I am a new DM and the games have been going well so far. My 4 PC party (ranger, druid, fighter, barb) are now all level 2. I am creating an encounter where 4 armoured gobins, an orc, and the orcs dire wolf companion raid the town the PC's are currently at.
The goblins are each CR1/4, the direwolf is CR1, and the orc is CR 1/2.
This encounter is suppose to be slightly challenging. Our ranger almost died in another encounter to a goblin warboss. They did however beat 3 goblins, a goblin warboss, and a cockatrice while still level 1.
They are level 2 now and I don't want them to slaughter these orcs and gobbos completely. I'm thinking about raising the orc/gobbos base AC because of their armour and taking away their ability to disengage. This is to let them stay toe to toe with the fighter and barb a bit more. Also the Orc is named Savash and has the "Sword of Savash" which will poison on hit. One d4 damage per PC turn if they PC fails a con saving throw (DC11).
I think with the added AC bonus for armour, the special weapon, and outnumbering the party by one model, this can be a challenging yet fair battle??
Lower level combats can be a bit swingy since everything has such low HP and attacks don't always hit. My advice would be to just fudge the combat a bit. Basically let the goblins die off as they do, since they are kinda fodder monsters in this fight, but let the orc and the dire wolf stick around as long as you want to make the combat memorable. Essentially ignore their HP totals and let them die when you think the party has put in enough effort to kill them.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
This is a climax battle regarding the starting story arc. I've let the PC's grow close to some of the residence and Savash is going to kill one of the NPC's my PC's like a lot, right in front of them to start the battle.
I will keep what you said in mind, especially with regards to the dire wolf. He hits kind of hard when he hits but I do want the PC's to feel the gravity, emotion, and danger of this fight.
Conversely, if you want the orc to be a bit more of a slippery opponent mechanically, you could give him a custom Reaction like the following:
Reactions
Menacing Maneuver. The orc adds 2 to its AC against one melee or ranged weapon attack that would hit it. To do so, the orc must see the attacker. The orc may then move 15 feet without provoking attacks of opportunity and may move through a creature's space to do so. If a the orc moves through a creature's space, that creature must make a Dex save or be pushed 5 feet in a random direction.
This would help keep the orc from being surrounded by the party and help the fight go on a bit longer.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
I root for my players, but I want them to feel the threat of middle earth. It is not a safe place, and I will never admit to them about fudging rolls. I only fudged one roll for the ranger to get a killshot to end a battle because we were all tired and needed to sleep IRL lol
I will fudge when necessary but I will NEVER tell my PC's that I did. I think I'm going to be lenient about the dire wolf. I feel like it could do some serious damage to the PC's.
I couldn't disagree more with "let them die when you think they should." It's a betrayal of the players; they are playing a game where they think that their choices and dice rolls matter. They need to matter, don't just make the combat encounters story tellings. That is a type of role play game, but it is not D&D. If your players know that a DM is doing this, it would ruin their experience and make the game feel pointless.
The most important thing here is action enconomy and number of attacks. You can cut down a lot of the swinginess by reducing the number of enemies so that they don't outnumber the party. When you outnumber the party at low level, fights can easily swing on some bad initiative rolls; if the PCs roll badly, or you roll high for initiative you might have one or more PCs unconscious before they get to take a turn, at which the fight is suddenly very dire for the PCs. Try to ensure that the PCs aren't outnumbered (6 doesn't sound a lot, but you get to take 6 actions for their 4). Of course, this also depends on whether the PCs have done any other combats that day.
Savash isn't very impressive - he can easily go down to a couple of attacks before he gets to take a move. I'd change the encounter to one Ogre, three goblins and one ordinary wolf. The goblins and wolf are easy to clear out, and then you've a boss-like monster for them to fight. He can still be an orc, just use Ogre stats to let him take a few hits.
The most important thing here is action enconomy and number of attacks. You can cut down a lot of the swinginess by reducing the number of enemies so that they don't outnumber the party.
Um... that's backwards. The way you cut down on swinginess (without changing difficulty) is
Give monsters multiple small attacks instead of one large attack. If you have two monsters that are otherwise identical except one of them attacks for 1d4+2 twice and the other attacks for 2d6+2 once, the first monster's damage output is far more predictable.
Give monsters high hit points and modest defenses instead of low hit points and high defenses. Against PCs with +5 to hit, AC 10/30 hit points and AC 18/15 hit points are equally difficult to kill, but the first is more predictable.
Multiple monsters are in effect a creature with many small attacks and a large health pool, so using multiple monsters typically reduces swinginess, though monsters designed to be used solo often have mechanics such as legendary resistance to reduce randomness.
