These guidelines, like the encounter building rules in the Dungeon Master's Guide and the challenge rating of monsters in the Monster Manual, are not perfect. The following guidelines aim to help Dungeons & Dragons dungeon masters quickly gauge the difficulty of combat encounters. If you find this article useful, please check out Return of the Lazy Dungeon Master and the Lazy DM's Workbook for more tips on preparing and running your D&D games. You can also read another take on this topic at A New Dungeon Master's Guide For Building Encounters and download the Encounter Building Guidelines PDF from the Lazy DM's Workbook. Consider the guidelines below as another alternative for fast and simple encounter building. The D&D sourcebook Xanathar's Guide to Everything now includes an excellent alternative method for encounter building in addition to the encounter building rules in the Dungeon Master's Guide.
Note: This article is a rewrite of the original from March 2015.įor an even simpler approach to determine potentially deadly combat encounters, see The Lazy Encounter Benchmark, a Simple Benchmark for D&D Encounter Deadliness. New to Sly Flourish? Start Here! Building Encounters in Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons
