensures that the characters will interact with the environment, whether as STACK THE DECK Scott notes that GMs can easily entice players to take a particular course of action by giving their characters a tangible benefit if they do so. Characters might not be inclined to take the time to navigate stairs to reach a boss monster—unless the stairs also provide half cover against attacks from the boss’s minions, creating an environmental benefit that makes that route a more attractive option.

80 a result of forced movement or of trying to stay out of the reach of a creature who can move them. FACILITATE ROLES Even though monsters in 5e games don’t have defined roles (controller, defender, and so forth), you can always think about the effect a monster’s stats have on the role it plays in combat, then use the environment to facilitate that role. A monster with high hit points or Armor Class should go to the front, drawing the heroes’ attention and soaking up the damage that would otherwise reach more important monsters. A chokepoint forces heroes to work through these combat-focused foes first. Monsters who deal high damage, especially those with high mobility, can engage key heroes in the middle or rear party ranks and then move away to safety. The environment facilitates this approach to monster roles when it provides ways for monsters to reach their intended targets. Likewise, monsters who hide should be given cover so they can maximize their potential for ambush. And monsters who can boost allies or attack at a distance should be given enough space to do so while maneuvering to stay away from the characters. (For a look at how to more formally apply monster roles to your game, see “Monster Roles” on page 22. “Reskinning Monsters” on page 50 also makes use of monster roles.) ELEVATION AND COVER Even easily defeated foes such as kobolds and goblins become harder to take on if some of them are placed on higher ground and behind cover. Similarly, providing characters with the benefits of elevation or cover can allow them to take on stronger foes or additional waves of weak foes. When adding elevation, consider how one or both sides can use it, and how creatures can reach elevated areas. Stairs or other means of access that are difficult terrain might require several rounds of movement. Many players would rather have their characters stay below and make inefficient ranged attacks than spend 2 or more rounds to reach their foes. But there are also times when placing foes out of reach works well, as doing so can let ranged and spellcasting heroes shine. If melee characters are expected to try to reach the high ground, set up ways for them to do so in 1 round, and don’t create a scenario where they spend most of the combat running from foe to foe. Even risky ways to move, such as making an ability check to ascend to a warehouse balcony using a pulley, work better than spending successive rounds on movement. Both elevation and cover are excellent ways to boost survivability. Because spellcasting foes often have fewer hit points and can be easily pinned down in open terrain, allowing spellcasting foes to begin combat hidden behind cover causes characters to focus on other targets initially. Once the spellcaster takes their actions, the heroes can change tactics to respond to the newly revealed threat. And whereas needing to spend 2 rounds to reach a goblin is usually frustrating, spending 2 rounds to reach a dangerous spellcaster might be a worthwhile option for a melee hero. Cover is also a boon to any foes or characters who benefit from stealth. A rogue always appreciates environments allowing them to hide, just as foes who work best as lurkers or skirmishers can benefit from cover and being able to fall back to hard-to-reach places. ENGAGING ELEMENTS Specific elements in the environment can help engage the players during an encounter, especially when the source of engagement gives the characters an edge. When designing encounters, look for opportunities to add dynamic elements that fit the location and reward interaction. DAMAGING OR HINDERING TERRAIN In a forest frequented by fey creatures, the vegetation might grab at characters, slowing or restraining them. A fight atop a volcano might feature pools of glowing magma that damage any creature moving through them. When selecting such terrain, consider where to place it in an encounter. Think through the likely routes creatures will take during combat, and how to create or break up obvious movement patterns to generate options or force particular behavior. Pools of lava might force melee characters to spend time reaching foes, or might encourage them to focus on high-AC foes in front of them, helping to protect vulnerable foes farther away. When hindering or damaging terrain is obvious, the players can freely discuss options when the encounter begins. Terrain can also be revealed during play when it impacts a creature, though it’s often more effective to hint at the terrain’s unusual nature and encourage ability checks that can reveal its effects. “The vegetation is moving, as if blown about by a wind you can’t sense” can inspire a player to ask if they can learn more, followed by an Intelligence (Nature) or Wisdom (Survival) check to determine the terrain’s effects. If the check fails, the UNREALISTIC SIZES ARE OKAY Scott points out that the goals of facilitating roles and enabling movement often require larger encounter areas than would be found in real life—and that this is fine. A 30-by-30-foot chamber is large in our world, but might work perfectly with the backstory of a fantastic location to allow for monsters and characters to interact properly. Similarly, Teos points out that a 5-foot-wide corridor works just fine for real people walking, but can be too narrow for the combat-focused reality of the game. This is because moving through a space containing an ally requires twice the movement. As such, a 5-foot corridor can hinder any attempts for characters or monsters to reposition or move tactically, and should generally not be used anywhere that combat might take place.

81 character must decide whether to risk crossing the area to learn what it does the hard way. To create damaging terrain, you can use magic of a level the characters or their foes might use as inspiration, including spells such as spike growth, entangle, grease, or sleet storm. You can also use the guidelines in the 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide for creating traps, using the tables to determine how much damage terrain might deal. FACILITATING OR DENYING MOVEMENT Swinging from a chandelier is great fun, and is more likely to become part of a scene when you point out the chandelier and the rope attached to it in an encounter area. Characters are more likely to cut a rope bridge the monsters are using when you describe how old the bridge looks and how its ropes are fraying. Likewise, adding elements that make movement easier increases the dynamic nature of the encounter environment. Bridges, ropes, teleporters, slides, and ramps can all add interest and engagement, helping facilitate the use of the entire encounter area. Such environmental elements can also change the tide of an encounter. The foes might start with the advantage of higher ground, but heroes who can pile up a number of convenient crates can reach those foes. Or an area could feature ladders or even a trampoline the heroes can utilize. When foes are attacking from a hayloft, a barrel of torches can allow characters to turn the tables, lighting the loft on fire and forcing the creatures above to descend. ATTACKS AND POWER-UPS An encounter environment can include elements that provide or boost offensive capabilities. A siege weapon might add a potent way for characters to damage a giant, or provide the means to tear down cover. In a bar fight, broken bottles can serve as improvised weapons, and alcohol spilled on the bar’s surface might be lit on fire. Such elements can be even more fun when they initially favor foes but can eventually be used by the characters. Spellcasting foes might benefit from an arcane circle boosting their spells, until the heroes drive them back and make use of the circle’s magic themselves. A table in an alchemist’s laboratory might hold potions that any creature can drink to gain a benefit, a fact the characters learn while observing their foes. Providing an obvious element meant to boost foes can also be interesting if the characters are allowed to prevent its use. If kobold brigands begin an encounter near a siege weapon but their ammunition is some distance away, the characters have the ability to prevent the kobolds from loading the weapon. DEFENSES Encounter elements offering a defensive benefit can likewise provide solid engagement. If heroes are targeted by ranged attackers, they might be in trouble if they have no cover. But a nearby clockwork fan has a large crank that can be turned to create a wind that blows away incoming arrows, and forces the foes to approach with melee weapons. Defenses can be interesting when they have a limited duration or a means to disable them. An arcane shield might protect an enemy spellcaster until special runes can be removed from four pillars in the area. The fell undead in a ruined temple regenerate all damage until a corrupted relic is restored by bathing it in holy water. The trick is to provide ways the characters can discover this. If the relic or the runes pulse with magical energy whenever a foe would have taken damage, that can provide a clear indication to the heroes of what kind of power is in play. Mundane defenses can work just as well for creating engagement. A ritual is being conducted behind a closed door that the characters must get through, but monsters stand in the way. A pack of undead is on the move, but the adventurers can loosen and drop a rusted portcullis to slow the horde’s approach. If ranged combatants stand on the other side of a ravine, the characters might topple a tree or move wooden planks to create a bridge. And if a red dragon breathes fire from above, the characters can hide in one of two ruined homes—but each time the dragon breathes, that home will burn, preventing it from being used as cover a second time. CHARACTERS ACT DEFENSIVELY Mike notes that players often have their characters act defensively by default. As a result, giving the characters more defenses can cause play to become less dynamic if those defenses provide an incentive to hunker down in one place. To counter this, consider ways for additional defenses to eventually break down, as with a monster tearing through cover or a magic circle in the process of fading out. Alternatively, create reasons why the characters can use the defenses only periodically. Scott likewise points out that providing defensive-minded characters with alternative—as opposed to additional—ways to defend themselves can help with this problem, especially if those additional means of defense require or encourage movement. LEVEL MATTERS Damaging and hindering terrain can be exciting, but Scott notes that they often have a disproportionate impact on lower-level characters, who often lack ways to mitigate hindering terrain or come up short on the hit points needed to weather continued damage. At the same time, highlevel characters might see such terrain as little more than a resource tax, requiring a couple of relatively low-level spells or readily available class features to deal with. As such, setting up engaging terrain at lower or higher levels often requires additional work to maintain the story and the challenge.

