Difficulty balance inDungeons & Dragonsis a delicate art, but based on some guidelines in the 2024Dungeon Master’s Guide, it’s about to change dramatically for high-level parties. High-levelDnDplay is a side of the game that plenty of long-term players haven’t even experienced, as it’s not uncommon for campaigns to end or fall apart before the characters reach the full potential that the system allows. In campaigns that do reach that stage, high levels bestow god-like powers on the party, leaning heavily into the heroic fantasy concept that defines the ruleset.
Getting that kind of boost as time goes on can feel rewarding, and some parties enjoy starting to steamroll enemies, with the diminishing threat of death coming as a potential relief after investing in characters for months or years. At times, though,DnD5e can feel like two completely different games at low and high levels, with DMs often having to re-learn balance even after finding a sweet spot for their players. The2024Player’s Handbookalready shifted the dynamicof progression in some regards, and the 2024Dungeon Master’s Guideis now taking a big leap of its own.
D&D’s 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide Raises The Encounter Budget
More XP Means More Monsters
The guiding tool for combat balance inDnD5e is an XP budget table, which offers a guideline for how much enemy XP should be in play per character of each level in the party. At low levels, the table in the 2024Dungeon Master’s Guidelooks similar to the 2014 implementation. The new table cuts the previous Easy option and changes Medium, Hard, and Deadly to Low, Moderate, and High, but all the numbers under those categories are identical for the first five levels.
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After level five, however, things start to veer off the original course.As levels progress, the difference in the new XP thresholds steadily increases. At level 10, the current High threshold is 300 XP above the old Deadly standard, a gap that grows to 1,400 by level 15. When characters reach level 20, dungeon masters are now guided to allot 22,000 XP worth of enemies per party member, which absolutely dwarfs the previous recommendation of 12,700.
Although the table alone paints an aggressive picture, the full scope of the 2024Dungeon Master’s Guide’s approach to encounter balance is even more intense than the raw numbers indicate. Even highly competent parties can buckle beneath a turn order filled with enemies, andthe 2014Dungeon Master’s Guideincluded multipliers to increase the XP calculation of monster groups. The new book cuts that process entirely, meaning that a horde of 15 monsters now takes up 4x less XP budget than before.
D&D Encounter Balance Is Still Up To Dungeon Masters
Dungeon Master’s Guide Numbers Aren’t Everything
The XP budget table is ultimately just a set of guidelines, andexperienced DMs are likely to form their own opinions about encounter balance after enough time at the table. All the same, it’s interesting to see a shift in design that’s this radical. Cutting the multipliers fits into the 2024 prerogative of making the game more approachable than ever, but it allows significantly more challenging encounters into the mix, and the change in XP budget for higher levels is much more dramatic than many of the iterative changes that appeared in the 2024 Player’s Handbook.
The changes also fit into a model ofDnDthat relies less on each adventuring day featuring a heavy load of encounters, an idea that’s less common in many modern games and seems to have disappeared in the 2024Dungeon Master’s Guide.
Following the adjusted rules should make it easier totoss legitimate challenges at high-level players, although it’s best to still approach encounters with care. The previous balance generally required some additional creative work by DMs, ashigh-level encounters often needed unique constraints or mitigating factors outside the raw enemy fighting power to keep things interesting. Even with the changes, introducing those kinds of challenges while being a bit more conservative in the XP budget department is more likely to lead to exciting combat, but simply ratcheting up the numbers can do in a pinch.
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At lower levels, additional care might still be necessary due to the removal of multipliers, and the increased danger that’s posed by enemy hordes against weaker parties is probably the biggest reason why the first five levels didn’t see any bump to XP budget. There’s definitely an argument to be made that the multipliers, however finicky, were necessary, as a sole powerful opponent is often far easier to defeat than a few decent ones.
The 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide Proves D&D Isn’t Getting Easier
Heroic Fantasy With Heroic Stakes
At any rate,the new XP budget table is the first concrete proof that the 2024 books aren’t simply interested in making the game easier. It makes sense that classes generally ended up slightly more powerful in the newPlayer’s Handbook, as the community tends to react a lot more favorably to buffs than nerfs. Counteracting that in the XP Budget changes won’t frustrate people in the same way that nerfs would, even if the game ends up being harder as a result of this approach.
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The big question mark is still theupcomingMonster Manualredux, which isn’t set to release until 2025. The value of an XP Budget is entirely dependent on how effective monsters are, and the new book is supposed to make a lot of tweaks. It’s unlikely that the difficulty of most creatures will be radically overhauled, but new abilities and adjustments to their core stats could end up making them slightly easier or slightly harder as a whole, and the sample size of reworked enemies seen so far isn’t big enough to get a clear picture of the overall strategy.
It’s also very possible that theMonster Manualwill be making some changes to help account for the removal of XP multipliers, although there’s no simple, overarching way to address that change.
Regardless, high-level parties transitioning to the new books should watch out, asDMs that stick to the rules might suddenly take a more aggressive turn in the coming weeks. As far as pre-written campaigns go, everything from the past decade should be no harder than it’s always been, even if future publications aren’t as merciful. The 2024Dungeon Master’s GuidemakesDungeons & Dragonseasier for dungeon masters, but based on the changes to XP budgeting, it might not be the same story for players.
Dungeons and Dragons
Dungeons and Dragons is a popular tabletop game originally invented in 1974 by Ernest Gary Gygax and David Arneson. The fantasy role-playing game brings together players for a campaign with various components, including abilities, races, character classes, monsters, and treasures. The game has drastically expanded since the ’70s, with numerous updated box sets and expansions.
