Poor fragile starting characters. I really felt bad both times. The group had good composition (I think), used good strategy, but the rolls just weren't on their side. Unfortunately they were all new to 5e (but not D&D) and got soured by the experience. Important lessons I learned.
1.Groups with pack tactics might be too dangerous for low level characters.
2. Might want to start groups at level 3+ at the very least.
3. Probably shouldn't have spent so much time creating level 1-4 content for my campaign.
Wish me luck getting some of them to come back and play again and in roping some more friends in to replace those who don't. Would be nice to at least get to the gnolls in my campaign about trying to stop a deadly gnoll warband ravaging across the countryside :-).
Group Comp: Forge Cleric, Paladin, Fiend Warlock, Bard (3 variant human, hill dwarf for the cleric, everyone but the bard had 18ac)
If you were rolling behind the screen, muff the rolls and say the enemies missed or did less damage. That also looks like too many hyenas for a first time group. As you note, the pack tactics, giving out lots of advantage, can do a tonne of damage to very squishy level 1 PCs, especially if they got ahead on init. I can see the hyenas easily taking down the cleric and paladin in one round. How were you measuring the challenge level of the encounter? Hyenas are 10xp. using the DMG encounter difficulty calculation, that's (10x10) [xp] x 2.5 (difficulty multiplier) = 250 (DMG page 82, DM basic rules p56). That's deadly for level 2 according to the encounter difficulty table. No wonder they all died. Heck, they could've died twice.
My party got TPK'd ... by themselves. Sorcerer rolled Fireball on the wild magic table. I just laughed, it was so funny. I just said that nearby helpful NPCs arrived and nursed them back to health.
I wasn't rolling behind the screen since i was helping them learn. Also 250 lands right between Medium and Hard (Rounding to medium) according to the DMG and encounter calculator i use. I think you forgot to multiply the XP threshold by the number of characters.
my bad. Still, i'd be pitching it lower. Ten enemy attacks, most at advantage, per round is serious killing time. That's the key part of the encounter difficulty, not the CR math. With an estimated HP total of about 40-50 over the party, that's good odds that there's enough damage to bring down 3/4 of the party in one round.
Agreed, that pretty much matches up with my first point. But given they were all experienced RPGers (just not 5e), and that I am not a big railroader I certainly wasn't going to stop them from trying to take on the pack, nor dissuade them from giving it a second shot when that is what they wanted, though admittedly hindsight being 20/20 maybe that would have been best. Honestly if they hadn't rolled so bad and the hyenas hadn't rolled so good it would have been doable. Sleep should have taken out more than half the pack on average, and most the PCs should have killed one with each attack statistically. But RNG doesn't always end up average. Bad sleep rolls, attack rolls, and high resists, along with the multiple crits do to the number of monsters and pack tactics just doomed them both times.
Edit: also group hp was 41 total (9,10,10,12), just 9 short of the total hp of the hyenas. the average to hit for the PCs was +5 against ac11, save dc 13 against +0. average theoretical damage on hit by the PCs was 6.5. It just proved the common consensus that low levels in 5e are incredibly deadly and subject to RNG.
One thing that I find helps in making the 5th edition game more easily predictable when the topic of "will the party live through this?" comes up is to utilize the optional rule to take average damage for monsters instead of rolling.
10 attacks that likely have advantage and can do as much as 6 damage each is a lot more frightening to a 1st level character than 10 attacks that likely have advantage and will do exactly 3 damage each time.
I'm really surprised you had a TPK though, given the high ratio of spell-casters in the party. But maybe they just didn't choose their spells very wisely.
Jesus thats a freakin large pack. Did they kill any? I think after a number of the hyenas died they would run away, but I don't even know if they killed many of them. That's a lot of damage output.
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"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
One thing that I find helps in making the 5th edition game more easily predictable when the topic of "will the party live through this?" comes up is to utilize the optional rule to take average damage for monsters instead of rolling.
