I'm sorry but how is this not clickbait? How is this even a fix? All the video does is explain why the CR system isn't working well for most people... and then offers a tool that completely bypasses the CR system. It's a useful tool, I'll give it that, but there is nothing in the video or tool that "fixes 5e's challenge rating". The CR system could not exist in the first place (and not need to be fixed) and this would work just as well. It just automates what most people are already doing: ignoring the challenge rating and just trying to estimate how a fight is going to go.
@@araonthedrake4049 Fair criticism tbh. I only realized this after posting the video, but I glossed over how I got to this solution. BattleSim is the 4th iteration of me trying to solve challenge rating in 5e. My first attempt was much closer to the current challenge rating system. But with each iteration, I realized, the method was less important to me than the end goal: being able to quickly and accurately tell how an encounter is likely to go. So while I did spend a couple years doing what game designers cynically call "polishing a turd", eventually, this led me to BattleSim. But it took 4 years to get there, not just the 10 minutes of this video. Here was my first attempt: www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/ce383d/customizable_5e_encounter_calculator/
As a long-term homebrewer and constant "simulator" myself, I must tip my hat to you for making such an accessible and efficient tool. I hope you have plenty of people in your life who are as proud of you as you should be of yourself
@@francisweller839I want to hear from you how well this has worked cause I am attempting to setup a campaign for me and friends and it would be very helpful if I can reduce my work load in the long run
Bro, when he said it was only his sixth video it blew my mind. The quality of these videos are easily on par with channels doing similar content, like pointy hat. You are doing amazing work, and thank you for this! (Also only realized while writing this that Pointy Hat only has 33 videos... You guys are incredible!)
This is absolutely insane lmao, and I mean that as the highest form of praise. You actually (de)coded "vibe"-based encounter balancing and extrapolated it into a set of statistics.
Dude, I am a relatively novice DM, and I'm currently preparing my own material... Calculating CR has been such a pain in the neck and so confusing that I basically came to conclusion that the only adequate way to assess the danger and balance everything is to run the encounter multiple times on my own. Your tool is going to save me and many others hours of preparation, for which I thank you with all sincerity that I have. Amazing work, keep it up, please!
This comment is brought to you by Standard Array Gang. Also thank you for creating Battle Sim because it's not only a fantastic tool but also it's proven that my back-of-a-napkin fudges for encounter difficulty were actually spot on all this time. My ego expresses its gratitude!
My rule has been to make sure the main baddy requires 2-3 hits to down a single player. Minions should only be annoying. Ie. 10 minion hits to down a player.
@@abcrasshadow9341 I keep my players at the same level so there isn't usually an enormous hp gap. I would say lowest if I had to pick. Remember though that 20 dmg is 2 hit kill to someone 21 hp or someone with 40. Therefore a large hp range is covered by this rule.
Sir, please know you're an absolute madlad of great quality. Great idea and execution of this. Probably the best way to try to navigate the blurry state of encounter balancing in 5E. May this tool help those poor DMs running their own games outside of published adventures, as they seem strangely forgotten by WOTC.
This is a great tool! The original CR-System is so broken, that it only takes 4 normal frogs (which don't even have an attack) to count as a deadly encounter against one Level-1 character.
Don't usually comment but I am genuinely impressed, and thankful this was recommended to me. Fantastic work, and a beautiful tool that I will certainly use a lot in prep. Sharing this with all the DMs I know.
Nicely done! I also thought about trying something like this but was overwhelmed by the amount of data input. You deserve serious kudos for actually doing it!
The crazy thing about a rakshasa is that it's CR could potentially be way under tuned in a party of spell casters. I'm glad to see a tool like this to help balance while taking party composition into account.
Great work on the sim! Just one thing: i noticed that most resistances, like a werewolf resistance to non silvered weapon, are absent. Still it really surprised me because it trivialized encounters i thought hard, I don't know if my assumptions were wrong (I am still a newbie dm) or if it somehow favours the party.
Dang, this this is incredible. In one of the official DungeonTalk podcast episodes, J-Craw talked about how the internal WOTC challenge rating spreadsheet is different than the published one. Theirs adjusts by decimal point, but the published CR information does it with whole numbers. It seems like you've been able to kind of crack that, and it's really impressive. I hate the current challenge rating system and a TON of what 5e does with its "do it however you want!" approach to DM advice. This app is incredibly useful.
this looks fantastic! Unfortunately, three of my five PCs are multiclass, which seems very difficult to adjust on here (I gather I can probably add actions from the Less Mechanically Impactful side into the equation, but I dunno how that will effect things in a more complex simulation like this) Anyway, congrats and keep up the good work! And please let me know if multiclass options ever get added in!
I make it very clear to my players whenever we sit down at the table that as a DM, I see stat sheets as a suggestion. I always tailor encounters to what I want the party to experience. If I put together a set piece where my players are up against a Roc while the sky echos with thunderous roar and the crashing tides threaten to pull them into the jagged depths, I'm not letting the fact that they are only level 5 or 6 stop that. As a bonus, this throws a wrench onto the mind of the metagamer and adds real value to the knowledge skills.
I really like that but instead I prefer to flavor the monsters with a new coat of paint. Where a experienced player would normally recognize I am using a Roc, I instead describe it differently but use the same stat sheet. This makes the stat sheets more of a template for my combat usage (which I really enjoy)
How did you know that I needed this!? I'm currently preparing to run my first campaign as DM and am so worried about balancing the encounters - this changes everything!
