As DM, at what party level will my encounter technique fall apart?

[Breashios]

I seem to be doing something very different from most Dungeon Masters based on what I am reading at this site and many others.

Rather than increasing the toughness of equal numbers of opposition, I tend to throw in more mooks and mid level lieutenants. The party is currently five at 9th level and one at 6th. We started at 3rd level. The next big climactic fight will be against 60. They are fully rested.

Their opposition will consist of two Bulette at CR 5, three CR 4 leaders, with 24 CR 2, 5 CR 1 and 26 soldiers less than CR 1, but entering the battle spread out over 4 to 8 turns.

While most encounter calculators rate this as ridiculous, I know they will feel the challenge, but will easily overcome it. I doubt any of them will even fall unconscious. Knowing their cautious strategic level thinking style they will fall back after this fight, with between a quarter and a half of their resources still in hand. They will insist on attempting a long rest, but they will still easily defeat what I will have available to send at them within the next 24 hours. Fear might get the best of them and they may fall back to a well defended community where they will certainly be safe.

Here is what I like about this encounter building technique. First, the players feel a real sense of threat from the numbers, and while I can see they are usually not in so much danger, they really have no way of knowing. Second, my experience is that it is easier to balance an encounter (by perceived difficulty) by adding more mooks, than by increasing the toughness of a few dangerous opponents. Finally, I like to run campaigns where the heroes are really exceptional, where in the whole rest of the known world there might only be one 20th level NPC and a handful of known NPCs in the levels above 11th.

My question for the forum is: Is there a party level known, either from experience or insightful theory, at which no number of mixed lower level opponents will be a challenge for the party?

Of course, they will encounter and even fight dragons at the appropriate time, so not all fights are as described in this one example, but will I have to move to that more typical encounter structure soon or can I continue to mix the two all the way to 20th level? I'm hoping bounded accuracy means I can.

[SilverStud]

Honestly, a horde of Hide-spamming goblins can be scary at most levels, especially before the mid (10-13/14) level abilities start coming online. It sounds like you're doing the right thing for your party. Keep at it.

If you're worried about challenging your players as they reach god tiers, just think this:
How would you, you yourself, personally, as you are now, reading this post, go about defeating your PCs? Assassins, poison, and especially hit-and-run techniques are answers I would give, if asked. Let them keep wading through armies, but slip a poisoned blade into the ranks. Have snipers with Sharpshooter shoot from extreme range. The enemy will have to resort to guerrilla tactics to defeat a level 20 party, since normal mortals stand no chance 1v1.

Hope that helps

[quinron]

Low-level monsters will stay competitive as long as 1) the party's defenses aren't being increased magically and stay capped by the game's standard constraints and 2) the monsters behave tactically. A single well-placed fireball can take out upwards of 10 goblins, but 10 goblins spaced out so only 1 or 2 can be hit at once can still pose a threat.

If the enemies can stay alive long enough to land hits and chip away at the party's HP, your planning style should keep working. Just make sure you know what your players can do and plan for it, letting them be just as effective as you want them to be for each fight.

[MrStabby]

A lot of it may depend on the spells available. Meteor swarm may destroy a lot of encounters but even at low levels there are some spells that really good - wall for fire for example.

Other abilities on the PCs are also good - if less flashy. Necromancer's ability to recover HP, Fiendlocks ability to gain temp HP are both things that scale very well against large numbers of less good opponents. This setup also massively favours PCs who go for a good AC rather than loads of HP for defence. When most enemies are hitting on a rolled 11 then an extra point of AC is pretty good; when most enemies are hitting on a 16 that extra point removes just under 20% of the damage you take - a big difference. Sometimes this doesn't matter - a temple of clerics spamming sacred flame for example.

More opponents is a good and fun way to increase the difficulty of a fight but I think it is also worth scaling the enemies up slightly as well to keep numbers manageable. This also lets you have enemies with more cool abilities which can be fun for the players.

