On p82 there is a system for analysing how difficult an encounter is. I just wanted to check that I understood the instructions properly - you take the XP of each individual monster, and add them together. You then multiply the result by the multiplier according to how many monsters there are. So, for example:
There are 3 ogres in the encounter. Each gives 450XP, so that's a sum total of 1,350. Then you take the multiplier which correlates to 3 monsters (x2) and multiply the total by that, giving you 2,700?
The reason I ask, is that we just had an encounter (that same one) in Dragon of Icespire Peak. We had two level 4s and a sidekick and it was...intense. By my calculations, 3 ogres would be a deadly encounter for 5 level 4s, which seems a bit harsh to put in an encounter in an adventure that allows potentially as weak a party as 1 level 4 and a sidekick into something that would be deadly for a full party of level 4s.
We enjoyed it, and nearly wet ourselves when we gave them our best opening salvoes only to see that they were still coming with barely a pause...but that's why I'm questioning whether I understood this metric. I'm surprised our party got through it, when it should have been a life or death struggle for a party with more than twice our power.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Not every encounter is meant to be fought and or even defeated.
A 1st level character could very well encounter a Vampire. Should they be able to defeat it? No. They could encounter it, then they could return at a later date when they're more experienced.
Run the encounters as you want the encounter to go. Balance is in the eye of the DM and it's up to you to hit that mark. If you have headstrong players that insist on fighting everything they encounter, then yes, they will hit some speed bumps - and they should. Let them face a bigger foe, who throws them back like the fish that John West rejects.
If the players complain that they shouldn't;t be facing a nest fo giant scorpions in the mountains (where one would find such critters), just shrug your shoulders and explain that they don't have to fight everything, and not every fight is a fight to the death.
Not every encounter is meant to be fought and or even defeated.
A 1st level character could very well encounter a Vampire. Should they be able to defeat it? No. They could encounter it, then they could return at a later date when they're more experienced.
Run the encounters as you want the encounter to go. Balance is in the eye of the DM and it's up to you to hit that mark. If you have headstrong players that insist on fighting everything they encounter, then yes, they will hit some speed bumps - and they should. Let them face a bigger foe, who throws them back like the fish that John West rejects.
If the players complain that they shouldn't;t be facing a nest fo giant scorpions in the mountains (where one would find such critters), just shrug your shoulders and explain that they don't have to fight everything, and not every fight is a fight to the death.
Fair enough. I think we hit a hard spot in that we barely qualified for increased difficulty of encounter which always spikes the challenge.l although it was part of a quest that was explicitly levelled for level 4s.
However, is my understanding of the system correct? That the rating would be 2,700?
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
You got it right. That said, CRs and ELs are more of an art than a science, and the circumstances of how you encounter creatures and choose to approach them can wildly swing how easy or hard of a time you'll be having - as well as how cutthroat the DM approaches the situation. In this particular case, I expect the DM is supposed to show some judgment and kid glove the encounter as needed.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Ok, so I have another question. The various values, are the maximum or minimum values??
For example, the thresholds for a level 4 party of 4 character are:
Easy - 375.
Medium - 750.
Hard - 1,125.
Lethal - 1,500.
Let's say there is an encounter of 900. Does the fact that it's met the threshold mean that it's a Medium encounter? Or does the fact that it beats the Medium score mean that it's Hard? It's unclear to me because Easy being at 375 would indicate that anything less than 375 would be Easy and 375 is a maximum value, but Lethal being 1,500 would indicate that it's a minimal value.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Well, insofar as they're accurate the value indicates the assumed difficulty beyond just the nominal rating. An encounter at 1100 is a Medium encounter, but also at the high end of Medium and close to Hard.
How...accurate are the ratings, generally speaking?
I ask because we had a fight last night, and it wasn't what I thought according to this system.
So, there were two phases to the encounter. Three level 1 characters in the party at this point, so a lethal threshold of 300xp (modified).
