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The same way(s) you keep any other combat from getting boring. First, I'm going to point you to DDAL03-04 "Shackles of Blood" which has an excellent arena scene in it exemplifying some of the advice I …

This is a "Multipart Encounter" In your case you've got two immediately-sequential encounters: A half-dragon (CR5), with only half its HP. (Because once you reduce it to half-HP it's gone! Yay! Excep …

(First, 7 players is a lot, for an adventure designed for four. Consider that excitement during combat may be a matter of spotlight as much as it is risk.) You can do nothing. If you look at the cha …

"By the books" the encounter is barely a Hard one. But there are huge caveats.... The adult gold dragon is CR17, 18,000 XP. According to the DMG at p.82 your L12 PCs can handle 2,999 XP each in a medi …

1. "is there a formula for using the CR?" No. As @Gregory and @Albert have pointed out, you've got to do the XP-math to evaluate the encounter against the guidelines. Luckily, tools like Kobold Fight …

DDEX3-5, "Bane of the Tradeways," has what you need, at pp.11-13. You can purchase it at Dungeon Master's Guild for a few bucks, or if you're an Adventurer's League GM you can still (Jan 2016) downloa …

Slightly-high CR can be deadly, even on full-resources. When putting together an encounter or adventure, especially at lower levels, exercise caution when using monsters whose challenge rating is hig …

[This all assumes you're looking for a medium encounter, as defined in the DMG. Adjust upward or downward for easy, hard, or deadly, as instructed in the various sections.] By the DMG "Creating a Comb …

There is no value given; I argue the correct value is (-) Petrification is not listed among the "features that you may plunder from the Monster Manual. (DMG p.279)" So we've got to figure it out ourse …

Should encounters be handled on a different way for a full magic party? No. What kind of parameters (Number of enemies, their stats, the environment) could break the balance? To address …

I'm going to get all old-school on you and say Looking through the bestiary by hand is the better way. Yes, DnDBeyond has a decent search function that will find you flying CR 5-13 monsters. But it's …

Don't. The antagonists want the PCs alive--that's already been established. So let the players take a few runs at the guards; undoubtedly one time they will come up with something clever or amazing, w …

I get CR=4, using the DMG and some generous (to the NPC) assumptions. Defensive CR based off of HP is 1, bump that up by 1 for the (relatively) high AC. Offensive CR based off three-round damage is 4, …