Build an encounter
Tell Chucks about the party and the fight you have in mind. It finds real monsters, works within the 2024 encounter budget, and checks the finished roster before your AI presents it.
Start with the party
Party composition is the only required ingredient: the number of characters and their levels. Add a difficulty and a sentence about the scene to get a more useful result.
Build a moderate encounter for 4 fifth-level characters. They are searching an abandoned watchtower at dusk.Describe the encounter you want
Name any constraints that matter. You can require or exclude monsters, describe a faction, add an obstacle, or say what the opponents are doing. Chucks will search for creatures that can satisfy the brief and still fit the party.
Build a high-difficulty encounter for 5 sixth-level characters. Hobgoblins are firing down from the upper floors of a ruined tower while their captain holds the entrance in melee. Their captain can be another kind of creature. Do not use flying monsters.When the constraints do not fit
Not every combination of monsters, party level, difficulty, and encounter size has a clean answer. When the numbers do not work, your AI may use far too many creatures, overlook a constraint, or invent a monster or its statistics. Ask it to use only monsters verified by Chucks and explain which constraint needs to change.
Give the scene somewhere to live
Mention the environment whenever it matters. A forest, flooded vault, mountain pass, ship, or aerial chase gives Chucks something concrete to use when choosing viable opponents and writing the encounter hook.
Adjust for your table
The low, moderate, and high difficulty bands assume a baseline party. If yours is consistently stronger or weaker, request a percentage adjustment to the XP budget.
If your party consistently needs the same adjustment, make it a campaign default in Set up your campaign instead of repeating it in every request.
Build a moderate encounter for 4 fourth-level characters exploring an old vault. This party is stronger than normal, so increase the encounter budget by 20%.Bring the unusual idea
If you want a specific kind of surprise, describe it. Your AI is much better at developing an unusual premise than inventing one from a blank page.
- Goblins riding worgs.
- Pirates attacking from another airship.
- Goblins allied with fire mephits from an abandoned wizard's tower.
Keep refining the same encounter
Follow-up requests can keep what works and change one part of the result:
- Make it harder.
- Swap the wraith for something less deadly.
- Keep the roster, but move the fight into a sandstorm.