Phase 1:
6 goblins pulling a sled, the party attacks. The party wins upon defeating them.
Phase 2:
Upon reaching 60ft of a carriage, two goblin archer starts shooting at the party and are accompanied by a goblin boss.
Since they are discrete phases, I'll only do the count for phase 1, despite them being technically one encounter. One of the characters technically didn't contribute - they missed all their attacks - but I'll include them. Also, the party had surprised and killed two goblins in the "surprise round", so I'll cut it down to 4 goblins, since that woukd be the straight fight.
That's still 400xp (modified), 33% over the threshold for "lethal" at this level. It should also have classified as "hard" for four level 2s. Yet, the party breezed through both phases. In some ways, it's good because I'd done the calculations for a party of four and it looked like there was only one order tondonl the various quests without it being lethal most of the time. Now, I can breathe easy and I don't need to worry about giving them guidance to keep the difficulty reasonable. On the other, it seems like the rating system is a bit...off?
Are the characters just getting lucky? Is it just a problem with lower level fights where you're more likely to get one-hit-kills that makes encounters inherently unpredictable and therefore harder to rate? Will the system.work.better at higher levels and, if so, at what point? Or is it just not a useful tool? Does it just need different thresholds? Thanks.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
It's not very good, for various reasons. Honestly, the kind of encounter you describe is when it should be at its best - level 1 characters, straightforward monsters - and as you've seen it's not always on target even in these favourable circumstances. At low levels it's mostly the luck factor, at higher levels the optimization (or lack thereof) of the characters and the monsters' special qualities come into play more, and in all cases how the DM runs the encounter is a factor too. You'll get a feel for it though, and it's ok to make some adjustments on the fly if you feel an encounter just is too unbalanced (unintentionally) to be fun.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Monster ratings are only one part of encounter difficulty. Positioning, environment, and tactics can all make a fight much easier or much more difficult.
Yesterday my party got the jump on a large group sitting in their camp. We opened with a fireball from ~90 feet away that hit all 12 or so, blocked their path towards us with a few wolves, and by the time they actually got to us (they were all melee barbarian types) there were about 3 left.
Take that same exp budget, make half of them archers, and have them surround us and attack in the woods guerilla-style and the encounter would have been much harder.
On p82 there is a system for analysing how difficult an encounter is. I just wanted to check that I understood the instructions properly - you take the XP of each individual monster, and add them together. You then multiply the result by the multiplier according to how many monsters there are. So, for example:
There are 3 ogres in the encounter. Each gives 450XP, so that's a sum total of 1,350. Then you take the multiplier which correlates to 3 monsters (x2) and multiply the total by that, giving you 2,700?
The reason I ask, is that we just had an encounter (that same one) in Dragon of Icespire Peak. We had two level 4s and a sidekick and it was...intense. By my calculations, 3 ogres would be a deadly encounter for 5 level 4s, which seems a bit harsh to put in an encounter in an adventure that allows potentially as weak a party as 1 level 4 and a sidekick into something that would be deadly for a full party of level 4s.
We enjoyed it, and nearly wet ourselves when we gave them our best opening salvoes only to see that they were still coming with barely a pause...but that's why I'm questioning whether I understood this metric. I'm surprised our party got through it, when it should have been a life or death struggle for a party with more than twice our power.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Not every encounter is meant to be fought and or even defeated.
A 1st level character could very well encounter a Vampire. Should they be able to defeat it? No. They could encounter it, then they could return at a later date when they're more experienced.
Run the encounters as you want the encounter to go. Balance is in the eye of the DM and it's up to you to hit that mark. If you have headstrong players that insist on fighting everything they encounter, then yes, they will hit some speed bumps - and they should. Let them face a bigger foe, who throws them back like the fish that John West rejects.
If the players complain that they shouldn't;t be facing a nest fo giant scorpions in the mountains (where one would find such critters), just shrug your shoulders and explain that they don't have to fight everything, and not every fight is a fight to the death.
