I am mildly obsessed with this table from the 3rd edition Dungeon Master’s Guide and the accompanying explanation.
| % of Total | Encounter |
|---|---|
| 10% | Easy |
| 20% | Easy if handled properly |
| 50% | Challenging |
| 15% | Very difficult |
| 5% | Overpowering |
I know it’s not a particularly glamorous topic, but the rhythm of the adventuring day is key for establishing an appropriate sense of threat. If encounters are too easy, the game feels trivial; too hard, and every combat becomes a slog. Get the ratios right, and the players feel like badass heroes.
This isn’t meant to be a long post, but there are a few key lessons here.
Most encounters should be challenging.
And by most, we mean ‘half’. But what is ‘challenging’? According to the 3rd edition DMG, ‘Most encounters seriously threaten at least one member of the group in some way [. . .] If an encounter doesn’t cost the PCs some significant portion of their resources, it’s not challenging.’ In the 2014 DMG, a ‘medium’ encounter uses about one-sixth of the party’s resources, but I think most people would agree that such encounters do not feel particularly challenging.
In Level Up 5e, it’s a bit more complicated: a high-level party might manage eight ‘medium’ fights, but a low-level one might only manage two. In 3rd edition, a party should be able to handle four challenging encounters per day, which probably aligns with what a ‘medium’ encounter now means in the 2024 rules (or a ‘hard’ encounter in 2014). That, to me, feels just right.
. . . but a lot of encounters will be easy . . .
According to the 3rd edition DMG, ‘The group should be able to handle an almost limitless number of these encounters.’ In the 2014 rules, an easy encounter uses about one-twelfth of the party’s resources, although Level Up 5e notes that a low-level party might only manage three or four such encounters before needing a long rest. In my experience, a lot of DMs don’t run enough easy encounters, myself included.
. . . ‘if handled properly’.
This is perhaps my favourite category of encounter, but it’s also the one that requires the most thought, and you won’t find it anywhere in 5th edition. To quote 3rd edition:
There’s a trick to this kind of encounter—a trick the PCs must discover to have a good chance of victory. Find and eliminate the evil cleric with greater invisibility first so she stops bolstering the undead, and everything else about the encounter becomes much easier. If not handled properly, this kind of encounter becomes challenging or even very difficult.
The best way to plan this kind of encounter is to start with a ‘challenging’ or ‘very difficult’ encounter and then build in the ‘trick.’ Here is a (non-exhaustive) list of ideas:
| d10 | Trick to make it easy |
|---|---|
| 1 | Eliminate the lynchpin. One enemy is keeping the rest strong, coordinated, or alive. Remove them first. |
| 2 | Use the environment. Terrain, hazards, or ambient effects can be turned against the enemy. |
| 3 | End the ritual. A magical effect is fuelling the threat. Disrupt or destroy it. |
| 4 | Split the group. The enemy is strong together but vulnerable apart. |
| 5 | Misdirection. Stealth, disguise, or other subtleties can allow the party to avoid the fight. |
| 6 | Turn them on each other. Tensions, rivalries, or fear can be pushed to trigger infighting. |
| 7 | Break their morale. A bold strike, dead leader, or spectacle can cause the rest to flee or surrender. |
| 8 | Time your strike. The threat is weaker at certain moments or stronger if delayed. Act accordingly. |
| 9 | Sabotage their support. Machines, alarms, or constructs can be disabled before they become a problem. |
| 10 | Free an ally. An NPC or creature can be turned to the party’s side or released to help. |
If you’re using XP (which I prefer), give full XP for bypassing encounters in this way.
Occasionally, a fight will be too difficult.
This category needs careful handling. Some DMs lean on these far too heavily, throwing in hopeless fights with little warning. I don’t think D&D benefits from that kind of design. But equally, if you never run encounters that outmatch the party, the world starts to feel sterile and ‘balanced’ in a way that undermines the fiction. One overpowering encounter every 20 fights feels about right.
How do you plan for this? Level Up 5e has good advice: if the total enemy challenging rating equals or exceeds the total character level, it’s probably impossible. That said, I’d lean upward when using 5e’s maths. A well-optimised, well-rested group can pull off some surprising wins.
‘Overpowering’ encounters achieve a number of important roles. They make the world feel credible and believable. They encourage player caution and problem-solving. They raise the stakes, reminding the players that failure, and death, are always possible. And they can foreshadow long-term stories in the campaign: the return of an elder evil, the awakening of a slumbering dragon, the mustering of a great army, and so on.
A great tip from Sly Flourish here: be careful to signpost to the players that this is not a fight they can probably win. Think of Gandalf’s words in The Fellowship of the Ring when the Balrog appears on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm: ‘This foe is beyond any of you.’ It’s not cheating or metagaming: it’s acknowledging that characters are veterans of the world, even if the players aren’t. And anyway, players only know half of what’s going on at any one time.
Bonus tip: different reasons for fighting
Daði over at Mystic Arts has a couple of great videos on how to mix up your combat and stop it feeling like a slog. One video covers the eight types of combat, and the other offers twelve combat objectives. Check them out! He recommends building two tables—one for combat type, one for objective—and rolling or picking from them for inspiration. I have slightly adapted Daði’s categories below, but you should definitely watch the original videos for more details of what entail.
| d8 | Combat type |
|---|---|
| 1 | Skirmish (baseline fight) |
| 2 | Ambush |
| 3 | Targeted strike |
| 4 | Horde of bad guys |
| 5 | Elite team |
| 6 | Slaughterfest (‘stomping ground’) |
| 7 | Boss battle |
| 8 | Puzzle |
| d12 | Combat objective |
|---|---|
| 1 | Death match |
| 2 | Stop the ritual |
| 3 | Daring escape |
| 4 | Hold the fort |
| 5 | Waves of bad guys |
| 6 | Save the NPC |
| 7 | Sabotage |
| 8 | Protect the payload |
| 9 | Defend the base |
| 10 | Steal and escape |
| 11 | De-escalate |
| 12 | Take them alive |
So next time you’re building your adventuring day, think less about individual fights and more about the overall rhythm. Mix up the difficulty, weave in clever tricks, keep things moving—and don’t be afraid to throw in something that makes say ‘oh shi—’.
Your world deserves to feel alive. And your players? They deserve to feel clever for surviving it.
Have fun!
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