82 FIFTEEN ENGAGING ENVIRONMENTS Presented below are fifteen examples of environments containing elements meant to engage your players and their characters. You can use any of these examples as is, or as inspiration for creating your own environments. SLIP AND SLIDE Frost-covered terrain features ramps shaped of ice, letting foes or heroes quickly move across a battlefield that would otherwise be difficult terrain. ALCHEMY LAB In an alchemist’s laboratory, any missed attack causes bottles to break and spill, creating a range of short-term hazards. VERTICAL ACCESS Within a wizard’s tower, each level contains a narrow circular ledge beneath open ceiling along the inside wall, creating a space from which the other levels can be seen. Teleportation alcoves on each ledge allow the fight to span several levels at the same time. SHIFTING FLOOR A construction site features automated clockwork cranes that move sections of the floor during a battle, and which suddenly bring different areas of the encounter together or move them apart. The characters understand that they can learn to manipulate the cranes, giving them control over the battlefield. STEP LIGHTLY While exploring a swamp, the characters quickly discover that what seems to be solid ground is actually a sleeping tentacle beast. Missing with an attack or moving without care causes the beast to strike. CRYPT SHORTCUTS A battle unfolds in an abandoned crypt filled with secret passages. The passages allow rapid maneuvering from one side of the fight to the other, but a few of them contain undead that dislike being disturbed. The presence of undead is random, and either side might trigger their appearance. DOWN TO EARTH Enemies start the fight atop a wooden platform, letting them attack with ranged weapons from cover. However, the heroes can cut the supports, causing their foes to take falling damage as they crash down to the characters’ level. WHITE WATER A battle takes place on rafts heading down a river. Each round brings a new threat from the environment, such as low branches forcing all creatures to duck or take damage, or fast-moving rapids requiring an ability check to navigate. CONTROLLED MOVEMENT In a dwarven fortress, a central chamber set with levers allows foes to open and close different sections of narrow corridors, enabling dwarf guards to attack the characters and then retreat. Once the heroes reach the central chamber, they can take control and dictate the conditions of the battle. FIRE BRIGADE During a battle in a burning building, in addition to their normal actions, each creature can attempt to either prevent the fire from approaching them or cause it to spread toward their foes. STAY DRY While the characters fight in a sewer canal, it suddenly begins to fill with water. Ramps and other devices can be climbed to keep the fight going. MARKETPLACE BRAWL A marketplace erupts in an exciting battle. Errant blows might knock over stacks of crates to hinder the characters or their foes, sacks of flour might split open to create obscuring and flammable clouds, or angry merchants could enter the fray to demand that the characters pay for damaged goods. PIT PUSH Multiple pits are set into the floors of a chamber where the walls shoot inward each round, potentially knocking creatures into a pit. It’s possible for the characters to determine which walls will move next, and how far, so as to find a safe place to fight. KING OF THE HILL A battle takes place along the outside of a pyramid, with those atop the pyramid gaining a bonus to attack and damage rolls, whether from magic or from the cheers of a crowd below. The uneven top of the pyramid has space for only four creatures, and creatures on the top can be pushed off with successful blows, leading to constant change at the top. GEYSER RIDES Geysers erupt in a cavern at unpredictable intervals, sending creatures flying upward and spraying them with scalding water. However, riding a geyser also allows creatures to reach the mushrooms growing on the cavern ceiling, which provide magical benefits.

ALLIE BRIGGS 83 ASSESSING A PUBLISHED ENCOUNTER Despite all the care designers take, no published adventure is perfect. It’s impossible for the encounters in an adventure to fit every group’s preferences, or to be playtested for the way every group of characters might approach them. Designers recognize that there’s no way to flawlessly select monsters, motivations, and engagement that will work for every table. So they make use of flexible design to encourage GMs to personalize a published adventure’s encounters. GMs didn’t always understand or even know this, however. Historically, earlier editions of D&D carried a mistaken sense that the words on the page were somehow sacred. “That’s the way the encounter is written,” was used as an excuse to explain why an encounter didn’t work well. Using a published encounter offers many benefits. But recognizing that published encounters are imperfect, GMs must also accept the responsibility to tailor them to our own needs. We want to learn how to assess what an encounter offers, and the changes we can make to improve how it runs at our table. Here’s how. FIRST LOOK When reviewing an encounter in a published adventure, start by quickly skimming it from start to finish. Note the major sections and what they tell you, at a high level, about the encounter. Published encounters (particularly encounters featuring combat) often have one or more of the following sections, roughly in this order: • Introduction or overview for the GM • Descriptive text to read aloud for the players • Lighting, ceiling or canopy heights, sounds and smells, and other environmental information • Goals or other story information not in the introduction • Terrain mechanics • Features that the monsters or characters might use • Lists of monsters and traps • Monster tactics or scaling • Monster or NPC motivations and roleplaying guidance • Developments or phases of play • Rewards and treasure • Information for moving on to the next adventure section A quick glance over the encounter’s sections can help you understand the encounter framework. Then ask yourself the following questions. Which are the Key Sections? Which sections receive the most emphasis? In one encounter, terrain might receive a lot of emphasis. In another, the encounter’s focus is the characters’ goals and how the monsters try to thwart them. Where is the Fun? Ideally, the key sections also drive the fun—within the context of what that means to your players. Ask yourself which sections excite you as a GM, because those will probably also be the ones to excite your players. You want to lean into those sections during play. What’s Confusing? Sections that read poorly, are confusing, or appear overly complex during a quick skim might simply need review to fully understand them. However, confusion can also be a sign that a section doesn’t fit your play style. Note these sections for later review. What’s Missing? Is the encounter missing sections? Does it fail to mention what the monsters do, or lack details for the environment and terrain? Does it seem too simple or lack fun? Make a note of these gaps.

84 Does This Fit the Story? Does the encounter fit the adventure, your campaign, and the developing stories of the characters? Does It Inspire Other Ideas? As you read, you might be inspired to add a plot twist, a new creature, or another element to the encounter. Or a published encounter might give you an idea for another encounter you want to create, perhaps tying into the published encounter through theme or plot. SECOND READ After an initial skim, go back and read the encounter fully. Some GMs like to do this immediately, while others prefer to give it a bit of time (even a day or two) for initial ideas to settle. A second read prepares you to run the encounter, and might correct some aspects of your initial assessment. Something you thought was confusing might become clear, or a perceived deficiency might actually turn out to be a strength. You might also confirm aspects of your initial assessment. You can make notes in the margins, underline or highlight text, or make notes in a separate document to help you when you run the encounter. During this second assessment, you want to focus particularly on the following key aspects of the encounter. ASSESSING THE FOES In a few cases, the monsters, NPCs, and other foes aren’t the key to an encounter. If this happens, you can decide not to worry about those foes, as they aren’t critical to the fun. For most encounters, though, the foes are a key part of the action. You therefore want to assess them carefully. Lore and Story. It’s worth reviewing the lore behind creatures appearing in a published encounter. Monster lore can offer valuable information about a creature’s mannerisms and preferences, which you might otherwise forget. By reviewing monster lore, you get into the heads of those foes, and can better understand how they fit into the story of the encounter, the adventure, and the campaign. Consider which lore aspects are known to the heroes. An ogre mercenary makes a straightforward foe, recognizable on sight. You can describe their massive muscles and stature to emphasize their nature. Any adventurer should know that a giant spider is dangerous, so you can freely describe the venom dripping from their fangs to heighten the sense of danger. Low-level adventurers probably won’t recognize what a cockatrice can do, so you might instead describe the coloration of their plumage and leave their capability for petrification as a surprise to be experienced during play. Monster Stat Block. As described in “Reading the Monster Stat Block” (page 102), you can review monsters in an encounter to understand how they operate, gauge their strengths and weaknesses, and think about how to make the most of their capabilities. Whenever a monster uses a combination of actions or features to be effective, you want to highlight that on their stat block. You also want to look for intersection points between different monster types. If one foe knocks creatures prone, this benefits another creature with many melee attacks, since they can now gain advantage on each of those attacks. Conversely, creatures might have features, actions, or spells not worth using. You can cross those out to make your foes easier to run. In general, ask yourself what makes a stat block interesting in the context of the encounter. If certain aspects aren’t interesting, you can mark them up to change them, or add to them using the monster powers in “Building a Quick Monster” (page 4), “Monster Powers” (page 15), and “Monster Roles” (page 22). For complex monsters, consider assigning specific features to particular rounds. An undead wizard might blast characters with a fireball spell on the first round, use a fear-based action on the second round, and then close to use their life-draining melee attacks on characters not affected by fear. Goals and Tactics. An encounter might have creatures performing unusual goals or employing specific tactics. If not, you want to review the stat blocks and lore to create appropriate goals compatible with the encounter. Encounters often feature more than one type of creature—hobgoblin gladiators fighting alongside an ogre battle master, for example. You can examine these pairings and what makes them interesting, starting with whether allied foes have slightly different goals and tactics. You can then highlight the differences during play, adding interest and realism to the encounter. Environment and Engagement. You can review how creatures fit into an encounter’s environment, and how those creatures engage the players. If an encounter offers this information, then review these aspects to make the most of them during play. You might make a note next to the stat block such as, “The ogre will try to destroy the bridge,” or “The bandits use the ropes to move between levels.” WHAT’S MISSING THAT EXCITES YOU? Scott notes that we don’t have to focus on every one of these questions as GMs. Another way to approach our first read is to look for the sections that normally excite you or are best for your style of play. For example, if you like tactical encounters, you might specifically look for monster tactics and terrain. If you love roleplaying and exploration, you’ll look for creature motivations, lore, and interesting features. By using this approach, you’ll be sure to focus on the elements you enjoy most, and can add those elements where they’re missing.

