Encounter Building

A session has about three encounters, and combat is one of three kinds. This page is for judging how hard a combat encounter will be. The Encounter Builder does the arithmetic for you and runs the result in the combat runner.

Difficulty and Aethyr Points

Aethyrsparked has no experience points. A creature’s XP value is used only as a yardstick for how dangerous it is, and spending a difficulty budget never awards anything. However hard the fight, an encounter the party completes gives each character at least 1 Aethyr Point, and the GM decides whether it’s worth more.

Using the SRD guidelines in Geminaea

Intensity level is the character level. Read the budget tables below by each character’s Aethyrflame Intensity level.
Party strength. Aethyrsparked characters don’t match the characters the SRD’s budgets were written for, and parties differ in their builds, gear and tactics. The Encounter Builder multiplies the budgets by a party strength you set, from ×0.5 to ×2: raise it if fights keep proving easier than rated, lower it if they prove harder.
Mixed levels. The Encounter Builder adds up each character’s own row of the table rather than using one party level. For a party all of one level, this is the same as the SRD’s method.
Creatures without a challenge rating. Where a creature in the Creatures compendium has no challenge rating, the compendium shows one estimated from its defenses alone, marked with “~”. Estimates tend to run low, since most creatures’ offense outweighs their defense. A creature with neither gets no XP until you enter a value for it in the builder.

From the SRD 5.2.1: combat encounter difficulty

Use the following guidelines to create a combat encounter of a desired level of difficulty.

Step 1: Choose a difficulty

Three categories describe the range of encounter difficulty:

Low difficulty. An encounter of low difficulty is likely to have one or two scary moments for the players, but their characters should emerge victorious with no casualties. One or more of them might need to use healing resources, however. As a rough guideline, a single creature generally presents a low-difficulty challenge for a party of four characters whose level equals the creature’s challenge rating.
Moderate difficulty. Absent healing and other resources, an encounter of moderate difficulty could go badly for the characters. Weaker characters might get taken out of the fight, and there’s a slim chance that one or more characters might die.
High difficulty. A high-difficulty encounter could be lethal for one or more characters. To survive it, the characters will need smart tactics, quick thinking, and maybe even a little luck.

Step 2: Determine your XP budget

Using the XP Budget per Character table, cross-reference the party’s level with the desired encounter difficulty. Multiply the number in the table by the number of characters in the party to get your XP budget for the encounter.

Level	Low	Moderate	High
1	50	75	100
2	100	150	200
3	150	225	400
4	250	375	500
5	500	750	1,100
6	600	1,000	1,400
7	750	1,300	1,700
8	1,000	1,700	2,100
9	1,300	2,000	2,600
10	1,600	2,300	3,100
11	1,900	2,900	4,100
12	2,200	3,700	4,700
13	2,600	4,200	5,400
14	2,900	4,900	6,200
15	3,300	5,400	7,800
16	3,800	6,100	9,800
17	4,500	7,200	11,700
18	5,000	8,700	14,200
19	5,500	10,700	17,200
20	6,400	13,200	22,000

Step 3: Spend your budget

Every creature has an XP value in its stat block. When you add a creature to your combat encounter, deduct its XP from your XP budget to determine how many XP you have left to spend. Spend as much of your XP budget as you can without going over. It’s OK if you have a few unspent XP left over.

For example, a low-difficulty encounter for four level 1 characters has an XP budget of 50 × 4, for a total of 200 XP. With that, you could build an encounter of 1 creature worth 200 XP, 2 worth 100 XP each, or 6 worth 25 XP each (150 XP in total).

Troubleshooting

Many creatures. The more creatures in an encounter, the higher the risk that a lucky streak on their part could deal more damage to the characters than you expect. If your encounter includes more than two creatures per character, include fragile creatures that can be defeated quickly. This guideline is especially important for characters of level 1 or 2.
Adjustments. A player’s absence might warrant removing creatures from an encounter to keep it at the intended difficulty. Also, die rolls and other factors can result in an encounter being easier or harder than intended. You can adjust an encounter on the fly, such as by having creatures flee (making the encounter easier) or adding reinforcements (making the encounter harder).
CR 0 creatures. Creatures that have a CR of 0, particularly ones that are worth 0 XP, should be used sparingly. If you want to include many CR 0 critters in an encounter, use swarms instead.
Number of stat blocks. The best combat encounters often pair one kind of creature with another. Be mindful of the number of stat blocks you need to run the encounter. Referencing more than two or three stat blocks for a single encounter can be daunting, particularly if the creatures are complex.
Powerful creatures. If your combat encounter includes a creature whose CR is higher than the party’s level, be aware that such a creature might deal enough damage with a single action to take out one or more characters.
Unusual features. If a creature has a feature that lower-level characters can’t easily overcome, consider not adding that creature to an encounter for characters whose level is lower than the creature’s challenge rating.