[Addaran]

In 5ed, it's somewhat a better tactic then just putting one huge monster. Even with crowd control and awesome defense, a few great rolls (with the number of dice, it's bound to happen!) will do a little bit of damage, doing attrition war on them.

I've used the same tactic as you a lot in PotA. Partly because it's the only way to threaten them (that or insane casters surprise attacks) because they have lots of control/burst damage and partly because they have a tendency to aggro the whole "map".

There's two things i've experienced.

1) Waves are awesome. It prevents them from doing one huge aoe (damage or control) that will just end the encounter. On the other hand, it's also great when you're not too sure how to balance encounters. If you give your whole gang in one shot and it turns out too easy, they might find it boring. If you go overboard though, you risk unfair TPK. So depending on how well/bad they are going through the fight, you can use one less wave or add some.

2)Playing the monsters strategically is important like jinjitsu said. But sometimes it doesn't make sense for them to do so. (too stupid, the players stealthed or planned well an ambush, etc). In that case, just accept you'll lose the fight spectacularly and be glad it cost them some resources. The players will probably feel super good about nailing the encounter too.

My 3 lvl 5 players fought 40 orcs, a warchief and a cleric (eye of gruumsh?). They had villagers to help (but didn't want them to die) that really didn't do **** with their poor rolls. Two fireball took care of 30 orcs, the cleric and left the warchief at 1hp. The orcs only had time for one volley of javelins then it was mop up time with the 10 left and the chief who got one round of attack. Hynoptic pattern took care of the 10 orcs. In all, they took care of it so quickly and they had Inspired Leadered the villagers, so there was not a single casualty (i don't think the players even lost all the temp HP). I think one got dropped to zero but stabilized for dramatic effect. And they had the warchief alive for questioning. The players felt like true heroes, part strength and part strategy.

[Breashios]

Thank you all. Very good points that match up with how I hope to proceed. Exactly the combat experience my players seem to enjoy.

[Estrillian]

My experience is that, despite bounded accuracy and the claims of the DMG, swarms of low CR enemies are only dangerous when they can't be handled out of hand by are of effect spells. 20 Goblins standing in a mass with pikes are 1 fireball away from dead. 20 Goblins charging in from every side in groups of 3 or 4, with partial cover all over the place, arriving at different times, are much more of a threat (if the party is pinned down).

As stated above waves can be a good way to handle this, if the players have some harder monsters to fight (and thus can't just turn around to aoe the wave as it arrives). Groups of monsters in cover with ranged weapons can be a pain too (though not if they just miss all the time). Sometimes I just model these as aoes (volleys of arrows) that you can make DEX saves to take half damage from.

Personally I like boss fights, so on the same principle as the waves I've been playing with multi-stage bosses (Final Fantasy Style) because it stops one power spell or bad save from ending the fight unsatisfyingly.

[Breashios]

...Personally I like boss fights, so on the same principle as the waves I've been playing with multi-stage bosses (Final Fantasy Style) because it stops one power spell or bad save from ending the fight unsatisfyingly.

This leads to interesting thoughts... I know what Final Fantasy is, but am not familiar with the Final Fantasy Style multi-stage bosses or how that translates to D&D. Can you elaborate with an example of how it would play out within D&D?

[BW022]

...

My question for the forum is: Is there a party level known, either from experience or insightful theory, at which no number of mixed lower level opponents will be a challenge for the party?
...


There are a number of inherent problems with D&D and large numbers.

Large numbers of creatures in initiative greatly slow down the game. Suddenly combats which take 5 minutes between turns, now take 7, 10, or more. Even the best ways of keeping combat moving still won't help as you always need to track hit points, initiative, conditions, actions, etc. Players can start becoming bored. Plot slows down. Large numbers also heavily slant the game towards casters with area damaging spells. Combats become insanely easy for them and insanely difficult for parties without else. Finally, large numbers greatly penalize certain spells and tactics -- often ones players would think good against such opponents. For example or confusion spell against 20 goblins can literally double the length of the combat as you now force hundreds more rolls on top of a combat which might take over an hour to run in the first place.