85 If the environment doesn’t fit the monsters well or their engagement with the environment is low, you can add those details. “Building Engaging Encounters” (page 76) and “Building Engaging Environments” (page 79) have all the information you need to make those adjustments. Challenge Level. You can assess the overall challenge level of monsters based on their CR and the number appearing, using the tables in “Monster Combinations for a Hard Challenge” (page 67) or the information in the “Lazy Encounter Benchmark” (page 70). You can then assess whether the encounter utilizes the monsters to their typical potential, or even above that potential. For example, if normally weak gnome archers are placed behind cover in a place the heroes can’t easily reach, you might treat the challenge level as higher—a medium encounter becoming hard, or a hard encounter becoming deadly. You can then consider how that challenge level fits the resources the characters have available, and whether an encounter under those circumstances will be fun. If a different challenge level would work better, you can make adjustments. Some published encounters come with scaling advice—information on how to adjust the encounter for weaker or stronger characters—which you can use to make changes. If not, you can make your own changes, or add features to monsters to increase the challenge. “Monster Difficulty Dials” (page 27) talks about making adjustments to encounter difficulty on the fly. “Building a Quick Monster” (page 4), “Monster Powers” (page 15), and “Monster Roles” (page 22) present lots of options for adding features to monsters. And challenge level is discussed in more detail in “Defining Challenge Level” (page 105). SURPRISES AND DEVELOPMENTS When preparing an encounter, you want to differentiate between what should be obvious to the characters initially, and those elements that can be learned during the course of the encounter. Aspects that should be known might need to be clarified for characters. For example, if the published encounter says negotiation is possible, you can review whether the encounter gives the characters reasons to try this. If anything that should be clear isn’t, you can make a note to clarify that during play, or add ways that the characters can learn the information. Some elements of the encounter might initially be hidden or unclear, with the intention of having those elements revealed during play. You should make a note of such elements, and think through the conditions by which characters can discover them, or when they should be surprised by them. It’s okay if characters spoil a surprise through clever or lucky play, so always keep that possibility in mind as well. Developments are often events that take place after the first round of combat—making them easy to forget during play. To prevent this, make a note of when a development occurs, and place the note where you’ll see it. For example, if a fog rolls in at the start of round 2, you might add an entry to the initiative tracker reminding you of that. As noted earlier, for complex monsters, you might want to assign specific actions to particular rounds. And if certain creatures surrender when reduced to below half their hit points, you might write that next to their stat blocks. If an encounter is simple, you can consider possible developments for it. A foe might issue a challenge or share interesting information at a particular time. Making a note of this can help keep you from forgetting the development. MINIATURES, MAPS, AND TERRAIN If you play with miniatures and maps or crafted terrain, your read-through of an encounter should also assess how best to portray the encounter physically. You don’t need perfect miniatures or maps to have a great time, but choosing miniatures effectively can help clarify who’s involved in a battle. Can the players tell two groups of creatures apart? If important terrain elements are featured on the map, will those be clear? Can you use simple tools like wooden blocks to signify elevation? A bit of time spent in preparing miniatures, maps, and terrain according to the specifications of the encounter can facilitate a great session. ONLINE PLAY You can ask similar questions for online play, selecting maps, creature tokens, and terrain markers that will help players understand what they face and the options available to them. When reviewing a published encounter, ask yourself whether you can easily use a generic map (a standard dungeon chamber, a default forest clearing, and so forth), or whether you want to look for a more distinctive map and more detailed tokens to properly capture the features described in the encounter. EXITS AND ALTERNATIVE ENDINGS Scott advocates always checking a published encounter for exit points and a range of possible endings, beyond the often-default expectation of all the foes—or all the characters—being killed. Are the creatures in an encounter likely to negotiate for surrender or offer an alliance? Will some of the creatures attempt to escape if overwhelmed? Similarly, recognizing the difference between an encounter the characters can run from versus an encounter that demands a fight to the finish can help you prepare for a range of outcomes.

86 BUILDING CHALLENGING HIGHLEVEL ENCOUNTERS As characters rise in level, many GMs find it harder and harder to challenge those characters and their players. Why is that? Characters gain more features as they level than monsters do, and the players choose many of those features carefully, if not optimally. Likewise, players hone the use of their characters’ capabilities through repeated play, while GMs are often running higher-CR creatures for the first time. The game’s math also takes some of the blame. At low levels, monsters deal enough damage to kill characters outright, and the regular rules for building encounters based on challenge rating often result in low-level encounters that can easily wipe an entire party out. At high levels, the reverse is true. It can seem impossible for monsters to deal enough damage to threaten a character, let alone kill one. So with all those factors in mind, let’s take a look at how we can build high-level encounters that will be challenging, fun for the players, and fun for us to run. ANALYZING CHALLENGE Challenging players and characters becomes easier if we look at challenge as more than just hit points. It also helps if we understand our players and their characters, as well as our own tendencies as GMs. STORY AND FUN ARE MORE IMPORTANT In the quest for challenge, we should never forget what matters the most: whether the GM and the players are having fun. Although a nail-biting encounter can be exciting, many players have even more fun with an easy win. Easy wins can make players feel awesome! Story is one of the key ways to provide fun. A good story resonates with the players. A game’s story is more likely to be a good one when the players see their characters’ actions matter, when there are secrets to unravel, and when the characters’ goals and aspirations are woven into the game. If a fight is easy but has a great story, that’s almost always preferable to having a challenging fight with a so-so story. The first step to making high-level play great is thus to create a great story alongside a fun and engaging encounter. That way, even if the encounter isn’t as challenging as you might have hoped, the game session can still be fun and interesting. Think about and ask yourself the following questions when creating a highlevel encounter, even before you work on making it challenging: • Are the monsters interesting, and fun to engage with? Do they do interesting things, and do they advance the story? • Does the encounter engage the characters, giving them heroic and fun things to do? • Does the encounter matter? Are there choices with repercussions, opportunities for clever play, secrets to learn, plots to advance, and threats worth overcoming? • Are the decisions and actions epic, reflecting the importance of the high-level heroes? At lower levels of play, a straightforward combat encounter can be exciting even when it’s not part of a perfect story—because the risk of death creates its own story. So as the risk of death becomes mitigated at higher levels, it becomes important for the GM to replace the narrative tension that the threat of death brings to the game. High-level play should therefore come with exciting story. The heroes are saving entire lands, if not the world or multiverse. Threats such as planar intrusions, the essential nature of magic becoming corrupted, or an ancient terror that can gain unstoppable power—if you create an engaging story around such concepts, your encounters will be fun regardless of whether the fights are hard or easy. CHALLENGE IS MORE THAN DAMAGE Encounters inevitably become boring if the only challenge the characters face is hit point loss. So by remembering that challenge is more than damage, we can enable more ways to create engaging encounters that feel epic, especially as the characters gain levels and face increasingly formidable threats. The basic nature of an encounter can make it seem challenging and rewarding, even if the combat ends up being easy. Consider the following examples: • A mighty creature threatens to destroy a town or city that is important to the heroes. Each round, in addition to their attacks, the creature also deals damage to buildings. The faster the characters defeat the creature, the more of the settlement they can save. • The villain is protected by an arcane energy field that greatly reduces incoming damage. Characters can destroy the arcane engine, which hovers high above the ground. Flight and teleportation, as well as other capabilities, become part of the way to address the challenge. • The dragon the characters fight isn’t just flying— they’re also ending each turn behind clouds. This puts spellcasters with the ability to cast control weather, or other characters with similarly powerful mastery over nature, in a position to cancel the dragon’s advantage. (“Lightning Rods” on page 44 has lots of ideas on how to customize creature traits and tactics to allow the characters to show off—and to feel great doing so.)

87 • As the heroes prepare to face the head of an enemy army, they also must raise the spirits of their nation’s people, and heal dozens of wounded soldiers so they can return to the battle and keep the enemy from outflanking them. A scenario of this sort can challenge players to come up with an inspiring speech, knowing that the tide of battle might change if their speech is a good one. LEARNING OVER TIME As we run encounters as GMs, we can take measure of what works and what doesn’t. By isolating what made an encounter easy and how to change that, you can change your approach to increase the challenge. “Building Engaging Encounters” on page 76 has lots of ideas on this topic, in addition to the following examples. Starting Distance. You might have been really excited to use monsters who felt powerful for an encounter, only to discover that most of them never got to do anything. Spells might have prevented some from acting, while other creatures were cut down before they could reach the characters. So make a note on which types of monsters become less effective when they start out grouped together and far from the characters. Then next time, test a way to place the monsters right among the heroes, perhaps cloaked by illusions or coming out of doors, crates, or thick underbrush. Obvious Linchpin. You might spend time preparing a powerful spellcaster mini-boss, setting them up at an altar, guards before them, ready to tear into the characters with their magic. The players, however, immediately focus fire. A few ranged attacks, spells and castings of counterspell, and attacks by melee fighters with mobility—and your caster won’t get to do much. So make a note about how making the boss so high profile played against the encounter setup, and think about providing the spellcaster with some protection next time—an arcane barrier, a shield guardian, resistances, and so forth—that can help prevent them from being taken down. Alternatively, you might have the caster appear from behind cover, making it likely that they get at least a round to cast a strong spell. Darting behind full cover each time they cast could buy them a couple of rounds, and portals or other ways to move around to different areas of cover could protect them further. Unhittable Defense. A fearsome giant deals tremendous damage—if they can actually land a blow against the characters. The one time you think you’ve actually hit the multiclassed tank, out comes a shield spell or a class feature to make the attack miss. When this happens, make a note of it. You want to reward the player of an optimized character with their desired play experience, but when you can’t count on hitting that character, you need more than one monster who hits hard, or ways for the hardesthitting monsters to reach other targets with lower ACs. When you want to challenge the tank in ways beyond weapon attacks, make use of damaging terrain, spells, illusions, and other complications to keep them on their toes. Similarly, characters who fight primarily at range often avoid damage, but you can design surprises for them as well. That obvious cover … it couldn’t possibly be an advanced mimic who grapples and deals a ton of damage, right? Surely not. Smooth Operators. Some adventuring parties operate like a well-oiled machine. Each character has a role and plays it well. Make a note of this in your games. Usually, it’s good to not just allow but to reward that kind of play. But what happens when the character who bails others out of trouble is in trouble? When the healer can’t heal because healing magic doesn’t work in an encounter area? When the terrain restrains, making it hard for characters to move around? By playing against the characters’ strengths, you can test what happens when the battle is fought on your terms. However, this is a technique to be used sparingly. Otherwise, it can feel as though you’re being antagonistic toward the players by deliberately countering their characters’ best combat options. What Works. Just as importantly, when a high-level encounter is hard, you can examine that. Where were the monsters in relation to the characters? What let the monsters be effective? How can you use this as a template for future combats? CHALLENGING HIGH-LEVEL CHARACTERS You have a fun story. Your encounter challenges characters in ways other than damage. You’re analyzing your games and learning as you play. Now it’s time to add specific techniques to make your high-level encounters more challenging. JUST ADD DAMAGE This sounds trite—and remember that challenge is about more than damage. But dialing up damage to boost the challenge for high-level characters is a good first step. If your encounters lack challenge, and especially if the players seem unimpressed, increase damage. A strong blow, even if a character still has plenty of hit points, feels dangerous. It wakes the players up. IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT Mike often talks about the “triangular growth of character power” (discussed in “The Relative Weakness of High-CR Monsters” on page 53). Characters don’t become stronger linearly as they increase in level. They become vastly more powerful and capable. On his blog, Teos has analyzed the average hit points of characters and compared it to the average damage of creatures in an encounter. As characters increase in level, foes appropriate for those characters fall farther behind. For example, a 12th-level party has somewhere around 375 total hit points. The official rules state that a battle with a CR 16 creature should be a tough challenge, but such a creature deals an average of 46 damage per round—meaning they need 8 rounds to defeat the heroes even if every attack hits!