This is awesome. A quick check of my estimates for my level 10 group vs a level 10 dragon ends up with the same estimate you have. A possible improvement is to add in a value that shows the estimated resources used in the encounter. In general my group feels like they need a long rest after using 50-55% of their resources. I assume each group will vary. Resources include HP, spell slots, inspiration points, superiority dice, etc.
I don't know if they're easter eggs but I do enjoy the variety of VTT's you're using to illustrate your points. Owlbear Rodeo icons ftw. My VTT of choice when Tabletop Simulator is not an option for everyone.
This is incredible, so much work goes into creating something like this. You are an absolute badass. Thank you so much for creating such an awesome tool!
Right at the moment you said that you had to input stats of hundreds of monsters by hand I realised how much I love pf2e for it has free online database with all monsters stats, spells, magic items ets that you can easily interact with using JS
Thanks for that pretty awesome looking battle simulator and the tons of work you put into it. I'm going to test it for my campaign asap. I've already tried to compare an encounter that I had in my last session with the prediction of your simulator and I stumbled over something you missed out: My players had the ingenious idea to run into the next room and start the next encounter, while they had the biggy of the last fight still caught in levitate. Also, some monsters turned up in waves, so they weren't present in the first few rounds. It would be pretty awesome if you could add a feature to add enemies after certain rounds or even better after certain conditions, e.g. at a percentage or after x monster died. But even a simple "joins at round x" would be a nice way to improve the capability and accuracy of your awesome simulator.
I'm pretty new in the DM world but I realized on day one that those standard CR are often not even to be taken as guidelines. Thank you for making this tool, after the last session I literally thought about testing all those encounters beforehand. Luckily I found your video just in time. I'm looking forward to more of your content.
This is staggeringly amazing. Incredibly impressed with the idea behind this. Haven't used the tool yet though, so i cant comment on the quality of the actual tool.
This is a pretty impressive tool. There are some aditional features it would be nice to see added, such as damage reduction, maybe a category of passive abilities, or reactions. But they say that if a lawful alligned creature attempts to read javascript they must succeed a DC 25 wisdom saving throw or fall under the effects of the feeblemind spell, so I'm not volunteering to code any new features.
All three of these are already implemented, actually! If you make a lv5 rogue, you'll get Uncanny Dodge as an example of a damage reduction ability that's a reaction Vampires, Trolls and others have examples of regeneration as a passive ability I tried to keep the simulator as simple as possible so it wouldn't take longer to input the encounter than to actually run it, but for very impactful stuff like that, I made sure it was possible to tell the simulator about it!
That’s mighty impressive and a great work for the community. I’ve got to say though, I’m glad I got into GMing with Pathfinder 2e and not DnD5e because dear god. Watching this video I imagine this is something like how Europeans feel when they hear an anecdote about the American healthcare system. The fact that someone needed to do this at all is insane to me. For Pathfinder the encounter table works as written. You don’t need to do anything to make it work, and you certainly don’t need to create an entire program to simulate an encounter for you to see how difficult it looks like it’ll turn out to be. You just follow the table and it works without adjustments. In my group’s last session I had a player who had to leave suddenly right before a combat encounter. I was able to readjust the combat to be the same difficulty effortlessly, and I’ve never once had to fudge numbers.
Dude. The level of effort you put into this thing is crazy, and let me just say it paid off. The website works like a charm, just tried it on my level 4 party of 6. I am a fairly experienced dungeon master and usually just wing it, but damn this brought a whole new level of ease to my session prep. Thank you.
- Made a complex app because computers have way more brainpower than people - Absolutely loves standard array - Just went and fking entered all of the monster stat blocks - Reject subjective labels, just gives you all the data oh so this is a channel run by an actual entity from the clockwork realms, I see
3rd edition was very good at this Cr= appropriate challenge for a 4 member party of that level. If the enemy is humanoid and you can see that 1 x 4 players seems weak use 1 monster/ player. It was very easy and I never went wrong with that approximation through the entire of 3rd edition. Congratulations for your work. It really will help a lot of people out there.
Firstly, amazing work. I've made something similar for my own game =D, but it was a lot less automated and worked mostly with custom built monster blocks. Putting those into your calculator to see how the battle plays out was really neat, our end results were quite close. So a few things I'd like to ask if they are in the works: - Are you going to allow ways to account for positioning? Maybe add rules like "Only x number of creatures can attack y" or "y is not targetable by melee strikes or ranges less than z" type of things. - I'm trying to simulate high level zealot barb play, particularly the con saves to 1hp and 0hp while raging mechanics. I've sort of done it with damage taken multiplier of 0 when a less than half hp, but he should be at 1 or 0 hp. Smaller nitpick, but makes a big impact on outcome - Can we make the "attack weakest monster" logic skip over a character? I have one character hidden within the mimic and he would be untargetable until the mimic is slain, but I'm not sure how to make the system prioritize the mimic first - Can we give specific monsters or PCs a "delay" in turns, to simulate them needing to spend turns closing distance? Thanks again for the effort and amazing tool.
You sir are a legend. I actually just had an anti-climactic boss battle with my PCs recently and was racking my head on what I did wrong. Now this should help, thank you!