It isn't that you can't do it. The occasional big fight with lots of enemies is fine. You should always mix up your encounters. Just realize that it normally isn't done for time and balance issues. Players might either breeze through in minutes or get slaughtered over hours.

Waves tend to help. They add the illusion of lots of creatures while limiting the number in any given initiative. In most cases, I'd say you need a minute or two between waves... unless creatures as specifically prepared and simply moving from an extremely nearby area. Putting on armor, grabbing shields, getting information about what is happening, etc. isn't typically done in rounds unless they can see each other and are already on guard.

[Zman]

A calculator will not give you an accurate gauge of that kind of battle as it is easier to break it down into seperate encounters that come in waves.

I often use a similar technique to change the feel of encounters and it works well. I also might fudge the strength of the reinforcements if I feel the earlier encounter wan't enough of a threat.

[Breashios]

There are a number of inherent problems with D&D and large numbers.

Large numbers of creatures in initiative greatly slow down the game. ... Even the best ways of keeping combat moving still won't help as you always need to track hit points, initiative, conditions, actions, etc. Players can start becoming bored. Plot slows down. Large numbers also heavily slant the game towards casters with area damaging spells. Combats become insanely easy for them and insanely difficult for parties without else. Finally, large numbers greatly penalize certain spells and tactics -- often ones players would think good against such opponents. For example or confusion spell against 20 goblins can literally double the length of the combat as you now force hundreds more rolls on top of a combat which might take over an hour to run in the first place.

It isn't that you can't do it. The occasional big fight with lots of enemies is fine. You should always mix up your encounters. Just realize that it normally isn't done for time and balance issues. Players might either breeze through in minutes or get slaughtered over hours.

Waves tend to help. They add the illusion of lots of creatures while limiting the number in any given initiative. In most cases, I'd say you need a minute or two between waves... unless creatures as specifically prepared and simply moving from an extremely nearby area. Putting on armor, grabbing shields, getting information about what is happening, etc. isn't typically done in rounds unless they can see each other and are already on guard.

A lot of good points, but all of these concerns would be the same at any level unless I am missing a point here, and I have already handled several large sized battles with good results, just at levels between 3rd and 9th.

I generally average two or three smaller battles between the larger ones, but they have NEVER struggled or said they felt challenged with any of them. Mainly their biggest gripe was that one or two of the enemy were able to escape, but only a couple of times. (In the big battles they do expect more than a couple to escape. They have lost two of these, but wisely retreated before they could be pinned down.)

I really haven't had a problem keeping big battles moving. Maybe I just have great players. One usually handles the initiative tracker, they usually accept my rulings during battle quickly (though I have been wrong by RAW a couple of times) and four of the six pay attention to every move of everyone, so they are ready to go when it is their turn. The other two not so much, but they rarely take double the time of the others. Finally, we all roll in plain view. This allows me to have players who acted recently make some rolls for the enemy. I just tell them what they see the NPC attempting.

Though it might be hard to plan for a big battle in a sandbox campaign, I set up most like the one we'll have two days from now: They had a battle at the complex gate to close the session so I could thoroughly prepare for the main encounter. I pre-rolled the enemy initiative, filled in that sheet, have a separate grid listing abilities and for recording all damage and conditions for each enemy. Finally I have plenty of unique minis, which does allow each to be easily identifiable on the battle map.

Regarding your last concern, the forces were awakened by the fight at the gate and have started equipping, which puts them that number of rounds from activation. (Characters used one fireball and a thunderous smite at the gate. Other players groaned.) The enemy can activate sooner if they skip equipping their armor, or enter the battle with it half on but gaining little benefit. (A premise I have already used in prior encounters.)