10 attacks that likely have advantage and can do as much as 6 damage each is a lot more frightening to a 1st level character than 10 attacks that likely have advantage and will do exactly 3 damage each time.
I'm really surprised you had a TPK though, given the high ratio of spell-casters in the party. But maybe they just didn't choose their spells very wisely.
This. I tend to use average damage for the first level after my first session with players where rolling damage k.o.ed the bard in an "easy" encounter. Once my players hit level 2 I'll start rolling damage.
Yeah the average monster damage rule might be worth using if I do low levels again with the campaign, I was against it at first because it makes things a little predictable which can equate to boring. They didn't really have terrible spell selection either.
The big problem was really just terrible luck on the party's part.
Bard never rolled higher than a 14 on sleep. Rolled 9 the first night i think ( I remember he was only able to sleep one). The party rolled tons of misses and the hyenas made almost every single save. all my low rolls for the hyenas seemed to be on attacks and were mostly canceled out by advantage do to pack tactics. First night the paladin went down before being able to act, was brought back up by the cleric who rolled very low on cure wounds. The paladin was taken down again along with the cleric next round. The closest they got was that first night when the bard/warlock managed to kite them for a while and actually got pretty close to finishing them off.
I didn't have the pack scatter because they still had numbers advantage, It made sense for them to chase the frightened (and partially injured) prey, and it looked like the PCs were gonna be able to win and it would be a great skin of your teeth victory. But miss after miss after resist after miss. Second night was actually less close because of less run and gun and even worse luck on everything but sleep (which was still a 14). Biggest strategic mistake was the bard not casting sleep twice either night, but he wanted to help bring downed party members back up before death saves got them.
I am not a big TPKer. I haven't had many over the 15 or so years I've been DMing. I've had maybe 3 before this including one that was actually a TPEnthralled that didn't end the game, just caused it to jump ahead in time quite a bit. Considering the following I let it happen. They weren't losing any progress to speak of if they died. It seemed like a bad time for a deus ex machina to save them without it being obvious and cheap and maybe taking away the feeling of choice and consequences. The second night, they were trying to get their revenge, and would know if I added something to prevent them from failing/made it easier which wasn't what they wanted. Given all that I allowed this to be the rare case were i actually let a TPK happen.
Again hind-site 20/20 i would probably make some different decisions. Average monster damage, lower pack size, deus ex machina a powerful hunter wondering by before they die, Use my DM screen so I can fudge roles, maybe start them at a higher level etc.
According to the "How to Calculate Monster CR" section of the DMG, hyenas are CR 1/8 (25 XP).
Yeah, it's likely that the CR got "bumped" down to 0 because play-testing suggested only having 5 hp and an 11 AC made them feel weak... but it is also likely that play-testing didn't involve using nothing but hyenas against 1st level characters, using more than a 2:1 outnumbering ratio, and also the players not having any luck/wit to do things like the bard using sleep or thunderwave to take out a few at a time.
Treating them as being CR 1/8, I'd top out an encounter with a 1st level party at 2 hyenas to 1 character (and even then, only if the party has some of the typical go-to 1st level spells, or if I am engaging the optional rule for cleaving through creatures from the DMG so melee heavy-hitters might take out more than 1 hyena per action).
Mathematics aside, hyenas are scavengers. My thought of changing the game situation might be to introduce a single large carnivore that scares off the hyenas but still presents a challenge to the PCs. It would be less of a “save” or deus ex machina, just a different, perhaps more manageable challenge that cinematically happens all the time (e.g. Jurassic Park, raptors, and the T-rex).
That was the basis for them running away after taking enough damage to the pack. Scavenger's don't stick around too long if their prey is fighting back too much.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Hyenas are scavengers for sure, but still hunt. Easy to find videos of them attacking prey as big as buffalo. so going after injured fleeing prey they have a numbers advantage on is not a stretch. Especially when you add in the fact they are most likely feeling the demonic influence of the nearby gnoll warband, which was even specifically quarrels turn violent. Trust me I thought this out. Not saying there was no way i could have logic-ed it away deus ex machina style, but i think i already explained why i chose not to do that in the moment. I tend to have researched and long thought out strategies and rules of attack/retreat for enemies i'm going to be using a lot.