88 MATT MORROW The easiest way to increase damage is to add more dice to every attack a monster makes. If a foe deals 2d8 + 10 damage, try making that 3d8 + 10. If that’s not working, try 4d8 + 20. If you’re comfortable doing so, you can simply double a creature’s damage output if they need a strong boost. From a story perspective, you can easily explain a change in a monster’s damage as a response to something the characters have done. When a monster misses on their first attack, they become enraged and start to hit harder. When reduced to half their hit points, a creature’s tenacious nature drives them to hit harder in an effort to stay alive. You can also add one or more monster powers (see “Building a Quick Monster” on page 4, “Monster Powers” on page 15, and “Monster Roles” on page 22) to increase the damage dealt by key foes. If a foe hits hard but only takes on single targets, add an aura so they deal damage to every character who comes near. You can also add a power that gives an additional attack, or even one that deals damage when a creature dies, either exploding or leaking lethal energy. You can add damage in an encounter from sources other than creatures as well. If your original idea for a warped Outer Planes landscape was to have colored grass that restrains the characters, you might decide that on the second round of combat, the grass begins to deal damage as well. (For more ideas on this topic, see “Building Engaging Environments” on page 79.) KEEP THE HEROES BUSY When a bunch of high-level characters are dealing significant damage, their foes can drop quickly. So challenging encounters must find ways to tie up the characters using more than just combat. This approach functions like splitting the party, but all the characters are present. They’re just pursuing more than the singular goal of defeating enemies. To keep the heroes busy, consider any of the following scenarios. Save Something. The characters came to retrieve a holy artifact or ancient tome—and during the battle, the item is in danger. Maybe the fire used in a ritual grows out of control, and will destroy the item unless the characters do something. Or maybe a beloved NPC is dangling over a pit that looks like a giant maw. If the characters must spend actions and resources to save someone or something, it limits their ability to just fight monsters. MORE THAN ONE BOSS OR MULTIPLE WAVES Mike loves using two or even three bosses in one encounter! When you take this approach, by describing each of the bosses and showing off their capabilities, you can create an encounter with no obvious linchpin. Similarly, Mike is a fan of waves of foes, as discussed in “Building and Running Boss Monsters” on page 31. The characters might quickly defeat the spellcaster protected by guards, but when a second guard patrol then shows up, the loss of the first obvious linchpin isn’t as significant—and the characters have expended the resources that enabled them to take down the linchpin so quickly. Waves of foes from unexpected directions can also pressure the more fragile characters who hang back from battle, forcing a change in tactics beyond just pummeling the obvious boss. To make things even more interesting, the boss or linchpin can arrive as part of a wave. Have the characters start out by battling guards, then have the boss arrive after resources have been expended.

89 Activate or Disarm. A terrible trap drains the characters’ life essence until it is disarmed. Four pillars around the encounter area must be deactivated to bring down the arcane shield protecting the villain. Any device that needs to be shut down during a fight can keep the characters busy—with the location of the device made difficult to reach, whether it’s floating in midair, surrounded by damaging terrain, or accessible only through a portal that must be activated before use. Penalty Box. A glyph or other magic could put a character into a maze spell or take them to a pocket dimension where they face a challenge before returning. Stepping on the wrong flagstone might teleport a character into a sarcophagus. A lot of monsters can swallow characters, limiting their actions for a time. All these scenarios are effective ways of isolating characters and keeping them busy, but you want to make sure they’re fun. Perhaps while within the belly of a monster, a character finds an unexpected treasure. The inside of a sarcophagus might have a note hinting at how to defeat the boss villain. Make any penalty box feel like part of the adventure, not a way to pick on specific characters. MODIFY THE ENCOUNTER BUDGET Some GMs create encounters using the core rules in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, adding up the XP of creatures in an encounter and using that total to determine the challenge level (easy, medium, hard, or deadly). A benefit of this technique is that if encounters consistently feel too straightforward, you can easily alter your budget, and thus alter the associated challenge. If moderate encounters consistently feel easy, try increasing the XP budget of a moderate encounter—or simply use the threshold for a hard encounter. When building a deadly encounter, you can take the difference in XP between the minimums for hard encounters and deadly encounters, then add that as the new minimum for a deadly encounter. However, be careful to not adjust the budget in a way that adds more creatures than you can easily run— especially creatures of different types. Adding another hill giant to an existing brute squad is fine. But adding a troll, a cyclops, and an advanced ogre is likely to overwhelm you. Any XP budget is usually better spent on creatures you can run easily and effectively. Another way to modify the encounter budget is to worry less about balancing encounters, and to simply run more encounters before the characters can take a long rest. As long as doing so fits the story and pacing of your game, “On Encounters per Day” on page 93 offers advice on this topic. The Lazy Encounter Benchmark. If you use the lazy encounter benchmark (from the section of the same name on page 70) instead of the core rules’ XP encounter budgeting, you can increase the threshold of encounter challenge by pretending a party has more characters. If five characters routinely find hard encounters less than challenging, build encounters as though the party had six characters—or even more characters, until you find the right balance. This technique can easily be used with most online encounter-creation tools. CUNNING TACTICS Because the effectiveness of a high-level party often comes from the tactics of the characters and players, keep in mind certain monster tactics specifically designed to challenge high-level characters in return. Prevent or Draw Focused Fire. Is it obvious to the players and characters which enemy should be ganged up on and defeated first? If so, describe all your foes as fearsome and interesting in different ways, making them all seem worthy of attention. You can also use descriptions during combat to make the least damaged foes seem more important than they are, leading characters to return fire when attacked by those foes. You can adjust position on the battlefield, so that the most important enemies aren’t near the encounter locations where the characters want to be. This can split the party, forcing some to focus on specific foes or locations, while others chase down the one foe dealing a ton of damage at range. Alternatively, sometimes having an obvious main foe can be used to your advantage. The big elemental in an encounter is a sack of hit points, and melee characters take fire damage each time they hit that foe. Meanwhile, the elemental’s seemingly unimportant allies are the real threat, but their innocuous appearance makes the characters downplay that threat. Monster Roles and Placement. As described in “Monster Roles” (page 22), you can often think of the characters’ foes as a team, each using separate but complimentary tactics. So place each foe where they can best fulfill their role. Defend vulnerable or key targets, whether through harmful terrain, features such as self-firing arcane ballistas, or foes such as a spellcaster benefiting from cover or magical defenses. Unless there’s a story reason to not do so, you can place creatures where they’ll be most effective right from the start of battle. Just ask yourself whether a particular foe would want to CAN YOU WEAR IT? CAN IT BE A MOUNT? Talking of mounts reminds Teos of some of the surprises organized play has provided. A fire giant with a pyrohydra “backpack” they carried, the hydra’s heads breathing fire in every direction. Druids using Wild Shape to serve as mounts for powerful creatures. Teleporting creatures carrying foes into battle, and then far away to safety. High-level encounters are a great time to get a bit weird, because the characters can likely survive even if you accidentally push a concept too far. Plus the unusual nature of such an encounter will surprise the players and engage them.