I couldn't disagree more with "let them die when you think they should." It's a betrayal of the players; they are playing a game where they think that their choices and dice rolls matter. They need to matter, don't just make the combat encounters story tellings.
Who said that? I didn't.... Also I give my PC's tons of agency. I never force them down any specific path, I just adapt as I go. I'm confused as per to where you got this idea from?
The most important thing here is action enconomy and number of attacks. You can cut down a lot of the swinginess by reducing the number of enemies so that they don't outnumber the party.
Um... that's backwards. The way you cut down on swinginess (without changing difficulty) is
Give monsters multiple small attacks instead of one large attack. If you have two monsters that are otherwise identical except one of them attacks for 1d4+2 twice and the other attacks for 2d6+2 once, the first monster's damage output is far more predictable.
Give monsters high hit points and modest defenses instead of low hit points and high defenses. Against PCs with +5 to hit, AC 10/30 hit points and AC 18/15 hit points are equally difficult to kill, but the first is more predictable.
Multiple monsters are in effect a creature with many small attacks and a large health pool, so using multiple monsters typically reduces swinginess, though monsters designed to be used solo often have mechanics such as legendary resistance to reduce randomness.
Multiattacks are actually much more dangerous, in part because every attack you roll has the potential to be a critical hit.
More enemies means more movements, more creatures to affect with Conditions like restrained, more chances for members of the group to pass saving throws etc.
We are also talking about goblin, an orc and a dire wolf. They don't have big powerful attacks anyway.
The side that outnumbers the opposing side always has an advantage because of the action economy. Two goblins may not each hit like an orc, but 8 goblins are far more challenging than 4 orcs. The goblins are harder to lock down, have more critical hit chances, can tie up more players in combat, have more Reactions and so on.
Multiattacks are actually much more dangerous, in part because every attack you roll has the potential to be a critical hit.
A critical hit on a 1d4+2 attack is less dangerous than a normal hit from a 2d6+2 attack. Other than specialized cases like breaking concentration, what matters is total damage output, not how many rolls are required to achieve that damage output.
We are also talking about goblin, an orc and a dire wolf. They don't have big powerful attacks anyway.
The side that outnumbers the opposing side always has an advantage because of the action economy. Two goblins may not each hit like an orc, but 8 goblins are far more challenging than 4 orcs. The goblins are harder to lock down, have more critical hit chances, can tie up more players in combat, have more Reactions and so on.
8 goblins have combined 44 dpr and 56 hp. 4 orcs have combined 38 dpr and 60 hp. The goblins aren't more dangerous because of action economy, they're more dangerous because they do more damage (and because of overflow on damage, harder to kill).
The action economy of the 8 goblins contributes to the DPR.
DPR = (num actions) * (damage per action). So yes, 8x5.5 > 4x9.5, but that's not anything magical about action economy, that's just "goblin actions are worth more than half an orc action, so if you have twice as many goblins, the goblins are more dangerous". 8xgoblin also have more actions than 4xbugbear, but there's no question the bugbears are more dangerous.
The action economy of the 8 goblins contributes to the DPR.
DPR = (num actions) * (damage per action). So yes, 8x5.5 > 4x9.5, but that's not anything magical about action economy, that's just "goblin actions are worth more than half an orc action, so if you have twice as many goblins, the goblins are more dangerous". 8xgoblin also have more actions than 4xbugbear, but there's no question the bugbears are more dangerous.
Not if your AC is high enough. If your AC is high enough that the bugbears are gonna miss all the time then the gobbos are more dangerous because the sheer volume of attacks means they’re likely to hit at least once. Weight of fire is a thing.
Not if your AC is high enough. If your AC is high enough that the bugbears are gonna miss all the time then the gobbos are more dangerous because the sheer volume of attacks means they’re likely to hit at least once. Weight of fire is a thing.
For AC 24+ characters, each goblin has a 5% chance of hitting, which will be a critical hit for 2d6+2 (9), total 0.45 dpr per goblin or 3.6 dpr total. Each bugbear has a 5% chance of hitting, which will be a critical hit for 4d8+2 (20), total 1 dpr per bugbear or 4 dpr total. In addition, with 27 hp per bugbear vs 7 hp per goblin, the bugbears will last longer and thus have significantly greater total damage potential.
Not if your AC is high enough. If your AC is high enough that the bugbears are gonna miss all the time then the gobbos are more dangerous because the sheer volume of attacks means they’re likely to hit at least once. Weight of fire is a thing.