This tool is great. I've noticed some issues, (like lvl 5 cleric assuming they have Spiritual Weapon, Bless, and Spiritual Guardians all ready and going in round 1, which they can't, because you can cast one of those per round, and 2 of them are concentration spells), but it is still much better than anything we had before.
This is an amazing tool, thank you so much! My players were just saying after the last session, that felt like a really epic fight! Good, I was hoping it wasn't a TPK because 5 level 12s vs. a Phoenix in the air should have been hard on paper, but I knew it wasn't going to be...so I added an adult red dragon's breath, an exhaustion aura, and like +250HP. It ended up being just right. I checked the simulator, and default without adding any extra items in or anything, the phoenix would've died in 3 rounds with nobody taking any damage. Very much looking forward to using this!
I like the simulator, if I could make a request though, it would be to add sub classes and be able to create characters without having type everything in manually, and a help file. I recognize that is a lot of extra work, the reason I bring it up is you have a great app here and I think that would make it even better.
I'm not sure if this is is the place for suggestions. But while trying it out there are a few features I think can be improved. 1: When it comes to the actions you can give a player/monster, the "debuff" section lacks any kind of incapacitation options, therefore cannot simulate spells such as "Tasha's hideous laughter" or "Hold person". 2. When it comes to "x/long rest" I would very much like for there to be an option of spell slots, (or spell-points for those that use that rule) on the number of times per day.
Ok, Quasi-Modron aside, this is a fantastic video. Hell, the topic is brilliant and you've provided something that's incredibly actionable. Best of all, unlike a lot of game advice about D&D out there, you've provided the lego bricks but not told people what to build. Love it. Now to slowly (next 1 hour) go through your other videos to enjoy (consume like an addict) your videos! Lookin forward to more!
what you did here is amazing! thank you for sharing this with the community for free. I do however have a small request, could you add the bloodhunter class to the simulator?
I'm having a good time using this simulator to test out my homebrew monsters to work out their appropriate difficulties. For such a fresh and new website it's already really customisable and easy to use! My one request would be the ability to have monsters provoke conditions as well as all the other buffs and debuffs, but I'm hoping that will be coming soon :)
Same, imagine you have like a sleeping dragon but only its mouth can be seen the rest looks like mountains, then you could also have the nostrils be a sort of trap because they either push you from a brige or pull you from the brige in periods(to hint at your players that it might me a real sleeping dragon, because you are not gonna tell them.) As soon es they then get into the dragon or get a meguffin of sorts the drafon awackens and now the mission is to get to the earth safely.
incredible impressive, hats off to you. will defiently look to use this, I do like you set up most of the classes, mediocre builds and not trying to implement complicated spells. The choice to go Moon Druid as the base is intresting, but using wizard is probably good enough to account for a "normal" druid. artificer seem to have a d12 hit die though small issue but it does increase their power in such a calculator by a lot.
I should probably add some more options to the PC templates tbh. There are two classes which "assume" a subclass choice right now, artificer and druid, but it shouldn't be too hard to include at least another option for folks who use a different one
super impressive work, only issue im having is that it loses accuracy when it comes to resistance to specific damage types since all damage in the simulator is counted as just "damage" and not for example "slashing damage." but that aside for encounters where resistances dont play much of a part this does wonders, thank you!
I have to say, I am seriously impressed with your simulator. Its a game changer! If there's any feedback I'd give for it though, is I'd like more details on what is happening round to round. How much damage are the attacks doing? Were any legendary resistances used? What were the rolls? Also, I think if you added some more battle tactics, like, using healing word on unconscious enemies, that would really help.
This is actually genius and I'd love to try it out but still think it wouldn't be super accurate for my party because of homebrew stuff. Still, AWESOME work man!
@Trekiros - Game Changer I run a very "combat focused" game and so they all have multiple items and skills that are all homebrew, for example my bard has a ring that gives everyone the equivalent of a short rest in a "healing burst" when she drops below half health. I wanted to throw crazy things against them and needed to balance it so they wouldn't TPK every encounter, that's one of the simplest homebrews in the party so I'm still not sure that it would be able to account for everything :/ Still though, AMAZING JOB and I'm sure it will only improve as time goes on!
Just found your channel from this video, very impressed with the tool you've built! And impressed at the dedication to input all those monster stats! Subbed and looking forward to seeing more and playing with the tool more
Very interesting. Cool tool too! I work using the same kind of prediction in a spreadsheet, not taking into account any deathspiral that may occur. 1. set the order in which the party will kill the monsters (or experiment this later) 2. use hp, ac, saves, and average player damage to calculate each monster's time-to-kill in rounds 3. calculate monster lifetime in rounds: the first monster to be killed will last only their own time-to-kill but last monsters they kill will have lived the longest: the sum of all time-to-kills. 4. use monster damage to calculate their total damage in the encounter Now you've got a few interesting stats: - expected number of rounds - expected suffered total damage (when players focus-fire and monsters don't at all) If the total damage done by the monsters is bigger than the party's total remaining hp, you probably made it as hard as you'll ever want it to be, since perfect PC target prioritization and bad target prioritization by the monsters will likely still lead to a TPK, especially since death spirals aren't take into account. In this kind of fight, the player will have to be lucky or make good tactical decisions to win. I try to minimize the number of rounds (lower HP/higher DMG), while finding a sweet spot in damage taken depending on the mood I'm looking for. Your tool can do the same thing I see, and is more fine-grained. It's not the best for homebrew (yet) I think. I think my own sheet helps me out better for now, because I use the sheet to design creatures while designing the encounter. But if I were to run some book-only things, I'll try it out.
