Help calculating CR

[HungryJack619]

Hey guys,

So I'm in a campaign where the DM doesn't give out XP, he simply gives levels based upon chapter resolution (which is completely fine). Recently we dispatched an insanely difficult number of baddies that the DM had designed for us not to fight, and to die against if we attempted to fight. Because the encounter would normally, at a minimum, give everyone in the party a level and the DM doesn't do things that way, he agreed to give us a free XP chunk to spend on magical items.

Now, the real question. We've been debating with the DM how much XP the encounter would be worth. He has absolutely no idea because he basically made an impossibly difficult encounter with no chance for survival, so he hadn't given his encounter a level, nor had he given his imaginary enemies a CR. So I want to know what you guys think the CR of each of these enemies would be, and what the total encounter level would be. I apologize that my information on these guys may be a little vague.

There were 12 Royal Guards and 1 Guard Captain. Each Royal Guard had around 50hp, 23 AC, a +14 to hit, and dealt 10-15 damage per hit (I don't know the exact calculation, but I'm pretty sure they were using +2 longswords). I don't know their Saving Throws, Feats, etc, but their saving throws were at least high enough for about half of them to succeed a reflex save when our 18 Intelligence Wizard threw a Fireball at them. The Captain of the Guard had around 60hp, 24 AC, slightly higher to-hit and damage.

So what are your thoughts? I know it's not a lot to go on, but our estimations were each of the Guards were around level 6, and the Captain maybe level 7. That would put the encounter at a CR 13. After I get an answer I'll amaze you guys by telling you what level our characters are and you'll understand how believably lucky they are to be alive.

Thanks!

[HungryJack619]

Clarification from the DM: "AC 22, attack +14, dmg 1d8+5, 35 hp, and decent save"

[With a box]

There were 12 Royal Guards and 1 Guard Captain. Each Royal Guard had around 50hp, 23 AC, a +14 to hit, and dealt 10-15 damage per hit (I don't know the exact calculation, but I'm pretty sure they were using +2 longswords). I don't know their Saving Throws, Feats, etc, but their saving throws were at least high enough for about half of them to succeed a reflex save when our 18 Intelligence Wizard threw a Fireball at them. The Captain of the Guard had around 60hp, 24 AC, slightly higher to-hit and damage.

So what are your thoughts? I know it's not a lot to go on, but our estimations were each of the Guards were around level 6, and the Captain maybe level 7. That would put the encounter at a CR 13. After I get an answer I'll amaze you guys by telling you what level our characters are and you'll understand how believably lucky they are to be alive.

Thanks!


Clarification from the DM: "AC 22, attack +14, dmg 1d8+5, 35 hp, and decent save"

So, how did you get 15 from 1d8+5?

[HungryJack619]

Checked with him, he didn't have the additional +2 from the magical weapon when he sent that to me, but he was using it during the campaign.

[Sith_Happens]

Clarification from the DM: "AC 22, attack +14, dmg 1d8+5, 35 hp, and decent save"

If you're right about the +2 weapons then a heavy-armored 8th level warrior with a rather strange ability array (16 STR with 10 CON) would have almost exactly these numbers. The captain being a 9th level warrior with and 14 CON would give him almost exactly 60 hit points. This yields an encounter level of 11, which is worth 3375 XP per character if you're a party of four 5th level characters.

[HungryJack619]

Yeah. Obviously it's not an NPC you could ACTUALLY make with that stat combination, but you could get pretty close. I'm just curious on your math for XP though. four 5th level characters at an encounter CR of 11 would be 12,000 total XP, or 3,000 each. And if you have twelve 8th Level Warriors and one 9th Level Warrior, is that really only a CR 11?

[Sith_Happens]

Yeah. Obviously it's not an NPC you could ACTUALLY make with that stat combination, but you could get pretty close.

Assuming---
* Full plate and heavy shield, with one or the other being +1 for the guards and the two totaling to +3 for the captain.
* Weapon Focus (Longsword) on all of them.
* Toughness on the captain.
* 12 DEX and Lightning Reflexes on the guards, for an exactly 50% chance of saving against a DC 17 spell.
---I got the hit point totals within one point and everything else exactly.


I'm just curious on your math for XP though. four 5th level characters at an encounter CR of 11 would be 12,000 total XP, or 3,000 each.

