My thoughts...

[Thrythlind]

...the bit I read on 5E has made me hopeful that it will be a potentially enjoyable game. However, Dungeons and Dragons will never be in the top ranks of my favorite game systems.

Perhaps it's because my first game system was Champions 1st Edition, a very versatile point buy system, but there are several problems I have with D&D:

I don't like being limited to class/race combo skill packets...I prefer to design my character from scratch.

I don't like the leveling mechanic. It feels very artificial to me. And I don't like the way HP goes up. I'd much prefer to start with a set amount of HP that rarely ever increases. I don't like the rising to hit rates either. Having pretty standard combat ability throughout is more appealing. It allows for maintaining some drama. I mean, if I'm playing HERO System, an army of mooks in the early campaign is roughly as dangerous to me as an army of mooks is at the late campaign. Granted, in mid-to-late campaign I might have developed a few extra tricks that make me able to handle a good number more mooks than I did earlier, but it's not like I suddenly become immune to attack the way high level D&D characters sometimes seem to.

I don't like loot dependency. I outright loathe loot upgrade dependency. The stories and myths I've read that drew me to fantasy RP had a character either use the same sword or spear or staff or whatnot through the whole story or else upgrade their weapons once at a dramatic point in the story. I've never read a story where the main character drops their sword at every major treasure point to pick up a new one each and every time.

I hate with a passion flat curve conflict resolution methods. D20 puts too much narrative control in the hands of, not the player, not even the GM, but the DICE. I firmly believe that narrative control should belong to the GM and Players first and the dice an extremely distant second. One of the reasons I like FATE. Still enough of an element that it can totally ruin your plans, but where you most likely to get an average result so that your bonuses and stats are that much more important than the die roll.

So there's lots of the base concepts of D&D that I hate. But I love many of the settings, like pre 4E Forgotten Realms and, much as I think it ripped off a large number of contest entrees, Eberron. I've had a lot of fun with d20 and D&D but those campaigns where I had a large amount of fun have often seemed to be in spite of it's sacred cows rather than because of them.

[Jenckes]

Allow me to say, I totally know where you're coming from. I started playing role playing games with 3.5. I has never made sense to me. Wait, now I'm a level 15 con 10 ninja, and now have more "HP" than the ogre we fought 10 levels back? How does that work exactly? Since I started playing I've played savage worlds, IKRPG, Song of Ice and Fire, 2nd Edition DnD, along with a truly horrible foray into 4th edition. Most of the time I'm the DM.

The thing is, Dungeons and Dragons hasn't ever been trying to simulate the actual world we live in. It's meant to simulate a fantasy world that might as well be called "Dungeons & Dragons." With any luck you can allow yourself to get immersed in that world, but I'm not sure it's intended that you confuse that world with our own. If it were a skill based (as opposed to class based) system where you didn't have HP it might be more gritty and real, but it would less D&D. Like a lot less. I am someone who would be very interested in playing a skill based wound mechanic game, but DnD is popular for a reason. It does some things right, and I think 5th edition does more things right than quite a few past editions. One thing to mention is that it does seem that 5th seems to be taking the approach you would prefer to magic items, the seem to be rather scarce and finding one is a big part of the story.

Just about everything I've read about 5e I've liked. That said I've already started trying to mod it to an HP free, armor as DR system.

First step, replace the existing critical rule with, "Light weapons crit when the hit by at least 3, and may crit one more time by exceeding the target's DEFENSE by another 3. One handed weapons crit when exceeding by 4, and two-handed weapons crit by exceeding by 5. When multiplying damage roll weapon damage twice and adding all damage modifiers a second time."

Second Step, armor as DR. Whatever armor you would wear, subtract 10 and it provides that much DR. Armor no longer affects Defense (though wearing medium and heavy armor still limits dex a character can add to ac). So a plate-mail wearing Character would have AC 10 and 8 DR. Also, Constitution modifier is added to DR.

Third Step, wound threshold. A character's wound threshold is equal to proficiency bonus + 1/2 Hit Dice size. Meaning a level 1 fighter would have 7 wound threshold. After damage has been reduced by DR the character divides the damage by her wound threshold. This number is rounded down and that is the number of steps a character is moved on the wound table (easily tracked with a d6).

Wound Table
1- Inured: -1 to all rolls
2- Ensanguinated: Disadvantage on skill checks
3- Wounded: 1/2 move speed
4- Dying: Disadvantage on attacks and saves
5- Unconscious
6- Deadsies

This system seems playable until 7th or 8th level spells where the crunch goes to ****. Up to there it seems fairly balanced. It's hard to say for sure only having access to the basic rules, but if you're interested in 5th ed but have a hard time with HP it might be worth giving this a playtest. I will if I can ever talk a group into it.

Also, I know this damage system is not math lite. Being relatively math light for a pen and paper rpg is one of the things 5th ed has going for it. I happen to play with a group that is 75% computer science grad students. So math is not a problem. In fact, if I told them we were playing by these rules one of them would likely just write a program so that when I told him damage he typed it in and gave me wounds. That's probably a sign of a bad mechanic, but whatever.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

HP has never been just physical wounds. HP is the combination of physical wounds and the ability to go on... Endurance.

Meat and not meat.

The part of the HP that is meat, is the last blow that kills you. This could be 1 point, 5 points, or 14 points of HP.

Up until then everything else can be (DMs can change all this) bumbs and bruises and stuff that makes you tired.

Kinda like in a basketball game, as you go on you lose HP from all the hits and running and times you fall down, but until you hit 0 HP and take say a sprained ankle or broken bone, you will be above 0 HP. You can rest for a couple minutes and get some HP back or you can rally and have a surge of adrenaline and get you HP back.


D&D is a horrible system to take HP = meat. Because minor cure spells don't repair damage like a restoration spell would, they just heal HP. Get your arm cut off at first level? Better hope you have the money to go back to town and get a caster to cast a higher level spell.

So as you level you don't gain more meat, you just gain the endurance to take more blows before one of those blows kills you.

[hawklost]

I think the problem you have with HP stems from the same kind of issue that many people have. I don't believe HP was ever supposed to represent your actual health, no matter what the name was. I believe Wizards intended hp to represent all things related to battle. HP = Dodging ability, Bruises, Scratches, Heartiness, and then only finally health.

One way to conceptualized HP without seeing it as only wounds.
A Person who has over half his HP might have taken 0 physical wounds. Instead he might have dodged so much that he is unable to dodge attacks as fast anymore.
Someone with less than half might have scraps and bruises, maybe even some light frying from those annoying fire bolts from the fight
Someone less than a a quarter might have actually taken slightly more serous wounds like actual cuts, stabs and second degree burning
Someone with 0 HP has a serious wound that stops them from fighting anymore. to make it easy, Wizards just knock you out, but a DM might decide instead of being unconscious, you are completely disabled from any kind of fighting/talking/moving because you are in too much pain.
With 5e you could have the saves be - With so much pain now you are attempting to help yourself. Succeed and you bandage up your wounds a little, while failure means you cause more damage.

This is just one way to see the HP and it also explains why it goes up each level
more HP means more of all things, not just more life.

[da_chicken]

D&D is a horrible system to take HP = meat. Because minor cure spells don't repair damage like a restoration spell would, they just heal HP. Get your arm cut off at first level? Better hope you have the money to go back to town and get a caster to cast a higher level spell.

Other than the fact that the iconic spell is called cure wounds. :smalltongue:

My take is that HP represent whatever they need to represent. Physical damage? Sure. Exhausted stamina? Absolutely. Ability to avoid damage? Yep. Inherent resistance to damage? Yes. Whatever "damage" needs to represent, "hit points" represent resistance to. What it actually represents is neither fixed, nor truly worth thinking about. Both damage and hit points are abstract mechanical hand waving.

[Lokiare]

Basically in every edition hp has not been meat. It has been the ability to turn a deadly blow into a scratch. Examine the words used Hit Points. They are points that count how many hits you can take before going down. Some hits count as more than 1 point. Hit Points are a throw back to war gaming where each token on the map represented entire armies or units and each 'hit point' was equal to one actual character. So hit points have never been meat points or life points. They are deadly blow mitigation points and can represent anything from divine luck to a physical resilience.

That people continue to house rule them as meat is a testament to the reading skills of people that play the game. There is also no problem if you house rule them as pure meat. Just don't expect the game to make sense or cater to your needs.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

Other than the fact that the iconic spell is called cure wounds. :smalltongue:

My take is that HP represent whatever they need to represent. Physical damage? Sure. Exhausted stamina? Absolutely. Ability to avoid damage? Yep. Inherent resistance to damage? Yes. Whatever "damage" needs to represent, "hit points" represent resistance to. What it actually represents is neither fixed, nor truly worth thinking about. Both damage and hit points are abstract mechanical hand waving.

Which is where the misconception comes from. They couldn't call it "cure endurance" or whatever. It is like fireball not being an actual ball of fire, they just used a name that people could understand d or people. would like. :smallbiggrin:

I'm not saying you don't get bumped and scraped or whatever as you take HP damage... But it isn't like messed up physical damage like loosing an arm or having a sword ran through your gut.

Also I think Lok, although can be a little rude, said it better than I did.

Edit.

A better metaphor would be football, they get beat the hell up every game but they rarely (KO/serious injury) ever actually take meat damage.

D&D HP system is a bit wonky since it is meant to be simple.

[Visivicous]

There's a particular play style that easily accounts for 'levels' and 'HP' within a game that the characters are aware of, which I've seen in video games and TV shows (anime for the most part) more often than in tabletop RPGs.

Basically, there is a hidden layer of mystical energy which pervades all things (could be spiritual energy, life energy, psychic energy, energy left over from creation, etc.) that certain people can tap into. By completing strenuous or difficult tasks, these folks literally absorb this energy (represented by XP) into their spirits/souls/bodies/whatever, and gain supernatural abilities (represented by level/hit dice increase). This process could be understood, in character, by the inhabitants of such a fictional universe without resorting to OoTS-esque jokes: This is how their universe works, and it seems normal to them. Thus, PCs would, as they level, become more akin to demi-gods, then to the common folk (same for high level NPCs).

A character's true Health (‘meat’ as others have said), would always be what they had at first level/hit die (unless Con modifier increased/decreased). HP, Hit Points, gained through increased levels/hit dice would actually represent the physical manifestation of the energy which is now within the character's body. It would manifest as a 'shield' or 'force field' of sorts, and negate damage or stop the damage from reaching the character's actual body. Think of it as ablative armor. The Cure Wounds line of spells could cure minor scrapes/bruises to true Health, or restore energy to a character's 'shield'. Using crit tables, critical strikes could represent an attack which pierces the 'shield', and inflicts damage to the character's body (either their true Heath, or by maiming: wounds).

There are probably folks who would read this and scream 'NO!', but I like this for high fantasy games. Sure, grim and gritty games should be treated with more 'realism', I.E. more like the way things work in the real world. But for high fantasy? I see no problem with treating things as obviously supernatural, and prefer it to saying ‘through luck/happenstance/skill/dues ex machina, those last fifty attacks (which totally hit) only caused scratches and fatigue’.

Edit:
I just wanted to clarify that I view the 'shield' as literally skin tight, only blocking/deflecting actual damage to the body, and most of the time the 'shield' itself would be intangible. Thus, a character hit by a fireball would still have singed hair (though the root of the hair, being in the skin, would be protected ;-P ), and clothing. Armor could be dented or destroyed, weapons sundered, etc.

[rlc]

With any luck you can allow yourself to get immersed in that world, but I'm not sure it's intended that you confuse that world with our own.

why would that be intended? i don't think that's ever been intended with any game, especially not one with magic elves and fireballs.

[Jenckes]

why would that be intended? i don't think that's ever been intended with any game, especially not one with magic elves and fireballs.

That was mostly my point. You have to let go of some things that seem intuitive to how your world works.

As for the whole HP thing, as a DM I often find it difficult to describe battles to new characters. So an attack that barely misses or scrapes the targets face as one that lowers HP, often confuses his character because "What do you mean I just barely missed I rolled a 27 with modifiers?" Well I can't well say you put the arrow through his heart now can I?

When attack rolls are to hit, and HP loss is "Damage" it is hard to separate HP from Meat. No matter how many times you read, or are told, that HP is not equal to meat.

If running low on HP is becoming exhausted, why are there status affects like exhausted and fatigued. Shouldn't that simply be covered by having less HP? HP is an abstraction. It's one some people get used to. But it is weird.

[Tholomyes]

That was mostly my point. You have to let go of some things that seem intuitive to how your world works.

As for the whole HP thing, as a DM I often find it difficult to describe battles to new characters. So an attack that barely misses or scrapes the targets face as one that lowers HP, often confuses his character because "What do you mean I just barely missed I rolled a 27 with modifiers?" Well I can't well say you put the arrow through his heart now can I?