For AC 24+ characters, each goblin has a 5% chance of hitting, which will be a critical hit for 2d6+2 (9), total 0.45 dpr per goblin or 3.6 dpr total. Each bugbear has a 5% chance of hitting, which will be a critical hit for 4d8+2 (20), total 1 dpr per bugbear or 4 dpr total. In addition, with 27 hp per bugbear vs 7 hp per goblin, the bugbears will last longer and thus have significantly greater total damage potential.
The Gobbos have twice as many attacks and therefore are twice as likely to catch that 5% chance to hit while they’re up.
Not if your AC is high enough. If your AC is high enough that the bugbears are gonna miss all the time then the gobbos are more dangerous because the sheer volume of attacks means they’re likely to hit at least once. Weight of fire is a thing.
For AC 24+ characters, each goblin has a 5% chance of hitting, which will be a critical hit for 2d6+2 (9), total 0.45 dpr per goblin or 3.6 dpr total. Each bugbear has a 5% chance of hitting, which will be a critical hit for 4d8+2 (20), total 1 dpr per bugbear or 4 dpr total. In addition, with 27 hp per bugbear vs 7 hp per goblin, the bugbears will last longer and thus have significantly greater total damage potential.
The Gobbos have twice as many attacks and therefore are twice as likely to catch that 5% chance to hit while they’re up.
Then you can see how DPR doesn’t tell the whole story.
The damage a group of enemies will do before being defeated is (effective DPR) * (number of rounds of survival).
Effective DPR is lower than unit count * unit DPR because some monsters will die (and thus stop contributing dpr) before the encounter ends, but the difference between 4 and 8 barely matters here -- with optimal targeting, 4 foes wind up having effective dpr = 62% of max, 8 wind up with effective dpr = 56%. Effective DPR can also be reduced because with large groups of foes (particular melee) not all of them will be able to reach the PCs. Rounds of survival is linear in size of enemy group if the PCs are using single target attacks, less than linear if they are using area damage.
Action economy only matters if you're dealing with limited-target action denial or debuffs--reducing or eliminating the damage of 1/4 of the enemies is obviously more valuable than reducing or eliminating the damage of 1/8, and in reverse, the enemy spending 1/8 of their potential damage debuffing the PCs is less expensive than spending 1/4. In practice this is somewhat rare, because debuffs aren't very good in 5e.
The rules for group size in the DMG are making some effort at reflecting the above math, but are clearly assuming the PCs have access to area damage and/or zoning that limits how many enemies can reach the PCs, because with single target attacks on an open field the multiplier for 8 foes would be 4.5, not 2.5 (and if you run a fight with a bunch of archers surrounding the PCs on an open field, expect it to be way deadlier than the encounter design rules imply).
You can have your math, my experience has taught me that any time I give the enemies enough bad guys with enough actions, I don’t care how weenie they are, that weight of fire is always dangerous to the party. Given enough attacks, some of them will get through and when enough get through, the party is in trouble. I’ll throw a handful of bugbears against a comparable sized party of appropriately leveled PCs without worrying about the outcome any day and twice on game day. But if I swamp them with a comparable CR worth of goblins i pucker my cheeks up a little because that sheer volume of attacks could overwhelm the party. I’ve seen it happen. Maybe your calculations aren’t taking tactics and flanking into consideration. Maybe your calculations aren’t taking something else into consideration. I don’t know. What I do know is that a swarm of Gobs can TPK a party that would otherwise waffle stomp a handful of bugbears or whatever.
But if I swamp them with a comparable CR worth of goblins i pucker my cheeks up a little because that sheer volume of attacks could overwhelm the party. I’ve seen it happen. Maybe your calculations aren’t taking tactics and flanking into consideration. Maybe your calculations aren’t taking something else into consideration.
None of the above. The problem is comparable CR. 4xCR 1/4 is almost always more dangerous than 1xCR 1, but that's not because of action economy, it's because they have more damage and more combined hit points. In the end, CR is a blunt instrument, and the adjusted xp rules are (a) making certain assumptions about PC and monster behavior that may not actually be true, and (b) often ignored -- those 4xCR 1/4 are adjusted xp 400, the 1xCR 1 is adjusted xp 200 (this is why spells like conjure animals are such a train wreck; it's just using a sum of CR 2, ignoring adjusted xp values; 8xCR 1/4 is 1,000 adjusted xp, 4xCR 1/2 is 800, 2xCR 1 is 600, 1xCR 2 is 450).
People who blame 'action economy' for the encounter building rules being broken are missing the forest for the trees. The problem isn't that action economy is that potent, the problem is that the encounter building rules are a mess.
