What is a "Balanced" Encounter?

One of the biggest hurdles for a new Dungeon Master is encounter balance. How do you create a fight that is challenging and exciting, but not so hard that it wipes out the entire party? (Unless that's what you're going for!)

A "balanced" encounter doesn't mean a "fair" fight. It means the challenge is appropriate for the party's level and resources. The goal is to drain some of their resources—hit points, spell slots, daily abilities—so they have to make interesting tactical decisions.

The Core of Balance: XP Thresholds

The Dungeon Master's Guide provides a system based on XP (Experience Points) to gauge difficulty. Every creature has an XP value based on its Challenge Rating (CR). The four encounter difficulties are:

• Easy: A minor challenge, requires few party resources.
• Medium: A decent challenge, will likely cost the party some resources.
• Hard: A dangerous fight. Players will need to be smart, and there's a real risk of a character going down.
• Deadly: A very dangerous fight that could easily lead to character death.

The key is to create an "XP Budget" for your party based on their level and size, and then fill that budget with monsters. This is the math that the Dungeons Tale Encounter Generator automates for you!

Beyond the Math: Action Economy

While XP budgets are a great starting point, the single most important factor in D&D 5e combat is the action economy. This simply means "how many things can each side do per round?"

A party of four adventurers gets four actions per round. If they're fighting a single powerful monster, the action economy is 4-to-1 in their favor. This is why a single high-CR monster can sometimes feel surprisingly easy. Conversely, fighting a dozen low-CR goblins can be incredibly dangerous, because the players will be overwhelmed by the sheer number of attacks.

Adjusting on the Fly

It's okay to adjust during the fight! If the combat is too easy, you can have a second wave of monsters appear. If it's too hard, maybe the lead monster has less HP than you initially planned, or a crumbling pillar falls and separates some of the enemies.