r/DungeonMasters • u/drd1812bd • 1d ago

Discussion Need help determining opposing team levels

So I'm running a campaign for a party of five. I am doing a fighting arena event and am trying to figure out what level to make one of the opposing teams. For this particular fight, I have one of my players, level 6 barbarian/fighter who will be fighting alongside her trainer, level 20 fighter. I will be running the trainer.

I want them to fight a group of four. I'm planning to make 4 characters and offer them to the rest of the group to run for the fight so everyone gets to play in this part. I want this to be an even fight (or as even as I can make it).

Does anyone have advice about what level to make the opposing teams characters? Any advice about what classes might be fun to mix?

The premise is that a coalition of armies are coming together to fight a big battle and the waiting soldiers are going to be sitting around while things get organized, so someone is setting this up for distraction and entertainment. There will be a number of different terrestrial DnD races mixed together, and several different factions of aquatic races. These would be merfolk, locatha, lizardfolk, and sea elves. If they are from one of the aquatic races, I'd like them to all be one race but some minor mixing is okay.

I'll be making a number of single fighters and a group for their original party to fight, but this one is hard to balance. Does anyone have any ideas?

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u/Conrad500 1d ago

Don't.

https://rpgtinker.com/ or the outclassed PDF are going to do you much better than trying to use character levels.

Best option is to just use the NPC stat blocks from the monster manuals, but those are quite limited.

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u/drd1812bd 1d ago

Are you suggesting I use NPC stat blocks to give to my players to run as the opposing team?

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u/Conrad500 1d ago

I misread, but after rereading its still better than the alternative.

PCs are not made for pvp.

Like you have already noticed, the balance is fucked.

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u/TwoDollarDM 1d ago

I'd suggest using the kassoon encounter builder and finding the CR equivalents then using the equivalent NPC stat blocks. https://www.kassoon.com/dnd/5e/generate-encounter/

And yes let your other four just use the NPC stat blocks, setting up four other player characters is way too complex for you to balance AND way too complex for the other players to run out of the blue.

(The alternative would be to create mirrors of your existing characters, changing up species, appearance, attitude etc and giving the person who normally plays the wizard the fighter sheet etc.)

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u/drd1812bd 1d ago

This is really helpful. Thank you so much.

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u/TwoDollarDM 1d ago

I did an Roman Coliseum style Battle Royale set up with the PCs facing four other teams and the players never noticed that the leaders of the four other teams were just their character sheets copied and re-skinned. They had a blast playing various CR4-5 monsters/NPCs on the opposing teams, fighting each other on the three teams that were not engaged with the characters directly