When attack rolls are to hit, and HP loss is "Damage" it is hard to separate HP from Meat. No matter how many times you read, or are told, that HP is not equal to meat.

If running low on HP is becoming exhausted, why are there status affects like exhausted and fatigued. Shouldn't that simply be covered by having less HP? HP is an abstraction. It's one some people get used to. But it is weird.The way I like to describe it to new players is to tell them it's kind of like an action movie, especially one where the hero has to fight through a series of mooks to get to the final confrontation. By that final confrontation, the hero's usually pretty beaten up, with wounds and scrapes and burns, but they're still standing, and not noticeably impaired by their wounds. That's how HP works: Every hit is physical damage, but HP is a measure of the character's ability to remain standing after taking that damage (and a bit of a narrative abstraction for turning what would be more serious injuries into flesh wounds)

[Thrythlind]

I think the problem you have with HP stems from the same kind of issue that many people have. I don't believe HP was ever supposed to represent your actual health, no matter what the name was. I believe Wizards intended hp to represent all things related to battle. HP = Dodging ability, Bruises, Scratches, Heartiness, and then only finally health.

One way to conceptualized HP without seeing it as only wounds.
A Person who has over half his HP might have taken 0 physical wounds. Instead he might have dodged so much that he is unable to dodge attacks as fast anymore.
Someone with less than half might have scraps and bruises, maybe even some light frying from those annoying fire bolts from the fight
Someone less than a a quarter might have actually taken slightly more serous wounds like actual cuts, stabs and second degree burning
Someone with 0 HP has a serious wound that stops them from fighting anymore. to make it easy, Wizards just knock you out, but a DM might decide instead of being unconscious, you are completely disabled from any kind of fighting/talking/moving because you are in too much pain.
With 5e you could have the saves be - With so much pain now you are attempting to help yourself. Succeed and you bandage up your wounds a little, while failure means you cause more damage.

This is just one way to see the HP and it also explains why it goes up each level
more HP means more of all things, not just more life.

Oh, I've worked around the HP system with the same sort of thought exercises ranging from "It doesn't really hit, it just 'hit' in terms of mechanics. In reality it barely misses me."

It doesn't change the fact that I don't like it. The HP and rising to-hit bonuses are one of the things that trivialize lower level enemies. At a certain point, why worry about the army of orcs, you can send your 15th level armed to the teeth fighter out there and they'll all be dead in roughly an hour?

I can fit HP into my suspension of disbelief, but the higher in level we get the less I'm able to stretch.

[hawklost]

Oh, I've worked around the HP system with the same sort of thought exercises ranging from "It doesn't really hit, it just 'hit' in terms of mechanics. In reality it barely misses me."

It doesn't change the fact that I don't like it. The HP and rising to-hit bonuses are one of the things that trivialize lower level enemies. At a certain point, why worry about the army of orcs, you can send your 15th level armed to the teeth fighter out there and they'll all be dead in roughly an hour?

I can fit HP into my suspension of disbelief, but the higher in level we get the less I'm able to stretch.

Think of your 15th level Fighter armed to the teeth as someone like Conan, he can slaughter many minor enemies without issues.

Also, almost every game has some way to do the negation of lower level enemies being a threat. If you look at 5e, they don't really increase your AC or saves by a huge amount so the only thing keeping a 15th level Fighter from being almost as bad as 1st level fighter would be his HP (and all his skills he gained). Otherwise, what would prevent a 1st level party from taking on CR15 encounter since those challenges would do as much damage as a CR1 encounter.

[da_chicken]

Back to OP.....


...the bit I read on 5E has made me hopeful that it will be a potentially enjoyable game. However, Dungeons and Dragons will never be in the top ranks of my favorite game systems.

Perhaps it's because my first game system was Champions 1st Edition, a very versatile point buy system, but there are several problems I have with D&D:

I don't like being limited to class/race combo skill packets...I prefer to design my character from scratch.

I find classless games frustrating. You always seem to start out without enough abilities to truly differentiate you from the other players, and character creation takes hours. Character classes give you the ability to have unique and powerful abilities right from level 1. Front loading abilities like this is actually a feature of class-based RPGs, it just causes problems with 3.x style multiclassing.


I don't like the leveling mechanic. It feels very artificial to me. And I don't like the way HP goes up. I'd much prefer to start with a set amount of HP that rarely ever increases. I don't like the rising to hit rates either. Having pretty standard combat ability throughout is more appealing. It allows for maintaining some drama. I mean, if I'm playing HERO System, an army of mooks in the early campaign is roughly as dangerous to me as an army of mooks is at the late campaign. Granted, in mid-to-late campaign I might have developed a few extra tricks that make me able to handle a good number more mooks than I did earlier, but it's not like I suddenly become immune to attack the way high level D&D characters sometimes seem to.

Good news! 5e was designed with bounded accuracy in mind, specifically intended to combat the problem that early game monsters don't challenge late game characters. I do encourage everybody to read the Bounded Accuracy (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120604) article as it gives crucial information about the design philosophy of 5e.

Hit points and damage do increase -- that's one of the primary benefits of levelling -- but the system is designed so that an army of mooks is likely to just kill you whether you're level 1 or level 20. Obviously it's harder to kill the high character and he will have a lot of defenses and can probably just run away, but they're definitely still a threat.


I don't like loot dependency. I outright loathe loot upgrade dependency. The stories and myths I've read that drew me to fantasy RP had a character either use the same sword or spear or staff or whatnot through the whole story or else upgrade their weapons once at a dramatic point in the story. I've never read a story where the main character drops their sword at every major treasure point to pick up a new one each and every time.

Good news! 5e is not built with the assumption that the players will have any magic items, and items which add straight bonuses to attack, damage, AC, or saves are likely limited to a maximum of +3. Additionally, by default magic item shops not only don't exist, by default you can't easily sell magic items, either.


I hate with a passion flat curve conflict resolution methods. D20 puts too much narrative control in the hands of, not the player, not even the GM, but the DICE. I firmly believe that narrative control should belong to the GM and Players first and the dice an extremely distant second. One of the reasons I like FATE. Still enough of an element that it can totally ruin your plans, but where you most likely to get an average result so that your bonuses and stats are that much more important than the die roll.

I dislike bell curve systems because (IMX) it's too easy to make checks impossible or irrelevant if the DM doesn't know what the abilities of the players are or doesn't know the system well enough (i.e., the DM must have high system mastery). Eyeballing DCs in D&D has a low impact because if you're off by 1 or 2 then you're not off by much. In dice pool games if you get the difficulty off by 2 or 3 successes, you can change the task from difficult to impossible or difficult to easy without realizing it. In that case you're just doing collaborative storytelling, and the dice stop mattering. For you that seems desirable, but for me it just means the game feels like a choose your own adventure novel and there's no risk as long as you don't choose wrong. When the dice go against you it can be frustrating, but to me that's just part of the game and part of life.


So there's lots of the base concepts of D&D that I hate. But I love many of the settings, like pre 4E Forgotten Realms and, much as I think it ripped off a large number of contest entrees, Eberron. I've had a lot of fun with d20 and D&D but those campaigns where I had a large amount of fun have often seemed to be in spite of it's sacred cows rather than because of them.

That's fair. I certainly didn't care for what happened to FR in 4e.

[Tholomyes]

I find classless games frustrating. You always seem to start out without enough abilities to truly differentiate you from the other players, and character creation takes hours. Character classes give you the ability to have unique and powerful abilities right from level 1. Front loading abilities like this is actually a feature of class-based RPGs, it just causes problems with 3.x style multiclassing.Minor nitpick, but I have rarely found this to be the case. I've played a bunch of point buy games, and rarely find that characters feel too similar starting out (unless two players don't talk about their concepts and end up playing two similar characters). Granted, there are issues with it, where I'd agree that such games aren't great for D&D. First of all, is the fact that a classless game, especially point buy, can put a greater emphasis on system mastery, in character building, meaning it's not as good an idea for a game that draws in so many casual or new gamers. Secondly, it also changes up how games will play out. Point Buy is really good for superheroes, both because it opens up the breadth of concepts that appear in superhero comics, but also because you can rely on more altruistic motivations from the party. In a point buy system, it's harder to give goals to an Amoral Rogue, who's only in it for the money, since often times money is little more than an abstracted perk that you can buy. It relies on rewards that, more often than not, are intangible, which creates for a different type of game than many D&D games, especially ones that are more episodic and less of grand, sweeping adventures.

[Sartharina]

I also like class-based instead of point-buy systems. It's one of the reasons I really don't like 3e - sure, the classes are nice, but WBL is a PITA point-buy system. 4e is... not much better, IME, but at least the "3 big items" makes it much less painful.

And, when I do get a point-buy system, I tend to end up making a glorified commoner.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Good news! 5e is not built with the assumption that the players will have any magic items, and items which add straight bonuses to attack, damage, AC, or saves are likely limited to a maximum of +3. Additionally, by default magic item shops not only don't exist, by default you can't easily sell magic items, either.

Thing is that because of Bounded Accuracy, those little +1/+2/+3 bonuses from magic items are now more important than ever. Also, at least in the latest playtest, the default rules for finding treasure made magic items extremely common.

[da_chicken]

Thing is that because of Bounded Accuracy, those little +1/+2/+3 bonuses from magic items are now more important than ever.

More powerful than ever, sure, but not necessary.

1e/2e/3e required magic weapons to even be capable of damaging an opponent. That's how damage resistance worked. 3e also required ridiculous amounts of magic items to keep your AC from becoming irrelevant. 4e went so far to schedule magic item disbursement and make selection of items the player's responsibility, effectively turning them into replaceable feats. The math was literally bolted on to include magic items. In all these systems, you got magic items not to get ahead, but to get to where you were supposed to be.

In 5e, a +1 weapon makes you better than you're supposed to be regardless of level. That's what magic treasure should do: make you better than you're supposed to be, not bring you up to par.


Also, at least in the latest playtest, the default rules for finding treasure made magic items extremely common.

Yes, and the default rules assume you're rolling on treasure tables. If you've ever run a campaign with random loot tables, you know that 50% of the magic items you get are consumable, and 75% of everything is not relevant. They're either duplicates (yet another +1 longsword), items too narrow to be of use (rods of fire exinguishing), or not useable to the party (magic full plate in a party with a ranger, barbarian, rogue, wizard, and druid).

[Lokiare]

Good news! 5e was designed with bounded accuracy in mind, specifically intended to combat the problem that early game monsters don't challenge late game characters. I do encourage everybody to read the Bounded Accuracy (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120604) article as it gives crucial information about the design philosophy of 5e.

Hit points and damage do increase -- that's one of the primary benefits of levelling -- but the system is designed so that an army of mooks is likely to just kill you whether you're level 1 or level 20. Obviously it's harder to kill the high character and he will have a lot of defenses and can probably just run away, but they're definitely still a threat.

Actually I've proven this to not be accurate. You can't put higher level characters up against low level monsters because you have to put enough of them in to fill the encounter budget and if you do that you'll TPK the party. The number of attacks the party takes is compounded each time an enemy is added. Thus the party will take so many attacks the encounter will end with the party having taken much more damage. This is one of those things where the developers didn't understand the math. If a party can take out 3 low level enemies per round on average (some rounds would be 1 or none and some rounds might be 5-6) and they face 25 low level monsters to fill out the encounter budget then even assuming the party goes first:



Round

Number of Attacks

Enemies left



1

22

22



2

41

19



3

57

16



4

70

13



5

80

10



6

87

7



7

91

4



8

92

1




Compare that to a regular 5 monster fight where they take out 1 monster per round (an average encounter with at level enemies):



Round

Number of Attacks

Enemies left



1

4

4



2

7

3



3

9

2



4

10

1




Now even acknowledging that low level monster attacks aren't equal to at level monster attacks in the percentage of hp they can remove, they would have to be almost 1/10th the power in order to be usable at higher levels.

So this is just flat out wrong. It might have been their goal, but they failed miserably.

[Fwiffo86]

Actually I've proven this to not be accurate. You can't put higher level characters up against low level monsters because you have to put enough of them in to fill the encounter budget and if you do that you'll TPK the party. The number of attacks the party takes is compounded each time an enemy is added. Thus the party will take so many attacks the encounter will end with the party having taken much more damage. This is one of those things where the developers didn't understand the math. If a party can take out 3 low level enemies per round on average (some rounds would be 1 or none and some rounds might be 5-6) and they face 25 low level monsters to fill out the encounter budget then even assuming the party goes first:



Round

Number of Attacks

Enemies left



1

22

22



2

41

19



3

57

16



4

70

13



5

80

10



6

87

7



7

91

4



8

92

1




Compare that to a regular 5 monster fight where they take out 1 monster per round (an average encounter with at level enemies):



Round

Number of Attacks

Enemies left



1

4

4



2

7

3



3

9

2



4

10

1




Now even acknowledging that low level monster attacks aren't equal to at level monster attacks in the percentage of hp they can remove, they would have to be almost 1/10th the power in order to be usable at higher levels.