So, I've gone the long way of saying I know large numbers could slow down the game. I know it brings the potential issues of player boredom, favors area of effect casters and favors certain spells and tactics (which is fine – as a player I don't want the world to provide a situation that will benefit my choice of spells and favored tactics; I want to adapt my spell choice and tactics to the situation the world presents me with). So far these concerns have not been a problem for our game. The players state they are loving it. I am just wondering if there is anything (like Meteor Swarm) that breaks this at later levels.

I do want to thank you for bringing up the example of a mass confusion effect requiring a significant effort to adjudicate. I have been lucky this has not occurred or did after the matter was settled, so it could be hand waved. This will allow me to think about how I would want to handle this before I am faced by it. Off the cuff, just apply each result proportionately?!? by their position in initiative and keep moving on?

[MaxWilson]

I seem to be doing something very different from most Dungeon Masters based on what I am reading at this site and many others.

Rather than increasing the toughness of equal numbers of opposition, I tend to throw in more mooks and mid level lieutenants. The party is currently five at 9th level and one at 6th. We started at 3rd level. The next big climactic fight will be against 60. They are fully rested.

*snip*

My question for the forum is: Is there a party level known, either from experience or insightful theory, at which no number of mixed lower level opponents will be a challenge for the party?

Of course, they will encounter and even fight dragons at the appropriate time, so not all fights are as described in this one example, but will I have to move to that more typical encounter structure soon or can I continue to mix the two all the way to 20th level? I'm hoping bounded accuracy means I can.

Not really. There are specific builds (e.g. 20th level Moon Druids) which can handle theoretically infinite numbers of low-level melee opponents making straightforward melee attacks, but even these builds fall apart when faced by missile weapons or melee opponents strafing them (c.f. goblin conga line).

As others have noted, it's more a matter of how much hassle you as DM are willing to put up with, managing NPC states. But as far as challenge goes, there is absolutely no reason you couldn't have 20th level adventures in which the majority of the conflicts are with platoon-sized elements of low-level creatures (e.g. 30 CR 3 Githyanki working together in dispersed four-man skirmish squads will still give the average party of 20th level PCs fits if they don't take the Githyanki seriously--even Meteor Swarm probably can't trivialize that encounter unless the caster is also an evoker with Sculpt Spell). Yes, certain PCs can be built to shine even in those scenarios, and they will have lots of fun while doing so. Playing getting to feel both challenged and awesome is a win/win for the players and the DM.

[Taejang]

I ran a campaign where the party fought off a literal army. They had to blitz through guarded encampments, take out patrols, break through a siege, defend the city during said siege, etc. They ended the campaign at level 15. The only time they weren't threatened by hordes was when I did things wrong. Don't make my mistakes, learn from them! Beware: wall of text.

The difficulty calculations in the book are garbage. They are just straight-up too simple. It sounds like you're already used to building encounters more by feel than by the DMG, and that's unfortunately the only way to do it. Anything else doesn't take into account all the moving parts that are unique to your party. As part of this, you're bound to make mistakes, so unless you're great at improvising on the spot, make a DM escape plan: What do I do if I overestimated the party? Some DM escape plan examples:

A purple worm, demon, or other enemy joins the fray, attacking both sides
An NPC appears to help the party
The enemy fractures as a lieutenant sees an opportunity to kill his boss
An earthquake, landslide, or other event (possibly triggered by something that happened in the battle) allows the party to escape or gain the upper hand

Bounded levels of AC means that a hundred orcs really can kill high level fighters. If you roll enough die, enough hits will happen. However, large swarms with no effective ranged attacks are worthless. You can only get so many guys adjacent to your PCs. Without ranged enemies, the party can stand like mountains in a sea of crickets, squashing three or more per turn and never taking a lick of damage.

If anyone has anything that reduces damage taken (such as the Heavy Armor Master perk), your mooks will have a much, much harder time threatening them. Likewise, Barbarians can fight seemingly forever.