Thank you! This is amazing and i think it should be advertised more, even you could have a payment option for adding custom monsters that are not in 5e books. Just an idea for you.
Thanks for this tool. I love preparing and I'm DMing my group's next campaign. This allowing me to custom tailor every story encounter perfectly is going to be sweet.🤣
For someone using standard aray this is quite amazing :D No but for real I´m about to DM my first game of DND ever with some friends and didn´t know how to balance a premade adventure for a group of 5 for a group of 3 and this is so helpful.
What the what?!!? This is amazing! You are a king! I've never heard of you or seen one of you videos before 15 minutes ago but this tool is so incredibly useful I am actually, instantly SMASHING those Like and Subscribe buttons!
Yo I was expecting adjustments to how the CR for monsters is determined, and some changes to how encounter-difficulty was calculated, but a whole encounter-simulation? This is great.
Seems interesting, I ran it through an encounter I put my players through last weekend and it came out pretty close. A party of 6 at level 4, ambushing a bandit encampment with about 17 bandits and their captain, who I had set up as a dwarf barbarian with the Giant subclass, meaning he grew to large size when he raged...It took awhile, but the party cleaned house. The party has a lot going on, but I tried to match their average actions and abilities to the calculator and it gave me a result pretty close to what actually happened. I could see this helping me to make encounters more interesting and balanced in the future. The only problem is, when I had a lot of customized enemies, when I'd try to add more to the encounter it started duplicating their entries. I.E. I tried to change bandits from 7 to 10 and instead of changing the number, it added a second set of 7 bandits. I did have a lot of customization to try to match it to the real encounter though, maybe it was too much lol
I think that one of the big things to introduce would be to have the "numbers" actually be a compilation of challenges associated with their stats and abilities. then have a list of abilities and other scenarios that would that would eliminate that particular difficulty modifiers. It is more work on WotC part, but their current algorithms make no mathematical sense.
Thanks for all of this, it's very helpful. I won't be using it whole, as I have worked out my own CR calculator for simplicity, but I like a lot of the thoughts you have on the way, they do give me a lot to consider
Super cool sim, would be really useful if it could include a recharge in the calcs. My dragon is definitely not using its breath at will but more than once per rest is very likely.
Follow-up video & Frequently Asked Questions: ruclips.net/video/LOcVlJfeq1w/видео.html
web app needs improvements,
soft delete enemies by setting count to 0
multiclass?
import or link to DnD beyond character sheets?
A DND “fix” video that isn’t clickbait?? ❤
Can’t even imagine the amount of work that went into this.
I'm sorry but how is this not clickbait? How is this even a fix? All the video does is explain why the CR system isn't working well for most people... and then offers a tool that completely bypasses the CR system.
It's a useful tool, I'll give it that, but there is nothing in the video or tool that "fixes 5e's challenge rating". The CR system could not exist in the first place (and not need to be fixed) and this would work just as well. It just automates what most people are already doing: ignoring the challenge rating and just trying to estimate how a fight is going to go.
@@araonthedrake4049 Fair criticism tbh.
I only realized this after posting the video, but I glossed over how I got to this solution. BattleSim is the 4th iteration of me trying to solve challenge rating in 5e.
My first attempt was much closer to the current challenge rating system. But with each iteration, I realized, the method was less important to me than the end goal: being able to quickly and accurately tell how an encounter is likely to go. So while I did spend a couple years doing what game designers cynically call "polishing a turd", eventually, this led me to BattleSim. But it took 4 years to get there, not just the 10 minutes of this video. Here was my first attempt:
www.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/ce383d/customizable_5e_encounter_calculator/
As a long-term homebrewer and constant "simulator" myself, I must tip my hat to you for making such an accessible and efficient tool. I hope you have plenty of people in your life who are as proud of you as you should be of yourself
BIG facts! This is SO DAMN COOL!
This guy is a true hero. Thank you very much, good sir!
What do you mean by simulator? :)
@@soMeRandoM670 I mean running mock scenarios with my homebrew and different party compositions
@@francisweller839I want to hear from you how well this has worked cause I am attempting to setup a campaign for me and friends and it would be very helpful if I can reduce my work load in the long run
Bro, when he said it was only his sixth video it blew my mind. The quality of these videos are easily on par with channels doing similar content, like pointy hat.
You are doing amazing work, and thank you for this!
(Also only realized while writing this that Pointy Hat only has 33 videos... You guys are incredible!)
The reason I'm offering free stuff with each video miiiiiiight be that Pointy Hat is my favorite channel :p
Crazy. This guy puts love into his videos.
@@Trekiros well maybe Pointy Hat and Trekiros - Game Changer are my favourite ttrpg channels! :p
literally what I was thinking reading the section. The video is really good
This is absolutely insane lmao, and I mean that as the highest form of praise.
You actually (de)coded "vibe"-based encounter balancing and extrapolated it into a set of statistics.
