Getting Started

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Introduction

These encounters don’t have specific numbers for damage, hit points, saves, or … any numbers at all actually.

Rather, I use terms like Heavy Damage, Light Damage, High Armour, Low Health etc.

The reason for this is I want them to be totally system, setting, level and player count agnostic; they’re for use in your game, whatever that may be.

You will want to know how to translate these terms into numbers for your party, your game system.
I’ll use examples, all for D&D5e which is by far the most popular RPG system today.

But not all parties are the same. For a group of all spellcasters with low HP pools, but very high damage; the terms Heavy Damage and High Health will mean something different for a burly melee-focused tanky group which can take harder hits, but hit less hard in return.

So, let’s get started getting to know your group.

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Step 1 – Know your Numbers

First thing to do is ask your group for copies or photos of their character sheets.

Specifically, you’ll need:

• Hit Points (HP)
• Armour Class (AC)
• Attack bonus (assuming primary attack i.e. cantrip for a caster, weapon for a martial)
• Consistent damage per round (w/o using cooldowns, resources, spell slots)
• Nova damage (using cooldowns, resources, spell slots).

Now, you add all these up to generate your party averages, as in the example below.

Player	HP	AC	+hit	avg Damage	nova Damage
Bard	17	12	+5	6	13
Fighter	23	18	+5	8	24
Sorcerer	15	13	+5	8.5	25
Barbarian	29	15	+5	10	12

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Step 2 – Party of Averages

Now, let’s average those numbers out. These averages will form the base assumption for the ‘average’ party member.

	HP	AC	+ hit	avg Dmg	nova Dmg
Party average	21	14.5	+5	8.125	18.5

Now you’ve got your party averages, you can use this to calculate what are appropriate numbers for your group to face in an encounter. We’ll do that next

Why use averages?

Because ideally character-building choices matter.

If you make a character with great defenses, you should get to feel that on the tabletop. If a squishy character gets hit for Average Damage, they’ll really notice it! But your armored up bulwark should be able to shrug a few of those off before calling for help.

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Step 3 – Plug and Play

Now plug your numbers into the calculators below!

Please note that I’m using D&D5e-based numbers here, which might not directly work for your game system.
However, they should hopefully help you get to the ballpark zone – and you can massage it in from there.

Also, please note these are just starting points. Everything should be adjusted to fit your game. If you’ve played with your group and system for a while, this is probably second nature. If you’re less familiar, a couple of encounters should be all you need to get a feel for whats right for you.

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Aside – Discussion on Damage Dice

How to translate ‘average 20 damage’ into the game?

For the short answer, go to this page and read off the handy chart that’s closest to the number you need.

For the longer answer, continue reading…

The first option is to just use flat damage. Let’s assume Heavy Damage is 20 for our example. In this case, you may simply deal 20 damage on a successful Heavy Damage attack.

But I like rolling dice.

Let’s take our 20 Heavy Damage again. How does this translate into damage dice?

I like around +/- 50% variation for damage. Your preferences may differ, I don’t mind spiky damage. So for 20 average damage, I’m happy with 10-30, following a broadly standard distribution.

There are lots of ways to get around 20 as average with the usual dice.

Dice pool	Average roll	Range
8d4	20	8-32
6d6	21	6-36
4d8	18	4-32
4d10	22	4-40
3d12	19.5	3-36
2d20	21	2-40

The more dice you roll the closer to average you get on any given roll. 2d20 generates a very skewed range, while 8d4 is much more likely to roll average.

I aim for 3 dice. You get your spikes up and down, but you do get a pretty consistent average as well. Your preferences may vary.

Adding flat values

Just dice alone does generate the most skewed results; the simple solution is to add flat modifiers. Every RPG monster you’ve ever fielded or faced does this, it works like a charm.

The easy way is to average one die, and remove it from the pool.
Note the average roll on a die always includes a 0.5, I just round up. So the average roll on a d10 is 6, a d8 is 5 etc.

Dice pool	Average roll	Range
7d4 + 3	20.5	10-31
5d6 + 4	21.5	9-34
3d8 + 5	18.5	8-29
3d10 + 6	22.5	9-36
2d12 + 7	20	9-29
1d20 + 11	21.5	12-31

As you can see this immediately flattens you range down to a pretty comfortable +/- approximately 50%.

If this were my game, I’d choose the 3d8+5 or 3d10+6 option depending on whether I want a slightly higher or lower damage value here. I’d probably go higher, because I love hurting my players.

You can flatten it further by converting a second die into its average. This will move towards +/- 35%, which lessens the spikes up and down.

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