5e encounter builder and calculator
Add your party and your monsters to see how hard the fight is. This free D&D 5e encounter calculator uses the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide XP budgets and works with SRD monsters and your own homebrew.
Happy with the fight? Run it in the initiative tracker, or read how to gauge it first.
Read the guideHow to calculate encounter difficulty
- Look up each character's XP budget for Low, Moderate and High by level.
- Add those budgets up across the party.
- Add up the XP of every monster in the fight.
- Compare the monster total to the party's three budgets.
Note
The 2014 rules multiplied monster XP by how many monsters there were. The 2024 rules drop that multiplier.
Warning
Past the High budget, the fight risks character deaths.
2024 XP budget per character
Each character’s budget by level, from the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide. Add up the budgets for everyone in the party, then keep the monsters’ total XP at or under the column you want.
| Level | Low | Moderate | High |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 50 | 75 | 100 |
| 2 | 100 | 150 | 200 |
| 3 | 150 | 225 | 400 |
| 4 | 250 | 375 | 500 |
| 5 | 500 | 750 | 1,100 |
| 6 | 600 | 1,000 | 1,400 |
| 7 | 750 | 1,300 | 1,700 |
| 8 | 1,000 | 1,700 | 2,100 |
| 9 | 1,300 | 2,000 | 2,600 |
| 10 | 1,600 | 2,300 | 3,100 |
| 11 | 1,900 | 2,900 | 4,100 |
| 12 | 2,200 | 3,700 | 4,700 |
| 13 | 2,600 | 4,200 | 5,400 |
| 14 | 2,900 | 4,900 | 6,200 |
| 15 | 3,300 | 5,400 | 7,800 |
| 16 | 3,800 | 6,100 | 9,800 |
| 17 | 4,500 | 7,200 | 11,700 |
| 18 | 5,000 | 8,700 | 14,200 |
| 19 | 5,500 | 10,700 | 17,200 |
| 20 | 6,400 | 13,200 | 22,000 |
Tips for balancing 5e encounters
Frequently asked questions
Add up each character's XP budget for their level, then add up the XP of every monster in the fight. The encounter is Low, Moderate or High depending on the first budget the monster total fits under. The calculator does both sums for you.
The 2024 rules. The 2014 rules used Easy, Medium, Hard and Deadly thresholds and multiplied monster XP by how many monsters there were. The 2024 rules use Low, Moderate and High budgets and drop the multiplier, so you add up monster XP as it is.
Yes. Set each character's level on its own. Budgets are summed per character, so a party of levels 3, 3, 4 and 5 gets the right total.
Yes. Creatures you've saved in Monsterbrew appear in the list next to the SRD monsters. For a monster that isn't there, use Add by CR: pick its challenge rating and a count, and the calculator adds the XP for that CR.
Yes. The calculator still shows the total and labels it Above High. A High encounter can already kill a character, so run an Above High fight only on purpose.
Each monster is worth the XP for its challenge rating, such as 200 XP at CR 1 or 50 XP at CR 1/4. A saved creature with its own XP value uses that instead.
Not on its own. Reloading the page resets it, and it never changes your saved creatures. Run this encounter saves your party and monsters to your library and opens them in the initiative tracker.