Dude, I am a relatively novice DM, and I'm currently preparing my own material... Calculating CR has been such a pain in the neck and so confusing that I basically came to conclusion that the only adequate way to assess the danger and balance everything is to run the encounter multiple times on my own. Your tool is going to save me and many others hours of preparation, for which I thank you with all sincerity that I have. Amazing work, keep it up, please!
This comment is brought to you by Standard Array Gang.
Also thank you for creating Battle Sim because it's not only a fantastic tool but also it's proven that my back-of-a-napkin fudges for encounter difficulty were actually spot on all this time. My ego expresses its gratitude!
My rule has been to make sure the main baddy requires 2-3 hits to down a single player. Minions should only be annoying. Ie. 10 minion hits to down a player.
@@Taparu2 [takes notes takes notes takes notes]
@@Taparu2 is that based on the highest HP character or the lowest, or some median, just for reference?
@@abcrasshadow9341 I keep my players at the same level so there isn't usually an enormous hp gap. I would say lowest if I had to pick. Remember though that 20 dmg is 2 hit kill to someone 21 hp or someone with 40. Therefore a large hp range is covered by this rule.
Sir, please know you're an absolute madlad of great quality.
Great idea and execution of this. Probably the best way to try to navigate the blurry state of encounter balancing in 5E.
May this tool help those poor DMs running their own games outside of published adventures, as they seem strangely forgotten by WOTC.
"Just getting started" already more comprehensive and logical than 80% of other DnD youtubers. Bravo my good Modron, instant like and subscribe
This is a great tool! The original CR-System is so broken, that it only takes 4 normal frogs (which don't even have an attack) to count as a deadly encounter against one Level-1 character.
A normal frog is worth 0 XP, so no matter how many there are the encounter will always be below Easy.
Thank you very much for this, I always struggled with encounter-balancing myself and i will definitely try this out
Don't usually comment but I am genuinely impressed, and thankful this was recommended to me. Fantastic work, and a beautiful tool that I will certainly use a lot in prep. Sharing this with all the DMs I know.
Nicely done! I also thought about trying something like this but was overwhelmed by the amount of data input. You deserve serious kudos for actually doing it!
The crazy thing about a rakshasa is that it's CR could potentially be way under tuned in a party of spell casters. I'm glad to see a tool like this to help balance while taking party composition into account.
Great work on the sim! Just one thing: i noticed that most resistances, like a werewolf resistance to non silvered weapon, are absent. Still it really surprised me because it trivialized encounters i thought hard, I don't know if my assumptions were wrong (I am still a newbie dm) or if it somehow favours the party.
Running a west marches game and constantly having to plan for different party comps. This is a gift as lvls get higher. Thank you!
We were talking about your tool within our group.
You are the real MVP.
Thank you so much for your effort. We'll surely enjoy it.
Dang, this this is incredible. In one of the official DungeonTalk podcast episodes, J-Craw talked about how the internal WOTC challenge rating spreadsheet is different than the published one. Theirs adjusts by decimal point, but the published CR information does it with whole numbers.
It seems like you've been able to kind of crack that, and it's really impressive. I hate the current challenge rating system and a TON of what 5e does with its "do it however you want!" approach to DM advice. This app is incredibly useful.
Probably the most amazing tool I have seen for 5e since I started GMing. It deserves to be known world wide. Thank you so much for this!
this looks fantastic! Unfortunately, three of my five PCs are multiclass, which seems very difficult to adjust on here (I gather I can probably add actions from the Less Mechanically Impactful side into the equation, but I dunno how that will effect things in a more complex simulation like this)
Anyway, congrats and keep up the good work!
And please let me know if multiclass options ever get added in!
wow, this thing is gonna save me so much time! thanks for putting in so much time and work into this, what a great resource!
Was literally just thinking about coding this, you're the goat!!!! I can't believe your not a bigger youtuber!
I make it very clear to my players whenever we sit down at the table that as a DM, I see stat sheets as a suggestion. I always tailor encounters to what I want the party to experience. If I put together a set piece where my players are up against a Roc while the sky echos with thunderous roar and the crashing tides threaten to pull them into the jagged depths, I'm not letting the fact that they are only level 5 or 6 stop that. As a bonus, this throws a wrench onto the mind of the metagamer and adds real value to the knowledge skills.
I really like that but instead I prefer to flavor the monsters with a new coat of paint. Where a experienced player would normally recognize I am using a Roc, I instead describe it differently but use the same stat sheet. This makes the stat sheets more of a template for my combat usage (which I really enjoy)
This is my new favorite channel. Tackles the real issues and provides the detailed answers I didn't even know I needed.
That is some next-level dedication. Thank you for putting all that work into BattleSim. I'm looking forward to trying it out.
How did you know that I needed this!? I'm currently preparing to run my first campaign as DM and am so worried about balancing the encounters - this changes everything!
This is awesome. A quick check of my estimates for my level 10 group vs a level 10 dragon ends up with the same estimate you have. A possible improvement is to add in a value that shows the estimated resources used in the encounter. In general my group feels like they need a long rest after using 50-55% of their resources. I assume each group will vary. Resources include HP, spell slots, inspiration points, superiority dice, etc.
This is just become my new favorite tool. You're absolutely brilliant.
Wow! Just as I was getting ready to run my first dnd campaign I find this, you are a life saver!
