Unearthed Arcana: Encounter Building Response

Introduction

Unearthed Arcana has a new article that covers guidelines for creating combat encounters. I've tried to create a table that maps level to challenge rating one to one (essentially translating level to challenge rating and vice versa) based on this article. Up until now we've mainly had experience and challenge rating to go on. Seeing this, I wanted to see what I could pull out and possibly organize into a new form as well as note anything else of interest I noticed.

Resulting Chart

The below chart uses the information in the multiple monster table provided in the Unearthed Arcana article. When two challenge ratings were given for a level, I took the highest. The result is a relative translation between level and challenge rating. If you like to use the player creation rules as a starting point for baddies, you might find this helpful.

Level	Challenge Rating
1	1/4
2	1/2
3	1/2
4	1
5	2
6	2
7	3
8	3
9	4
10	4
11	4
12	5
13	6
14	6
15	7
16	7
17	8
18	8
19	9
20	10

What We Get

It doesn't look like my resulting chart follows a pattern. It's probably best that if you just consult the charts and not memorize them. I'm happy to finally see the math behind challenge ratings and hopefully once it gets finalized it'll help a better level of consistency on Dungeon Masters Guild. The challenge rating for different group sizes was also a nice touch. I wish the table went to at least 3 players groups for solo monsters. You would think that you could use the tables to figure it out yourself, but it doesn't line up. The math for the multiple monsters table is different than the solo monsters table. Given the modifiers used in the Dungeon Master's Guide for larger groups of enemies (the difficulty of an encounter was the total experience points multiplied by a constant determined by the number of enemies), it's not too much of a surprise. Trying to work backwards by guessing would be a pain though and not guaranteed to yield a result. It makes me wonder if the table was made mostly through eyeballing things or whether there is some kind of hidden math. If it's hidden math, I'd like to see it.

The solo monster table is quite interesting to see. You would think that challenge rating should translate to something meaningful, like being a nice challenge for a party of 4 for that level. At fifth level, that pattern is quickly abandoned in the table. It reinforces that challenge ratings are odd. To make things worse, it specifically states that the table is for challenge a party by using a single legendary creature.

The table for dealing with multiple monsters in an encounter may be more useful. I'm hoping to see if I can successfully trim back an encounter to fewer characters by using it. Based on the text so far, it should use the same math as the other guidelines. However, the difference in the way it is presented means it will be easier to use for certain things.

I like the sections about monster personality and monster relationships. Too often I've seen the encounters where creatures are just buckets of hit points that need to be reduced to zero before advancing. It honestly seems to be stuff that should have been included in the Dungeon Master's Guide.

Is It Alternate?

Reading over these guidelines, it makes me wonder if it is indeed an alternate system or instead another system of checks we can use. If you know what creature you want to throw at your party or need a single legendary creature, it should make it easier to design the encounter. Using the second table, you can also choose monsters to challenge a single character and then multiply it by the number of characters, if you have a party of equal level. I think I might give that approach a try and see how it works. In the previous guidelines, however, the number of creatures used against the party influence the modifier. In the new method, the total number of creatures doesn't seem to be used. My concern at the moment is that these new guidelines will diverge from the old ones at times.