It feels like every D&D blogger or YouTuber has recently covered the topic of encounter balance. Why?
Let’s recap. A few weeks ago, Wizards of the Coast released the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide, and many of us have been looking forward to the new encounter rules and how they’ve changed.
By the designers’ admission, the 2014 DMG was a bit of a rush-job, and the encounter-building guidance in particular had some serious flaws. Not only was it unclear, it was also just … wrong. Frankly, it didn’t feel properly playtested. Anyone who has DMed 5th edition for a significant length of time will tell you that it becomes increasingly difficult to challenge the party from about 7th level onward, and by Tier 4, almost impossible.
WotC clearly knew something was off. They released new encounter-building rules three years later in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. The rules were better—but still not great. In particular, high-level play still felt far too easy.
Is encounter-building that a big deal? In short, yes. Combat is one of the three pillars of the game, and for many groups, the most important pillar. DMs need help knowing how to make an encounter fun and challenging, and if the core guidance is wrong on that point, it has consequences.
So how has encounter-building changed?
Hordes? No biggie
First of all, the new DMG has removed the advice about encounter multipliers. In 2014, you would adjust the ‘encounter XP’ by the number of monsters. Thus, one goblin was worth 50 XP, two were 150 XP, and four were 400 XP. The thinking here was that large numbers of monsters were disproportionately harder to fight because of action economy. Two goblins feel more challenging than a single hobgoblin, but in the new DMG, they are both worth 100 XP.
I can see why they’ve done this. The maths was fiddly, and at higher levels it maybe overstated the threat of large groups of enemies. You could also end up with some slightly bizarre outcomes where a lich with two rats was somehow ‘twice as deadly’ as a lich on its own, which is clearly ridiculous.
No more dungeon-crawling?
What else has the 2024 DMG changed?
The adventuring day has gone. Pfft! It has ceased to be. There is no mention of it any more.
I have mixed feelings about this.
On the one hand, it was easy to misinterpret, and lots of groups just ignored the advice anyway. But on the other, I think there’s a merit in explaining to DMs how the game is balanced around attitrition of resources. If characters are only fighting one or two battles each day, their finite resources suddenly don’t feel that finite any more. If you can only cast three 3rd-level spells a day, but you know you’re only going to have one encounter that day … well, you don’t have to worry about casting fireball anymore. To all intents and purposes, it’s a cantrip. (This is also one of the key reasons why people complain about the ‘quadratic wizards, linear fighters’ phenomenon. Try playing a wizard who has run out of spell slots … )
‘I eat red dragons for breakfast’
There’s one other big change in the 2024 DMG as far as encounter-building is concerned. Perhaps most significantly, the XP table has changed. 2014 ‘medium’ has become 2024 ‘low,’ 2014 ‘hard’ has become 2024 ‘medium,’ and 2014 ‘deadly’ has become 2024 ‘high’—except at Tier 4, where the gloves really come off, and 2024 ‘high’ becomes 50-percent harder than 2014 ‘deadly’ by 20th level. (To put this in perspective: eight young red dragons would be a moderate encounter in 2024 rules.)
Of all the changes, this one is perhaps the most justified. High-level encounters were already too easy in 2014 rules, and with 2024’s power creep, this was only going to get worse. But if the new Monster Manual gives higher-level monsters a bit of a boost—and early signs suggest this will happen—the arms race might cancel itself out. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. (Incidentally, have you seen how many magic items the new DMG thinks we should be doling out? Far, far more than 2014 recommended! But that’s a post for another day.)
Harder, better, faster, stronger
Anyway, there’s a secondary implication of this. If ‘medium’ encounters are now easy, and ‘hard’ encounters are now ‘medium,’ it follows that parties can get through more XP, more quickly—and, accordingly, level up faster. This is especially true now that we’ve taken encounter multipliers out of the equation.
Consider a party of four 1st-level adventurers. In 2014, they would have needed, collectively, 1,200 XP to reach 2nd level. That’s twelve (100 XP) hobgoblins, or twice as many goblins (50 XP), or four times as many kobolds (25 XP).
Let’s think about goblins for the moment. You wouldn’t fight them en masse, of course. Two dozen goblins would be a TPK. Even four goblins would be ‘deadly,’ technically. But three would be doable—‘hard,’ but doable. So unless you wanted to kill your players, you would need to fight those 24 goblins in groups of three or fewer: eight hard encounters to level up.
Now, in 2024, you still need 1,200 XP to level up, and a goblin is still worth 50 XP, but now three goblins are ‘moderate,’ not ‘hard.’ In fact, according to the 2024 DMG, a ‘high’ challenge would now be four goblins—previously ‘deadly.’ Your group still needs to fight two dozen goblins, but according to the new rules, they should be able to do this in six fights, not eight.
This might not sound like a big deal, but over 20 levels of play, it’s quite dramatic. Have a look at the graph below:
In 2014, a party would need to fight 959 ‘medium’ encounters to reach 20th level. In 2024, they only need to fight 517 ‘moderate’ encounters. That’s almost half as many encounters over a whole campaign. Presumably WotC isn’t so fussed about this because so many people use milestone levelling now.
Conclusions and verdict
In sum, then, what have we got?
- Harder encounters
- Faster levelling
- No adventuring day
- No adjustments for hordes
I’m going to put my head above the parapet here: this feels like the wrong approach. Don’t get me wrong—the 2014 rules weren’t perfect by any means (too easy, too fussy, out of line with how most people played). But this guidance is also not quite right, just in a different way (too simple, too difficult, too power-gamey). And this frustrates me, because, in a game with a mathematical foundation, encounter building should, in theory, be **predictable, at least to an extent, and it feels like the game designers have lurched too far in the opposite direction.
Far better, in my opinion, is the advice in Level Up 5e, aka ‘Advanced 5th Edition.’ Their rules are a little more granular than 2014 (eg, they take into account the fragility of lower-level characters, and they recommend a ‘maximum CR’ for any single creature), but the overall advice is solid. If you’re looking for something that improves on 2014 rules without going too far down the 2024 route, A5e is what I would recommend.
Incidentally, it is also the encounter guidance I am going to follow in The Campaign Handbook—which is nearly due another update! I have fallen very behind on this due to some nasty illness, moving, and a particularly full-on period at work, but I’m hoping to have levels 1–13 finished very soon. Join me on Patreon for more details!
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