90 start next to characters, near them, far away, or hidden or behind cover. Counter Defenses. If the damage resistances high-level characters often have are a problem, you can consider ways to remove them periodically. A dragon’s breath weapon might cling to characters, dealing damage for multiple rounds or temporarily removing resistance to the breath’s damage type. A trap, magical effect, or environmental feature can do the same. You might even let the characters learn that there are ways to reverse these effects by interacting with some aspect of the encounter. MONSTER–TERRAIN INTERACTIONS A powerful way to give foes an advantage and increase the challenge in high-level encounters is to create an interaction between the terrain and your monsters. “Building Engaging Environments” (page 79) cautions about not overwhelming low-level characters. But with high-level characters, you can safely cut loose! Many creatures can fly, letting them stay away from the heroes or forcing characters to expend magical resources to take to the air. But a black dragon can also swim through pools of acid, while most characters can’t. This lets the dragon use such pools to move around an encounter area—or even hide in a pool while their breath weapon recharges. A giant might push a pillar down on a character, dealing the same damage as if the giant had hit with their best melee attack, and also causing the character to be restrained. Incorporeal undead can fight in collapsing ruins, uncaring as parts of those ruins fall and pin characters underneath the rubble. A massive demon might set an encounter area on fire while fighting, potentially dealing damage to the characters each round. And similar effects might hurt the characters even as they provide a boon to foes. In a dread temple, waves of necromantic energy could heal undead while damaging the heroes. Curtains of fire could provide concealment for fire elementals, while burning any character who moves through them. BREAK THE RULES Our world uses physics, but a magical world can ignore or bend the expectations physics creates. Similarly, the world of the game creates expectations which we can change, creating exceptions that can be validated through story. A fire giant king might be no regular fire giant, as you increase your encounter budget as described above to create a stronger threat. You can have the king deal more damage, letting them hit harder than expected. You can also pair them with a powerful mount, such as a massive hydra that breathes fire and is immune to fire damage. A magical monster on another plane might be able to use their movement to simply will themself to be anywhere in the encounter area. A creature who doesn’t normally fly could be a winged variant who does. A creature might wear self-repairing armor, manifesting as temporary hit points granted at the start of each of their turns. A death knight becomes truly terrifying when you give them the ability to tear apart the magic of a forcecage spell with their bare hands. You can usually exceed the game’s expectations when creating high-level challenges because high-level characters are so resilient. They can even recover from death … unless you counterspell their revivify. One of the best ways to break the rules is to take monster features you love and add them to other monsters—but you need to do so convincingly. A remorhaz is a great threat, because whenever characters hit them with melee attacks, those characters take damage. You can add that sort of trait to any elemental creature, or to a monster covered in spikes or wearing spiked armor. You can give a monster a reaction to reflect a spell back on a caster, with or without an opposed check or saving throw. Or you might have a creature targeted by a spell cause the spell to target the caster as well, evening the score a bit. You can have creatures who take a final attack when they die, upping their damage output as they go down fighting. The monster powers presented in “Building a Quick Monster” (page 4), “Monster Powers” (page 15), and “Monster Roles” (page 22) present all kinds of ready-to-use features that let you scale damage and alter effects to meet your needs. ON THE FLY When preparing encounters for powerful high-level characters, keep in mind that the tricks and tools discussed here can also be used on the fly to make encounters more challenging. If you do so, don’t worry about picking just one or two. Use several ideas and options, one after the other, until the encounter becomes compelling and fun for both you and the players. RUNNING A BATTLE ACROSS TWO WORLDS In a particularly memorable boss battle, Mike built an encounter designed to split the party—not just into separate rooms but across separate worlds. For months, the game had set up the idea that one of the characters had a deep friendship with a giant they thought was dead. Unknown to the characters, though, the nasty ancient blue dragon sorcerer boss had actually trapped the friendly giant in amber. When the characters entered the dragon’s sanctum, the trapped giant was hanging above a pit leading into the Nine Hells— whereupon the dragon snapped her clawed fingers and the amber prison fell. Without a second thought, the character bound to the giant leaped in after them. Thus began a battle across two worlds, with some characters fighting the ancient blue dragon sorcerer on one side and others fighting a host of devils to protect their friend in a hellish arena. Only through the careful use of a powerful cubic gate did the characters survive, teleporting across worlds for the occasional bout of healing before popping back to their home world to defeat the dragon.

91 EXIT STRATEGIES The other sections of this book talk about lots of different options for setting up and running combat with monsters and other foes. But when thinking about the beginning and middle of a fight, many GMs overlook all the possible endings of a fight—and the ways in which having ending options in mind can help keep an exciting combat from becoming a total-party-kill scenario. In the earliest editions of D&D, encounter design was much more of an art than a science (as discussed in “The History of Challenge” on page 97). As such, adventures for those older editions typically set the GM up to assume that every fight might go in any possible direction, with four cardinal points on that combat compass: the characters win; the monsters win; the characters flee; the monsters flee. But as later editions of the game have pushed toward the holy grail of balanced encounter design, and an implicit math-backed guarantee that a certain encounter should turn out a certain way, the fine art of not fighting to the bitter end has become minimized. A whole lot of players have never learned the value of fleeing a fight their characters can’t win, and GMs are reminded to ignore alternative options for ending fights by the number of published adventures making use of the words: “These creatures fight to the death.” To help prevent an exciting encounter from becoming memorable for all the wrong reasons, this section encourages GMs to think about monster motivations, a broader range of rewards for combat beyond just “winning,” hooks that you can use to have foes roleplay their way into a surrender scenario, and making sure that the physical setup of encounters affords characters and monsters alike the ability to flee from a fight. PLAN YOUR ENDGAMES Figuring out how to end a fight in a satisfactory way that doesn’t involve one side claiming complete victory is a difficult thing to do in the moment. While engaged in running combat, a GM already has a lot of things to think about. As such, by the time you realize that an encounter you thought would be an average challenge at best is about to become a smorgasbord of player-character pâté, coming up with a believable plot twist to take the fight to a different end can be tough. You want to think about those plot twists and possible alternative endings ahead of time, so that you’ve always got one or more ready to drop in to any fight. The following guidelines can help. ASSESSING MOTIVATIONS Only rarely do the monsters in a fight have the single motivation of “destroy or be destroyed in turn.” Mindless undead or constructs are great for those kinds of fightto-the-finish encounters when that’s what you want to run. But almost all other creatures, including intelligent undead and the game’s full range of monstrous and NPC foes, have other motivations for getting into combat—and equally powerful motivations that can inspire them to get out of combat. (“Roleplaying Monsters” on page 48 talks more on this subject.) STAYING ALIVE A monster who fights and runs away lives to fight another day, and even creatures who can’t articulate that old adage can live it. Every NPC, from the most loyal guard to the most fanatical cultist, has a sense of self-preservation that can inspire them to flee when the fight goes bad. Likewise, animals, aberrations, draconic creatures, and more all have reasons to want to live, whether those reasons are guided by intellect and self-awareness or by instinctual need. Monsters who draw part of their combat strength from fighting as a team or in a pack are especially open to reevaluating the odds of survival in a battle as their allies start to drop around them. Whether the characters fight a pack of wolves or a mercenary band, those enemies can easily tell when the tide of battle shifts to create a fight they can’t win, triggering a perfect opportunity for an offer of truce or the enemy side’s sudden flight from the battlefield. ALTERNATIVE REWARDS A pack of wolves on the hunt most often have sustenance as their goal, not violence, when they surround characters in the wilderness. One way or another, bandits get into that line of work for material gain. And most sapient creatures who routinely enter into combat understand what kind of edge magic can give them in battle. As such, player characters looking to end conflict early often have the ability to buy their way out of a fight. Dropping food for hungry predators; offering coin or other valuables to brigands, pirates, or cultists; or offering magic or service to sapient creatures in the hope of ending a violent misunderstanding can easily let the characters reshape the scope of a fight. Alternatively, a foe aware that they are about to be trounced by the characters might offer them a reward or their own promise of service in the interest of ending combat. CUT OFF THE HEAD Many times, the ferocity of a group of creatures in battle is inspired by strong leadership, whether a pirate captain able to whip her crew into a fighting frenzy, a mage summoning magical creatures to do their bidding, or a group of zombies responding to the will of the death knight who directs them to attack. Having a clearly identified boss who controls the rest of the enemy combatants in a battle gives the characters a clear line on ending a fight early. Once the boss is dispatched, you can have their minions flee, or let them fight on in a less organized fashion to give the characters an edge.