So this is just flat out wrong. It might have been their goal, but they failed miserably.

And yet, the play test scenarios me and my group ran say otherwise. Are you calculating hits as 100% guaranteed? I'm not seeing evidence of hit chance in your table. Is it not reasonable to represent that around 25% of all attacks will miss/be resisted in some way?

[Lokiare]

And yet, the play test scenarios me and my group ran say otherwise. Are you calculating hits as 100% guaranteed? I'm not seeing evidence of hit chance in your table. Is it not reasonable to represent that around 25% of all attacks will miss/be resisted in some way?

Did you run 4,000 test runs of each encounter? Did you run even 10?

If all hits are 25% miss chance then take 25% off of both numbers at the bottom of the middle column of the table. My results still stand.

Now if someone wanted to calculate it out using real scenarios and real hp and average damages that might provide more clarity, but I don't have the time to do that as I'm working on two contract programming jobs a the moment. Feel free to run the numbers and/or the simulated combats and show us your results. Just make sure you tell us how many times you simulated each combat encounter. If its less than 10 it could be anecdotal. If its less than 100 per encounter its probably not going to be accurate.

[1337 b4k4]

Actually I've proven this to not be accurate. You can't put higher level characters up against low level monsters because you have to put enough of them in to fill the encounter budget and if you do that you'll TPK the party.

So basically you proved exactly what he said. That low level monsters remain dangerous and deadly into high levels, especially when you use them in amounts designed to meet the XP budgets of an encounter. Am I missing something here?

[Fwiffo86]

Did you run 4,000 test runs of each encounter? Did you run even 10?

If all hits are 25% miss chance then take 25% off of both numbers at the bottom of the middle column of the table. My results still stand.

Now if someone wanted to calculate it out using real scenarios and real hp and average damages that might provide more clarity, but I don't have the time to do that as I'm working on two contract programming jobs a the moment. Feel free to run the numbers and/or the simulated combats and show us your results. Just make sure you tell us how many times you simulated each combat encounter. If its less than 10 it could be anecdotal. If its less than 100 per encounter its probably not going to be accurate.

hey now, no reason to be adversarial. I was asking for clarification because my experience alludes to different conclusions. But in light of 1337b4k4's statement, you seem to be saying that a group of "lowbie" enemies does indeed provide a challenge. Unless your definition of challenge is different.

For clarification, I do not consider encounters with expected player success to be anything more than a trivial encounter at best. An encounter with a better than average chance of failure is the definition of epic encounter. Such as a party of 4 adventurers dealing with a small army of goblins.

[Lokiare]

So basically you proved exactly what he said. That low level monsters remain dangerous and deadly into high levels, especially when you use them in amounts designed to meet the XP budgets of an encounter. Am I missing something here?

It jumps from 'not a challenge' to 'TPK' so no that's not what I'm saying. Its not a challenge when your party faces a near guaranteed TPK.


hey now, no reason to be adversarial. I was asking for clarification because my experience alludes to different conclusions. But in light of 1337b4k4's statement, you seem to be saying that a group of "lowbie" enemies does indeed provide a challenge. Unless your definition of challenge is different.

Why do people assume I'm being adversarial when I point out facts and flaws in arguments? We need to stop teaching our children that a disagreement means someone hates you.


For clarification, I do not consider encounters with expected player success to be anything more than a trivial encounter at best. An encounter with a better than average chance of failure is the definition of epic encounter. Such as a party of 4 adventurers dealing with a small army of goblins.

Well my definition of a challenge is a party has at least a 50/50 chance of success. Anything less and its not a challenge, its a slaughter and anything more and its a cake walk. Also my definition of a challenge hinges on challenging the players, not the dice. That's a different discussion altogether though.

[Seppo87]

It jumps from 'not a challenge' to 'TPK'
Then calculate better the amount of monsters needed to make it a proper challenge so that they aren't either too few or too many.

[Lokiare]

Then calculate better the amount of monsters needed to make it a proper challenge so that they aren't either too few or too many.

I came up with the math needed, but its a complicated equation and WotC didn't include it so I guess they decided to just let DMs TPK their parties or whatever.

The math problem was something like for every extra monster you add over the size of the party (average of 5 characters) you increase the monsters xp value by 1.5 for the purpose of the xp budget.

[Fwiffo86]

I came up with the math needed, but its a complicated equation and WotC didn't include it so I guess they decided to just let DMs TPK their parties or whatever.

The math problem was something like for every extra monster you add over the size of the party (average of 5 characters) you increase the monsters xp value by 1.5 for the purpose of the xp budget.


Except the previously established WotC equation is based on four characters, not five. Arguments could be made that its based on the Core Four in particular.

[Friv]

Actually I've proven this to not be accurate. You can't put higher level characters up against low level monsters because you have to put enough of them in to fill the encounter budget and if you do that you'll TPK the party. The number of attacks the party takes is compounded each time an enemy is added. Thus the party will take so many attacks the encounter will end with the party having taken much more damage. This is one of those things where the developers didn't understand the math. If a party can take out 3 low level enemies per round on average (some rounds would be 1 or none and some rounds might be 5-6) and they face 25 low level monsters to fill out the encounter budget then even assuming the party goes first:

If a high level party can only kill three low-level monsters per round, something has gone terribly wrong in that party's construction. With the exception of the rogue, who is absolutely not at her best when fighting hordes, high-level characters should be killing at least three low-level monsters per round. If the bad guys happen to bunch up, and the wizard has a spell or two left, that number is going to jump up dramatically.

[pwykersotz]

Why do people assume I'm being adversarial when I point out facts and flaws in arguments?

Mostly your wording. It's almost impossible to read the questions "Did you run 4,000 test runs of each encounter? Did you run even 10?" as anything but insulting.

The first question sets a standard which a casual forum-goer is unlikely to meet and tries to put it as the baseline. This is insulting because no matter what else might have gone into the opinion, you've sold it short by establishing a single unachievable baseline for comparison.

The second question could have made up for the first, but it was phrased poorly. The use of the word 'even' puts you in an antagonistic position. Consider the meme phrase "Bro, do you even lift?" It's designed to be insulting. Compare with "Bro, do you lift?" That's just a question.

It probably wouldn't have been considered insulting if you had said: "How many test scenarios did you run? 4000 is the number that would be optimal, but 10 would do for general trends."

I have no critique about your math or ideas or opinions, but I think it's possible that when a diverse group of people all react unilaterally to what you say, it might be how you're saying it. :smallwink:

[Sartharina]

Actually I've proven this to not be accurate. You can't put higher level characters up against low level monsters because you have to put enough of them in to fill the encounter budget and if you do that you'll TPK the party. The number of attacks the party takes is compounded each time an enemy is added. Thus the party will take so many attacks the encounter will end with the party having taken much more damage. This is one of those things where the developers didn't understand the math. If a party can take out 3 low level enemies per round on average (some rounds would be 1 or none and some rounds might be 5-6) and they face 25 low level monsters to fill out the encounter budget then even assuming the party goes first

You're running them wrong. An encounter is everything between Short Rests, not a single combat situation. 25 low-level monsters is a about 5 different rooms in a dungeon that get cleared between Short Rests.

[1337 b4k4]

I came up with the math needed, but its a complicated equation and WotC didn't include it so I guess they decided to just let DMs TPK their parties or whatever.

The math problem was something like for every extra monster you add over the size of the party (average of 5 characters) you increase the monsters xp value by 1.5 for the purpose of the xp budget.

It sounds like you came up with pretty much the same formula that WotC did, the difference being you increase per individual monster, and WotC increase per outnumbering ratio increase:


The Monstrous Horde: Sometimes outnumbering the characters gives monsters a big tactical advantage. If you're creating an encounter with monsters that have a relatively low XP value compared to the XP budget for the party's level, you might end up with twice as many monsters as characters. However, if you looked at our preview of the hobgoblin, you'll have seen that even lower-CR monsters can become more dangerous when they fight as a group. As such, large numbers of monsters can skew the balance of an encounter.

To account for this, multiply the XP value of an encounter by 1.5 if the monsters outnumber the adventurers by two-to-one. If the monsters outnumber the characters by three-to-one, multiply the XP total by 2. For a four-to-one advantage, multiply the XP total by 2.5, and so on.

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/building-adventures

[da_chicken]

I came up with the math needed, but its a complicated equation and WotC didn't include it so I guess they decided to just let DMs TPK their parties or whatever.

The math problem was something like for every extra monster you add over the size of the party (average of 5 characters) you increase the monsters xp value by 1.5 for the purpose of the xp budget.

It seems to me that you're saying you didn't do the math. Fine. Then I will. When relevant I'll use the math here (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20140707). You don't mention the level of the party you used, the composition of the party, or the monster you used. Indeed, you only list how many monsters there are: 25.

I'll use the Starter Edition Orc. They're Challenge 1/2 and are worth 100 XP. The rule is that you add +50% to the base XP for every time the PCs are outnumbered. In a 4 person party, 25 opponents is 6:1. That's 3.5x XP multiplier. 25 * 100 * 3.5 = 8750 XP. That's about 2200 XP per character. Looking at the table in the above article, we see that your XP budget meets the encounter level for a challenging encounter for level 19 or 20 PCs, or a nearly Hard encounter for level 15-16 PCs. Let's assume the PCs are level 15. We still have budget left, so let's go to 27 orcs (going to 28 would increase the multiplier to 4x, making it an 18th level Hard encounter).

Give me a bit and I'll do the math more completely.

ETA: OK, longer than a bit. I suddenly have plans. But today!

[Tholomyes]

You're running them wrong. An encounter is everything between Short Rests, not a single combat situation. 25 low-level monsters is a about 5 different rooms in a dungeon that get cleared between Short Rests.

Citation needed. Never seen anything from any of the Devs saying anything like this, and the encounters in the Starter set aren't really based around this, if you compare it to the encounter building article guidelines.

Granted, I don't really care much myself, whether high-level party vs low level horde is balanced. A high level party vs 25 low level monsters sounds like quite possibly the most boring encounter possible. If we've gotten to that point, I say we've already lost.

[da_chicken]

OK, here we go. TLDR: It depends on the encounter, but 6:1 odds at an appropriate level require the monsters to generally be too weak to do very much.

Lets make PCs all human, assume the starting array, and assume one member of each class in Basic. Let's assume each caster has these slots available: 2/2/2/1/1/1/0/0. Lets assume at least some portion of a player's prepared spells are not useful or can't be cast. Also, I'm ignoring crits. That favors the PCs. For advantage/disadvantage, I'm using this (http://onlinedungeonmaster.com/2012/05/24/advantage-and-disadvantage-in-dd-next-the-math/) table. Those percentages look right, but I haven't confirmed them.

Orc
Move 30
hp 15
Initiative +1
Attack: +5 melee greataxe (9 damage)
+5 ranged javelin (6 damage)
AC 13
Dex save +1

Fighter (Champion): 20 Str (15+1 starting + 2 at 4th, 6th), 20 Con (14+1 starting + 2 at 8th, +1 at 12th), Dex 14 (13+1 starting)
Move 30
hp 169 (+1d10+15)
Initiative +4 (+2 Dex + 2 Remarkable Athlete)
Attacks:
+10 melee greatsword for 2d6+5 (13.33 damage avg /w THF style) x3
+7 ranged longbow for 1d8+2 (6.5 avg dmg) x3
AC 19 (18 Full Plate + 1 Defense Style)
Skills: Athletics

Rogue (Thief): 20 Dex (15+1 starting + 2 at 4th, 8th), 16 Con (14+1 starting + 1 at 12th) Str 12 (10 + 1 starting + 1 12th)
Move 30 (plus bonus action: Disengage)
hp 123
Initiative +5
Attacks:
+10 melee shortsword 1d6+5 plus sneak attack 7d6 (33 avg dmg)
Bonus action: +10 melee shortsword 1d6+5 (8.5 avg dmg)
+10 ranged light crossbow 1d8+5 plus sneak attack 7d6 (34 avg dmg)
or +10 ranged light crossbow 1d8+5 (9.5 dmg)
AC 17 (12 studded leather + 5 Dex)
Resistance on first attack that hits as Reaction
Skills: Acrobatics

Cleric (Life): 20 Wis (15+1 starting + 2 at 4th, 8th), 16 Con (14+1 starting + 1 at 12th), 14 Dex (13+1 starting), Str 11 (10+1)
Move 30
hp 123
Initiative +2
Attacks:
Ranged or melee sacred flame 3d8 (13.5 avg, Dex save neg)
Melee +7 dagger 1d4+2
AC 19 (15 half plate + 2 Dex + 2 shield)

Channel Divinity 2/rest (Preserve Life): 75 hp

Spell slots:
2/2/2/1/1/1/0/0
Save DC 18

Spells prepared:
1st - guiding bolt, cure wounds (domain), bless (domain)
2nd - hold person, warding bond, spiritual weapon (domain)
3rd - spirit guardians, mass healing word, beacon of hope (domain), revivify (domain)
4th - freedom of movement, guardian of faith (domain)
5th - flame strike, mass cure wounds (domain)
6th - heal

Wizard (Evoker): 20 Int (15+1 starting + 2 at 4th, 8th), 16 Con (14+1 starting + 1 at 12th), 14 Dex (13+1 starting), Str 11 (10+1)
Move 30
hp 100
Initiative +2
Attacks:
Ranged +10 firebolt 3d10+5 (21.5 dmg avg)
Melee +10 shocking grasp 3d8+5 (18.5 dmg avg)
Melee +10 staff 1d6 (3.5 dmg avg)

AC 15 (13 mage armor + 2 Dex) (AC 20 with shield)

Spell slots:
2/2/2/1/1/1/0/0
Save DC 18

Spells prepared:
1st - shield, thunderwave, sleep
2nd - misty step, hold person, web, invisibility
3rd - fireball, fly
4th - greater invisibility, dimension door
5th - dominate person, wall of stone
6th - chain lightning

I've purposefully left off blade barrier and mass suggestion because they both effectively end the encounter without conflict immediately. The first can cut off the orcs from the PCs and will probably force them to retreat. The latter will send about half the orcs to do something unreleated to the current encounter, likely causing the rest to retreat.