There are at least a dozen easter eggs in this video. Which ones have you found? 😇
I don't know if they're easter eggs but I do enjoy the variety of VTT's you're using to illustrate your points. Owlbear Rodeo icons ftw. My VTT of choice when Tabletop Simulator is not an option for everyone.
@@laguaridadelgremlin That one was a lucky coincidence, but Owlbear Rodea ftw indeed :p
Do you have a Discord?
@@yunusahmed2940 Yup, link in the video description!
Tarrasque pops up when you mention monsters that don't perform well...
This is incredible, so much work goes into creating something like this. You are an absolute badass. Thank you so much for creating such an awesome tool!
Wow this must have taken so much time and effort. Thank you!
Right at the moment you said that you had to input stats of hundreds of monsters by hand I realised how much I love pf2e for it has free online database with all monsters stats, spells, magic items ets that you can easily interact with using JS
Thanks for that pretty awesome looking battle simulator and the tons of work you put into it. I'm going to test it for my campaign asap. I've already tried to compare an encounter that I had in my last session with the prediction of your simulator and I stumbled over something you missed out:
My players had the ingenious idea to run into the next room and start the next encounter, while they had the biggy of the last fight still caught in levitate. Also, some monsters turned up in waves, so they weren't present in the first few rounds.
It would be pretty awesome if you could add a feature to add enemies after certain rounds or even better after certain conditions, e.g. at a percentage or after x monster died. But even a simple "joins at round x" would be a nice way to improve the capability and accuracy of your awesome simulator.
I'm pretty new in the DM world but I realized on day one that those standard CR are often not even to be taken as guidelines.
Thank you for making this tool, after the last session I literally thought about testing all those encounters beforehand.
Luckily I found your video just in time. I'm looking forward to more of your content.
This is staggeringly amazing. Incredibly impressed with the idea behind this. Haven't used the tool yet though, so i cant comment on the quality of the actual tool.
This is a pretty impressive tool. There are some aditional features it would be nice to see added, such as damage reduction, maybe a category of passive abilities, or reactions.
But they say that if a lawful alligned creature attempts to read javascript they must succeed a DC 25 wisdom saving throw or fall under the effects of the feeblemind spell, so I'm not volunteering to code any new features.
All three of these are already implemented, actually!
If you make a lv5 rogue, you'll get Uncanny Dodge as an example of a damage reduction ability that's a reaction
Vampires, Trolls and others have examples of regeneration as a passive ability
I tried to keep the simulator as simple as possible so it wouldn't take longer to input the encounter than to actually run it, but for very impactful stuff like that, I made sure it was possible to tell the simulator about it!
@@Trekiros ah, I see. I should have looked at the presets some more before jumping straight to the customise options.
That’s mighty impressive and a great work for the community.
I’ve got to say though, I’m glad I got into GMing with Pathfinder 2e and not DnD5e because dear god. Watching this video I imagine this is something like how Europeans feel when they hear an anecdote about the American healthcare system. The fact that someone needed to do this at all is insane to me. For Pathfinder the encounter table works as written. You don’t need to do anything to make it work, and you certainly don’t need to create an entire program to simulate an encounter for you to see how difficult it looks like it’ll turn out to be. You just follow the table and it works without adjustments. In my group’s last session I had a player who had to leave suddenly right before a combat encounter. I was able to readjust the combat to be the same difficulty effortlessly, and I’ve never once had to fudge numbers.
you are criminally underrated I'm watching this for the 4th time and keep sharing it with my friends so it gets boasted. this is brilliant
I'll buy the books when WOTC stops sending mercenaries to people's houses to steal their cards.
Hirelings
This is the first video of yours that I've seen and it's exactly what I needed! Keep up the good work!
Dude. The level of effort you put into this thing is crazy, and let me just say it paid off. The website works like a charm, just tried it on my level 4 party of 6. I am a fairly experienced dungeon master and usually just wing it, but damn this brought a whole new level of ease to my session prep. Thank you.
I like that this was reccomended to me. Feeding the algorythm some engagement so that others also get reccomended this.
Yes! This is what computers where meant to be used for! Not writing , not painting, but simulation and raw hard math! Thank you for your work.
Dudeeee you are insane, thank you for all that work, Ill share this video with all my dm friends, keep it up ;)
- Made a complex app because computers have way more brainpower than people
- Absolutely loves standard array
- Just went and fking entered all of the monster stat blocks
- Reject subjective labels, just gives you all the data
oh so this is a channel run by an actual entity from the clockwork realms, I see
This is incredible! just the tool that I needed to balance my homebrew encounters!
3rd edition was very good at this Cr= appropriate challenge for a 4 member party of that level. If the enemy is humanoid and you can see that 1 x 4 players seems weak use 1 monster/ player. It was very easy and I never went wrong with that approximation through the entire of 3rd edition.
Congratulations for your work. It really will help a lot of people out there.
Firstly, amazing work. I've made something similar for my own game =D, but it was a lot less automated and worked mostly with custom built monster blocks. Putting those into your calculator to see how the battle plays out was really neat, our end results were quite close.
So a few things I'd like to ask if they are in the works:
- Are you going to allow ways to account for positioning? Maybe add rules like "Only x number of creatures can attack y" or "y is not targetable by melee strikes or ranges less than z" type of things.