92 CAN’T WE JUST TALK? Whether on its own or as a lead-in to convincing foes to stand down in some of the scenarios above, negotiation and detente are time-honored traditions for ending a fight. Though combat is one of the most exciting aspects of fantasy roleplaying games, it’s almost always easier and less costly for both sides in a conflict to not fight. So after a few rounds of exciting combat, don’t be afraid to show the players and characters that detente is a fine alternative to one side or the other being thoroughly beaten down. Rather than having the party’s most charismatic character take a solo role in talk meant to end hostilities, you can engage the whole party in negotiations by calling for a group ability check using different abilities and skills. This lets everyone play a part, from the sorcerer making Charisma (Persuasion) checks to set out the deal, to the cleric making Wisdom (Insight) checks to help determine which foes are most open to negotiation, to the barbarian quietly making Strength (Intimidation) checks to warn the other side what happens if discussions break down. In the event of a failed group check, you can allow the negotiations to successfully end hostilities anyway, with the failure simply creating a complication surrounding the truce. For example, although the leader of a group of assassins agrees to end a potentially deadly fight with the party, one prideful member of that band feels humiliated at being forced to stand down, and can return as a longterm foe of the characters in subsequent adventures. INS AND OUTS In addition to the many social baselines that might allow a combat encounter to be called off early, adventures— particularly site-based published adventures—have another important requirement for GMs who want to keep exit conditions in mind. Specifically, one or more actual exits. Just as recent editions of the game have seeded the expectation that every fight should go to the bitter end, many of the adventures of those editions focus on a linear encounter setup that can make it difficult for characters to break off from an encounter without interrupting the expected flow of adventure events. In a site-based adventure, this idea most often manifests in a map that features little or no empty or safe space for characters fleeing a fight to fall back to. If fleeing one encounter only brings the party immediately into the orbit of the next encounter, not much is gained—especially if some of the combatants in the previous encounter are in hot pursuit. Likewise, you can set up the most entertaining surrender-and-flee scene for a goblin mercenary band who realize the party are way above their pay grade. But if the mercenaries don’t have a way to slip safely and quietly out of the adventure, the characters are just going to run into them again. SIDE ROUTES Whatever the main route the characters are expected to take through an adventure (whether in a dungeon, a city, a noble’s estate, or what have you), make sure the adventure’s physical locations hold side routes that can be fallen back to. If you set out that the Forest of Eternal Death promises a horrid end to all those who stray from its single path, characters or monsters breaking off from a fight in the forest might have nowhere to go. If it doesn’t make sense to have prebuilt side routes in a location, secret passages and alternative pathways (waterfalls, air shafts, fast-flowing streams, sinkholes, and so forth) also offer good escape routes for both characters and monsters. SAFE HAVENS Unless it makes sense for creatures (especially characters) to not be pursued after fleeing a fight, it’s important to have locations where a party can safely regroup. Stumbling upon a secret room, or having previous knowledge of a section of a fortress or ruin where guards don’t regularly patrol, can give fleeing creatures respite before taking on new threats. And combatants on both sides of a fight might be able to make use of illusions or other magic to create a safe space while remaining in enemy territory. RIPPLE EFFECTS Any group that can depart from an encounter rather than falling victim to it provides a potential catalyst for unexpected changes in an adventure—especially a published adventure that doesn’t expect that group to survive. In a site-based setup, a group of NPC adventurers who stand down from a fight with the characters and agree to go their own way might take care of subsequent threats before the characters get to them—or might rile up those threats out of spite for when the characters finally arrive. In an event-based adventure, enemies who survive combat because the characters let them go might become reluctant allies of the party from a sense of hard-won respect. Or they might double down on their nefarious plots, furious at having been bested by the party and anxious for revenge. CHANGE OF ALLEGIANCE Teos likes the potential that comes from characters asking surrendering foes to join them. As the GM, you get to decide how long this alliance will last, and how thoroughly the surrendering foes comply with requests—particularly ones that endanger them. It can be good to come up with a goal (other than treachery) for the surrendering group, whether that’s simply not to lose any more members, or to gain enough treasure to make the truce worthwhile. This kind of setup provides a realistic roleplaying hook to communicate to the players, and from which tension and compromise can emerge. If the characters’ newly made allies are pushed too far from their goal, it’s time for the alliance to end in a way that will further the goal. This might mean retreating at night, renegotiating, or attacking when the characters are vulnerable.

MATT MORROW 93 ON ENCOUNTERS PER DAY In many discussions, the ideal number of combat encounters a group of characters can face before taking a long rest—often described as “the adventuring day”—is focused on resource attrition. But although draining resources is an important consideration, it isn’t the only factor in assessing encounters, nor the most significant. This section examines how the number of encounters in an adventuring day impacts play, enables specific stories, and contributes to the overall level of challenge those encounters create. WHAT THE RULES AND OFFICIAL ADVENTURES SAY In talking about the adventuring day, the 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide states that an adventuring party can handle roughly six to eight medium or hard combat encounters in a day, interspersed by two short rests. These numbers are likely based on typical character resources—hit points, spell slots, and so forth—but their context is never explained. More importantly, those numbers aren’t given as a recommendation. (“Defining Challenge Level” on page 105 provides recommended maximums based on every encounter challenge level.) The fact that these numbers aren’t recommendations can be seen in the design of the game’s many official adventures, which vary greatly in the number of encounters per day. In some scenarios, the characters might undertake a week-long wilderness trek with only a single combat encounter. Other scenarios might feature a dungeon with a dozen encounters. A typical four-hour one-shot or organized play adventure usually features three to four encounters in a single day, often of medium to deadly difficulty. DRAINING RESOURCES As noted, the arbitrary number of six to eight combat encounters in a day is likely based on available resources. Characters start the adventuring day fresh, and as they face foes and other challenges, they use up spells, limited-use class features, and magic items. Running out of resources and being forced to face another fight is problematic. Characters who lack healing, have minimal hit points, have no spell slots, and have expended their limited-use class features—yes, that is challenging. It’s also frustrating if it happens too often. As such, GMs should consider using resource attrition sparingly, and tying it to strong story developments. In situations where the players understand the challenge of running out of resources, that drawback becomes a special experience. (This idea is expanded upon at “Dictating Rests” below.) When the story doesn’t force the heroes to continue, players generally prefer to decide whether to press on for greater progress and rewards, or to stop to rest and recuperate. As discussed in “Defining Challenge Level” (page 105), the difficulty of an encounter does impact when characters need to rest. However, resting is even more valuable as a way to establish the pace of play. Rests are natural break points, allowing characters, players, and GM to step away from the tension of combat, engage in interparty roleplaying, discuss character and adventure goals, and plan for the next set of adventures. THE RIGHT NUMBER So what number of encounters should a GM use? Ultimately, the right number of combat encounters in an adventuring day is as many as makes sense for the story and your world. You might set up few encounters

94 in an inhospitable region, then dial up to many possible encounters in a populated city or a forest teeming with beasts and monsters. The number dictated by the story can then be adjusted based on play impact and story beats. These design goals are the key reasons why adventures often vary the number of encounters in a day. STORY IMPACT Start by thinking about the story. When the characters engage in an overland trek, a single combat encounter in a day can break up the travel nicely, painting a picture of the environment and the foes who live there. A self-contained encounter story, such as a lazy troll under a bridge who demands payment to cross, or a chance encounter with a pack of beasts, helps you tell the larger story of a desolate wilderness where dangerous creatures live and hunt. When the characters explore a dungeon, you can instead set up several encounters spread across a series of cramped quarters joined by twisting, sarcophagus-lined corridors. This larger number of encounters perfectly fits the story of ruins crawling with threats. So ask yourself what threats should be present in the setting, and how those threats can be best captured as encounters. Then use the number that best fits the setting as you portray the story you want to tell. PLAY IMPACT An adventuring day with lots of short encounters feels different from a day with one or two long encounters. Over one session of play, changing the number of encounters helps you vary the feel of the game, keeping the players’ interest levels high. You can thus select the type of adventuring day that will help you create the desired play experience. When a day features a single encounter, that encounter is likely significant. You have one chance for this encounter to impart your vision of a particular part of the setting and the story. For example, on a wilderness trek through a primeval forest, you might create a single encounter featuring a gargantuan dinosaur among bubbling tar pits. You can easily lean into the pulp feel of this encounter, with the monster making the most of their capabilities, and the terrain helping to shape a memorable and interesting fight. With just a single encounter, the players get a strong feeling for the lands the characters travel through, in addition to a great play experience. But you could instead use multiple encounters to mark out one day of a wilderness trek. You might decide to make each encounter tougher than the previous one, building a sense of dread. Before they even begin travel, the characters might hear stories of the swamp teeming with undead. As they traverse the swamp, they glimpse roaming zombies, easily evaded at first. They then face a series of encounters, with your story goals spread across them so that each tells one facet of the overall story. The first encounter could feature skeletons in the tattered military garb of the nation controlling the swampland. The second encounter could feature zombies and skeletons in the uniforms of this nation and a rival, painting the picture of an ancient battle. A third encounter with ghouls and a ghost could take place at a main battle site, loaded with lore about how one of the armies’ clerics tried to animate their dead soldiers to gain victory, but instead doomed everyone. MULTIPLE APPROACHES These approaches aren’t exclusive, and you can consider both story impact and play impact based on your design goals. As GMs, we always want to periodically step back and assess the patterns of play in our games. Are our dungeon excursions always composed of three to four encounters? Are our wilderness treks always a single encounter? Breaking out of established patterns can surprise the players, even as it makes our storytelling more complex. PACING AND THE PILLARS OF PLAY When the adventuring day features a single encounter, we have a limited canvas with which to capture the three pillars of 5e play—roleplaying, exploration, and combat. When we use multiple encounters in a day, we have more opportunities to play with pacing and activate different pillars of play. As with the general approach to choosing how many encounters to run per adventuring day, think about the effect of these broadly different approaches. A SINGLE COMBAT ENCOUNTER In an attempt to keep play exciting, a single encounter in a day often features just combat by default. But it’s better to choose the pillar you want to feature in a single encounter based on your story and the encounter’s place in the campaign. There are times when roleplaying or exploration deserve the focus and will create a better experience, just as there are times when combat is more exciting for the players. When focusing on combat for a single encounter, you can add separate roleplaying or exploration experiences during the remainder of the adventuring day. With no further threats at hand, the pacing of additional events allows the characters to rest and regain resources. And even when a single big encounter is primarily combat focused, you can increase its complexity by weaving roleplaying or exploration elements into it. Make it clear that sadistic dwarf warlords are forcing a band of goblins to fight, and the characters might encourage the goblins to switch sides. In a fight against a golem who appears impossible to defeat, let the players deduce that arcane machines along the walls of the golem’s sanctum can shut down—or heighten—the construct’s defenses. In the same way, you can focus on exploration or roleplaying as the main pillar of play, then add an aspect of combat to that play. While the characters