Encounter 1 -- Medium-long distance in the wilderness:
Let's assume a meeting encounter in large clearing in a sparse new growth forest, no surprise, mid day, overcast skies, no special win conditions or objectives, initial distance is 100', and AoE effects can never target more than 5 Orcs at a time. Wall of stone and web are not available because they don't function in a clearing and really are no different than any other AoE effect. This encounter favors the PCs.

So, we roll initiative.

Likely the order is all PCs go then the orcs go.

Round 1:
Rogue closes to 80', fires his crossbow (0.9*9.5 = 8.55 damage), and then with remaining 10' either drops prone or moves to cover/concealment. Let's assume the Rogue finds a few handy bushes. Rogue tries to hide with his bonus action, likely succeeds easily. 27 orcs remain, 1 hurt.

Fighter pulls out longbow and drops the orc the Rogue hit (0.9 * 6.5 = 5.85) x2, and puts an arrow into a second orc (5.85). He then moves forward 30' and drops prone. 26 orcs remain, 1 hurt.

Cleric moves forward 30'. Bless isn't useful; the players already need a 3 to hit. So he lights up the orc with an arrow in it with Guiding Bolt (0.9 * 14 = 12.6 damage). He drops prone. 25 orcs remain.

Wizard -- let's be honest -- casts Greater Invisibility amd moves away from his previous position, probably lateral to the orcs.

Orcs go. The orcs move 30' forward, and chuck javelins. 13 go for the Fighter, 12 go for the Cleric. Against the Fighter, 13 attacks at +5 vs AC 19. They need a 14 to hit. There's a 12.25% chance to roll a 14+ with disadvantage. So 13 * 6 * 0.1225 = 9.555 damage. Fighter is now at 159.445. Against the Cleric, 12 attacks at +5 vs AC 19, so same math but 1 less attack: 12 * 6 * 0.1255 = 9.036. Cleric is at 113.964.

Round 2: Fighter and Cleric are 40' from the orcs, Rogue is 50', Wizard is at 70' and invisble.

Rogue fires from cover and drops an orc with sneak attack (0.9 * 34 = 30.6). Someone repeats a joke about Cartman yelling at Butters for shooting someone in the groin that was first told at Level 2. 24 orcs remain.

Fighter stands up, kills another orc with his bow and injurs another. 23 orcs remain, 1 injured.

Cleric stands up, near the Fighter, and drops Flame Strike for 8d6 (28) DC 18, hiting 5 orcs. Orcs need a 17 to save, so they take 0.2 * 14 + 0.8 * 28 = 25.2. 18 orcs remain, 1 injured. Alternative is Hold Person as a 6th level spell, but that only affects 4 Orcs. Flame Strike is better.

Wizard casts Fireball for 8d6+5 (33) DC 18, hitting 5 orcs. They take 0.2 * 16.5 + 0.8 * 33 = 29.7. 5 orcs die. 13 orcs remain, 1 injured.

Orcs turn. Realistically, they should run. 50% casualties is usually enough for a morale failure. Instead 6 move 30' and throw javelins at the Cleric (visible spellcaster). 6 * 6 * 0.35 = 12.6 damage. Cleric drops to 101.364. The remaining 7 dash and surround the Fighter and Cleric.

Round 3: Fighter and Cleric in melee with 7 orcs, the remaining 6 orcs are 30' away.

Rogue fires at an orc in melee with the cleric, dropping it with sneak attack damage. 12 orcs remain.

Fighter switches to Greatsword and... Action Surge. He makes six attacks at 0.90 * 13.33 = 11.997. He kills 3 orcs. 9 orcs remain.

Cleric Flame Strikes as a 6th level spell 5 of the orcs that threw javelins. 4 orcs remain.

Wizard Fireballs the remaining 4 orcs, using Sculpt Spells to avoid hitting the Cleric and Fighter.

Total cost: 31.191 damage out of 515 total HP (~6%). That's trivially healed with Preserve Life. Cleric has no spell slots above 4th level. Wizard has no 3rd level and no 4th level slots remaining. That is significant. This doesn't seem like it was a Hard encounter, however.


Encounter 2 -- Dungeon ambush:
The PCs are travelling down a long, 5' wide hallway which appears to be covered in an unappetizing brown goo. The goo isn't dangerous, but it's not very pleasant. The Rogue is first (and "searching for traps" but explicitly telling the DM he's not touching anything), followed by the Fighter, Wizard, then Cleric, all adjacent to each other. What they don't realize is that the walls on the left and right side of the hallway are one-way illusions, and conceal a hidden room in which 27 orcs wait to ambush the party! When the players reach the midpoint of the concealed room, the orcs spring their trap. The orcs have surprise this encounter. Characters attacking from behind the illusory wall are effectively invisible to those in the "hallway" (except to the Rogue, who has Blindsense). Interacting with an illusion directly is enough to reveal it as false for that player; no save is needed. This encounter highly favors the orcs.

Surprise round. Each orc moves 15' to the players, attacks, and if needed moves back to allow other orcs to strike. 6 orcs attack each player, the extra attacks the Wizard (visible spellcaster). Each player gets a reaction due to orcs leaving area of effect. The orcs have advantage against everybody except the Rogue, as he has Blindsense and can hear the attacks coming.

Fighter: 6 * 9 * .5775 = 31.185 damage. Fighter drops to 137.815.
Cleric: 6 * 9 * .5775 = 31.185 damage. Cleric drops to 91.815.
Rogue: 6 * 9 * .45 = 24.3 damage. Rogue can't Sneak Attack in retaliaton since no other party member is aware of any specific orc at the time. Rogue chooses to use Uncanny Dodge, reducing damage by 4.5 * .45 = 2.025. Rogue drops to 100.725.
Wizard: Casts Shield as reaction, granting AC 20. 7 * 9 * .51 = 31.13 damage. Wizard drops to 68.87.

[Note that, yes, the orcs could have just killed the Wizard or Cleric if they focused fire. 27 * 9 * .51 = 123.93 against the Wizard and 27 * 9 * .5775 = 124.74 against the Cleric.]

Initiative is rolled. Order is likely the same. Fighter & Rogue, then Wizard & Cleric, then Orcs. Note that if initiative goes to the orcs, the damage values get really high, essentially doubling what was above and nearly crippling the whole party. We'll cover that later.

Fighter goes first. He uses Second Wind, and gains 20.5 hp to 158.315. He tries to move through the wall to follow an orc, but gets shoved back running into an orc. However, he touches the wall long enough to dispel the illusion for him. He tries to move to the other side, and reveals that wall as an illusion, too. He spends his Action Surge, and kills all three orcs in range he can reach. Fighter communicates where the orcs are to the party. 24 orcs remain.

Rogue player goes, and he kills one orc with sneak attack that's visible to the Fighter. He's about to use his Bonus action to move into the hidden room when the Wizard tells him to stay where he is. 23 orcs remain.

Wizard goes, and casts Fireball centered on the party as a 6th level spell (just to be sure). He uses Sculpt Spell to miss all 4 party members, but this hits all the orcs for 11d6+5 (43.5), killing them all even if they save. 0 orcs remain.

Total cost is 117.8 hp, nearly 23% of the party's hp, and one 6th level slot. If the party didn't win initiative or didn't try nuking themselves or retreat before the orcs go again, damage is likely to be closer to 50%. If the orcs focus fire on one party member, they can likely kill the Wizard or Cleric.


Looking at it, I don't think the Orcs at 6:1 odds really keep up that well. Just like the warning in the article, the PCs just have abilities that outclass their opponents, and they can't keep up even if they cheat. Obviously, this style of encounter showcases the power of AoE effects. Most encounters won't involve being able to do 11d6+5 to 23 targets simultaneously. However, if they have a small advantage, they can quickly deal a lot of damage, even with relatively poor attack bonuses. Still, I think the math begins to break down, but I certainly wouldn't recommend fixing it by adding more orcs. They're still dangerous!

[Envyus]

You forgot about the Orc's aggressive trait. It allows them to move another 30 ft as a bonus action towards an enemy. Still I doubt it would have mattered too much and your math and senario's are much better then Lokiare's made up imaginary problem.

I think he is using the old playtest monster math still.

[Knaight]

You're running them wrong. An encounter is everything between Short Rests, not a single combat situation. 25 low-level monsters is a about 5 different rooms in a dungeon that get cleared between Short Rests.

Even if it is a single combat situation, the scenario where every enemy gets to attack every round breaks down. It could easily be more limited than that, once things like actual terrain, walls, etc. get involved. This is particularly true as the "goblin conga line" probably won't actually get used.

[da_chicken]

You forgot about the Orc's aggressive trait. It allows them to move another 30 ft as a bonus action towards an enemy. Still I doubt it would have mattered too much and your math and senario's are much better then Lokiare's made up imaginary problem.

I think he is using the old playtest monster math still.

Ah, I did miss that! That actually helps them a lot. It lets them use their higher melee damage much more easily. That's actually kind of terrifying. You can't run away from Orcs.

[Lokiare]

OK, here we go. TLDR: It depends on the encounter, but 6:1 odds at an appropriate level require the monsters to generally be too weak to do very much.

Lets make PCs all human, assume the starting array, and assume one member of each class in Basic. Let's assume each caster has these slots available: 2/2/2/1/1/1/0/0. Lets assume at least some portion of a player's prepared spells are not useful or can't be cast. Also, I'm ignoring crits. That favors the PCs. For advantage/disadvantage, I'm using this (http://onlinedungeonmaster.com/2012/05/24/advantage-and-disadvantage-in-dd-next-the-math/) table. Those percentages look right, but I haven't confirmed them.

Orc
Move 30
hp 15
Initiative +1
Attack: +5 melee greataxe (9 damage)
+5 ranged javelin (6 damage)
AC 13
Dex save +1

Fighter (Champion): 20 Str (15+1 starting + 2 at 4th, 6th), 20 Con (14+1 starting + 2 at 8th, +1 at 12th), Dex 14 (13+1 starting)
Move 30
hp 169 (+1d10+15)
Initiative +4 (+2 Dex + 2 Remarkable Athlete)
Attacks:
+10 melee greatsword for 2d6+5 (13.33 damage avg /w THF style) x3
+7 ranged longbow for 1d8+2 (6.5 avg dmg) x3
AC 19 (18 Full Plate + 1 Defense Style)
Skills: Athletics

Rogue (Thief): 20 Dex (15+1 starting + 2 at 4th, 8th), 16 Con (14+1 starting + 1 at 12th) Str 12 (10 + 1 starting + 1 12th)
Move 30 (plus bonus action: Disengage)
hp 123
Initiative +5
Attacks:
+10 melee shortsword 1d6+5 plus sneak attack 7d6 (33 avg dmg)
Bonus action: +10 melee shortsword 1d6+5 (8.5 avg dmg)
+10 ranged light crossbow 1d8+5 plus sneak attack 7d6 (34 avg dmg)
or +10 ranged light crossbow 1d8+5 (9.5 dmg)
AC 17 (12 studded leather + 5 Dex)
Resistance on first attack that hits as Reaction
Skills: Acrobatics

Cleric (Life): 20 Wis (15+1 starting + 2 at 4th, 8th), 16 Con (14+1 starting + 1 at 12th), 14 Dex (13+1 starting), Str 11 (10+1)
Move 30
hp 123
Initiative +2
Attacks:
Ranged or melee sacred flame 3d8 (13.5 avg, Dex save neg)
Melee +7 dagger 1d4+2
AC 19 (15 half plate + 2 Dex + 2 shield)

Channel Divinity 2/rest (Preserve Life): 75 hp

Spell slots:
2/2/2/1/1/1/0/0
Save DC 18

Spells prepared:
1st - guiding bolt, cure wounds (domain), bless (domain)
2nd - hold person, warding bond, spiritual weapon (domain)
3rd - spirit guardians, mass healing word, beacon of hope (domain), revivify (domain)
4th - freedom of movement, guardian of faith (domain)
5th - flame strike, mass cure wounds (domain)
6th - heal

Wizard (Evoker): 20 Int (15+1 starting + 2 at 4th, 8th), 16 Con (14+1 starting + 1 at 12th), 14 Dex (13+1 starting), Str 11 (10+1)
Move 30
hp 100
Initiative +2
Attacks:
Ranged +10 firebolt 3d10+5 (21.5 dmg avg)
Melee +10 shocking grasp 3d8+5 (18.5 dmg avg)
Melee +10 staff 1d6 (3.5 dmg avg)

AC 15 (13 mage armor + 2 Dex) (AC 20 with shield)

Spell slots:
2/2/2/1/1/1/0/0
Save DC 18

Spells prepared:
1st - shield, thunderwave, sleep
2nd - misty step, hold person, web, invisibility
3rd - fireball, fly
4th - greater invisibility, dimension door
5th - dominate person, wall of stone
6th - chain lightning

I've purposefully left off blade barrier and mass suggestion because they both effectively end the encounter without conflict immediately. The first can cut off the orcs from the PCs and will probably force them to retreat. The latter will send about half the orcs to do something unreleated to the current encounter, likely causing the rest to retreat.


