D&D Encounter Difficulty Calculator

How the encounter difficulty calculator works

1. Set the party. Enter the level every character has and how many characters are at the table. The calculator multiplies the per-character XP thresholds for that level by the party size to get the party's easy, medium, hard and deadly budgets.
2. List the monsters. Add one entry per kind of monster, pick its challenge rating and type how many of them are in the fight. Naming them is optional and only affects the wording of the notes.
3. Read the multiplier. A group of monsters is more dangerous than the sum of its parts, so the monsters' XP is multiplied: ×1 for a single monster, ×1.5 for two, ×2 for three to six, ×2.5 for seven to ten, ×3 for eleven to fourteen and ×4 for fifteen or more. A party of two or fewer steps the multiplier up one row, so a single monster becomes ×1.5 and fifteen or more become ×5. A party of six or more steps it down one row, so a single monster becomes ×0.5 and fifteen or more become ×3.
4. Compare with the budgets. The multiplied figure is the adjusted XP, and the band it lands in is the verdict: under the easy budget is trivial, then easy, medium, hard and deadly.
5. Balance it. The page simulates adding or removing monsters of the ratings in your list and shows the smallest change that actually moves the encounter into a different band.

Reading the results

Two totals matter and they are not the same number. The monsters' XP is what the party earns, and the adjusted XP is what the difficulty is judged on. Six goblins at CR 1/4 are 300 XP of monsters; they are also seven monsters in total once the ogre joins them, so the encounter multiplier is ×2.5 and the adjusted total is higher than anything the party will write on a character sheet.

Award the monsters' own XP, not the adjusted XP. The multiplier exists to answer "how dangerous is this", not "how much is it worth". Divide the monsters' XP by the number of characters to get the per-character award shown above the budgets.

The budgets are what "easy" and "deadly" actually mean in numbers for this party. Easy is a fight that costs hit points, medium is a fight that costs resources, hard is a fight the party can lose if it plays badly, and deadly is the line past which characters can die. Every band is a range, so an encounter well past the deadly threshold is materially worse than one that just crosses it, which is why the page reports how far over the line you are.

Worked example: six goblins and an ogre

Four 5th-level characters have budgets of 1,000 easy, 2,000 medium,3,000 hard and 4,400 deadly adjusted XP. Six goblins at CR 1/4 are 300 XP and the ogre at CR 2 is 450 XP, so the monsters are worth 750 XP. Seven monsters apply a ×2.5 multiplier, which makes 1,875 adjusted XP: inside the easy band, 125 points short of medium, and each character earns 188 XP from the fight.

One more goblin takes the count to eight, keeps the ×2.5 multiplier, and lifts the adjusted total to exactly 2,000: a medium encounter. Drop the ogre instead and the encounter falls to 600 adjusted XP, which is trivial. Those are the two options the page puts in front of you, and both are simulated with the real rules rather than guessed.

What this calculator does not do

• It uses the fifth edition XP-budget method as published in the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide. The 2024 revision replaced that method with a different budget system, so the numbers here are not the 2024 ones and the two should not be mixed.
• It assumes every character is the same level. For a mixed-level party the exact thresholds come from adding each character's own per-character thresholds: total them across every character, or total each level group's thresholds and add those group totals — both are exact for the budgets. What is not exact is adding separately calculated group encounter results, because the multiplier depends on the whole fight's monster count and should be applied once to the combined monsters' XP.
• The page counts every monster you enter toward the multiplier. The 2014 guidance allows much weaker monsters that do not contribute significantly to the fight to be excluded from the count used for the multiplier, not from the XP the party earns. This tool has no separate contributing-count field, so for that edge case calculate the multiplier yourself from the contributing monsters, apply it to the full monsters' XP, and keep every monster's base and earned XP in the award.
• Challenge rating is an approximation. Monsters whose tricks the party cannot answer, or who are immune to the party's best options, hit harder than their XP suggests, and a monster with an unusual action economy can be far more dangerous than its rating.
• It does not model the state of the party. A full-health party with all its spell slots can take a deadly encounter; the same party on its fourth fight of the day can be undone by an easy one. The budgets assume a party with resources left.
• It does not roll dice, fetch monster statistics or look anything up online. Challenge ratings and counts are the numbers you type, and everything is worked out in this page in your browser.
• A difficulty label is a planning estimate. It does not guarantee how many resources the party will lose or that the party will win; tactics, dice and the state of the party still decide the fight.
• Method and further reading:2014 Basic Rules, Building Combat Encountersand2024 Dungeon Master's Toolbox.

Frequently asked questions

How do you calculate encounter difficulty in D&D 5e?

Add up the XP values of every monster in the fight, multiply that total by the encounter multiplier for the number of monsters, then compare the result with the party's budgets. Four 5th-level characters have budgets of 1,000 easy, 2,000 medium, 3,000 hard and 4,400 deadly adjusted XP. Six goblins at CR 1/4 are 300 XP and an ogre at CR 2 is 450 XP, so the monsters are worth 750 XP; seven monsters give a multiplier of 2.5, which makes 1,875 adjusted XP and puts the fight inside the easy band.

What are the XP thresholds for four 5th-level characters?

Easy starts at 1,000 adjusted XP, medium at 2,000, hard at 3,000 and deadly at 4,400. Those come from the per-character thresholds for level 5, which are 250, 500, 750 and 1,100, multiplied by four characters. The same table scaled to any other level or party size is what the calculator applies, so a party of six 5th-level characters has budgets of 1,500, 3,000, 4,500 and 6,600 instead.

How many goblins are a deadly encounter for four 5th-level characters?

Twenty-two goblins is the smallest all-goblin fight that reaches the deadly budget. Goblins are CR 1/4, worth 50 XP each, so 22 of them are 1,100 XP of monsters and the multiplier for fifteen or more monsters is 4, which gives exactly 4,400 adjusted XP. Fifteen goblins come to 3,000 adjusted XP, which is the bottom of the hard band, and eleven goblins give 1,650, an easy fight. That is also why four goblins at 400 adjusted XP are trivial: weak monsters need numbers before the multiplier makes them dangerous.

Why does the multiplier change for small or large parties?

The multiplier exists because a group of monsters gets more actions than a single monster of the same total XP, and a party of two has fewer actions to answer with. A fight with four monsters uses a multiplier of 2 as printed, but the same fight against two characters uses 2.5, and against six or more characters it drops to 1.5. At the extremes the party-size step leaves the rows the base count table applies to that monster count: a single monster becomes x1.5 for a party of two or fewer and x0.5 for six or more, while fifteen or more monsters become x5 for fewer than three characters and x3 for six or more. The calculator applies that step up or step down automatically and tells you which multiplier it used and why.

Should I award the adjusted XP or the monsters' XP?

Award the monsters' own XP and ignore the multiplier when you hand out experience. The adjusted figure is a difficulty yardstick, not a reward, so the six goblins and the ogre from the example are worth 750 XP to the party no matter how the multiplier moved the verdict, which is 188 XP per character for a party of four. The multiplier only exists so that ten weak monsters are not scored as though they were one big one.