I am a new DM and the games have been going well so far. My 4 PC party (ranger, druid, fighter, barb) are now all level 2. I am creating an encounter where 4 armoured gobins, an orc, and the orcs dire wolf companion raid the town the PC's are currently at.
The goblins are each CR1/4, the direwolf is CR1, and the orc is CR 1/2.
This encounter is suppose to be slightly challenging. Our ranger almost died in another encounter to a goblin warboss. They did however beat 3 goblins, a goblin warboss, and a cockatrice while still level 1.
They are level 2 now and I don't want them to slaughter these orcs and gobbos completely. I'm thinking about raising the orc/gobbos base AC because of their armour and taking away their ability to disengage. This is to let them stay toe to toe with the fighter and barb a bit more. Also the Orc is named Savash and has the "Sword of Savash" which will poison on hit. One d4 damage per PC turn if they PC fails a con saving throw (DC11).
I think with the added AC bonus for armour, the special weapon, and outnumbering the party by one model, this can be a challenging yet fair battle??
Any advice?
Lower level combats can be a bit swingy since everything has such low HP and attacks don't always hit. My advice would be to just fudge the combat a bit. Basically let the goblins die off as they do, since they are kinda fodder monsters in this fight, but let the orc and the dire wolf stick around as long as you want to make the combat memorable. Essentially ignore their HP totals and let them die when you think the party has put in enough effort to kill them.
This is a climax battle regarding the starting story arc. I've let the PC's grow close to some of the residence and Savash is going to kill one of the NPC's my PC's like a lot, right in front of them to start the battle.
I will keep what you said in mind, especially with regards to the dire wolf. He hits kind of hard when he hits but I do want the PC's to feel the gravity, emotion, and danger of this fight.
Conversely, if you want the orc to be a bit more of a slippery opponent mechanically, you could give him a custom Reaction like the following:
This would help keep the orc from being surrounded by the party and help the fight go on a bit longer.
Thanks. I'll consider giving him this reaction :)
I root for my players, but I want them to feel the threat of middle earth. It is not a safe place, and I will never admit to them about fudging rolls. I only fudged one roll for the ranger to get a killshot to end a battle because we were all tired and needed to sleep IRL lol
I will fudge when necessary but I will NEVER tell my PC's that I did. I think I'm going to be lenient about the dire wolf. I feel like it could do some serious damage to the PC's.
I couldn't disagree more with "let them die when you think they should." It's a betrayal of the players; they are playing a game where they think that their choices and dice rolls matter. They need to matter, don't just make the combat encounters story tellings. That is a type of role play game, but it is not D&D. If your players know that a DM is doing this, it would ruin their experience and make the game feel pointless.
The most important thing here is action enconomy and number of attacks. You can cut down a lot of the swinginess by reducing the number of enemies so that they don't outnumber the party. When you outnumber the party at low level, fights can easily swing on some bad initiative rolls; if the PCs roll badly, or you roll high for initiative you might have one or more PCs unconscious before they get to take a turn, at which the fight is suddenly very dire for the PCs. Try to ensure that the PCs aren't outnumbered (6 doesn't sound a lot, but you get to take 6 actions for their 4). Of course, this also depends on whether the PCs have done any other combats that day.
Savash isn't very impressive - he can easily go down to a couple of attacks before he gets to take a move. I'd change the encounter to one Ogre, three goblins and one ordinary wolf. The goblins and wolf are easy to clear out, and then you've a boss-like monster for them to fight. He can still be an orc, just use Ogre stats to let him take a few hits.
Um... that's backwards. The way you cut down on swinginess (without changing difficulty) is
Multiple monsters are in effect a creature with many small attacks and a large health pool, so using multiple monsters typically reduces swinginess, though monsters designed to be used solo often have mechanics such as legendary resistance to reduce randomness.
Who said that? I didn't....
Also I give my PC's tons of agency. I never force them down any specific path, I just adapt as I go. I'm confused as per to where you got this idea from?
Multiattacks are actually much more dangerous, in part because every attack you roll has the potential to be a critical hit.
More enemies means more movements, more creatures to affect with Conditions like restrained, more chances for members of the group to pass saving throws etc.
We are also talking about goblin, an orc and a dire wolf. They don't have big powerful attacks anyway.
The side that outnumbers the opposing side always has an advantage because of the action economy. Two goblins may not each hit like an orc, but 8 goblins are far more challenging than 4 orcs. The goblins are harder to lock down, have more critical hit chances, can tie up more players in combat, have more Reactions and so on.
