D&D encounter difficulty calculator
Set your party’s levels and the monsters you are thinking of throwing at them, and this tells you how hard the fight is before you run it. It covers both the 2014 Dungeon Master’s Guide method and the revised 2024 one, because they answer the question differently.
It runs entirely in your browser. No account, nothing stored, nothing sent anywhere.
The party
The monsters
Difficulty
Hard
600 XP × 2 = 1,200 adjusted XP against 4 characters
| Band | Party threshold | Reached |
|---|---|---|
| Easy | 300 XP | yes |
| Medium | 600 XP | yes |
| Hard | 900 XP | yes |
| Deadly | 1,600 XP | — |
If the party wins, that is 150 XP per character — XP awards always use the raw total, never the adjusted one.
The difference
2014 and 2024 are not the same sum
Under the 2014 rules you total the monsters’ XP, multiply it by a factor that grows with how many monsters there are, and compare the result against four thresholds — easy, medium, hard and deadly — summed across the party. The multiplier is the part people get wrong by hand, which is why it is shown in the result rather than hidden inside it.
The 2024 rules removed the multiplier entirely. You total the monsters’ XP and compare it against three budgets — low, moderate and high. The designers folded the crowd effect into the budget numbers themselves, so a straight sum is now the correct calculation rather than a shortcut.
That means the same encounter can land in different places depending on which edition you are running, and neither answer is wrong. Use the toggle to match your table.
The multiplier
Why eight goblins are worse than their XP suggests
Two monsters of half the strength are harder than one of full strength, because they get twice the actions. The 2014 multiplier is how that is priced in: ×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.
Party size shifts it. A party of fewer than three characters moves one step up the ladder, and a party of six or more moves one step down — six players get more actions of their own, so a crowd threatens them less.
One thing worth knowing: the multiplier only exists to classify difficulty. XP awarded to the party after the fight always uses the raw total, never the adjusted one.
Reference
XP by challenge rating
| CR | XP | CR | XP |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 10 | 11 | 7,200 |
| 1/8 | 25 | 12 | 8,400 |
| 1/4 | 50 | 13 | 10,000 |
| 1/2 | 100 | 14 | 11,500 |
| 1 | 200 | 15 | 13,000 |
| 2 | 450 | 16 | 15,000 |
| 3 | 700 | 17 | 18,000 |
| 4 | 1,100 | 18 | 20,000 |
| 5 | 1,800 | 19 | 22,000 |
| 6 | 2,300 | 20 | 25,000 |
| 7 | 2,900 | 21 | 33,000 |
| 8 | 3,900 | 22 | 41,000 |
| 9 | 5,000 | 23 | 50,000 |
| 10 | 5,900 | 24 | 62,000 |
Judgement
What the number does not know
Difficulty bands are a starting point, not a verdict. They do not know that your party has no healer, that the fight happens in a corridor where only two characters can reach the front, or that the wizard still has a fireball and the encounter is six goblins standing in a circle.
They also assume a party at full resources. A "medium" encounter as the fourth fight of a day with no short rests behaves like a hard one, and the 2014 guidance of six to eight medium-to-hard encounters per adventuring day is doing a lot of quiet work behind these numbers.
Treat "deadly" as "someone could die if this goes badly", not "someone will". It is the band that most rewards knowing your own table.
Common questions
- Which edition should I pick?
- Match whichever Dungeon Master’s Guide your table is running. If you are unsure, the 2014 method is what most published adventures and most online advice assume; the 2024 method is simpler and slightly more forgiving at high monster counts.
- Does the encounter multiplier change how much XP my players get?
- No. The multiplier exists only to classify difficulty. XP awarded after the fight is the raw sum of the monsters’ XP, divided among the characters. The tool shows both numbers so they do not get confused.
- Why does adding a sixth player make the encounter easier?
- Under the 2014 rules a party of six or more shifts one step down the multiplier ladder, because more player actions blunt the advantage a crowd of monsters has. It also raises the party’s summed thresholds, so both halves of the comparison move.
- Is "deadly" the same as lethal?
- No. Deadly means the encounter could kill a character if the dice and tactics go badly, not that it is expected to. Many tables run deadly encounters routinely as the climax of an adventuring day.
- Does this work for characters of different levels?
- Yes. Add a row per level — the thresholds and budgets are summed per character, so a party of three level 5s and one level 3 is calculated correctly rather than averaged.
More free tools
- Session notes templatesSix Markdown templates — session log, session zero, NPC, location, quest, character. Copy or download.
- XP split calculatorDivide an encounter’s XP across the party, and see how close that lands them to levelling.
- Travel time calculatorHow long a journey takes by pace, terrain and hours per day — with forced march rules.
- CR calculatorWork out a homebrew monster’s challenge rating from its defences and its damage output.
Keep reading
- Dungeon Master notesPrep that survives the party going somewhere else.
- D&D campaign managerEverything around the notes: maps, sessions, compendium, soundboard.
- D&D campaign wikiTurning linked notes into a reference for your world.
- Keeping DM secrets separateWhere secrets leak from, and what to do about it.
The encounter is one line in a longer campaign
Balanced or not, what the party actually remembers is who they fought and why. Dungeon Ledger keeps that — linked to the NPC, the location and the session — with per-note visibility so your plans stay yours. Free to start.
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