Edit: By the way definitely some great suggestions, I'm not trying to claim otherwise. If I were to do it all over again i would probably have a way to save them or shift the encounter in place and go with a smaller pack for starters.
Poor fragile starting characters. I really felt bad both times. The group had good composition (I think), used good strategy, but the rolls just weren't on their side. Unfortunately they were all new to 5e (but not D&D) and got soured by the experience. Important lessons I learned.
1.Groups with pack tactics might be too dangerous for low level characters.
2. Might want to start groups at level 3+ at the very least.
3. Probably shouldn't have spent so much time creating level 1-4 content for my campaign.
Wish me luck getting some of them to come back and play again and in roping some more friends in to replace those who don't. Would be nice to at least get to the gnolls in my campaign about trying to stop a deadly gnoll warband ravaging across the countryside :-).
Group Comp: Forge Cleric, Paladin, Fiend Warlock, Bard (3 variant human, hill dwarf for the cleric, everyone but the bard had 18ac)
Enemies: 10 Hyenas
Cancelling my subscription due to the OGL debacle
If you were rolling behind the screen, muff the rolls and say the enemies missed or did less damage. That also looks like too many hyenas for a first time group. As you note, the pack tactics, giving out lots of advantage, can do a tonne of damage to very squishy level 1 PCs, especially if they got ahead on init. I can see the hyenas easily taking down the cleric and paladin in one round. How were you measuring the challenge level of the encounter? Hyenas are 10xp. using the DMG encounter difficulty calculation, that's (10x10) [xp] x 2.5 (difficulty multiplier) = 250 (DMG page 82, DM basic rules p56). That's deadly for level 2 according to the encounter difficulty table. No wonder they all died. Heck, they could've died twice.
My party got TPK'd ... by themselves. Sorcerer rolled Fireball on the wild magic table. I just laughed, it was so funny. I just said that nearby helpful NPCs arrived and nursed them back to health.
I wasn't rolling behind the screen since i was helping them learn. Also 250 lands right between Medium and Hard (Rounding to medium) according to the DMG and encounter calculator i use. I think you forgot to multiply the XP threshold by the number of characters.
Cancelling my subscription due to the OGL debacle
my bad. Still, i'd be pitching it lower. Ten enemy attacks, most at advantage, per round is serious killing time. That's the key part of the encounter difficulty, not the CR math. With an estimated HP total of about 40-50 over the party, that's good odds that there's enough damage to bring down 3/4 of the party in one round.
Agreed, that pretty much matches up with my first point. But given they were all experienced RPGers (just not 5e), and that I am not a big railroader I certainly wasn't going to stop them from trying to take on the pack, nor dissuade them from giving it a second shot when that is what they wanted, though admittedly hindsight being 20/20 maybe that would have been best. Honestly if they hadn't rolled so bad and the hyenas hadn't rolled so good it would have been doable. Sleep should have taken out more than half the pack on average, and most the PCs should have killed one with each attack statistically. But RNG doesn't always end up average. Bad sleep rolls, attack rolls, and high resists, along with the multiple crits do to the number of monsters and pack tactics just doomed them both times.
Edit: also group hp was 41 total (9,10,10,12), just 9 short of the total hp of the hyenas. the average to hit for the PCs was +5 against ac11, save dc 13 against +0. average theoretical damage on hit by the PCs was 6.5. It just proved the common consensus that low levels in 5e are incredibly deadly and subject to RNG.
Cancelling my subscription due to the OGL debacle
One thing that I find helps in making the 5th edition game more easily predictable when the topic of "will the party live through this?" comes up is to utilize the optional rule to take average damage for monsters instead of rolling.
10 attacks that likely have advantage and can do as much as 6 damage each is a lot more frightening to a 1st level character than 10 attacks that likely have advantage and will do exactly 3 damage each time.