Good enemy tactics alone won't save your large enemy mobs. Fifty goblins can only spread out so far and still be within range to fight. Orcs are only so smart, and making them behave like General Lee in every fight isn't going to seem proper to your players. That said, if you employ no tactics, your mobs will be easy pickings. Decide what level of tactical ability the enemy can use and make use of it. For example, the enemy can retreat, too. And fight at bottlenecks, or from atop cliffs, or in a blizzard, or whatever gives them an advantage.

A long enough battle, with enough enemies, means you can wear PC spellcasters out of mass damage spell slots. But a high level wizard can cast Fireball many, many times. And they may have items, like Staff of Fire, enabling even more mass damage. At some point, critical mass will be reached- in order to run down the spellcasters, you will need so many enemies that the encounter is no longer fun. The first time the party wizard and sorcerer team up to kill two hundred orcs, it is a tale to be spoken of for months. The fifth time? Slog fest.

Thus, denying them their mass damage spells becomes a possible strategy for you. The mooks are resistant or immune to fire damage. The enemy boss, who is high level, keeps counterspelling the party's fireballs. There is an anti-magic field in effect. These are Tucker's Kobolds (http://tuckerskobolds.com/), and you can't effectively target them. Whatever you do, make sure you don't make the party wizard feel worthless- you want to limit his options, not strip him of everything. But this tactic gets old real quick. Do not rinse and repeat without careful thought.

It is a good idea to mix in tough monster encounters. If every encounter is the Party vs Throng, it may get stale. Sprinkle in a dragon, purple worm, mummy lord, or whatever fits. Variety is the spice of dungeons.

The larger the group, the harder it is on the DM. If battles become too big for you to handle, either increase the average CR to decrease the numbers, or make some enemies irrelevant. For example, include some NPCs which take on the easiest enemies for the party, and describe their fight without doing any rolling at all.

When you're tracking fifty guys of five different types, it can be very difficult to remember to use all their abilities properly. Especially if one or more can cast spells, and doubly so if their spell list has many options. Consider reworking enemy spell lists to only their most useful spells to make it easier on you, and take notes on the spells so you don't have to look them up during combat.

To keep the fights from getting too easy, consider changing the objectives. Ideas:

You see before you ten thousand orcs. You must reach the other side.
You must escort Mr. Squishy NPC. Even a single orc javelin can kill him.
These guards are all under mind control. You need to get through them without killing them, and stop the thing controlling them.

Fighting large groups is fun and rewarding, and I'm glad I'm not the only one to do it despite the DMG's crazy rules. Good luck, and have fun!

[Haydensan]

I like the idea of this and it sounds really good. Quick question though not to derail the thread, how do you manage such a large number of monks as a dm?

[Taejang]

I like the idea of this and it sounds really good. Quick question though not to derail the thread, how do you manage such a large number of monks as a dm?
I'm not the OP, but here are some thoughts:

Prepare in advance. Read their abilities thoroughly and look up any rule questions ahead of time. Write down their key stats on note cards so you don't have to flip book pages.
Understand the most likely scenarios your party will get into, and how the enemy will respond to them.
Roll for groups: if 5 enemy creatures of type X attack, roll one dice and have a number range associated with how well they do. For instance, 5 goblins attacking a high-AC PC might be like this: 1-8, all miss. 9-12, one hits. 13-16, two hits. 17-19: three hits. 20: all hit. If the monsters are better able to hit than a goblin, or are attacking a lower-AC PC, adjust it so it is easier for them to hit.
Weak monsters may not require tracking HP. Any hit is a killing blow for them.
If you track HP, you can track them as swarms, like bats. Total the HP for all the enemies in one general area (i.e. ten goblins at 7 HP each totals 70) and as the players do damage, subtract from this total HP pool. Remove figures when you feel is appropriate, or every "milestone" (for goblins, that'd be every time more than 7 damage is done)
Have the players help move monsters. On the monsters' turn, point to a group of bad guys and say, "I want those guys to move 30 feet closer to the party" and let a player do the square-counting. You the DM can overrule any player-placed monster's position.
For movement, if you know where one guy starts and count it out, you can move the rest in relation to his ending point (i.e. goblin 1 moves 30 feet, goblin 2 was a square behind and thus moves to a square behind goblin 1 without needing to count the squares again).
If anything threatens to bog the combat down, ignore it or make a ruling on the spot. This may mean monsters aren't as smart as they could be, or you may misrule something, but that's ok. If you have a rule's lawyer in the group or someone who would be bothered by this, have him/her look it up while you handle some other part of combat.
Limit enemy spellcaster lists to only a few spells so you have less to consider on their turns.
Consider having all the enemies together in the initiative order instead of separately (i.e. goblins, hobgoblins, wolves, and rat swarms all using the same initiative roll instead of rolling four times). You'll probably be surprised by how much this one alone speeds up combat if there are multiple types of enemies (and how much it *feels* like it speeds it up).

[Fri]

This leads to interesting thoughts... I know what Final Fantasy is, but am not familiar with the Final Fantasy Style multi-stage bosses or how that translates to D&D. Can you elaborate with an example of how it would play out within D&D?

He meant bosses that went "But this isn't even my real form!" And turn into a horrible angelic creature or whatnot.

You should give hints that the boss has different form, though how many can be a schrodinger number. Or you could make it that the ultimate final form is actuall a sad little thing that beg to be killed or whatever. (or can be easily killed by the party's macguffin)

[Theodoxus]

Its for this reason that I'm slowly turning from D&D to Savage Worlds. I like the concept of a massive army fighting the besieged players... but the execution takes forever, as BW022 points out.

But hey, if you and your players are happy with that style of combat and you've learned tricks to manage the inherent boredom and lack of attention that 10 minute rounds generate, more power to you!

[Breashios]

I like the idea of this and it sounds really good. Quick question though not to derail the thread, how do you manage such a large number of mooks as a dm?

I use more than half of what Taejang suggests. I’d recommend any DM pick whatever they like off that list and use what works for them.

I might rely on my players a bit more than most DMs, as they do about half of the rolls for the monsters, while I check stats and resistances. When I do ask them to move the enemy closer or whatever, they usually pick the best route for them, split them up just enough to avoid AoE spells they have, etc. Sometimes they put them in better positions than I would have thought of.

Preparation is key. As mentioned above I try to delay the main fight I know is coming until the beginning of a future session. I do best when I pre-roll initiative (since it cannot change in 5e), grouping like monsters on the same initiative or splitting them into two groups. Leaders and lieutenants always have their own initiative. I then print out my enemy roster in initiative order, (numbering the pages because it is sometimes easy to get them out of order). The roster will probably contain more information than I will need (the related mini, stats, abilities, attacks with to hit and damage, spells, AC, saves and HP at a minimum). I am not afraid to waste paper. Empty space between monsters could be needed for anything. (Also helps you find what you are looking for quickly.)

There is a separate initiative sheet which I give to the player that runs it for me. Player initiatives are added to that sheet at the start of the battle. If the battle starts in waves I will run the initiative sheet until most of the combatants are on the field, then hand it over, so there will be some mystery/surprise upon their activation.

As the battle proceeds, put the top sheet on the bottom immediately after the unit or units on that page have acted. Repeat, until at the beginning of the next round the first sheet is on top again. Enemies on the initiative sheet are recorded by the mini used. When a mini is targeted for an attack or damage, keeping the pile in order, flip through to that sheet to find the AC (if you don’t remember) and to record the damage, other effects or conditions applied. The initiative caller helps you find sheets quickly by telling you which mini is before or after the one you are looking for.