95 explore a ruin, a spider attempts to leap onto an isolated character for a quick fight before exploration resumes. Or an encounter might begin as a fight, then highlight roleplaying when both sides realize they have a reason to work together. MULTIPLE COMBAT ENCOUNTERS When exploring a hillside riddled with caves, some of those caves might feature foes who can be engaged in roleplaying encounters. At the same time, roleplaying or investigation can provide insight into certain aspects of the setting, helping the players determine which creatures live in the caves and why. You can adjust the length of the many possible encounters in and around the caves with more or fewer foes, and by varying complexity. Doing so creates different experiences to keep the players on their toes, and to surprise the characters as they explore each cave and steadily gather more information. With multiple encounters, you can decide how often to insert scenes without combat. These interludes allow characters to momentarily let their guard down, stop to rest, and reflect upon the adventure. As such, decreasing the number of noncombat breaks keeps the players on their toes as it builds a sense of relentless danger and pressure. A series of caves that are home to kobold trapsmiths could be an unending gauntlet the characters must run through until they reach the end. Or it could feature a number of exploration and roleplaying scenes in which the characters learn about the folk who dwell in the caves, negotiate with some of those folk, and prepare to sneak into the caverns occupied by oppressive forces. You can also consider the pacing when an encounterfilled adventuring day ends. Will the next day feature more of the same? Will you do a fast cut straight to the next combat encounter to keep pressure going, or do the characters get to return home or to a place of rest and refuge? Allowing for slow moments and a return to base provides many opportunities for play, including allowing characters to follow up on personal goals or make the most of downtime activities. CHALLENGE A single encounter can be just as hard as several encounters strung together. But because the game can be swingy, a single encounter might have more variance than a series of encounters, ending up much easier or harder than expected. As such, when planning a single encounter, think through ways to adjust the challenge during play. For example, if you realize that damaging terrain is too effective, you can prompt characters with possible ways to bypass it. If a boss monster foe isn’t dealing enough damage, you can have them become enraged and boost their damage output when they drop below a certain hit point total. When working with multiple encounters in an adventuring day, you typically need to worry less about any particular encounter being easier or harder than expected. Variance in individual encounters usually evens out over time, with characters expending resources on unexpected challenges and saving resources on encounters that go easier than expected. If you find that the characters are having too easy a time and you want resource attrition to be part of the play experience, you can simply increase the challenge of later encounters. “Modifying Monsters Before and During Play” (page 45) has lots of ideas for this. DICTATING RESTS An average adventuring day allows characters to take a number of short rests before ending with a long rest. You can lessen the frequency of rests when needed to create a sense of urgency and use up resources more quickly. You can also add more rests when you want to replenish resources to compensate for heightened challenge. DENYING RESTS Successfully resting, whether the one hour of a short rest or the eight hours of a long rest, requires two conditions. First, the characters must be able to rest without engaging in strenuous activity. Second, the rest period must be uninterrupted. This means that you can reduce or prevent resting by altering either of these conditions in any number of ways. Clear Time Pressure. A volcano’s imminent eruption. Poison gas slowly building up in a cavern. The timing of a ritual. An army’s impending arrival. Upcoming story events such as these can help convince the characters to not take a rest by making it clear that resting will result in failing at their primary goals. A Need to Keep Moving. To stay in one place long enough to rest might be impossible. For example, guards patrolling an area will surely find characters if they stay in one place more than ten minutes (to prevent short rests) or one hour (to prevent long rests). Constant Threats. A location might be unsafe, periodically dealing a small amount of damage to the characters from magic, environmental effects, or the STAY FLEXIBLE Scott notes that some site-based adventure setups can lock a GM into needing to run a full slate of encounters, even if those encounters end up depleting more of the characters’ resources than expected. For example, consider the difference between exploring a haunted ruin and infiltrating an active military outpost. The former can easily allow retreat and respite, but the latter forces the characters to keep going until they accomplish their goals. When designing such scenarios, consider whether the characters might get in over their heads and what changes you can make if they do. In the military outpost scenario, you should be able to easily remove some of your planned encounters, or allow the characters to use distractions or roleplaying to avoid them.

96 attacks of lurking insects. Alternatively, poisonous gas or extreme temperatures might make it impossible for characters to rest. Nightmares and Hauntings. Short rests might be possible in a haunted area, but attempts to take a long rest result in horrid dreams that deny characters the benefits of the rest. Background Disturbances. The constant chittering of insects, the ground shaking due to tremors, the moaning of spirits, and similar disturbances can prevent rest. Likewise, a recurring loud gong in a nearby temple or waves of magical energy washing through an area could interrupt a rest. If the environment denies characters the opportunity to rest, let the players determine this quickly. Heroes who enter a ruined abbey should immediately feel a sense of overwhelming dread telling them they won’t be able to rest even as they explore, creating a sense of urgency. When characters can’t rest, the number of encounters in an adventuring day becomes more impactful, and resources become precious. Even a single encounter per day as a party crosses a haunted wilderness can be a challenge when no long rests are possible. A series of easy- and medium-challenge encounters becomes more exciting and formidable when no short rests are available. ADDITIONAL REST BENEFITS Sometimes it can be useful—or even necessary—to give characters even more rests than normal, by granting the benefit of short or long rests in other ways. When rests are plentiful, characters can face repeated challenges with all or most of their resources available, which can be fun for the players. When providing rest benefits, you can grant characters the full effect of a short or long rest, or create a partial rest effect that replicates a spell or other magic. Usually, the time required to gain these benefits is reduced, even to the point where the characters can gain the benefit during an encounter by making use of a source of power that bestows it. Holy Restoration. Drinking from a healing font, praying at a temple, or receiving a divine gift can all provide a restorative effect. Alchemy. Potions and draughts, ancient elixirs, or alchemical concoctions can allow characters to replenish resources in unusual ways. Alchemy can be a good way to provide alternative types of rejuvenation, from temporary hit points to reproducing the effects of magic potions. Unusual Magic. Arcane equipment, sources of raw eldritch power, or limited-use magic items can all restore characters. As a potential benefit, you can also let characters attune to newfound magic items more quickly than normal (or even instantly), either as a property of those items or a one-time supernatural benefit. Nature’s Gift. Natural sites with an abundance of primal or elemental energy might heal or reinvigorate characters. Meditation or Psionic Restoration. Places or sources of deep mental calm can restore body and mind in minutes rather than hours or days. Safe Place. In a busy or well-trafficked environment, the characters might find a secret door leading to a concealed space where they can rest without interruption. This space might be temporary, or it could allow repeated use. Out of Time. An extradimensional space can allow for time to pass differently, so that a short or long rest can be taken with almost no time passing in the world. Chaos. Elements of chaos magic or wild magic can let characters restore resources, or not expend those resources in the first place. In areas of such magic, casting a spell might not use a spell slot. Or perhaps every critical hit or each fallen foe randomly recharges one of a character’s limited-use class features. In some cases, it can be fun to surprise players and characters with a source of rest or rejuvenation. The characters might feel like they are on their last legs with many dangers still to come, only to find an unexpected way to regain resources. However, when the players benefit from carefully tracking their characters’ resources, it can be better to let them know up front how they can replenish those resources once spent. For example, characters trapped in a dungeon where resting is impossible might quickly realize that each of a set of artifacts they must recover to exit the dungeon also provides the equivalent of a long rest. This mechanic keeps the characters focused on finding the artifacts, while still encouraging them to use their capabilities to the fullest. DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT Mike often takes a different approach when considering the number of encounters per day—he doesn’t. If you want to experiment with this approach, just let the game play out how the game plays out. Sometimes the characters have good opportunities to take a lot of long rests, such as when they’re traveling vast distances in relative safety. Other times, heroes exploring deep dungeons have few opportunities for a safe respite. Sometimes the characters have all their resources going into a big fight. Sometimes they have hardly any. If the fun of the game is at risk from too many or too few encounters between rests, it’s worth grabbing onto the reins and looking to the advice in this section for managing your adventuring day. But otherwise, don’t be afraid to let things play out how they play out based on the evolving story taking place at the table.

NIKKI DAWES 97 THE HISTORY OF CHALLENGE In the first comprehensive edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game (the version commonly known as first edition or 1e to those who remember it, though it was in fact the second full version of the game), that greatest of all mortal foes the ancient red dragon had 88 hit points and an Armor Class of −1. Those aren’t typos. Yes, Armor Class ran backward in those days. That’s roughly equivalent to AC 21 in 5e. It’s complicated to explain. When we talk about encounter building within the context of the 5e D&D ruleset, we’re discussing a topic that’s been around for almost fifty years, and which has gone through multiple stages of evolution and revision. Each edition of the game had its own rules for how monsters and other enemies were to be stacked up against the player characters, and its own guidelines (or charming lack thereof) that GMs were expected to follow to create challenging encounters. By looking back at the progression of challenge and encounter design, we can see where earlier editions fell short of the modern game—and where we can learn things as GMs from the more laissezfaire approach of earlier gaming generations. TURNING THE TABLES There was no such thing as challenge or CR in first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. (That name is also complicated to explain.) There were no formulas or checklists for building balanced encounters. There was, in fact, very little consensus on what a balanced encounter (in the sense that we talk about it with the current version of the game) even means. Instead, monsters were broadly organized into ten “level” groups according to their XP value (the number of base experience points a monster was worth if defeated in combat). That XP calculation was in turn based on a monster’s Hit Dice (which were d8s across the board for all creature types and sizes, unlike later editions), hit points, and special features. Monster Hit Dice were also used to compare the relative threat of a group of monsters with the party fighting them, by dividing total Hit Dice by total character levels— but with monsters granted extra virtual Hit Dice for bonus hit points and special attacks. Challenge in 1e was a complicated process, in other words. But even more than that, challenge in 1e was never intended to be a process for selecting monsters to create balanced encounters. The ten tables into which creatures were divided were used for stocking the 1e game’s default multi-level, increased-depth-equals-increased-threat dungeons, where the level of the dungeon below the ground was expected to indicate the level of characters who would find it filled with suitable threats. Consulting the tables, a GM could see that the minor monsters of Table I were most common on the first to third levels of the dungeon (arbitrarily intended for 1stto 3rd-level characters), more powerful monsters from Table IV were unseen on the first dungeon level and most common on levels five through seven, and so forth. But random encounter tables for wilderness areas paid no attention to monster strength, with creatures there chosen entirely on the basis of fitting the environment and nothing else. TRIAL AND ERROR The second edition of AD&D (commonly called 2e in current parlance) cleaned up and clarified the 1e encounter approach somewhat. But for the most part, encounter building in both those earliest versions of the game was an art, not a science. Through trial and error while keeping one eye on the tables and the other on monster Hit Dice and special features, a GM would develop a sense of which monsters were a reasonable fit for characters by level, and then adjust the difficulty of such encounters by adjusting monster numbers relative to the party. But creating encounters against higher- or lower-threat creatures was almost entirely an ad hoc process. Then that process was made even more chaotic by randomly rolling for the number of monsters in an encounter before randomly rolling their hit points, as many GMs did. As such, encounters in the first- and second-edition days often needed to feature things rarely considered by modern GMs accustomed to setting up balanced

