The @slyflourish monster baseline is super useful as this inexperienced DM adjusts encounters for his party. I can pick CR based on the party, then use these guidelines to dial monsters in to the right CR.
Looking at the most critical stats:
Damage = 7-10 * CR
HP = 15-20 * CR
Really great for taking published encounters intended for higher level parties and dialling it back (but still hitting hard).
Typically in Dungeons and Dragons an adventure consists of some easy encounters, some hard encounters, a deadly encounter, and then the final encounter. The way characters level up over a campaign echoes this progression.
Heck, this is even typical in most stories. The heroes may see a deadly monster early, but they don’t fight it until they are more powerful. Or, in the course of a D&D adventuring day, when they’ve used some amount of resources, thereby making the final monster more deadly.
Through a happy little accident of misreading some stat blocks, my last set of sessions inverted this process.
Rather than meet goblins, then hobgoblins, then an ogre climbing that ladder of difficulty, the group started their day with a CR 7.6 encounter, next was a CR 6.25 encounter, and then a CR 3.
That released some opportunities for the players. The happy little accident meant that during that tough encounter they used a bunch of powerful abilities rather than keep them in reserve. During the second encounter they used more.
Then, finally, when they met the “boss” (who was actually the boss of the various Dragon Sworn*) they only had a couple abilities left. That meant it felt deadly, but really wasn’t. They won easily.
* For this I used the Fizban’s Dragon Blessed, Dragon Chosen, and Dragon Speaker
Overall the group was tested, more so than typical in my sessions. Also, they got to use more of their potent features. If I better telegraphed the inversion, like if it was planned, then they would have used even more of their limited powers.
When a player invests in a character having certain abilities they need to be able to use them. This accident utilized more powers in one day then I’ve seen in some time.
Now they’ll try to rest.
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https://fullmoonstorytelling.com/2022/01/19/try-inverting-your-dd-encounters-difficulty/
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Mike Doherty
PinkDiceGM
Full Moon Storytelling