I'm really surprised you had a TPK though, given the high ratio of spell-casters in the party. But maybe they just didn't choose their spells very wisely.
Jesus thats a freakin large pack. Did they kill any? I think after a number of the hyenas died they would run away, but I don't even know if they killed many of them. That's a lot of damage output.
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Yeah the average monster damage rule might be worth using if I do low levels again with the campaign, I was against it at first because it makes things a little predictable which can equate to boring. They didn't really have terrible spell selection either.
The big problem was really just terrible luck on the party's part.
Bard never rolled higher than a 14 on sleep. Rolled 9 the first night i think ( I remember he was only able to sleep one). The party rolled tons of misses and the hyenas made almost every single save. all my low rolls for the hyenas seemed to be on attacks and were mostly canceled out by advantage do to pack tactics. First night the paladin went down before being able to act, was brought back up by the cleric who rolled very low on cure wounds. The paladin was taken down again along with the cleric next round. The closest they got was that first night when the bard/warlock managed to kite them for a while and actually got pretty close to finishing them off.
I didn't have the pack scatter because they still had numbers advantage, It made sense for them to chase the frightened (and partially injured) prey, and it looked like the PCs were gonna be able to win and it would be a great skin of your teeth victory. But miss after miss after resist after miss. Second night was actually less close because of less run and gun and even worse luck on everything but sleep (which was still a 14). Biggest strategic mistake was the bard not casting sleep twice either night, but he wanted to help bring downed party members back up before death saves got them.
I am not a big TPKer. I haven't had many over the 15 or so years I've been DMing. I've had maybe 3 before this including one that was actually a TPEnthralled that didn't end the game, just caused it to jump ahead in time quite a bit. Considering the following I let it happen. They weren't losing any progress to speak of if they died. It seemed like a bad time for a deus ex machina to save them without it being obvious and cheap and maybe taking away the feeling of choice and consequences. The second night, they were trying to get their revenge, and would know if I added something to prevent them from failing/made it easier which wasn't what they wanted. Given all that I allowed this to be the rare case were i actually let a TPK happen.
Again hind-site 20/20 i would probably make some different decisions. Average monster damage, lower pack size, deus ex machina a powerful hunter wondering by before they die, Use my DM screen so I can fudge roles, maybe start them at a higher level etc.
Cancelling my subscription due to the OGL debacle
According to the "How to Calculate Monster CR" section of the DMG, hyenas are CR 1/8 (25 XP).
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both" -- allegedly Benjamin Franklin
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Mathematics aside, hyenas are scavengers. My thought of changing the game situation might be to introduce a single large carnivore that scares off the hyenas but still presents a challenge to the PCs. It would be less of a “save” or deus ex machina, just a different, perhaps more manageable challenge that cinematically happens all the time (e.g. Jurassic Park, raptors, and the T-rex).
"Where words fail, swords prevail. Where blood is spilled, my cup is filled" -Cartaphilus
"I have found the answer to the meaning of life. You ask me what the answer is? You already know what the answer to life is. You fear it more than the strike of a viper, the ravages of disease, the ire of a lover. The answer is always death. But death is a gentle mistress with a sweet embrace, and you owe her a debt of restitution. Life is not a gift, it is a loan."
Hyenas are scavengers for sure, but still hunt. Easy to find videos of them attacking prey as big as buffalo. so going after injured fleeing prey they have a numbers advantage on is not a stretch. Especially when you add in the fact they are most likely feeling the demonic influence of the nearby gnoll warband, which was even specifically quarrels turn violent. Trust me I thought this out. Not saying there was no way i could have logic-ed it away deus ex machina style, but i think i already explained why i chose not to do that in the moment. I tend to have researched and long thought out strategies and rules of attack/retreat for enemies i'm going to be using a lot.
Edit: By the way definitely some great suggestions, I'm not trying to claim otherwise. If I were to do it all over again i would probably have a way to save them or shift the encounter in place and go with a smaller pack for starters.
Cancelling my subscription due to the OGL debacle