Encounter 1 -- Medium-long distance in the wilderness:
Let's assume a meeting encounter in large clearing in a sparse new growth forest, no surprise, mid day, overcast skies, no special win conditions or objectives, initial distance is 100', and AoE effects can never target more than 5 Orcs at a time. Wall of stone and web are not available because they don't function in a clearing and really are no different than any other AoE effect. This encounter favors the PCs.

So, we roll initiative.

Likely the order is all PCs go then the orcs go.

Round 1:
Rogue closes to 80', fires his crossbow (0.9*9.5 = 8.55 damage), and then with remaining 10' either drops prone or moves to cover/concealment. Let's assume the Rogue finds a few handy bushes. Rogue tries to hide with his bonus action, likely succeeds easily. 27 orcs remain, 1 hurt.

Fighter pulls out longbow and drops the orc the Rogue hit (0.9 * 6.5 = 5.85) x2, and puts an arrow into a second orc (5.85). He then moves forward 30' and drops prone. 26 orcs remain, 1 hurt.

Cleric moves forward 30'. Bless isn't useful; the players already need a 3 to hit. So he lights up the orc with an arrow in it with Guiding Bolt (0.9 * 14 = 12.6 damage). He drops prone. 25 orcs remain.

Wizard -- let's be honest -- casts Greater Invisibility amd moves away from his previous position, probably lateral to the orcs.

Orcs go. The orcs move 30' forward, and chuck javelins. 13 go for the Fighter, 12 go for the Cleric. Against the Fighter, 13 attacks at +5 vs AC 19. They need a 14 to hit. There's a 12.25% chance to roll a 14+ with disadvantage. So 13 * 6 * 0.1225 = 9.555 damage. Fighter is now at 159.445. Against the Cleric, 12 attacks at +5 vs AC 19, so same math but 1 less attack: 12 * 6 * 0.1255 = 9.036. Cleric is at 113.964.

Round 2: Fighter and Cleric are 40' from the orcs, Rogue is 50', Wizard is at 70' and invisble.

Rogue fires from cover and drops an orc with sneak attack (0.9 * 34 = 30.6). Someone repeats a joke about Cartman yelling at Butters for shooting someone in the groin that was first told at Level 2. 24 orcs remain.

Fighter stands up, kills another orc with his bow and injurs another. 23 orcs remain, 1 injured.

Cleric stands up, near the Fighter, and drops Flame Strike for 8d6 (28) DC 18, hiting 5 orcs. Orcs need a 17 to save, so they take 0.2 * 14 + 0.8 * 28 = 25.2. 18 orcs remain, 1 injured. Alternative is Hold Person as a 6th level spell, but that only affects 4 Orcs. Flame Strike is better.

Wizard casts Fireball for 8d6+5 (33) DC 18, hitting 5 orcs. They take 0.2 * 16.5 + 0.8 * 33 = 29.7. 5 orcs die. 13 orcs remain, 1 injured.

Orcs turn. Realistically, they should run. 50% casualties is usually enough for a morale failure. Instead 6 move 30' and throw javelins at the Cleric (visible spellcaster). 6 * 6 * 0.35 = 12.6 damage. Cleric drops to 101.364. The remaining 7 dash and surround the Fighter and Cleric.

Round 3: Fighter and Cleric in melee with 7 orcs, the remaining 6 orcs are 30' away.

Rogue fires at an orc in melee with the cleric, dropping it with sneak attack damage. 12 orcs remain.

Fighter switches to Greatsword and... Action Surge. He makes six attacks at 0.90 * 13.33 = 11.997. He kills 3 orcs. 9 orcs remain.

Cleric Flame Strikes as a 6th level spell 5 of the orcs that threw javelins. 4 orcs remain.

Wizard Fireballs the remaining 4 orcs, using Sculpt Spells to avoid hitting the Cleric and Fighter.

Total cost: 31.191 damage out of 515 total HP (~6%). That's trivially healed with Preserve Life. Cleric has no spell slots above 4th level. Wizard has no 3rd level and no 4th level slots remaining. That is significant. This doesn't seem like it was a Hard encounter, however.


Encounter 2 -- Dungeon ambush:
The PCs are travelling down a long, 5' wide hallway which appears to be covered in an unappetizing brown goo. The goo isn't dangerous, but it's not very pleasant. The Rogue is first (and "searching for traps" but explicitly telling the DM he's not touching anything), followed by the Fighter, Wizard, then Cleric, all adjacent to each other. What they don't realize is that the walls on the left and right side of the hallway are one-way illusions, and conceal a hidden room in which 27 orcs wait to ambush the party! When the players reach the midpoint of the concealed room, the orcs spring their trap. The orcs have surprise this encounter. Characters attacking from behind the illusory wall are effectively invisible to those in the "hallway" (except to the Rogue, who has Blindsense). Interacting with an illusion directly is enough to reveal it as false for that player; no save is needed. This encounter highly favors the orcs.

Surprise round. Each orc moves 15' to the players, attacks, and if needed moves back to allow other orcs to strike. 6 orcs attack each player, the extra attacks the Wizard (visible spellcaster). Each player gets a reaction due to orcs leaving area of effect. The orcs have advantage against everybody except the Rogue, as he has Blindsense and can hear the attacks coming.

Fighter: 6 * 9 * .5775 = 31.185 damage. Fighter drops to 137.815.
Cleric: 6 * 9 * .5775 = 31.185 damage. Cleric drops to 91.815.
Rogue: 6 * 9 * .45 = 24.3 damage. Rogue can't Sneak Attack in retaliaton since no other party member is aware of any specific orc at the time. Rogue chooses to use Uncanny Dodge, reducing damage by 4.5 * .45 = 2.025. Rogue drops to 100.725.
Wizard: Casts Shield as reaction, granting AC 20. 7 * 9 * .51 = 31.13 damage. Wizard drops to 68.87.

[Note that, yes, the orcs could have just killed the Wizard or Cleric if they focused fire. 27 * 9 * .51 = 123.93 against the Wizard and 27 * 9 * .5775 = 124.74 against the Cleric.]

Initiative is rolled. Order is likely the same. Fighter & Rogue, then Wizard & Cleric, then Orcs. Note that if initiative goes to the orcs, the damage values get really high, essentially doubling what was above and nearly crippling the whole party. We'll cover that later.

Fighter goes first. He uses Second Wind, and gains 20.5 hp to 158.315. He tries to move through the wall to follow an orc, but gets shoved back running into an orc. However, he touches the wall long enough to dispel the illusion for him. He tries to move to the other side, and reveals that wall as an illusion, too. He spends his Action Surge, and kills all three orcs in range he can reach. Fighter communicates where the orcs are to the party. 24 orcs remain.

Rogue player goes, and he kills one orc with sneak attack that's visible to the Fighter. He's about to use his Bonus action to move into the hidden room when the Wizard tells him to stay where he is. 23 orcs remain.

Wizard goes, and casts Fireball centered on the party as a 6th level spell (just to be sure). He uses Sculpt Spell to miss all 4 party members, but this hits all the orcs for 11d6+5 (43.5), killing them all even if they save. 0 orcs remain.

Total cost is 117.8 hp, nearly 23% of the party's hp, and one 6th level slot. If the party didn't win initiative or didn't try nuking themselves or retreat before the orcs go again, damage is likely to be closer to 50%. If the orcs focus fire on one party member, they can likely kill the Wizard or Cleric.


Looking at it, I don't think the Orcs at 6:1 odds really keep up that well. Just like the warning in the article, the PCs just have abilities that outclass their opponents, and they can't keep up even if they cheat. Obviously, this style of encounter showcases the power of AoE effects. Most encounters won't involve being able to do 11d6+5 to 23 targets simultaneously. However, if they have a small advantage, they can quickly deal a lot of damage, even with relatively poor attack bonuses. Still, I think the math begins to break down, but I certainly wouldn't recommend fixing it by adding more orcs. They're still dangerous!

Not a bad analysis, pretty much worthless, but a nice first try. One of the major flaws is the lack of critical hits. Every 20 attacks by the orcs would on average produce a critical hit. Then you assume the casters have combat only spells prepared and that they use optimal tactics while the orcs don't. You also assume the casters haven't used their high level slots. You also assumed that the monsters bunched up for area spells.
This analysis does point out another problem though, if the casters are out of or didn't prepare any AoE spells then it would be nearly a guaranteed TPK. If the monsters focus fire the casters it would also be a TPK. It seems you can choose not to have fighters in the party but not casters.

[Lokiare]

I'm going to repeat the above analysis using all the rules and assuming an equal level of optimization and tactics. While Orcs and goblins aren't the smartest bunch, they should through social evolution have figured out optimum battle tactics such as focus fire and not clumping up. Thus any small AoE will only hit 2, medium AoE's will hit 3 and large AoE's will hit 5, unless there is a reason for more like dropping a sculpted spell on the fighter to hit the 8 enemies surrounding them.

Same characters as the above analysis except I'm halving the spell slots and the number of prepared spells with the idea that they didn't hit this encounter fresh and have some utility spells prepared (these characters appear to be 15th level, correct me if I'm wrong). Also I don't have the stats for the Orc so I don't know if their str bonus is higher or lower.

Orc
Move 30
hp 15
Initiative +1
Attack: +5 melee great axe 1d12 (6.5 [weapon] + 3 [str] = 9.5)
vs Fighter or Cleric: 30% hit chance 2.85, 5% crit chance 0.8, total 3.65 damage per attack.
vs Rogue: 40% hit chance 3.8, 5% crit chance 0.8, total 4.6 damage per attack.
vs Wizard: 55% hit chance 5.225, 5% crit chance 0.8, total 6.025 damage per attack.
+5 ranged javelin (30/120) 1d6 (3.5 + 3 [str] = 6.5)
vs. Fighter or Cleric: 30% hit chance 1.95, 5% crit chance 0.5, total 2.45
vs. Rogue: 40% hit chance 2.6, 5% crit chance 0.5, total 3.1
vs Wizard: 55% hit chance 3.575, 5% crit chance 0.5, total 4.075
AC 13
Dex save +1

Fighter (Champion): 20 Str (15+1 starting + 2 at 4th, 6th), 20 Con (14+1 starting + 2 at 8th, +1 at 12th), Dex 14 (13+1 starting)
Move 30
hp 169 (+1d10+15)
Initiative +4 (+2 Dex + 2 Remarkable Athlete)
Attacks:
+10 melee greatsword for 2d6+5 (average damage 13.33 (http://anydice.com/program/42a9)) x3
vs. Orc: 85% hit chance 10.2, 5% crit chance 1.0835, total 11.2835
+7 ranged longbow for 1d8+2 (6.5 avg dmg) x3
vs. Orc: 70% hit chance 4.875, 5% crit chance 0.55, total 5.425
AC 19 (18 Full Plate + 1 Defense Style)
Skills: Athletics

