Kobold Fight Club Examples: How to Balance D&D 5e Encounters

Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is an exciting tabletop role-playing game that’s all about adventure, exploration, combat, and storytelling. As Dungeon Masters (DMs), we require a range of tools to help us organize our campaigns and keep things balanced. One such tool is the Kobold Fight Club (KFC).

Imagine you’re running a D&D game with a party of four adventurers, consisting of two fighters, one cleric, and one wizard. You’ve designed an encounter where they fight against six goblins and a bugbear, but how do you know if this challenge is too tough or too easy?

That’s where KFC comes in handy. KFC is a free web-based tool that helps DMs calculate the difficulty level of combat encounters by crunching the numbers based on the Challenge Rating (CR) system in the D&D 5th edition ruleset.

Let’s dive deeper into how KFC can be used to determine encounter difficulty levels.

When using KFC for determining encounter difficulty levels, it’s important to understand how it works. The interface is user-friendly and very simple to use. All you need to do is add the NPCs or monsters you plan to include in your encounter. The tool then determines how difficult the encounter will be for your player characters based on factors such as monster Challenge Ratings, group size, and number of monsters.

It’s worth noting that while CR math is crucial to understanding monster abilities and power levels relative to player characters, its application in determining encounter difficulties isn’t without its flaws. The determination of CR ratings in some cases may not align with actual combat scenarios. For example, it may not account for certain player tactics that may shift power during fights.

Furthermore, it’s also essential to note that DMs should view encounters as puzzle pieces that contribute to a larger overarching challenge. KFC is more useful for balancing specific combat sections within an adventuring day that involves 6-8 encounters, subject to varying levels of competency and difficulty.

The tool produces and displays an “Adjusted XP” number, which indicates how much experience points the encounter would be worth based on the number of monsters and player characters involved. DMs can use this feature to ensure they are devising challenges that provide enough experience points for their players.

Although the KFC tool can be extremely helpful in providing a guideline for encounter difficulties, DMs should also consider other factors like party composition, feats, selected spells, magic items and other party features when balancing encounters.

There’s no one-size-fits-all system for determining how challenging an encounter should be, but using tools such as KFC as part of preparations can significantly improve fairness and make encounters more enjoyable for everyone involved.

For those who are unfamiliar, Kobold Fight Club (KFC) is an online tool that helps balance encounters in Dungeons and Dragons 5e. It allows Dungeon Masters to select creatures based on their CR ratings, adding or subtracting them from the encounter until it falls within the desired difficulty range.

One of KFC’s essential features is its creature selection. With hundreds of monsters to choose from, creating a balanced encounter becomes much more accessible. The creatures are organized by CR rating, with multiple filters for sourcebook, type, and terrain. Each creature has a link to its D&D Beyond profile, including stat blocks and descriptions for their abilities.

For instance, let’s say we want to create a Medium-difficulty encounter for our level-5 party comprising six characters. We can input these variables into KFC, and it will generate a list of eligible monsters to choose from that sum up to the appropriate challenge rating. Note that while CRs provide general guidance on monster strength, they’re not always reliable indicators of difficulty since monsters’ abilities can be unique or unpredictable.

If we followed the example above with the specific parameters in mind, KFC would suggest options like a group of five Bandits or three veteran PCs as primary antagonists. Alternatively, we could add minions like Goblins or Giant Spiders to spice things up as needed.

It’s essential to keep party size and dynamics in mind when selecting creatures. Overloading combat encounters with too many enemies could turn encounters deadly even if they fall within Medium parameters. On the other hand, some classes have exceptionally powerful area-of-effect spells that can demolish hordes of enemies effortlessly.

Overall, KFC’s creature selection is an excellent starting point for novices looking to balance encounters quickly.

While KFC provides an excellent framework for encounter balancing, it’s crucial to understand the mechanics of tweaking its encounter ratings. By default, the tool uses a calculation based on the number of monsters and the party size, depending on their CR rating. However, this calculation is not flawless – some creatures’ abilities might make them a lot more dangerous or less lethal than their raw stats would suggest.

Given that each party is different, Dungeon Masters can use KFC’s Adjusted XP feature to customize each encounter’s challenge level further. The Adjusted XP considers specific combat factors like resistances, immunities, and vulnerabilities that can alter a creature’s difficulty rating once implemented.

For example, let’s say we want to use an Invisibility Spell to surprise our party with an ambush by two assassins (CR 8) and six bandit minions (CR 1/8). Naively selecting these stats on KFC would rate the encounter as “Medium” since it falls between 3750-4500 Adjusted XP. However, if we consider the assassins’ ability to strike from invisibility and inflict automatic critical damage on a surprised victim, we must increase its effective CR rating by one or two steps. As such, our actual encounter difficulty is closer to “Deadly” or “Hard,” as shown in the table below:

While KFC’s creature selection provides an easy-to-use baseline for quick encounter balancing for most groups, adjusting encounter ratings is necessary for groups with different levels of experience or unique party compositions. Customizing difficulty factors like monster abilities and tactics is also crucial to providing a diverse range of encounters.

While Kobold Fight Club (KFC) provides a great starting point for encounter balancing, there are situations where customization is necessary. Whether it’s to make the battle more challenging or to address an imbalance in your party’s abilities, tweaking encounters is a way of personalizing your game.

For instance, suppose KFC recommends an encounter with several goblins against a team of level 5 characters, but the party has a Paladin, whose Divine Smite feature could easily overcome them using radiant damage. In that case, you may need to add other tougher monsters or provide goblins with magical weapons.

Similarly, suppose you’re unfamiliar with a monster’s abilities or don’t have access to certain creatures from the Monster Manual. In such cases, consider replacing them with similar creatures that match the original encounter’s mood.

Whatever your reasons for customizing and tweaking encounters using KFC might be, let’s explore some ways to do so while still providing a balanced and fun experience for your players.

• Adjusting monster statistics: You can alter HP levels and Armor Class (AC) depending on how difficult you want the encounter to be. Increasing HP or AC would make the monster last longer in the fight while decreasing it makes it easier for PCs to defeat it.
• Revising number of opponents: In KFC-generated battles, there may be cases where adding or removing monsters would make more sense than sticking rigidly to what’s suggested. You can also include reinforcements if the battle starts to tip in favor of the players.
• Adding environmental factors: Conditions like weather pattern, lighting conditions, and terrain – can all affect how encounters play out. For example, adding low light conditions could disadvantage classes that rely on ranged attacks.

The key takeaway is that tweaking encounters using KFC offers one solution when faced with unbalanced combats. However, it’s essential to ensure that the modifications are reasonable and in line with the players’ abilities.

Now that we’ve discussed encounter customization let us take a look at some examples of balanced encounters using KFC.

It is vital to note that balance can be subjective and influenced by party composition, magic items, and player tactics. Therefore, these examples serve only as guidelines representing particular levels featuring different monsters.

• Level 1: Goblins vs. Four Level One Characters

KFC rates this as an easy encounter and comprises six goblin creatures against four level one PCs. The adjusted XP value is 300 XP, making it ideal for a first-level experience.

• Level 5: Skeletons & Zombies vs. Five Level Five Characters

KFC categorizes this combat as challenging, featuring five Zombies and four skeletons versus five fifth-level players. Its adjusted XP value is 7,500 xp

• Level 10: Chromatic Dragons vs. Six Level Ten Characters

This is a deadly rated encounter comprising four ancient chromatic dragons versus six tenth-level characters (adjusted XP value of 84,000). Players must come up with intricate strategies to emerge victoriously from such combats.

These examples are comparable to Goldilocks’ story – find the sweet spot that suits you!