The final part is to clearly mark through any monster that has been dropped on the initiative sheet and put an X through the appropriate entry on the roster. When every unit on a page has been dropped, throw that page on the floor (or put it out of reach for the time being). If for some rare reason it can get back up later, pick it back off the floor and reinsert it into the pile. Then erase the line drawn through it on the initiative sheet.

Soon you’ll be down to a couple of sheets in your stack. Those might be running away, surrendering or whatever, but essentially you won’t really be needing a “system” at that point.

I hope this is helpful to anyone willing to give it a try. Again, look at Taejang’s entry for the other stuff.

[Laserlight]

Kobold Fight Club says that to have enough kobold to make a Hard encounter for 4PCs of 11th level, you'd need 385 of them.

You send two poor saps in each round to make contact so the rest get Pack Tactics (assuming someone has PAM+Sentinel). They stay at range 120 so Pack Tactics cancels out long range and simplifies the arithmetic. We'll assume the target has AC20; the kobolds attack at +4 for 1d4+2. Roughly 76 of them hit and another 19 crit. That does 114d4+190 = 475hp. Someone using Shield or other shenanigans to get his AC up to "only crits hit" still takes 138hp, assuming all the kobolds shoot at him instead of spreading their fire among multiple targets.

[MaxWilson]

Kobold Fight Club says that to have enough kobold to make a Hard encounter for 4PCs of 11th level, you'd need 385 of them.

Something's wrong with kobold.com right now--it has a huge jump between 115 kobolds (which is says are worth 8625 XP, Medium--wrong BTW, should be 11,500) and 116 kobolds (which is correctly says are 11,600 XP, Hard). I don't know why it told you that 385 kobolds were necessary for a Hard encounter. The Hard threshold is 9600 XP, so 96 kobolds would do it.

In actuality of course, 96 kobolds are likely to eat many PC groups for breakfast. 5E tends to underestimate the difficulty of hordes.


You send two poor saps in each round to make contact so the rest get Pack Tactics (assuming someone has PAM+Sentinel). They stay at range 120 so Pack Tactics cancels out long range and simplifies the arithmetic. We'll assume the target has AC20; the kobolds attack at +4 for 1d4+2. Roughly 76 of them hit and another 19 crit. That does 114d4+190 = 475hp. Someone using Shield or other shenanigans to get his AC up to "only crits hit" still takes 138hp, assuming all the kobolds shoot at him instead of spreading their fire among multiple targets.

Case in point of how the kobolds will eat the PCs for breakfast. Although, to be fair:

(1) you're using 385 kobolds, which is almost triple-Deadly (385/144 = 2.67);

(2) a skilled and sane party will use asymmetric tactics against the kobolds, such as using Cunning Action and/or Expeditious Retreat/Phantom Steed/etc. to kill the kobolds without coming within their 120' range (150' including kobold movement). They'll also do things like kill off the "poor saps" before they hit contact range, thus imposing disadvantage on the kobolds and reducing their damage rate by up to 95%.

On the other hand, the kobolds can also use more sophisticated tactics such as attempting encirclement and making use of (portable?) cover. If both kobolds and PCs fight intelligently and cooperatively, the players are going to get a mental workout even if they win handily in the end! (Because if they don't use their brains, they won't win handily.)

[CaptainSarathai]

I was running some tester combats with a few friends for a potential "Wrath of Grodd" type campaign with lots of HobGobbos.
Hobgoblins can wreck a party, they can punch way above their weight level. Especially if, as the levels increase, you just toss in a big "slave monster" or two. Anything with pack-style tactics will wreck face in larger numbers.

Then again, I play "open" battles. 60 Hobgoblins hitting in waves as the players move through a castle? No problem.
20 HobGoblins in small clusters of 4 advancing as coordinated shield walls, while a shaman sits on some Counter Spells and another 39 HobGobbies rain down arrows from the overlooking hilltop... yeah, that's a bit different.