98 encounters of specific challenge level (easy, medium, hard, and deadly). Things like fitting monsters to the narrative (see “Choosing Monsters Based on the Story” on page 113) and making sure that combat encounters can be resolved in ways other than a clear win for the characters (talked about in “Exit Strategies” on page 91 and “On Morale and Running Away” on page 125). At the height of second edition, the ancient red dragon received an upgrade to the red great wyrm, and averaged out at 103 hit points with an upgraded AC of −11 (equivalent to AC 31 in the current game). GUIDELINES FOR CHALLENGE Starting in 2000, third edition D&D (no more “Advanced,” 3e to most, divided into 3.0e and 3.5e releases) made big changes to monsters and encounter building—and in so doing, laid the framework for encounter-building guidelines whose reflection can be seen in the current game. Across the board, monsters in 3e were tougher than their 1e and 2e counterparts, as 3e design embraced the idea of monsters having ability scores (they didn’t in earlier editions) and making good use of their Strength and Constitution modifiers to dial up damage output and hit points. Characters in the 3e game got tougher and more feature-rich as well, but that edition stuck close to the 1e/2e model in combat, with an average fighter still dealing a baseline 1d8 + 4 damage with a longsword and a fireball spell smacking down foes with 1d6 damage per caster level. GMs in third edition were the first to make use of challenge rating as a concept and game term, as each foe in the game was assigned a fixed numerical CR based on defenses, attacks, damage output, special features, and other factors. Famously, the 3e core rules didn’t provide any easy way to calculate a GM-created monster’s challenge rating, describing instead an arduous process of eyeballing the monster’s stats against other monsters of a given CR. Challenge rating was used to determine XP rewards for characters defeating a monster of a particular CR, with that reward adjusted depending on how the characters’ level and the monster’s CR compared. More importantly, though, 3e provided formulas and tables in plenty for determining how to create a theoretically balanced encounter for characters of a particular level, using the baseline idea that one monster of CR X was an appropriate challenge for four characters of level X. At the same time, third edition formalized the sense of what “balanced” should mean by breaking out encounters into varying ranks of difficulty, from easy to overpowering. In 3.0e and 3.5e, the ancient red dragon remained the red great wyrm, and received an eye-popping update to 660 hit points and an Armor Class of 41. NUMBERS GAME The tactical-focused fourth edition of D&D used dramatically different foundations for monster building and encounter design, making significant departures from third edition. The biggest of those departures was replacing monster challenge rating with monster level, and creating an encounter framework where one creature of level X was considered equivalent to one character of level X. That made building balanced encounters as easy as matching the characters up against equal numbers of same-level foes, using same-level elite and solo monsters to build mini-boss and boss encounters, or using straightforward formulas to build more complex encounters featuring monsters within one or two levels of the characters. The rebuilt challenge paradigm of fourth edition created what was arguably the game’s best encounterbuilding system—at least within the context of the neverending power creep that was the unintended baggage of 4e’s tactical-combat focus. That focus owed much to the broad math underlying the fourth edition game, which used the horizontal scaling of minion, normal, elite, and solo monsters to fill in a roster of foes for each level of challenge. (By comparison, the more tightly bounded 5e monster math can see a creature like an ogre act as a solo monster at the lowest levels of the game, an elite or normal monster at low-to-middle levels, and a minion at anything beyond the middle levels of the game). To wit, the ancient red dragon in 4e was once again rebranded with that name, and tipped the scales at 1,390 hit points and an Armor Class of 48. BACK TO THE FUTURE The current 5e core rules are a wonderful amalgam of ideas, principles, and feel-of-play from previous editions, all reshaped within a contemporary design space that’s produced the most popular—and arguably the most solid—version of the game yet. Tightening the range of bonuses that can be applied to combat has created a more focused math for determining the challenge of monsters. This means a thankful move away from the 3e and 4e tendency of attack modifiers, hit points, and Armor Class and other defenses to reach mid or high double digits, even as a controlled increase of character power across all levels leaves room for the most powerful monsters to still feel forbidding. Looking over the history of challenge, one straightforward conclusion is that whether the game had loose systems or rigid systems, those systems never worked quite as well as their designers intended. Whether it’s the loose Hit Dice gauge of 1e and 2e or a rigid levelbased system like 4e, other factors and the subtle effects of the game’s mechanics can constantly send battles in unexpected directions. The rest of this book offers much advice for building and running encounters for the 5e game, keeping in mind the importance of being able to navigate those unexpected combat course changes. But as a starting point to all that, this section can offer up that the ancient red dragon of 5e has 546 hit points and an Armor Class of 22. Roll for initiative.

99 WHAT ARE CHALLENGE RATINGS? Challenge ratings are a loose guideline with which we can compare monsters to evaluate their power and station, and to compare them to the level of the characters. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of 5e’s challenge rating system can help you build more dynamic encounters and adventures. The concept and intent of a monster’s challenge rating is sometimes difficult to grasp. This comes from one important yet often unspoken factor of challenge ratings: they don’t compare to anything else. A monster’s challenge rating compares only to the similar challenge rating of other monsters—and this comparison is loose at best. Even with the same challenge rating, creatures often behave very differently in combat. THE LIMITS OF GUIDELINES As set out in the 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide, four characters should be able to defeat a single monster with a challenge rating equal to their level without suffering any deaths. But relating four characters to one foe is hardly a solid comparison, because of the difference in the number of actions the characters and a single foe can make use of. (“Understanding the Action Economy,” page 42, has more information on this topic.) In general, a single monster doesn’t match well against four characters of a level equal to the monster’s challenge rating. The higher level the characters, the worse that match becomes. Further, challenge ratings don’t give you any indication how well a group of foes matches up against a group of characters. For that, the 5e core rules offer a complicated two-dial system of experience points budgets and multipliers, while other books provide tables to help compare groups of monsters to groups of characters. But there’s one unfortunate truth underlying these approaches: no system does an accurate job. There’s simply too much variance and too many variables to summarize combat with a single calculation. This book includes different sets of loose guidelines to help gauge the combat threat of creatures compared to characters, including “Monster Combinations for a Hard Challenge” on page 67 and “The Lazy Encounter Benchmark” on page 70. Loose guidelines are as good as any advice on this topic can get, given how loose challenge ratings can be when applied to different creatures, and the high variance of difficulty for any given encounter. Since no system of encounter building is particularly accurate, loose systems thus work better than complex ones. COMPARING MONSTERS So if challenge ratings are of limited use in gauging encounters, why do we bother with them? It’s because challenge ratings are still generally useful for comparing one monster to another. They say something about each creature’s place in the world. Giant rats aren’t as dangerous as ghouls, who aren’t as dangerous as ogres, who aren’t as dangerous as fire giants, who aren’t as dangerous as balors. Challenge ratings offer quantifiable numbers that show the overall power hierarchy of creatures and NPCs in the world. They show which foes are weak, which ones are strong, and which are epically dangerous. APPROPRIATE CHALLENGES Challenge ratings also clarify what kinds of threats characters should face given their level. They help define what kinds of problems are worthy of the characters’ attention at different points in their adventuring careers. It’s easy to conclude that 18th-level characters probably shouldn’t be facing giant rats, even as 2nd-level characters shouldn’t be facing frost giants. Character level means something in the story of the game. A 2nd-level party typically handles problems of a local scale. At 7th level, characters are handling regional problems. By 13th level, they handle kingdom-level problems. At 17th level, characters are taking on the problems of the multiverse. And thanks to challenge ratings, we can see what foes are the best general fit for those types of threats, knowing that 3rd-level characters are going to have significant trouble defending a town overtaken by an army of greater demons. In this regard, a monster of a specific challenge rating shows roughly what level of characters are their “equals” from a story perspective—even if knowing that doesn’t help perfectly balance the mechanics of combat. THE WORLD DOESN’T FIT THE LEVEL OF THE CHARACTERS That said, GMs shouldn’t shy away from exposing low-CR monsters to higher-level characters—or vice versa—if doing so makes sense within the context of the story. Bandits are still bandits wherever they might be found, and if 9th-level characters get jumped by such brigands, it’s perfectly acceptable for them to mop the floor with those NPCs—and potentially a lot of fun. (“Running Easy Monsters,” page 124, has thoughts on that topic.) On the other hand, the characters might witness foes far beyond their capabilities—hopefully from a distance. It behooves GMs to telegraph the danger of encounters with too-powerful creatures, so that the characters don’t run in with swords and spells at the ready, only to be quickly destroyed. Likewise, being directly threatened by highCR monsters can take agency away from the players and characters alike, leaving them with few options other than surrender and capitulation. In general, try to avoid forcing encounters with deadly threats just to push the characters in a particular direction—but if doing so makes sense in the larger context of the story and won’t ruin the players’ fun, go with it.