Rogue (Thief): 20 Dex (15+1 starting + 2 at 4th, 8th), 16 Con (14+1 starting + 1 at 12th) Str 12 (10 + 1 starting + 1 12th)
Move 30 (plus bonus action: Disengage)
hp 123
Initiative +5
Attacks:
+10 melee shortsword 1d6+5 plus sneak attack 7d6 (33 avg dmg)
Bonus action: +10 melee shortsword 1d6+5 (8.5 avg dmg)
+10 ranged light crossbow 1d8+5 plus sneak attack 7d6 (34 avg dmg)
or +10 ranged light crossbow 1d8+5 (9.5 dmg)
AC 17 (12 studded leather + 5 Dex)
Resistance on first attack that hits as Reaction
Skills: Acrobatics

Cleric (Life): 20 Wis (15+1 starting + 2 at 4th, 8th), 16 Con (14+1 starting + 1 at 12th), 14 Dex (13+1 starting), Str 11 (10+1)
Move 30
hp 123
Initiative +2
Attacks:
Ranged or melee sacred flame 3d8 (13.5 avg, Dex save neg)
Melee +7 dagger 1d4+2
AC 19 (15 half plate + 2 Dex + 2 shield)

Channel Divinity 2/rest (Preserve Life): 75 hp

Spell slots:
2/2/1/2/1/1/0/0
Save DC 18

Spells prepared (20):
1st - guiding bolt, sanctuary, cure wounds (domain), bless (domain)
2nd - hold person, augury, silence, warding bond, spiritual weapon (domain)
3rd - spirit guardians, mass healing word, speaks with dead, dispel magic, beacon of hope (domain), revivify (domain)
4th - freedom of movement, divination, locate creature, guardian of faith (domain)
5th - flame strike, commune, raise dead, mass cure wounds (domain)
6th - heal, find the path, heroes feast, true, seeing

Wizard (Evoker): 20 Int (15+1 starting + 2 at 4th, 8th), 16 Con (14+1 starting + 1 at 12th), 14 Dex (13+1 starting), Str 11 (10+1)
Move 30
hp 100
Initiative +2
Attacks:
Ranged +10 firebolt 3d10+5 (21.5 dmg avg)
Melee +10 shocking grasp 3d8+5 (18.5 dmg avg)
Melee +10 staff 1d6 (3.5 dmg avg)

AC 15 (13 mage armor + 2 Dex) (AC 20 with shield)

Spell slots:
2/2/1/2/1/1/0/0
Save DC 18

Spells prepared:
1st - shield, thunderwave, sleep
2nd - misty step, hold person, web, invisibility
3rd - fireball, fly
4th - greater invisibility, dimension door
5th - dominate person, wall of stone
6th - chain lightning

I have to go but I'll come back and finish this analysis and repost it either in a new thread or in this one if the conversation hasn't drifted too far.

[obryn]

Citation needed. Never seen anything from any of the Devs saying anything like this, and the encounters in the Starter set aren't really based around this, if you compare it to the encounter building article guidelines.
It's right and wrong.

For available resources, it's 100% correct, barring stuff like healing potions used between fights.

For monsters in the fight, it's not. 8 fights vs. 1 orc each will play out a lot differently than 1 fight vs. 8 orcs.

[hawklost]

Not a bad analysis, pretty much worthless, but a nice first try. One of the major flaws is the lack of critical hits. Every 20 attacks by the orcs would on average produce a critical hit. Then you assume the casters have combat only spells prepared and that they use optimal tactics while the orcs don't. You also assume the casters haven't used their high level slots. You also assumed that the monsters bunched up for area spells.
This analysis does point out another problem though, if the casters are out of or didn't prepare any AoE spells then it would be nearly a guaranteed TPK. If the monsters focus fire the casters it would also be a TPK. It seems you can choose not to have fighters in the party but not casters.

Considering that 'Every 20 attacks by the Orcs' consist of only 3 Attacks in the First Scenario and 1 attack in the second (WHICH WOULD NOT KILL ANY PARTY MEMBER).

The spells left of 2/2/2/1/1/1/0/0 is less than 4/3/3/3/2/1/1/1/0 that the Casters would normally have at the beginning of the day. 14 Spells prepared for the Wizard is less than the 20 spells prepared that he has. The Cleric only has 15 spells prepared on his list out of 20. Meaning both casters should have 5-6 more spells on their list which can be assumed to be Utility spells worthless to combat.

da_chicken did not assume that the Orcs bunched up, in fact, he specified that they could only get 5 Orcs with one Spell at a time during the Outside ambush. On the other hand, if you think that the Orcs wouldn't bunch up around the party to attack in a close dungeon (considering they do more damage in Melee), then you are just grasping at straws now.

And yes, the analysis does point out that without AoE spells the party has more of a challenge against large number of enemies. That is obvious for anyone to see without any kind of analysis (more enemies = more attacks needed unless AoE abilities exist). If none of your Casters bother preparing Any AoE spells (including things like Darkness/Light/Web/Mass Suggestion/Charm Person) then your caster is intentionally gimping the party. The Caster does not always have to prepare a large amount of AoE Damage spells, but if he has No AoE spell (especially with the new rules on Spell casting and the spell not being lost when the slot is cast) then he is pretty much being a fool of a caster.

Again, when enemies Focus Fire down a single target (even a lot of times the Fighter) then of course the target most likely dies. The Larger number of enemies, the more likely it is that Focus Fire will kill someone. If you want your DM to always aim for the wizard/cleric and focus fire them down with ignoring everyone else then that is your choice. As it stands, it could easily be argued that the Orcs felt that they had enough numbers to spread their fire across all the PCs and kill them. They were completely wrong, but it is a fair assumption for monsters not to stop and consult with the PCs about their level before attacking them.

So in conclusion, your condescending dismissal (which is your normal way of doing any posts) of da_chicken's analysis just shows you did not bother to read it (and take the time to understand it) and instead appear to have just skimmed it and tried to dismiss it because it went against your claims (and people actually agreed with it).

[Doug Lampert]

Again, when enemies Focus Fire down a single target (even a lot of times the Fighter) then of course the target most likely dies. The Larger number of enemies, the more likely it is that Focus Fire will kill someone. If you want your DM to always aim for the wizard/cleric and focus fire them down with ignoring everyone else then that is your choice. As it stands, it could easily be argued that the Orcs felt that they had enough numbers to spread their fire across all the PCs and kill them. They were completely wrong, but it is a fair assumption for monsters not to stop and consult with the PCs about their level before attacking them.

Mostly agreed, but the paragraph above is wrong.

With the way the turn based abstraction works each orc acts, then the next one, so the orcs don't NEED to consult. They simply observe that the squishy target hasn't gone down yet and continue to target it. This is the same tactics the PCs are using in the first scenario after all. Always target the already wounded but still fighting guy first.

The overwhelming effectiveness of focused fire is a chronic D&D problem.

Similarly, one of the PCs really should lose initiative, their bonuses are +4, +5, +2, +2; these are not all that much bigger than the orcs' +1.

The chances of all PCs going before the orcs are only about 30.2% assuming the DM uses the "random rolls" method of resolving ties. 32.8% if the DM always lets ties go to the PC, and 27.8 if the DM always lets ties go to the monsters.

Edited to add: The really amusing part about Loki's posts is that having criticized that the casters "hadn't used their high level slots" he then went and gave them an IDENTICAL selection in his post to the one he rejected except with a 4th level slot in place of a 3rd level slot. So he was more generous than what he claimed was too generous.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

How about a focus fire rule?

If a target is hot more than once per round by a different enemy, they gain resistance to any further damage.

Orc versus Fighter Mage and Rogue.

Fighter hits twice for normal damage, mage hits with fireball but the damage is resisted, and the rogue sneak attacks which is also resisted. The target of the onslaught will go down faster but it may not be a 1 round sure thing.

Hmmm

For normal enemies this may be to troublesome but for bosses... This could really help.

The reasoning for the resistance, essentially the enemy is hit, reacts to the hit, but because they are reacting to the hit (monster moving due to pain and is distracted but chaotic) it makes your Attack more accurate but the damage less accurate.

Like trying to punch someone, if they are wiggling around like a jaggoff, it may be easy to land a hit, just not a solid blow.

/shrug.

[hawklost]

Mostly agreed, but the paragraph above is wrong.

With the way the turn based abstraction works each orc acts, then the next one, so the orcs don't NEED to consult. They simply observe that the squishy target hasn't gone down yet and continue to target it. This is the same tactics the PCs are using in the first scenario after all. Always target the already wounded but still fighting guy first.

The overwhelming effectiveness of focused fire is a chronic D&D problem.

Similarly, one of the PCs really should lose initiative, their bonuses are +4, +5, +2, +2; these are not all that much bigger than the orcs' +1.

The chances of all PCs going before the orcs are only about 30.2% assuming the DM uses the "random rolls" method of resolving ties. 32.8% if the DM always lets ties go to the PC, and 27.8 if the DM always lets ties go to the monsters.

Edited to add: The really amusing part about Loki's posts is that having criticized that the casters "hadn't used their high level slots" he then went and gave them an IDENTICAL selection in his post to the one he rejected except with a 4th level slot in place of a 3rd level slot. So he was more generous than what he claimed was too generous.

Yes, you are correct, as per the exact rules of DnD and turn based games in general, the Orcs know exactly what every other turn before them did and can choose to target the same PC until he is fully dead. If a DM wishes to play that way, that is their call. If on the other hand, the DM wishes to play, pretending that since all the orcs went on the same initiative, they kinda all go at once (kinda but not really) and instead attack spread out, they can. If you want to play strictly by how turns work, then you can, although if you do that, technically you should be rolling for each Orcs initiative separately because they are doing Separate actions instead of acting as a group ('single' monster).

Pretend Scenario
The DM, pretending to be the Orcs could look at it this way. They don't Want to lose any Orc in the fight or be injured. If they Kill one target by focus firing it, they are guarantied to have some of them injured or killed. If on the other hand, they kill all the Targets at once (or even severely injure them (disable)) then they can go in for the kill without taking Any injuries! Since the Orcs don't know how tough the PCs are, they assumed they could kill them all by spreading fire. They were wrong (and did not have to do it if your DM feels like doing each action individually).

Your DM can Always make encounters more deadly/easier by playing enemies differently. In Scenario 1, the orcs could have attempted to sneak up on the Party, they could have spread out more or they could have fled to come back later and harass the players but they didn't. In Scenario 2, the Orcs could have focused down a single PC, they could have waited for the PCs to pass and attacked them from behind when they reached the next fight area (or Traps), they could even have given the PCs warning by making some kind of noise (or have one accidentally have his foot/sword out of the illusion) while watching the PCs get into the ambush area (making the encounter easier), but none of those is how the DM decided to play them.

As for Losing Initiative, I have a feeling that was more for ease of use than anything else. Each orc should technically roll for Initiative for a more 'realistic' scenario (or each small grouping). Having all Orcs go at the same time and beat the PCs Initiative (especially after the Ambush) could be devastating to a party in Scenario 2 (and even possibly in Scenario 1 but less so). If on the other hand, only a few Orcs go before Party members, it is less of a change up in either Scenario. (Technically, Some of the Orcs are likely to go before Any party member due to their numbers).

[obryn]

So what you're saying is, we should bring back the Declare Intentions phase.

[hawklost]

Nope, that just bogs down the game a little if each phase the party needs to declare intentions. On the other hand, the DM does not have to have a discussion with himself on what all the enemies will and won't do, he can decide as he sees fit whenever he sees fit. If the DM likes to come up with a general strategy the enemies will follow then he can (he can also change it on the fly if he feels like it). If he wants to pick and choose each and every action of an enemy based on all previous actions of every single enemy and player, he can do that to. It depends on how much he wishes to do. I would just personally request to my DM that if he wishes to have all the enemies in such a large group act individually, that they need to have all their turns calculated individually (including Initiative) to get the feel that he is attempted for (or appearing to attempt for).

[da_chicken]

Mostly agreed, but the paragraph above is wrong.

With the way the turn based abstraction works each orc acts, then the next one, so the orcs don't NEED to consult. They simply observe that the squishy target hasn't gone down yet and continue to target it. This is the same tactics the PCs are using in the first scenario after all. Always target the already wounded but still fighting guy first.

The overwhelming effectiveness of focused fire is a chronic D&D problem.

Yes. It's why solo monsters don't work all that well, and it's why getting outnumbered is super dangerous in 5e. In my experience, DMs don't focus fire down PCs because it's dirty pool. I played it the way I think most DMs play it. The goal is to challenge the players, not assassinate them. If the DM wants his orcs in the second encounter to just kill the players, he certainly can. Surprise round take out the Wizard and run through his death saves, second round take out the Cleric the same way. IMO, that's dirty pool, and the illusory walls are already pretty dirty pool. The PCs had to decide to touch the walls to search for traps to detect it, and the walls are intentionally disgusting. I'd also probably argue that if the walls were any worse than presented that they'd add a significant amount to the challenge of the encounter, and should constitute an XP bonus (it probably should as presented).

