Budgets (9e)

The budget for a combat encounter is how a DM balances out the enemies that will be faced by the player characters.

Determining Budget

Budget is determined by the number of player characters in the party. Each character is worth the following: 50 hit points of mooks, or 10 dice hits of minions, or half a major archetype.

Therefore, a balanced encounter for a party of five characters could be:

• 2 packs of wolves (Pack Mook x2, 25 hit point each, 50 hit points of mooks total)
• 2 troll beastmasters (Ringleader Minion x2, 6 dice hits)
• 1 troll berserker (Brute Minion x1, 7 dice hits)
• 1 troll battlechief (Champion Minion x1, 5 dice hits)
• 1 troll deathspeaker (Lurker Minion x1, 2 dice hits, 20 dice hits total)
• 1 warbeast (Beast x1) (one major archetype)

Increasing the budget by one or two characters can make the encounter more challenging, and help to counteract benefits that the party might have, such as a defensive position, beneficial artifacts, or lots of experience.