Encounter XP Budget Calculator
Your party's XP budget for a fifth-edition combat encounter, and how hard your monsters make it.
- Low
- 600
- Moderate
- 900
- High
- 1,600
Add monsters with the XP from their stat blocks to see how hard the fight is.
A fifth-edition combat encounter is built against an XP budget. The game master picks how hard the fight should be, looks up what that difficulty costs for a character of the party's level, and spends the budget on monsters, each of which has an XP value in its stat block. This calculator does the lookup and the arithmetic for the 2024 rules, from the System Reference Document 5.2.1.
The three difficulties
The 2024 rules have three. A Low encounter has one or two scary moments, but the characters should win with no casualties. A Moderate one could go badly without healing and other resources. A High one could be lethal for one or more characters. The 2014 rules had four (easy, medium, hard and deadly) and multiplied the monsters' XP when there were several of them. The 2024 method has no multiplier: you add up the stat-block XP as it is.
How the budget is worked out
Each character contributes the amount in the XP Budget per Character table for their level and the difficulty you want, and the contributions are added up. For a party all of one level that is the table's number times the number of characters. Four level 1 characters have a Low budget of 200 XP, and six level 15 characters a High budget of 46,800 XP. A party of mixed levels adds each character's own share, so the calculator takes a row for each level in the party.
Spending it
Add each kind of monster with the XP from its stat block and how many there are. The calculator totals them and names the lowest difficulty whose budget the total stays within. Five level 3 characters have a Moderate budget of 1,125 XP, and two Druids at 450 XP each with nine Stirges at 25 XP each come to exactly that. If the monsters cost more than the High budget, the encounter is beyond High, and the calculator says by how much.
The budget is a guideline, not a guarantee. The SRD itself warns that the more creatures an encounter has, the higher the risk that a lucky streak on their part deals more damage than you expect, and that a creature whose Challenge Rating is higher than the party's level might take out a character with a single action.
What it does not do
It has no monster list: you type each creature's XP from its stat block. If you would rather search a list of monsters and pick from it, Kobold Plus Fight Club budgets with the same 2024 method, adds a monster list and random encounters, and is free in the browser.
Sources
This work includes material from the System Reference Document 5.2.1 ("SRD 5.2.1") by Wizards of the Coast LLC, available at https://www.dndbeyond.com/srd. The SRD 5.2.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.
Does this use the 2014 or the 2024 encounter rules?
The 2024 rules, as published in the System Reference Document 5.2.1: three difficulties (Low, Moderate, High) and no multiplier for the number of monsters.
Where do I find a monster’s XP?
In its stat block, next to its Challenge Rating. Type that number in; the calculator multiplies it by how many of that monster there are.
What if my party has characters of different levels?
Add a row for each level. Each character contributes the budget for their own level, and the rows are added together.
Is a Low encounter always easy?
No. The budget is a starting point. Many creatures, or one whose Challenge Rating is above the party’s level, can make a fight harder than its XP suggests.