- I'm trying to simulate high level zealot barb play, particularly the con saves to 1hp and 0hp while raging mechanics. I've sort of done it with damage taken multiplier of 0 when a less than half hp, but he should be at 1 or 0 hp. Smaller nitpick, but makes a big impact on outcome
- Can we make the "attack weakest monster" logic skip over a character? I have one character hidden within the mimic and he would be untargetable until the mimic is slain, but I'm not sure how to make the system prioritize the mimic first
- Can we give specific monsters or PCs a "delay" in turns, to simulate them needing to spend turns closing distance?
Thanks again for the effort and amazing tool.
You sir are a legend. I actually just had an anti-climactic boss battle with my PCs recently and was racking my head on what I did wrong. Now this should help, thank you!
This tool is great.
I've noticed some issues, (like lvl 5 cleric assuming they have Spiritual Weapon, Bless, and Spiritual Guardians all ready and going in round 1, which they can't, because you can cast one of those per round, and 2 of them are concentration spells), but it is still much better than anything we had before.
This is an amazing tool, thank you so much! My players were just saying after the last session, that felt like a really epic fight! Good, I was hoping it wasn't a TPK because 5 level 12s vs. a Phoenix in the air should have been hard on paper, but I knew it wasn't going to be...so I added an adult red dragon's breath, an exhaustion aura, and like +250HP. It ended up being just right. I checked the simulator, and default without adding any extra items in or anything, the phoenix would've died in 3 rounds with nobody taking any damage.
Very much looking forward to using this!
"Something that would take the CR 6 human mage one fireball."
*Gandalf headbobs approvingly*
I like the simulator, if I could make a request though, it would be to add sub classes and be able to create characters without having type everything in manually, and a help file. I recognize that is a lot of extra work, the reason I bring it up is you have a great app here and I think that would make it even better.
WHAT THE HECK it's amazing work, thank you so much!
I'm not sure if this is is the place for suggestions. But while trying it out there are a few features I think can be improved.
1: When it comes to the actions you can give a player/monster, the "debuff" section lacks any kind of incapacitation options, therefore cannot simulate spells such as "Tasha's hideous laughter" or "Hold person".
2. When it comes to "x/long rest" I would very much like for there to be an option of spell slots, (or spell-points for those that use that rule) on the number of times per day.
Ok, Quasi-Modron aside, this is a fantastic video. Hell, the topic is brilliant and you've provided something that's incredibly actionable. Best of all, unlike a lot of game advice about D&D out there, you've provided the lego bricks but not told people what to build. Love it. Now to slowly (next 1 hour) go through your other videos to enjoy (consume like an addict) your videos! Lookin forward to more!
what you did here is amazing! thank you for sharing this with the community for free. I do however have a small request, could you add the bloodhunter class to the simulator?
I'm having a good time using this simulator to test out my homebrew monsters to work out their appropriate difficulties. For such a fresh and new website it's already really customisable and easy to use! My one request would be the ability to have monsters provoke conditions as well as all the other buffs and debuffs, but I'm hoping that will be coming soon :)
Absolutely great tool. One of the most deserved like and subscribes I have ever given.
Incredibly impressive! Well done!!!!
Interesting idea. I'll give it a try at my next one-shot session.
I'm not gonna lie your comment about how many dungeons you put in your dragons just gave me a campaign idea of really really big dragons...
Same, imagine you have like a sleeping dragon but only its mouth can be seen the rest looks like mountains, then you could also have the nostrils be a sort of trap because they either push you from a brige or pull you from the brige in periods(to hint at your players that it might me a real sleeping dragon, because you are not gonna tell them.) As soon es they then get into the dragon or get a meguffin of sorts the drafon awackens and now the mission is to get to the earth safely.
I respect people who love data and d&d. Such a good combo. You sir have earned a subscription.
incredible impressive, hats off to you.
will defiently look to use this, I do like you set up most of the classes, mediocre builds and not trying to implement complicated spells.
The choice to go Moon Druid as the base is intresting, but using wizard is probably good enough to account for a "normal" druid.
artificer seem to have a d12 hit die though small issue but it does increase their power in such a calculator by a lot.
I should probably add some more options to the PC templates tbh. There are two classes which "assume" a subclass choice right now, artificer and druid, but it shouldn't be too hard to include at least another option for folks who use a different one
@@Trekiros yea i think it's pretty easy to substitute another class that is "close enough" for other subclasses or even homebrewed classes.
Thanks, that look very cool. I'm going to try it out.
This man is must be a messiah or an hero.
You're the most underrated rpg youtuber, good work man!
I just rang the bell. You are a wizard. Keep it up!
super impressive work, only issue im having is that it loses accuracy when it comes to resistance to specific damage types since all damage in the simulator is counted as just "damage" and not for example "slashing damage." but that aside for encounters where resistances dont play much of a part this does wonders, thank you!
This is... spectacular. I will be using this permanently from now on
This is ludicrous, amazing work!
I have to say, I am seriously impressed with your simulator. Its a game changer! If there's any feedback I'd give for it though, is I'd like more details on what is happening round to round. How much damage are the attacks doing? Were any legendary resistances used? What were the rolls?
Also, I think if you added some more battle tactics, like, using healing word on unconscious enemies, that would really help.
This is actually genius and I'd love to try it out but still think it wouldn't be super accurate for my party because of homebrew stuff.
Still, AWESOME work man!
You might be able to account for that using the advanced customization mode - at least, that's the intent behind this thing!