Besides, generic orcs aren't known for tactics. "We waits in dis hidey wall until deys in frunt uv us, den we jumps onnam and guts em wiv ar choppas! Dey won't know what hit em!" Warhammer orcs have too much character not to use, IMO. :smallsmile:


Similarly, one of the PCs really should lose initiative, their bonuses are +4, +5, +2, +2; these are not all that much bigger than the orcs' +1.

The chances of all PCs going before the orcs are only about 30.2% assuming the DM uses the "random rolls" method of resolving ties. 32.8% if the DM always lets ties go to the PC, and 27.8 if the DM always lets ties go to the monsters.

Yeah, the problem was that there was no easy way to simulate this well when you're assuming average die rolls. I mean, do I split the orcs around the players? Average the damage before and after? If I were actually running this, I'd probably split the orcs into two or more groups to make it more natural. All PCs then all NPCs tends to favor the NPCs.

What struck me was just how powerful mass advantage was. It increased damage from 6 attacks by +50%. Clearly shoving is the answer when ganging up on someone. The pusher robot will be so pleased! Initially I was going to have the orcs do that or grapple the Wizard, but that doesn't seem to affect spellcasting at all by RAW, and I didn't want to make ad hoc stuff up.

[Doug Lampert]

Nope, that just bogs down the game a little if each phase the party needs to declare intentions. On the other hand, the DM does not have to have a discussion with himself on what all the enemies will and won't do, he can decide as he sees fit whenever he sees fit. If the DM likes to come up with a general strategy the enemies will follow then he can (he can also change it on the fly if he feels like it). If he wants to pick and choose each and every action of an enemy based on all previous actions of every single enemy and player, he can do that to. It depends on how much he wishes to do. I would just personally request to my DM that if he wishes to have all the enemies in such a large group act individually, that they need to have all their turns calculated individually (including Initiative) to get the feel that he is attempted for (or appearing to attempt for).

Individual initiative doesn't hurt the monsters, it CAN'T, in the scenario as given they all went after every PC, any other initiative order is BETTER for them!

And the BtB rules are, all identical monsters go at the same initiative and that they go one at a time.

Focusing fire is EXACTLY what the PCs are doing. One of the most common responses I hear to PCs using a tactic is "then the monsters can start using it too". Sauce for the goose...

I'd rather have a ruleset under which focused fire is a bad idea. In real life having everyone in a group on group fight pick on the same target is disastrously bad. But if the rules allow and encourage focus then the monsters should do so, they live in the world and know roughly how combat in their world works. (Note: They won't bother to keep attacking after the wizard is down, most groups don't have a cleric; and they won't necessarily hit the cleric till after they've seen him cast spells since he's in armor and isn't an obvious caster.)

The fourth edition solution to focused fire was that group encounter healing resources effectively provided a rather large "group HP pool" you had to work through to actually hurt anyone. I didn't particularly like this, but that + start from 0 on healing made monster focusing fire actually LESS effective than spreading it out.

The suggestion above of resistance to all but the first strikes me as excellent within the rest of the 5e context. It even has the advantage that a solo with resistance to all attacks is NOT effectively identical to a monster with double the HP.

[1337 b4k4]

While Orcs and goblins aren't the smartest bunch, they should through social evolution have figured out optimum battle tactics such as focus fire and not clumping up. Thus any small AoE will only hit 2, medium AoE's will hit 3 and large AoE's will hit 5, unless there is a reason for more like dropping a sculpted spell on the fighter to hit the 8 enemies surrounding them.

Point of order. You spend a lot of pixels on this forum arguing that AoE spells in 5e are encounter ending spells. In doing so you implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) assume that enemies are going to be clustered together allowing the caster to get max effect out of their AoE. It seems disingenuous for you to, now that it doesn't support you argument, argue that the enemies are smart enough not to cluster together.


So what you're saying is, we should bring back the Declare Intentions phase.

Oh yes please. And also per-side-per-round initiative. I tell you, nothing gets a player's heart going faster than the dragon has just taken a huge chunk out of everyone and it's time to roll initiative again. Better hope he rolls badly.

Edit
-------------

I've also noticed that declared intentions + per side initiative also really helps encourage group cohesion. Weird plans like "A and B are going to grab the rope and string it across the hall, C is going to taunt the giant and take off down the hall and D is going to cast giant strength on A and B" are much easier to plan and think of when the player's mindset is "we're all acting together at once" rather than "I go, then you go, then she goes, then he goes"

[ImperiousLeader]

I've become a fan of Popcorn Initiative. This is something the Angry DM (http://angrydm.com/2013/09/popcorn-initiative-a-great-way-to-adjust-dd-and-pathfinder-initiative-with-a-stupid-name/) mentioned, and I've seen used in Marvel Heroics and Atomic Robo RPG. Basically, initiative determines only who goes first. After that, the last thing a monster or player does is nominate who goes next from the players and monsters that haven't acted this round. Whoever goes last in the round determines the first player next round ... which can be himself. It allows players to build up combos, setting each other up, which helps group cohesion. Fighter shoves a monster so they're bunched up for the wizard, and stuff like that. Monsters can do that too.

[hawklost]

Individual initiative doesn't hurt the monsters, it CAN'T, in the scenario as given they all went after every PC, any other initiative order is BETTER for them!

And the BtB rules are, all identical monsters go at the same initiative and that they go one at a time.

Focusing fire is EXACTLY what the PCs are doing. One of the most common responses I hear to PCs using a tactic is "then the monsters can start using it too". Sauce for the goose...

I'd rather have a ruleset under which focused fire is a bad idea. In real life having everyone in a group on group fight pick on the same target is disastrously bad. But if the rules allow and encourage focus then the monsters should do so, they live in the world and know roughly how combat in their world works. (Note: They won't bother to keep attacking after the wizard is down, most groups don't have a cleric; and they won't necessarily hit the cleric till after they've seen him cast spells since he's in armor and isn't an obvious caster.)

The fourth edition solution to focused fire was that group encounter healing resources effectively provided a rather large "group HP pool" you had to work through to actually hurt anyone. I didn't particularly like this, but that + start from 0 on healing made monster focusing fire actually LESS effective than spreading it out.

The suggestion above of resistance to all but the first strikes me as excellent within the rest of the 5e context. It even has the advantage that a solo with resistance to all attacks is NOT effectively identical to a monster with double the HP.

Never claimed Individual initiative hurt the NPCs more than PCs, but it can hurt them or help them depending. NPCs go first in group, individual Initiative hurts, NPCs go last, individual Initiative would have helped (remember, for enemy NPCs help indicates more damage even if they don't win the fight).

As for Focus Fire for the PCs, 4 characters targeting one target is a whole lot weaker than 27 characters against a single target. Yes, PCs do it, and yes, I have nothing against small groups of NPCs doing it, but in very large groups, it gets ridiculous.

As for real life scenario. That argument fails while in game for many reasons. The biggest one is that once a target is hit they are usually out or less effective in combat, in DnD they are fully combat effective until they are completely out (which almost always takes more than one hit). That means that they will do more damage to the party because they are not out if the party spreads their fire. 4 wounded enemies in real life are not fighting well, 4 wounded enemies in DnD means there are 4 attacks at full power at the party.

The enemies might live in the world but you might want to realize something. Since the PCs are part of the Narrative, they do seem to act differently than 'world NPCs'. DnD is effectively making the Party the main hero of any action movie. Enemies can attack a normal person of those movies and it works out one way, but attack the Hero and you will find your same exact attack does not work as well. I feel games like Scion make sure players understand this better than a game like DnD, but it is effectively always in a game that way. There are hundreds of little things in the world that work that way because well, its a game. I mean, why would a big bad boss just wait till the party levels up and attacks him when they seem to be the only ones who are effective against his plans at lower levels? (Because its a game and otherwise the PCs die horribly). Why do PCs level up magically without massive work (no research for Wizards, not training for Fighters) they just gain it after they kill some monsters? (Because in a game, it would suck for PCs to have to exit a dungeon they are only partially through, go to a town and spend Weeks to Months actually leveling before they go back to a dungeon). I could go on and on, but by the rules, that is not what PCs have to do.

As to resistance, well, that could work, but at the same time it makes little sense on things. Why did the monster suddenly gain resistance to the Wizards Fireball after the fighter struck it? Why is it that getting burned by a spell causes the enemy to resist a Fighters stab instead of making it easier to hit? Heck, with the resist rules, you pretty much screw a fighter with multiple attacks since he would either have to move between enemies (causing him to be struck by more of them) or he would be hitting away with much less effect. You are promoting Huge single damage attacks (aka, wizard/cleric single target spells and Rogue Sneak attacks) over anyone who can dish out attacks quickly (Fighters multiple attacks per round).

EDIT: Please also show me the rule in 5e that says Monsters of same type go on same initiative. I could not find it in the Basic when I looked. If it is just because it is 3.x and 4e that it was, then that is one thing, if it is because I am reading the Basic wrong, I would like to know.

[Doug Lampert]

EDIT: Please also show me the rule in 5e that says Monsters of same type go on same initiative. I could not find it in the Basic when I looked. If it is just because it is 3.x and 4e that it was, then that is one thing, if it is because I am reading the Basic wrong, I would like to know.

It's cleverly hidden in the rules called "Initiative" on page 69 of your PDF.

Why do people argue rules they aren't even going to bother to look for? The document is searchable and it's under the second occurrence of the word initiative in the entire document, and the first occurrence is a straight reference to the page in question.

[obryn]

I've become a fan of Popcorn Initiative. This is something the Angry DM (http://angrydm.com/2013/09/popcorn-initiative-a-great-way-to-adjust-dd-and-pathfinder-initiative-with-a-stupid-name/) mentioned, and I've seen used in Marvel Heroics and Atomic Robo RPG. Basically, initiative determines only who goes first. After that, the last thing a monster or player does is nominate who goes next from the players and monsters that haven't acted this round. Whoever goes last in the round determines the first player next round ... which can be himself. It allows players to build up combos, setting each other up, which helps group cohesion. Fighter shoves a monster so they're bunched up for the wizard, and stuff like that. Monsters can do that too.
I am so close to trying that out for my 4e game, but with the amount of resources my players have dropped into improving their initiative, I'm kinda skeptical. :smallsmile:

[Doug Lampert]

I am so close to trying that out for my 4e game, but with the amount of resources my players have dropped into improving their initiative, I'm kinda skeptical. :smallsmile:

It also advantages the side with a numeric advantage, 5 vs. 10 the side with 10 can trivially arrange to have 15 consecutive turns. The side with 5 can arrange to have 5 consecutive turns.

I prefer "everyone on the same side goes at once" with the initiative rolls determining who gets to go on the first turn for the first side to act. It's simple, and the group vs. identical monsters effectively degenerates to this anyway except without the encouragement to teamwork that comes from actually SAYING, "everyone acts at once".

[Dimcair]

It doesn't change the fact that I don't like it. The HP and rising to-hit bonuses are one of the things that trivialize lower level enemies. At a certain point, why worry about the army of orcs, you can send your 15th level armed to the teeth fighter out there and they'll all be dead in roughly an hour?



Think of it this way:

In your system
Start of the Campaign: Captain Hero faces 10 minions who try to hit him.
Middle of the Campaign: Captain Hero faces 10 minions who try to hit him.
End of the Campaign: Captain Hero faces 10 minions who try to hit him.

In a 'level up' system
Start of the Campaign: Captain Hero faces 10 minions who try to hit him.
Middle of the Campaign: Captain Hero faces 10 minions who try to hit/trip/grapple him and has to dodge spells and, lets say, supernatural abilities of them.
End of the Campaign: Captain Hero faces 10 minions who try all of the above but also wield even more powerful magic etc.

For me it feels more like my character grows on his challenges to become an epic hero.

But granted, the illusion breaks when your DM somehow forces you in a situation in which you fight enemies/minions you fought when you were much less experienced. Like the 10th level warrior fighting cr 1/3 creatures.... I would see this as bad DMing, though.

[Lokiare]

Point of order. You spend a lot of pixels on this forum arguing that AoE spells in 5e are encounter ending spells. In doing so you implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) assume that enemies are going to be clustered together allowing the caster to get max effect out of their AoE. It seems disingenuous for you to, now that it doesn't support you argument, argue that the enemies are smart enough not to cluster together.

Um, you do know that a regular encounter is around 5 enemies right? In fact if you double the number of enemies in comparison to the party the basic rules tell you to increase the value of the xp to counteract the increased difficulty. 5 players = 5 enemies on average so a large AoE will catch them all. This only matters in fights with more than 5 enemies and when you have around 25-30 enemies you kind of need to know the average number of enemies players catch in AoE's. Which is one of the things WotC would know if they had put it in their surveys.


Oh yes please. And also per-side-per-round initiative. I tell you, nothing gets a player's heart going faster than the dragon has just taken a huge chunk out of everyone and it's time to roll initiative again. Better hope he rolls badly.

I prefer rolling initiative each round, but it slows the game down. I don't enjoy declaring action ahead of time, that just ends up with players doing nothing for rounds at a time.


Edit
-------------

I've also noticed that declared intentions + per side initiative also really helps encourage group cohesion. Weird plans like "A and B are going to grab the rope and string it across the hall, C is going to taunt the giant and take off down the hall and D is going to cast giant strength on A and B" are much easier to plan and think of when the player's mindset is "we're all acting together at once" rather than "I go, then you go, then she goes, then he goes"

Actually I see no difference between my 2E days and my 3E and 4E days. They all have about the same amount of strategy.

[hawklost]

It's cleverly hidden in the rules called "Initiative" on page 69 of your PDF.

Why do people argue rules they aren't even going to bother to look for? The document is searchable and it's under the second occurrence of the word initiative in the entire document, and the first occurrence is a straight reference to the page in question.

I know you like to be a jerk in your posts, but I was asking politely. This also kind of throws out your logic of each creature waiting for the other one in the group to attack before making its attack since "each member of the group acts at the same time. Not, Same initiative, but the exact same time, so your failure to read the rules is sad, considering you even knew where in the rules the ruling was (See, I can read the rules and act like a jerk to when I get a chance).

EDIT: Now that we both acted superior to the other, why not actually get a real conversation going without the condescending tone between us.

[HorridElemental]

Speaking of initiative, one thing I've thought of doing.

1st round (no surprise): Everyone rolls 1d20 + Dex + Bonus to Initiative. This is the order you go during the first round.

2nd round and onward: "Cool Word" (no clue what to call it) initiative is used. This is 10+ Dex + bonus to initiative.

This is to show that a heavy armored cleric may get the jump on a rogue due to help from their god (rolled 20 on initiative, has -1 to initiative) but after that first round the rogue (being speedier) will catch up to the flow of the fight and essentially go before the cleric.

(I need to add this to my list, totally forgot till I read the popcorn initiative)

[Sartharina]

Speaking of initiative, one thing I've thought of doing.

1st round (no surprise): Everyone rolls 1d20 + Dex + Bonus to Initiative. This is the order you go during the first round.

2nd round and onward: "Cool Word" (no clue what to call it) initiative is used. This is 10+ Dex + bonus to initiative.

This is to show that a heavy armored cleric may get the jump on a rogue due to help from their god (rolled 20 on initiative, has -1 to initiative) but after that first round the rogue (being speedier) will catch up to the flow of the fight and essentially go before the cleric.

(I need to add this to my list, totally forgot till I read the popcorn initiative)

Or, you just let initiative cycle endlessly like normal, instead of having people suddenly going twice before others get a chance to act.

[1337 b4k4]

Um, you do know that a regular encounter is around 5 enemies right?

Citation needed. Also per your analysis rules you just listed that means only the largest of AoEs are encounter ending.

[HorridElemental]

Or, you just let initiative cycle endlessly like normal, instead of having people suddenly going twice before others get a chance to act.

What are you talking about?

Round 1: initiative ad normal (everyone goes)

Round 2+: everyone goes based on 10+ initiative bonus (Dex + bonus)

Perhaps I typed it weirdly before but no one goes twice before someone else gets to act.

[hawklost]

What are you talking about?

Round 1: initiative ad normal (everyone goes)

Round 2+: everyone goes based on 10+ initiative bonus (Dex + bonus)

Perhaps I typed it weirdly before but no one goes twice before someone else gets to act.

Yes, what Sartharina appears to be saying is this

Rogue: +10 Init total
Orc: +1 Init

Orc rolls a 20, gets 21 total, Rogue rolls a 1 and gets 11.

Orc Attack
Rogue Attack
Round 2:
Rogue Attack
Orc Attack

Rogue has now gotten to attack twice in a row. Original way has Rogue always going after Orc, your method has them getting 2 attacks in this scenario.

[HorridElemental]

Yes, what Sartharina appears to be saying is this

Rogue: +10 Init total
Orc: +1 Init

Orc rolls a 20, gets 21 total, Rogue rolls a 1 and gets 11.

Orc Attack
Rogue Attack
Round 2:
Rogue Attack
Orc Attack

Rogue has now gotten to attack twice in a row. Original way has Rogue always going after Orc, your method has them getting 2 attacks in this scenario.

But that isn't twice before the orc has acted, the orc went first on the first round of the fight.

The rogue caught up to the speed of battle and goes before the orc on each round after. What can I say, I like my immersion more than choppy initiative.

[Lokiare]

Citation needed. Also per your analysis rules you just listed that means only the largest of AoEs are encounter ending.

The final play test listed an average encounter as the same number of creatures as the party. It then went on to describe that using larger numbers of creatures increases the xp. Each time you outnumber the party you are supposed to increase the xp value of all creatures in the encounter. Until more evidence shows up (i.e. the PHB or DMG) I'm inclined to use the play test, especially if there have been no articles, interviews, or other things that contradict it.

[Lokiare]

Ideal initiative would be the DM counting segments and asking if a monster or characters initiative is divisible with that numbers. Unfortunately we would have to reverse initiative to be the lowest number goes first and spell durations would have to be counted in segments. However this would allow high dex characters to act multiple times while slower characters could not. You could even add in penalties for heavy armor and heavy weapons so they would act less often.

Of course traditionalists would cry foul.

[hawklost]

Ideal initiative would be the DM counting segments and asking if a monster or characters initiative is divisible with that numbers. Unfortunately we would have to reverse initiative to be the lowest number goes first and spell durations would have to be counted in segments. However this would allow high dex characters to act multiple times while slower characters could not. You could even add in penalties for heavy armor and heavy weapons so they would act less often.

Of course traditionalists would cry foul.

They did that in Shadowrun early editions, what occurred was people who put huge amounts of skills into giving themselves the lowest initiative(weapons/spells had +/- to init) just went 4-5 times before someone who didn't. This usually completely wiped the floor with anyone who did not have that good of init. It is fare from Ideal and does not work as well as the base idea seems to.

[Lokiare]

They did that in Shadowrun early editions, what occurred was people who put huge amounts of skills into giving themselves the lowest initiative(weapons/spells had +/- to init) just went 4-5 times before someone who didn't. This usually completely wiped the floor with anyone who did not have that good of init. It is fare from Ideal and does not work as well as the base idea seems to.

Well you would have to balance it and not have a lot of things that can change your initiative. Mostly things like using light weapons and having a high Dex mod. If you had it where the most optimized character could only go 3x as much as the most unoptimized character intentionally made to be slow then it would work nicely. I'm thinking that maybe on average a fast character would go 3 times for every 2 that another character went.

[1337 b4k4]

The final play test listed an average encounter as the same number of creatures as the party.

Coincidentally, I have the last play test DMG here in front of me and it does nothing of the sort. It does have the advice concerning modifying xp values when outnumbering the PCs, but everything talks about building off that XP budget, not counting individual monsters. In fact, if we look at the play test XP chart (instead of the LL chart) we get 20xp per PC at level 1 for an "average" encounter. With 5 PCs that puts us at 100 xp. A level 1 goblin in the same playtest is 10xp, which means an average encounter with goblins will have between 6 (just above easy) and 9 (just below tough) goblins (at 10 goblins, by the doubling rules, it would fall into a tough encounter even though it meets the xp budget). By level 2, your players should be going up against between 10 (easy budget, moved to average per doubling rules) and 14 goblins (well within the 200xp budget, but 15 would push to tough per the doubling rules)

[Lokiare]

Coincidentally, I have the last play test DMG here in front of me and it does nothing of the sort. It does have the advice concerning modifying xp values when outnumbering the PCs, but everything talks about building off that XP budget, not counting individual monsters. In fact, if we look at the play test XP chart (instead of the LL chart) we get 20xp per PC at level 1 for an "average" encounter. With 5 PCs that puts us at 100 xp. A level 1 goblin in the same playtest is 10xp, which means an average encounter with goblins will have between 6 (just above easy) and 9 (just below tough) goblins (at 10 goblins, by the doubling rules, it would fall into a tough encounter even though it meets the xp budget). By level 2, your players should be going up against between 10 (easy budget, moved to average per doubling rules) and 14 goblins (well within the 200xp budget, but 15 would push to tough per the doubling rules)

Yes, if you have 5 characters and you have 6 monsters the party is outnumbered and you would increase the xp value. If you have 11 monsters you are double outnumbering the party and increase the xp value again.

I'm flat out saying that math is wrong. It doesn't take into account that if an average combat is 7 rounds long adding another creature into the mix adds 7 more attacks by that creature and this continues each time you add a creature and if you extend the number of rounds it takes to defeat all the creatures you just increased the number of attacks the party takes by # rounds * number of monsters left in each round. At some point I'm going to finish that math example and how people what I mean.

[Sartharina]

Yes, if you have 5 characters and you have 6 monsters the party is outnumbered and you would increase the xp value. If you have 11 monsters you are double outnumbering the party and increase the xp value again.

I'm flat out saying that math is wrong. It doesn't take into account that if an average combat is 7 rounds long adding another creature into the mix adds 7 more attacks by that creature and this continues each time you add a creature and if you extend the number of rounds it takes to defeat all the creatures you just increased the number of attacks the party takes by # rounds * number of monsters left in each round. At some point I'm going to finish that math example and how people what I mean.
But the weaker the creatures, the lower the base value of rounds they last are, especially as people take more out per round at higher levels.

[1337 b4k4]

Yes, if you have 5 characters and you have 6 monsters the party is outnumbered and you would increase the xp value. If you have 11 monsters you are double outnumbering the party and increase the xp value again.

This is neither per the last playtest, nor the Legends and Lore article. In both instances, you only increase the difficulty once the players are outnumbered 2:1 and again at 3:1 and 4:1 and so-on. In a 5 PC party, that means the difficulty doesn't jump until 10 opponents, not 6 as you claim.

But in either case, you still haven't cited anything that says an "average encounter should have the same number of monsters as PC characters".

[Lokiare]

But the weaker the creatures, the lower the base value of rounds they last are, especially as people take more out per round at higher levels.

That only works up to a point. For instance fireball is no better than burning hands if you are fighting a bunch of 1/3 CR creatures with 4 average hp. Only the area it covers matters.

This is the same problem fighters and other non-casters will have. The casters will be taking out 4+ creatures with every AoE spell while the fighter will be taking about a max of 6 creatures assuming they don't miss and can reach them all with their movement. More likely they will take out 3-4 per round max.

Short of dropping Meteor Swarm on a group of creatures the area a caster can hit is around 20 foot radius.

An argument can be made that having more spell slots will increase the number of creatures defeated, but in reality a caster is unlikely to waste those kinds of resources and after the first one hits the enemies will spread or already be spread out to make it more difficult to get a large number.

Either way if the casters are taken out with focus fire (lets say they are fighting Hobgoblins so they are intelligent enough to use tactics) the rest of the fight will quickly turn into a TPK.

[Lokiare]

This is neither per the last playtest, nor the Legends and Lore article. In both instances, you only increase the difficulty once the players are outnumbered 2:1 and again at 3:1 and 4:1 and so-on. In a 5 PC party, that means the difficulty doesn't jump until 10 opponents, not 6 as you claim.

But in either case, you still haven't cited anything that says an "average encounter should have the same number of monsters as PC characters".

Look at the CRs and then look at the xp budgets. Do a little math.

[Sartharina]

A melee character has the option of reducing the amount of attacks they subject themselves to per round.

[1337 b4k4]

Look at the CRs and then look at the xp budgets. Do a little math.

CR does not relate to encounter building for the purposes of determining how many creatures to include in an encounter.


The casters will be taking out 4+ creatures with every AoE spell while the fighter will be taking about a max of 6 creatures assuming they don't miss and can reach them all with their movement. More likely they will take out 3-4 per round max.

Except you just argued the exact opposite a page ago when you were arguing that the analysis presented should not have had the enemies clustering together. I quote you:


While Orcs and goblins aren't the smartest bunch, they should through social evolution have figured out optimum battle tactics such as focus fire and not clumping up. Thus any small AoE will only hit 2, medium AoE's will hit 3 and large AoE's will hit 5, unless there is a reason for more like dropping a sculpted spell on the fighter to hit the 8 enemies surrounding them.

So which is it? Are casters taking out 2-5 targets per AoE (to the fighters 3-4 per round) or are they taking out 4+ per AoE?

[Envyus]

The final play test listed an average encounter as the same number of creatures as the party. It then went on to describe that using larger numbers of creatures increases the xp. Each time you outnumber the party you are supposed to increase the xp value of all creatures in the encounter. Until more evidence shows up (i.e. the PHB or DMG) I'm inclined to use the play test, especially if there have been no articles, interviews, or other things that contradict it.

Are you still using the xp value of the creatures in the last playtest as well. And no you don`t use the stuff from the last play test use stuff from basic.

(Everyone already told you about how your are mistake about how to increase the xp value.)