What level of damage is appropriate?

[Godskook]

As a DM, I'm often left wondering what amount of NPC damage is an appropriate challenge for Mooks, Lieutenants and Villains. Specifically as a proportion of player HP. So....10% HP per round? 20%? I'm running into this as an idea because whenever I start optimizing NPC builds for my villains(cause its FUN), I invariably end up with something that effectively 1-shots the party Barbarian from range. I then try to walk that back down, but....not sure to what optimization level I should aim, and was wondering if anyone had good standards to work with on this.

[rel]

If I am tailoring opposition to the party here is how I go about doing it

Mooks outnumbering the party 5 to 1 is a good start.

So 5 or more mooks could potentially surround a single party member. If that is a front liner this should not be a problem. if it is a squishy then it might be an issue.

so balance for the least resilient party member.

The mook mob should kill the squishy in say 3 rounds.

so each mook should have an average DPR of (squishy hp) / 3 rounds / 5 mooks

that is average DPR so it includes a chance to hit, a percentage of mooks doing something other than damage like tripping or grabbing without any special ability to be good at it and so on.

Let me throw some numbers out so you can see what I mean.

Lets say the level 3 sorcerer has the worst defences; an AC of 15 and 15 hp

I want 5 mooks (let's just call em Scrobolds) to spend at about 3 rounds bringing him down.

I want them to hit the party tank with 21 AC at least some of the time so I set their to hit at +5. Thus they hit our dood on a 10.

now 15hp / 5 mooks / 11/20 to hit chance / 2.5 rounds

each mook should do about 2 damage per round.

so they won't kill the sorcerer but it feels like they can't do much to the tank.

so we double their damage to four (on average) say 1D6 even and give them a secondary action to perform;

jeering
when many scrobolds fight one enemy they tend to spend a lot of time cheering each other on instead of fighting. Once they decide their friends have done enough damage the remaining scrobolds stop attacking and instead attempt to intimidate the target. Actually, 1 scrobold tries to intimidate and the rest just aid another that 1 intimidator.

So now damage is effectively capped off, the tank can wade in and hold his own against a horde and if they get to the back line they don't instantly kill the squishies. The only remaining issue is a string of lucky crits so we deal with that possibility.

****ty weapons
the scrobolds wield weapons of such astoundingly poor quality that they are worth literally negative gold and on a crit only do max damage instead of double damage as normal.
On top of that a crit causes the weapon too fall apart and the scrobold must spend the next round frantically repairing their weapon instead of fighting.

There we go. damage for a purpouse built mook horde that will drain resources but are unlikely to kill anyone.

[Agahnim]

Also consider the fact that they are likely to get killed really fast. The PCs are likely to kill such mooks at the rate of one per round at the very least, which will reduce the enemies' damage output until they're all dead.
On a side note, enemies that take 3 rounds to kill a sorcerer in melee while outnumbering him 5 to 1 seem like a really pathetic threat.

[rel]

Well yeah, they are mooks. I expect to use them in a horde of 20 or so against a standard 4 man party and have the party come out of the fight still able to take on a few more fights before they rest for the day.

Obviously Lieutenants and villains would be more threatening.

[Deeds]

As a DM, I'm often left wondering what amount of NPC damage is an appropriate challenge for Mooks, Lieutenants and Villains. Specifically as a proportion of player HP. So....10% HP per round? 20%? I'm running into this as an idea because whenever I start optimizing NPC builds for my villains(cause its FUN), I invariably end up with something that effectively 1-shots the party Barbarian from range. I then try to walk that back down, but....not sure to what optimization level I should aim, and was wondering if anyone had good standards to work with on this.
For non-bosses, my standard is the appropriate CR given in Monster Manual 1. After several encounters, I decide if the PCs need an increase or decrease in CR. Ignore the Orc and the Allip.

When creating boss NPCs, you can try restricting your feat choices to core. Maybe your party is challenged by the BBEG with weapon specialization. If not (hopefully not) slowly raise the bar.