For example, if you want to include challenge rank 4 worth of minions of Party PL-3, use 3 minions per challenge rank * 4 challenge rank= 12 Party PL-3 minions. The minions come out of the same challenge rank budget for the encounter. Using the above notation, minions would often be worth a fraction of a challenge rank to avoid this, minions are listed as minions per challenge rank. Minions are weaker than villains of the same PL and their challenge ranks reflect this.
As you add or subtract enemies, or increase or decrease their power level, you can track it easily with the tokens. A Challenge Rank 16 encounter for a party of four PL 10 PCs could consist of four PL 10 enemies, or two PL 12 enemies, or one PL 14 enemy, or two PL 10 enemies and one PL 12 enemy, or eight PL 7 enemies, or just about any other combination you can imagine.Ī helpful aid for this stage, especially if you're trying it for the first time, is to put a stack of poker chips or pennies in front of you for each enemy's Challenge rank. So long as the total Challenge Ranks of all of the enemies put together are equal to the Danger Rank x the number of PCs in the party, you'll still have an appropriate encounter for that Danger Rank. Depending on how many ranks you assign each enemy, it will change what Power Level that NPC is. You can divide the Challenge Ranks to many NPCs, or only a few. The total Challenge Rank of an encounter can be distributed in any way you like among the enemies the PCs will face. So if a group of four PCs is going to face an encounter of Serious Danger (4), then the encounter will have a total Challenge Rank of 16. To determine this, you need to determine the total Challenge Rank for the encounter:Įncounter Challenge Rank = Danger Rank x Number of Party Members Depending on how challenging you wish to make the encounter (see Step 1), you can have more or fewer NPCs of higher or lower power level. Next, you need to figure out just how many NPCs to challenge your party with (and just how powerful to make them). I've used this system for just about every encounter in my Justice League: Legacy game and found it to be very helpful.Įncounters are rated by how dangerous they are, or how difficult it will be for the players to overcome them:Ġ: No Danger there is almost no possible way that the PCs could suffer injury, much less defeatġ: Minimal Danger the PCs have almost no chance of being defeatedĢ: Modest Danger the PCs stand to suffer some injuries if they're not carefulģ: Significant Danger the PCs are likely to win the fight, but it will require smart play to come out on topĤ: Serious Danger the PCs are going up against a real threat and could just as easily win as they could lose, and will need to play smart to winĥ: Severe Danger The PCs are going to be outmatched and without very clever gameplay and teamwork, they're more likely than not going to loseĦ: Overwhelming Danger the PCs are very likely to lose the encounter, and only tremendous luck or playing at the top of their game can see them through I will be the first to tell you that it's not 100 percent accurate as not all effects are created equal, but this should give you a good baseline on where to start. The idea is to give a way to easily and effectively build balanced encounters for your heroes to go up against. This is from a post I found on Atomic Think Tank long ago (that I can't find anymore, so if someone can find it and credit the original creator, please do so and I'll add it into this post) and thought I'd post here for any new (or maybe even old) MnM 3e GMs along with some of my own thoughts.