Fair enough. I think we hit a hard spot in that we barely qualified for increased difficulty of encounter which always spikes the challenge.l although it was part of a quest that was explicitly levelled for level 4s.
However, is my understanding of the system correct? That the rating would be 2,700?
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Yes... your maths are correct, and the way you calculated it is also correct.
You got it right. That said, CRs and ELs are more of an art than a science, and the circumstances of how you encounter creatures and choose to approach them can wildly swing how easy or hard of a time you'll be having - as well as how cutthroat the DM approaches the situation. In this particular case, I expect the DM is supposed to show some judgment and kid glove the encounter as needed.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Ok, so I have another question. The various values, are the maximum or minimum values??
For example, the thresholds for a level 4 party of 4 character are:
Easy - 375.
Medium - 750.
Hard - 1,125.
Lethal - 1,500.
Let's say there is an encounter of 900. Does the fact that it's met the threshold mean that it's a Medium encounter? Or does the fact that it beats the Medium score mean that it's Hard? It's unclear to me because Easy being at 375 would indicate that anything less than 375 would be Easy and 375 is a maximum value, but Lethal being 1,500 would indicate that it's a minimal value.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Minimums. Assume a category below 375 called "Not worth the time it takes to roll initiative."
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Well, insofar as they're accurate the value indicates the assumed difficulty beyond just the nominal rating. An encounter at 1100 is a Medium encounter, but also at the high end of Medium and close to Hard.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
How...accurate are the ratings, generally speaking?
I ask because we had a fight last night, and it wasn't what I thought according to this system.
So, there were two phases to the encounter. Three level 1 characters in the party at this point, so a lethal threshold of 300xp (modified).
Phase 1:
6 goblins pulling a sled, the party attacks. The party wins upon defeating them.
Phase 2:
Upon reaching 60ft of a carriage, two goblin archer starts shooting at the party and are accompanied by a goblin boss.
Since they are discrete phases, I'll only do the count for phase 1, despite them being technically one encounter. One of the characters technically didn't contribute - they missed all their attacks - but I'll include them. Also, the party had surprised and killed two goblins in the "surprise round", so I'll cut it down to 4 goblins, since that woukd be the straight fight.
That's still 400xp (modified), 33% over the threshold for "lethal" at this level. It should also have classified as "hard" for four level 2s. Yet, the party breezed through both phases. In some ways, it's good because I'd done the calculations for a party of four and it looked like there was only one order tondonl the various quests without it being lethal most of the time. Now, I can breathe easy and I don't need to worry about giving them guidance to keep the difficulty reasonable. On the other, it seems like the rating system is a bit...off?
Are the characters just getting lucky? Is it just a problem with lower level fights where you're more likely to get one-hit-kills that makes encounters inherently unpredictable and therefore harder to rate? Will the system.work.better at higher levels and, if so, at what point? Or is it just not a useful tool? Does it just need different thresholds? Thanks.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
It's not very good, for various reasons. Honestly, the kind of encounter you describe is when it should be at its best - level 1 characters, straightforward monsters - and as you've seen it's not always on target even in these favourable circumstances. At low levels it's mostly the luck factor, at higher levels the optimization (or lack thereof) of the characters and the monsters' special qualities come into play more, and in all cases how the DM runs the encounter is a factor too. You'll get a feel for it though, and it's ok to make some adjustments on the fly if you feel an encounter just is too unbalanced (unintentionally) to be fun.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Monster ratings are only one part of encounter difficulty. Positioning, environment, and tactics can all make a fight much easier or much more difficult.
Yesterday my party got the jump on a large group sitting in their camp. We opened with a fireball from ~90 feet away that hit all 12 or so, blocked their path towards us with a few wolves, and by the time they actually got to us (they were all melee barbarian types) there were about 3 left.
Take that same exp budget, make half of them archers, and have them surround us and attack in the woods guerilla-style and the encounter would have been much harder.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm