Low-Level Encounters

 With the new DMG and new MM in hand, it's all very exciting to build insane, epic encounters with Liches, Arch-Hags, Blobs of Annihilation, and the like.

But what about those very early fights? What about the kind of fights you're going to be having possibly in your very first session? I know not all campaigns even start at level 1, but I'm curious to see what the DMG says we can build that, in theory, we can throw brand-new characters up against. Generally, combat has been made scarier by a more liberal amount of XP to spend and also by making the monsters tougher.

My first combat encounter I ever ran was between a Wizard, Paladin, and Fighter and two Kobolds and an Octopus (the latter of which I allowed them to befriend). The 2014 DMG was extremely conservative when it came to building encounters with multiple monsters, and it wasn't until the better-but-still-flawed encounter-building guidance found in Xanathar's Guide to Everything that I started having more satisfying fights.

The 2024 DMG is probably the most hard-skewing system I've used (between those two and the CR budgets in Flee Mortals,) but let's look at what we can build with the new core rulebooks.

The new system is relatively simple: each player at each level in the party contributes a certain amount of XP to an overall budget. This is like what we had in 2014, except that there are no coefficients to worry about. Having over two monsters doesn't suddenly balloon our effective XP spent by a factor of two (which is why it was hard to make any multi-monster encounter and stay on budget,) so this actually works similarly to the Flee Mortals system, except that CR and XP don't scale in a linear manner with one another.

There is a different budget per player for three different difficulty levels - Low, Moderate, and High. Naturally, if your budget falls somewhere between these, you can imagine that there's greater levels of granularity. I'd also say if you go slightly over High or slightly under Low, you might still have a fun encounter, but going too far beyond these will probably make things far to trivial or unfairly hard.

Now, one thing we don't get guidance on is how to manage friendly NPCs. My rule is that I just deduct the XP of allies from the XP spent, or, to put it another way, allies add to our total budget of hostile monsters an amount equal to their XP value. (Though if gaining the help of an NPC reflected a strong effort on the party of the party, I might not adjust the difficulty, allowing them to just enjoy the easier fights because of their work to garner the favor of this ally.)

But, given that we're probably at the start of our campaign here, we probably don't yet have allies to count on. So, what is our budget?

At level 1, Low is 50 XP, Moderate is 75, and High is 100.

If we imagine a group of 5 players (which seems about average in my experience, your mileage may vary) we can thus imagine that our budgets are somewhere between 250 and 500 xp.

Thus, for a hard fight, we're looking at probably a maximum CR of 2, which is worth 450 xp, leaving only 50 left for additional monsters - though a single CR 2 monster is probably enough to be pretty scary.

This is certainly possible, but I think especially at 1st level, when you might have PCs with 7 or 8 maximum hit points, I think this can be a little much. An Ankheg's Acid Spray hits for an average of 14 damage, which will take down pretty much any 1st-level character on a failed save except maybe a Barbarian with 16 or more Con.

Instead, I want to see what a fight of this sort is like using two of D&D's most classic low-level foes - Goblins and Kobolds.

We have three Goblin stat blocks which will fit within that absolute maximum budget, which are the Goblin Minion, Goblin Warrior, and Goblin Boss.

Now, the simplest thing here would be to just use a single type of creature. Goblin Minions are CR 1/8, and worth 25 xp a piece. Thus, even with a low-difficulty encounter, a party of 5 players could theoretically fight 10 of these. While the math claims that this should be easy, I'm not convinced it would be. Consider this:

Let's say we have a 1st level Monk. They've really arranged their stats to optimize for what Monks do, so they've got a +3 to Dex, Wis, and Con, and -1s to the other three stats. Thus, they have 11 HP and an AC of 16. They use their spear two-handed, so each turn they can make one attack with a +5 to hit for 1d8+3 (7.5 average) and a bonus action attack for 1d6+3 (6.5).

Goblin Minions have a max HP of 7 and an AC of 12. So, our Monk has to roll a 7 or higher to hit them (70%). On a crit, they'd have to roll two 1s or a 1 and a 2 on the dice not to instantly kill the goblin. On a normal hit, their spear will take the goblin down on a roll of 4 or higher (so 5/8 of the time) and on their unarmed strike, they do the full HP half of the time (4-6). So, that's pretty good - very easy to take these guys out.

However, if the minions get the drop on them, and perhaps they identify the Monk as a major threat (which it certainly is at 1st level) and they all unload on the Monk, each has a +4 to hit, and 10 of these guys tossing daggers or stabbing at this Monk is going to mean that their 45% chance to hit across 10 attacks means that, well, about 4.5 of those attacks will hit, and each does an average of 4 damage, so our Monk is probably going down.

Now, of course, this is very bad for the Monk, but their Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, and Bard friends might then seriously winnow the numbers of goblins they're fighting by the next round (the Cleric might get them up with a Cure Wounds - likely healing them to full given the buff to that spell) so that such a massive assault will not be repeated.

If, instead, we use Goblin Warriors (what used to be simply "goblins") we cut down significantly on the number of attacks coming out. Goblin Warriors are CR 1/4, and thus worth 50 xp, meaning out party is only going to face 5 of them (one per player) if we're only using them. Each of these goblins hits a bit harder - they deal 5 damage, or 7 on average if they have advantage on the attack (which they can get potentially by hiding as a bonus action). And they are also harder to take down - with an AC of 15 (requiring a roll of 10 or higher from our hypothetical Monk) and also having 10 HP (meaning that if the Monk wants to fully take one down in a single hit, they have to roll a 7 or 8 on their spear, and they just straight cannot with an unarmed strike at this level outside of a crit).

Still, these have the same +4 to hit, so outside of being able to hide (which is legitimately a good use of their bonus action, though they might not be able to get obscurement if they don't instead disengage,) so they'll probably have less of a chance to hit than not when fighting in the open.

Finally, we can look at the Goblin Boss, which is CR 1 and thus worth 200 xp. For our low-difficulty encounter, we're now looking at maybe one of these and either a single Goblin Warrior or, more likely, two Goblin Minions (minions and bosses feel like a good combo).

The Goblin Boss had multiattack, and deals basically the same damage as a Goblin Warrior with the same attack bonus. But its AC is 17 and it has 21 HP, so you could argue that you're basically combining two Goblin Warriors into one creature, adding both their attacks and their HP into one package. They also have a reaction that can redirect attacks against them to hit an ally.

Now, strategically, as a DM, you might find that the Boss can take a hit or two and you might prefer to have those extra bodies on the field to split focus and get off more attacks. But both personality-wise and thematically, it'll make a lot of sense to have the Boss preserve itself by sacrificing its minions to your party's blows.

Again, though, note that this is all the low difficulty budget for a 1st level party. All of these fights are theoretically something that they should be able to breeze through. And yeah, when you consider that you could fry a bunch of minions with a Burning Hands (average damage is 10.5, so on a lucky roll you could even kill some minions on a successful save) or how a Ranger that's dual-wielding could deal 4d6+3 total to a Goblin boss on the first round of combat (with lucky rolls, that could be lethal) you can see how that might be.

Kobolds are perhaps in second place to goblins as classic low-level monsters, and we have fewer to choose form in the Monster Manual.

Kobold Warriors are CR 1/8, like goblin minions. They do similar damage +4 to hit for an average of 4 damage (also just using daggers) but they can get advantage on their attacks if they have allies within 5 feet of the target, so a swarm of kobolds can be pretty deadly.

Winged Kobolds are CR 1/4, like goblin warriors (yeah, it bugs me slightly that "warriors" here don't match up,) attacking in range or melee for +5 to hit and 6 average damage, also with Pack Tactics. As flyers, Winged Kobolds are going to make it tough for your melee characters.

Again, though, 10 of the warriors or 5 of the winged kobolds are supposed to be easy encounters - but let's think cautiously: If you're playing these monsters as strategic thinkers, Winged Kobolds will probably zero in on the party's ranged combatants. Granted, they still need to be within 30 feet for their ranged attacks, so even a Barbarian could huck a javelin at one.

Now, let's consider about how we could ramp up the difficulty, and if we even should.

Just going up to Moderate difficulty, our budget is now 375. That could mean 15 CR 1/8 monsters - that's three times as many attacks coming into the party as the party has chances to respond. AoE spells are relatively limited at this level, but you do have things like Burning Hands at least. It's also likely that CR 1/8 monsters will miss more often than they hit - characters in Medium or Heavy Armor are likely to start with an AC of 16, or 18 if they use a Shield. A creature with a +4 to hit is going to have to roll a 12 or higher to hit the former (45% hit chance) or a 14 or higher to hit the latter (35% hit chance.) Now, that is enough that, if they're fighting a lot of creatures, the damage will add up.

In a fight like this, I'd really recommend making a dynamic battlefield with places to take cover, different elevations, and other environmental effects (like a stream that's just deep enough to be difficult terrain, where ranged party members might gain just enough distance to keep melee attackers at bay).

I also think that for a party's first encounter, even amongst experienced players, the low difficulty is probably what you're looking for. Even while still level 1, players might have the time or gold to secure things like healing potions and other supplies.