@Trekiros - Game Changer I run a very "combat focused" game and so they all have multiple items and skills that are all homebrew, for example my bard has a ring that gives everyone the equivalent of a short rest in a "healing burst" when she drops below half health.
I wanted to throw crazy things against them and needed to balance it so they wouldn't TPK every encounter, that's one of the simplest homebrews in the party so I'm still not sure that it would be able to account for everything :/
Still though, AMAZING JOB and I'm sure it will only improve as time goes on!
Just found your channel from this video, very impressed with the tool you've built! And impressed at the dedication to input all those monster stats!
Subbed and looking forward to seeing more and playing with the tool more
What an impressive work ! Thank you !
Very interesting. Cool tool too!
I work using the same kind of prediction in a spreadsheet, not taking into account any deathspiral that may occur.
1. set the order in which the party will kill the monsters (or experiment this later)
2. use hp, ac, saves, and average player damage to calculate each monster's time-to-kill in rounds
3. calculate monster lifetime in rounds: the first monster to be killed will last only their own time-to-kill but last monsters they kill will have lived the longest: the sum of all time-to-kills.
4. use monster damage to calculate their total damage in the encounter
Now you've got a few interesting stats:
- expected number of rounds
- expected suffered total damage (when players focus-fire and monsters don't at all)
If the total damage done by the monsters is bigger than the party's total remaining hp, you probably made it as hard as you'll ever want it to be, since perfect PC target prioritization and bad target prioritization by the monsters will likely still lead to a TPK, especially since death spirals aren't take into account. In this kind of fight, the player will have to be lucky or make good tactical decisions to win.
I try to minimize the number of rounds (lower HP/higher DMG), while finding a sweet spot in damage taken depending on the mood I'm looking for.
Your tool can do the same thing I see, and is more fine-grained. It's not the best for homebrew (yet) I think.
I think my own sheet helps me out better for now, because I use the sheet to design creatures while designing the encounter.
But if I were to run some book-only things, I'll try it out.
Ive started running LoX for a group of 6 at lvl 5 with magic items, cant wait to give your site a try, will hopefully help with balancing
Thanks for all this hard work and great presentation!
Thank you! This is amazing and i think it should be advertised more, even you could have a payment option for adding custom monsters that are not in 5e books. Just an idea for you.
Thanks for this tool. I love preparing and I'm DMing my group's next campaign. This allowing me to custom tailor every story encounter perfectly is going to be sweet.🤣
Glorious, my group just started using it today!
This looks amazing! Subscribed, I hope to see more content like this 👏
Amazing can’t wait to try it out
Great work. Exceedingly helpful. Well explained and entertainingly so. Thank you. I've subscribed.
Love what you did there mate. Hope you keep it up.
I don't have the words to describe my gratitude.
For someone using standard aray this is quite amazing :D
No but for real I´m about to DM my first game of DND ever with some friends and didn´t know how to balance a premade adventure for a group of 5 for a group of 3 and this is so helpful.
What the what?!!? This is amazing! You are a king! I've never heard of you or seen one of you videos before 15 minutes ago but this tool is so incredibly useful I am actually, instantly SMASHING those Like and Subscribe buttons!
Yo I was expecting adjustments to how the CR for monsters is determined, and some changes to how encounter-difficulty was calculated, but a whole encounter-simulation? This is great.
Seems interesting, I ran it through an encounter I put my players through last weekend and it came out pretty close. A party of 6 at level 4, ambushing a bandit encampment with about 17 bandits and their captain, who I had set up as a dwarf barbarian with the Giant subclass, meaning he grew to large size when he raged...It took awhile, but the party cleaned house. The party has a lot going on, but I tried to match their average actions and abilities to the calculator and it gave me a result pretty close to what actually happened. I could see this helping me to make encounters more interesting and balanced in the future. The only problem is, when I had a lot of customized enemies, when I'd try to add more to the encounter it started duplicating their entries. I.E. I tried to change bandits from 7 to 10 and instead of changing the number, it added a second set of 7 bandits. I did have a lot of customization to try to match it to the real encounter though, maybe it was too much lol
Huh, that's a weird bug. If you can, can you maybe film it happening or give me a recipe to reproduce it consistently? 🤔
I think that one of the big things to introduce would be to have the "numbers" actually be a compilation of challenges associated with their stats and abilities. then have a list of abilities and other scenarios that would that would eliminate that particular difficulty modifiers. It is more work on WotC part, but their current algorithms make no mathematical sense.
Thanks for all of this, it's very helpful. I won't be using it whole, as I have worked out my own CR calculator for simplicity, but I like a lot of the thoughts you have on the way, they do give me a lot to consider
Such consistent quality, always a delight to watch a Trek video 😄
This looks very promising, thanks for sharing!
Standard Array is the way.
Looking forward to giving this a try. Had my first PC death last week and I still don't know how
Amazing! As a new DM to 5e, thank you!
This is AMAZING! You should implement some way to add common monster abilities, like pack tactics 😁
This is the most based solution to CR I've ever seen: just simulate the whole fight, that way you'll know how hard it is.
Thanks for making this
Recalibrating the scale, such a Mordron thing to do. Well it was helpful you little creature of order, thank you
Super cool sim, would be really useful if it could include a recharge in the calcs. My dragon is definitely not using its breath at will but more than once per rest is very likely.