I used this (http://www.d20srd.org/extras/d20encountercalculator/), which gave me 3375 each (13500 total).


And if you have twelve 8th Level Warriors and one 9th Level Warrior, is that really only a CR 11?

NPC classes are one CR per two levels.

[HungryJack619]

Well done. Unfortunately the DM said he wouldn't give me an XP chunk to spend on magic items (the jerk), which I think we deserve because we dispatched that group with 2 (and a half?) lvl6 PCs. We had a Dwarf Fighter that we've boosted to 29AC (+4 with Dodge against a specific target for 33AC) that just stood in the middle and tanked damage while the Conjurer Variant Wizard went invisible and dropped Tiny Earth Elementals (Not actually in the book, but we modified the Tiny Elemental Familiars to turn them into a Level 1 summon) that have a +8 to hit and deal 1d3+1d6+8 damage each because of Augmented Summon, Augment Elemental, and Beckon the Frozen, which he summoned at a rate of of 4-5 per turn because of high rolls on Summon Monster III and summoning doesn't break invisibility. The half a person was the halfling who surrendered at the start of the fight, and only got up to help when all but two of the enemies were dead, the Dwarf was unconscious but stabilized, and the Wizard was bleeding out.

Later this same game that Wizard also took out a Raven familiar of a lvl15 Wizard who was dumb enough to have his familiar follow us by itself. Two fireballs, a scorching ray, two magic missiles, and 5 tiny air elementals later and the Raven had taken 117 damage and was dead...

We're very good at killing things.

[Seerow]

Yeah. Obviously it's not an NPC you could ACTUALLY make with that stat combination, but you could get pretty close. I'm just curious on your math for XP though. four 5th level characters at an encounter CR of 11 would be 12,000 total XP, or 3,000 each. And if you have twelve 8th Level Warriors and one 9th Level Warrior, is that really only a CR 11?

1 level 8 Warrior = CR4. Every time you double the soldiers involved, add 2 to the CR.
2 = 6
4 = 8
8 = 10
12 = 11 (16 would be CR 12, 12 is conveniently the exact mid point so works as a CR11)

The guard captain is a CR5, which by himself isn't enough to increase the CR11 encounter further, so you would add the value of a CR5 encounter separately and add it.

So the CR11 gives you 3,000 exp per person as you noted, and CR5 gives 375xp. So the total exp is 3,375, just like he said. The Encounter Calculator just rounded the CR of the encounter down to 11, but gave full experience for every creature.

[Sith_Happens]

2 (and a half?) lvl6 PCs

Rounding up to three because you would in fact have lost had the Halfling not been there, that makes 4000 XP each.

[Crake]

NPC classes are one CR per two levels.

Aren't NPC classes level -1 CR? not half?

Edit: Yeah, DMG p38, NPC cr= level-1


Personally, if the PCs somehow managed to overcome this incredible encounter, as it says in the DMG, it's likely other things were at play here, which would warrant an ad-hoc xp adjustment. How exactly did you guys beat all those guards?

[Karl Aegis]

Bag o' stats type enemies typically have HD/3 as their CR. You're looking at a CR 8 encounter at best. No special abilities to speak of and under-equipped for their duties means your "royal guards" don't add up to much more than thugs in fancy armor.

[HungryJack619]

Aren't NPC classes level -1 CR? not half?

Edit: Yeah, DMG p38, NPC cr= level-1


Personally, if the PCs somehow managed to overcome this incredible encounter, as it says in the DMG, it's likely other things were at play here, which would warrant an ad-hoc xp adjustment. How exactly did you guys beat all those guards?

Dwarf Fighter without all the necessary equipment and feats to put him at 33AC, and a Conjurer Variant Wizard who went invisible and just summoned Earth Elementals every turn that had +8 to hit and dealt 1d3+1d6+8 damage (Augmented Summoning, Augment Elemental, Beckon the Frozen). The Dwarf sat there and tanked damage while I dropped out 3-5 elementals every single turn. Dwarf eventually went down, I create and illusion to distract the people while I ran over to heal check the Dwarf, I eventually go down with two bad guys left, the Halfling the surrendered at the start of the fight decided it was a good time to start helping, grabbed his weapon, and took out the last two.