In campaigns I've run, I usually have the party level up after their first day of adventuring no matter what the XP gained is, but if you want to really live in that low-level, tier 1 area, you can build up to those harder fights gradually.

The higher-level your players get, the more flexibility they have to deal with different difficulty levels. But at first level, there's only so much that they can do. A few unlucky rolls can turn even a low-difficulty encounter into a TPK, and unless the party has ample means to avoid a fight in the first place, or to escape from a fight, I think you, as the DM, should always try to avoid such a fate. Frankly, for a campaign's first encounter, I think killing a single character is basically DM malpractice. (Unless you intend this more as an inciting incident that involves the players coming back to life - but if that's the case, throw a CR 5 creature or something at them to make sure it happens).

Actually, just to take a look at this, let's consider the Lost Mine of Phandelver, the first 5th Edition adventure and what is generally considered a pretty good standard by which to judge low-level adventures (and which got expanded out in The Shattered Obelisk).

LMoP is designed for 4-5 characters who start at 1st level. And the adventure begins with an ambush by goblins on the road. This uses 4 goblins (now goblin warriors,) which matches the balance for a low-difficulty encounter (even under-budget if we've got 5 players).

The subsequent encounters in Cragmaw Hold of course might be a little more chaotic, with goblins and other creatures running to gather allies in other rooms. In fact, the biggest grouping of hostile creatures in the entire dungeon is Klarg the bugbear (CR 1, what would now be considered a Bugbear Warrior) with a wolf and two goblins (goblin warriors,) meaning a total XP value of 350, putting us slightly below a "moderate" encounter.

So, what's our takeaway?

Well, given how new these rules are, we haven't really gotten a sense for how hard a Low, Moderate, or High difficulty encounter is. I've run two encounters using the new system (I think? Maybe I've done more) and it certainly seems like Moderate is closer to what we used to think of as hard, and High is probably in the truly deadly territory.

It would stand to reason that, Cragmaw Hold being the first dungeon for a bunch of new adventurers, the whole thing skews easy. Way at the end of the adventure, the "final boss fight" (assuming that they don't somehow negotiate a surrender) with Nezznar the Black Spider involves fighting him (a CR 2 custom stat block, I believe, so 450 xp) and four Giant Spiders (CR 1, so 200 apiece, and a total of 800 xp). Thus, the budget for this encounter is 1,250 xp. Divided by 4, that comes to 312, or 250 if divided between 5 players, which at level 4 makes it either a Low difficulty encounter or between Low and Moderate.

And I think that's illustrative:

My sense is that if you're intending a fight that's one among many over the course of a day, you probably want to skew Low difficulty. D&D is a game of attrition, after all, and HP, Spell Slots, and other resources deplete over time. Several low-difficulty encounters will test this ability to conserve resources (balancing offensive resources against the need to kill things before they can deal tons of damage). My sense, then, is that high-difficulty encounters are more for days when the party is expecting just one major fight - and there, you can really pull out the stops and expect the party to absolutely Nova against the monsters.

Now, what's the place for Moderate-difficulty encounters? Well, I'd say probably only aim to have two or maybe three in a day. For random encounters on the road, if you want the sense that a region has some real dangers (perhaps far out beyond civilization, or if the party has powerful enemies and a bounty on their heads) you might go for a Moderate encounter. A 3rd level party - high enough to have gotten through some introductory adventures and perhaps made some enemies or merit being sent abroad - of 5 players would call a fight worth 1,125 a Moderate encounter. A Troll (CR 5) would be slightly higher than that at 1,800 xp, while an Ettin or Banshee (CR 4) would be pretty much right on the money at 1,100 xp. Such a fight should be doable, but they'll pose enough of a challenge to draw on some real resources.

So, broadly speaking, here's how I think of these as working:

Low difficulty encounters should be your dungeon-crawl, several-fights-per-day encounters. Moderate encounters should be only a couple a day, or just one a day if you want to let the party let loose and feel a monster is worth burning high-level resources but not feel like they're in a ton of danger. High-difficulty is probably when you want one really cataclysmic event - a major set piece or battle that the party should have time to get ready for and not really need to worry about what comes after it.

Interesting - with this in mind, I might take a look at some of the encounters I have in the dungeon crawl I'm currently running (mainly the final boss) and might scale down the two-phase finale a bit (it actually might be ok - it starts as a fight against an Elder Brain and two Ettin Ceremorphs, and once the Elder Brain is reduced to zero HP, it transforms itself and the battlefield and the party fights a re-skinned Dyrnn (the Mind Flayer Daelkyr from Eberron). I want to ensure that it's not a High difficulty fight in either phase.