A critical hit on a 1d4+2 attack is less dangerous than a normal hit from a 2d6+2 attack. Other than specialized cases like breaking concentration, what matters is total damage output, not how many rolls are required to achieve that damage output.
8 goblins have combined 44 dpr and 56 hp. 4 orcs have combined 38 dpr and 60 hp. The goblins aren't more dangerous because of action economy, they're more dangerous because they do more damage (and because of overflow on damage, harder to kill).
The action economy of the 8 goblins contributes to the DPR.
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DPR = (num actions) * (damage per action). So yes, 8x5.5 > 4x9.5, but that's not anything magical about action economy, that's just "goblin actions are worth more than half an orc action, so if you have twice as many goblins, the goblins are more dangerous". 8xgoblin also have more actions than 4xbugbear, but there's no question the bugbears are more dangerous.
Not if your AC is high enough. If your AC is high enough that the bugbears are gonna miss all the time then the gobbos are more dangerous because the sheer volume of attacks means they’re likely to hit at least once. Weight of fire is a thing.
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For AC 24+ characters, each goblin has a 5% chance of hitting, which will be a critical hit for 2d6+2 (9), total 0.45 dpr per goblin or 3.6 dpr total. Each bugbear has a 5% chance of hitting, which will be a critical hit for 4d8+2 (20), total 1 dpr per bugbear or 4 dpr total. In addition, with 27 hp per bugbear vs 7 hp per goblin, the bugbears will last longer and thus have significantly greater total damage potential.
The Gobbos have twice as many attacks and therefore are twice as likely to catch that 5% chance to hit while they’re up.
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Already accounted for in my math...
Then you can see how DPR doesn’t tell the whole story.
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The damage a group of enemies will do before being defeated is (effective DPR) * (number of rounds of survival).
Effective DPR is lower than unit count * unit DPR because some monsters will die (and thus stop contributing dpr) before the encounter ends, but the difference between 4 and 8 barely matters here -- with optimal targeting, 4 foes wind up having effective dpr = 62% of max, 8 wind up with effective dpr = 56%. Effective DPR can also be reduced because with large groups of foes (particular melee) not all of them will be able to reach the PCs. Rounds of survival is linear in size of enemy group if the PCs are using single target attacks, less than linear if they are using area damage.
Action economy only matters if you're dealing with limited-target action denial or debuffs--reducing or eliminating the damage of 1/4 of the enemies is obviously more valuable than reducing or eliminating the damage of 1/8, and in reverse, the enemy spending 1/8 of their potential damage debuffing the PCs is less expensive than spending 1/4. In practice this is somewhat rare, because debuffs aren't very good in 5e.
The rules for group size in the DMG are making some effort at reflecting the above math, but are clearly assuming the PCs have access to area damage and/or zoning that limits how many enemies can reach the PCs, because with single target attacks on an open field the multiplier for 8 foes would be 4.5, not 2.5 (and if you run a fight with a bunch of archers surrounding the PCs on an open field, expect it to be way deadlier than the encounter design rules imply).
You can have your math, my experience has taught me that any time I give the enemies enough bad guys with enough actions, I don’t care how weenie they are, that weight of fire is always dangerous to the party. Given enough attacks, some of them will get through and when enough get through, the party is in trouble. I’ll throw a handful of bugbears against a comparable sized party of appropriately leveled PCs without worrying about the outcome any day and twice on game day. But if I swamp them with a comparable CR worth of goblins i pucker my cheeks up a little because that sheer volume of attacks could overwhelm the party. I’ve seen it happen. Maybe your calculations aren’t taking tactics and flanking into consideration. Maybe your calculations aren’t taking something else into consideration. I don’t know. What I do know is that a swarm of Gobs can TPK a party that would otherwise waffle stomp a handful of bugbears or whatever.
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None of the above. The problem is comparable CR. 4xCR 1/4 is almost always more dangerous than 1xCR 1, but that's not because of action economy, it's because they have more damage and more combined hit points. In the end, CR is a blunt instrument, and the adjusted xp rules are (a) making certain assumptions about PC and monster behavior that may not actually be true, and (b) often ignored -- those 4xCR 1/4 are adjusted xp 400, the 1xCR 1 is adjusted xp 200 (this is why spells like conjure animals are such a train wreck; it's just using a sum of CR 2, ignoring adjusted xp values; 8xCR 1/4 is 1,000 adjusted xp, 4xCR 1/2 is 800, 2xCR 1 is 600, 1xCR 2 is 450).
People who blame 'action economy' for the encounter building rules being broken are missing the forest for the trees. The problem isn't that action economy is that potent, the problem is that the encounter building rules are a mess.