Introduction
The 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide snuck a significant difficulty increase into the game, and most of us didn’t even look at the combat encounter rules closely enough to notice.
Balancing combat encounters has long been a pain point in DnD 5e. Challenge Rating feels like a loose suggestion, the 2014 rules for building combat encounters require a frustrating amount of math, and the “Adventuring Day” pacing assumptions used in the 2014 rules are borderline impossible to use.
The 2024 rules aimed to simplify a lot of things and address long-standing pain points. These changes have also introduced interesting balance changes.
We Haven’t Seen the Monster Manual
We have not yet seen the changes to monsters. We know that WotC wants creatures above CR 20 to be much more powerful than in the 2014 rules, but they haven’t said anything about other creatures other than that everything got reexamined to make sure that it matched its CR. We’ve seen a few isolated examples, such as the Dire Wolf, which actually got nerfed between the 2014 and 2024 versions.
We also don’t know for certain that XP for a creature at a given CR has not changed. There are enough examples in the 2024 DMG that I don’t think they have, but I can’t say for certain.
The Multiple Monster Multipliers are Gone
In the 2014 rules, you added a multiplier for each additional enemy in an encounter, then applied another multiplier based on the number of party members. The “normal” encounter was 4 PCs against 1 monster of CR equal to the party’s average level, but even that never really held up because the xp value for any given CR never matched the XP budget for 4 players.
Anything beyond that got screwy, and there was no distinction for varying monster CR. An encounter with a CR 10 Froghemoth and 2 CR ¼ Giant Frogs was treated as slightly more difficult than a single CR 14 creature (12,000 xp vs. 11,500 xp). It’s not. Those Giant Frogs are fun to add to the encounter, but they do not add to the difficulty of the encounter as the math indicates.
These clumsy multipliers have gone away. This makes it considerably easier to build encounters without the aid of an encounter builder, but it also means that encounters with multiple enemies no longer exponentially increase the XP budget for an encounter.
You’re free to throw in CR 0 enemies at 10xp each to fill out encounters, leaving the party mobs to carve through without worrying that the game thinks you’re going to TPK your level 10 adventurers. You’re also free to hit them with a group of enemies just below their level, which will often be more challenging than a single CR-appropriate enemy due to the shift in action economy.
XP Budgets Massively Increased
The change that originally inspired this article was that the “Deadly” column in the 2014 combat encounter rules is gone. We noted that the “Deadly” column for traps is gone in our review of the 2024 DMG, and I was terrified that WotC had done the same thing here, only to find a startling shift in the encounter math.
Low Difficulty (formerly “Easy”) encounters now use an XP budget progression higher than the Medium progression in the 2014 rules, more than doubling the XP budget for an Easy encounter. Moderate Difficulty (formerly “Medium”) encounters use a progression higher than the High encounters in the 2014 rules. High Difficulty (formerly “Hard”) encounters match 2014’s Deadly encounters through level 8, then gradually become even more difficult..
If you haven’t yet grabbed a copy of the 2024 DMG, the combat encounter rules are included in the free rules. I encourage you to examine the differences yourself.
This tells us that encounters in the 2014 rules weren’t challenging enough, especially with the gradual power creep introduced by new supplements and with the addition of Weapon Mastery, Origin Feats, and easier access to magic items in the 2024 rules. Characters are stronger, but individual monsters mostly aren’t (at least as far as we’ve seen), so encounters need to be more difficult to compensate.
This also tells us that using single creatures that match the party’s level isn’t a challenge. One CR 10 Froghemoth was slightly above Medium difficulty for a party of 4 level 10 adventurers in 2014. In 2024, it’s below the Low threshold. It’s not even Moderate Difficulty for a party of 3.
So What Actually Changed?
Let’s look at an example encounter. We have a party of 4 level 3 players, and they’re facing a pack of gnolls. Gnolls have a few different stat blocks across 5e’s various books, plus we can throw in hyenas and maw demons. Let’s say that we’re planning an exciting boss fight, so we want one big enemy, a couple bodyguards, and a few low-CR minions.
In the 2014 rules, we have an XP budget of 1600. We’ll start with a Gnoll Pack Lord (CR 2, 450 XP), then throw in 2 Maw Demons as bodyguards (CR 1, 200 XP each). That’s 850 XP, but since it’s 3 creatures, we apply a x2 multiplier, and we’re suddenly at 1700 XP. There’s no room for minions here.
We could replace the Maw Demons with 2 Gnolls (CR ¼, 100 XP each), which is 650 before the multiplier. That will let us add some Hyenas (CR 0, 10 XP each). 5 hyenas feels exciting, bringing us to a nice, round 700 XP. We then apply the 3.5x multiplier for 8 creatures, and we’re at 1750 XP despite this probably being an easier encounter. I’m tearing my hair out at this point.
Now let’s use the same group of creatures in the 2024 rules. Our Gnoll Pack Lord and 2 Maw Demons is a total of 850 XP, and there are no multipliers ever. A Moderate Difficulty encounter for our party of 4 is 900 XP, so we’re well within budget. We could add 5 Hyenas and exactly hit the cap for Moderate. If we threw in some Gnolls, we would inch toward High Difficulty.
Conclusion
The 2024 rules aimed to simplify a lot of things and address long-standing pain points. Removing the multipliers from the encounter math is a huge improvement, in my opinion, but it will probably be overlooked by a huge number of DMs who have been running 5e for a decade.
The resulting changes to XP budgets now mean that single-enemy encounters will need to feature much stronger creatures, which is great since there are so many new ways to lock a single creature out of combat in the 2024 rules. With increased budgets, I think that encounters will be much more exciting, and DMs will have more flexibility in how they pick monsters for any given fighter.
I’m excited to see these changes in action. I love a challenging fight, and 5e has terribly few of those that didn’t feel like cheap gimmicks. I’m optimistic that this change will make the game more satisfying.
