Struggling Balancing Encounters

[Wise Orc Tavern]

I've being playing D&D for more than 30 years now. During all this time never once I played an official adventure. Me and my pals always created everything from scratch, so now after 25 years playing together I though - Hell, why not dive into those pre-made adventures and see what it really is about. So I picked up some of them within FG and I started with Strongholds & Followers, but since it is designed for 5 lvl5 characters I am struggling to adjust encounters to my current party size. Bear in mind I do know how to adjust things, what to tweak here and there, but I was used to do those things on the go, no pre-planning needed.

Now, if I change the damage, the AC, the resistances or a simple change on HP, it's almost impossible to reflect those changes in the CR/XP.

I found this amazing site (https://5e.tools/crcalculator.html#0,13,1,3,false,Medium,1,10,false ,0,false,0,) which helps me with that. I also use other two homebrew monster generators ( 1.https://tetra-cube.com/dnd/dnd-statblock.html and 2.https://giffyglyph.com/monstermaker/ ) and so I get by. The only thing is that it takes a lot of time to run all this, than go into FG and remake everything. Sounds Like I am complaining on the burdens of being a DM, I am not. I am just trying to figure out if there is an easy way to adjust encounter levels.

All my players have the same level - I use thresholds so everyone lvls up together. I also use an extension to calculate encounter difficulty (can't remember now which one, but can check that later). So I need to recreate each and every single monsters, make a new encounter, and only than I can run the extension to see how adjusted is my encounter. I am looking for a way to streamline the prrocess.

This is not a big deal - I' ve being using FG for a while now and usually I just do things as I would if I was on a table, I just don't let them see that I am changing things on the go, but I was wondering that for the next adventures - those official pre-made adventures like ToEE, Ywaning Portal and so on, it would be better to try to stick to them as close as I can ( My Strongholds & Followers although a very fun adventure doesn't resemble it for a moment. Aside from the general idea I could not hold on to myself to create so many things around that everything went their own way).

Personal Disclaimer: One of the best things I read in my D&D years was the book The Lazy Dungeon Master - solid work both for newcomers and veterans alike, I consider it to be a hidden gem. So I am down to take the lazy path and make things simple, I just don't know how to make it better.

I have 3 players in this adventure, all lvl 5. The encounter is almost 3x harder (using DMG encounter build rules), but if I take out enough monsters (they are just 4 Knights, a cleric, a mage and the main enemy) to adjust the battle I end up with only 2 enemies. What I did is tailor each one of them to make them nerfed. It works, but it's a lot of work, considering everything else.

Can someone share any insights on that?

Thanks

[Zacchaeus]

You probably picked just about the hardest adventure to run. As you say your party is short of two characters so without some adjustment it's going to be difficult. What I would do is have each player roll up two characters and play with a party of 6. Another possibility (since it is Strongholds and Followers) is give each character a follower to help them along.

[Wise Orc Tavern]

Yes, I understand that. It's too late for that though :-) Last battle will take place in a couple of hours!

But honestly, everything will be fine today....its just that it was a lot of work, and looking up ahead for the next official adventures we intend to play I was wondering if there is an easier way.

I posted this exactly same topic on enworld forums to get some insight in how people tackle this kind of issue. One thing I said over there is that I remember 4e having apps that would let you easily adjust the CR of a creature by the number amount you wished. I miss that and I think that is the only downside of 5e, it's harder to tailor official adventures to your taste. It's a lot of work, and one of the reasons we decided to try out the official adventures was because we don't have the time we used to have when we were younger. SO I think that is something the designers did wrong.

The next one we will try will be Yawning Portal, so I am still to decide on that.

[LordEntrails]

I just do it in FG and wing it.

For example, if I change an NPC, I start by creating a copy of it. Usually most changes like you are suggesting, AC, saving throws, etc don't actually change the challenge rating of the NPC, since those are just a factor or two in what are very broad assumptions. Second, I don't care if I'm off by 1 CR rating either way. The difference in experience after a few levels I figure just evens out.

For encounter difficulty, I just use the outline FG gives in the encounter itself. Yes the effective XP is different than the award XP that FG shows. But again I don't worry because my players adapt, I adapt, and I get close enough. And when I don't the players might have an easy day, or a hard one and have to do something different (or I might have to do something). I'm ok with that :)

To adjust encounters from an AP to a party, I don't bother changing anything but HP and number of NPCs. FG has options to set NPC hitpoints to min, max, default and random. Though I usually use random.

[GavinRuneblade]

Yes, I understand that. It's too late for that though :-) Last battle will take place in a couple of hours!

But honestly, everything will be fine today....its just that it was a lot of work, and looking up ahead for the next official adventures we intend to play I was wondering if there is an easier way.

I posted this exactly same topic on enworld forums to get some insight in how people tackle this kind of issue. One thing I said over there is that I remember 4e having apps that would let you easily adjust the CR of a creature by the number amount you wished. I miss that and I think that is the only downside of 5e, it's harder to tailor official adventures to your taste. It's a lot of work, and one of the reasons we decided to try out the official adventures was because we don't have the time we used to have when we were younger. SO I think that is something the designers did wrong.

The next one we will try will be Yawning Portal, so I am still to decide on that.

https://theangrygm.com/how-to-f-cr-practical-example-1/
This is the easiest I am aware of, and it works. Very efficient and quick, scales to any party size.