Morbid thought but I figure it could be a little fun. Let's assume you have a party of 5 PC's who are all max level, and kitted out with the best of the best items. You stick them in a magical village located in a demi plane. The village will spawn endless commoners for the party to fight (dead bodies despawn after 1 minute of combat). How long do you think your party would last before dying to the endless swarm of villagers. How would you maximize your time to survive the longest (stuff like funneling via a building's door frame is on the table, but the villagers are likely to eventually just burn the house down if they can't enter the house)? Only special rule is that your party can't leave the village. You are bound by the basic rules of the game (exhaustion from lack of sleep, spell slots, carry capacity, etc..)
Build your party, and tell us how long you think you could last? If you want to make it extra fun, make a guess based off action economy (if you went first EVERYONE gets a turn before you get your second turn) and a guess based off "realism" (how would a normal person react to you causing a 30 foot fireball/explosion to go off right in front of you?)
Sorry i don't really know how many people would typically exist in your standard back water village of D&D. So i don't really have a good idea on how many villagers could realistically exist at any given time (assuming this magical village only spawns up to the population cap)
Endless swarm of villagers? They are level 0. A 5 player party at level 20 would be fine to handle that for a while. Then they'd get bored and leave. Least my character would. My character would wonder why he's fighting commoners. Then see there is no reason to do it outside of protecting himself and just leave.
perhaps I need to retool the idea such that you can never sleep (but don’t get exhaustion points from that), or otherwise flee indefinitely from the commoners.
it’s also possible what I’m really asking is if someone can only be hit via a nat 20, how many rounds of combat would it take to bring down a max level’d adventurer. And how does that number change if the adventurer has friends to help keep them alive…
A fighter of any level with Heavy Armour Master, AC20 and Adamantine armour can take only 1 point of damage from any attack that the commoners throw at him. Let's give him 224 hit points, which is average hit points plus 100 from his 20 Constitution.
Assuming that no more than 9 commoners can attack him during any single turn (completely surrounding him), they will score 1 hit every 20 attacks. Of those hits, only 1 in 4 overcomes his Heavy Armour Master feat, so that means they need 80 attacks to inflict 1 point of damage.
Since they have no ranged attack, only 9 commoners can attack him per turn. After 180 attacks, they will have dealt him 9 points of damage, which takes them 20 turns, which is the equivalent of 3 minutes and 12 seconds. A Ring of Regeneration will heal him for 3 (1d6) hit points every 10 minutes, so he'll only take 24 damage every 10 minutes that he fights.
However, if he's an Eldritch Knight, he can cast Blade Ward every turn, whilst still making one melee attack. This gives him resistance to the commoner's bludgeoning damage, meaning that any hit they inflict will be only a maximum of 2 damage, which is then reduced by 3 by Heavy Armour Master. Therefore he is invulnerable and can never be taken down by any number of commoners.
A level 7 Eldritch Knight with 20AC, Heavy Armour Master and Adamantine armour fights forever against any number of commoners. He doesn't need to be anywhere near level 20, and only needs a single magic item.
Well, if you can only hit on a natural 20 you'd have a 5% chance of hitting, but deal double dice damage when you do. For a commoner that would be avg 5 damage (2d4+0). a level 20 adventurer with a d8 hit dice probably has around 200-220 hitpoints (assuming maxed CON and average rolls). So it would take 20 commoners (1 would hit on average) about 40-44 rounds of combat to bring a level 20 character to 0, without any other interventions (healing, special abilities that would prevent a hit like fly would be a simple one). That equals 4 - 4.5 minutes of them whaling on the character with basically the character doing nothing to stop it.
Factor in just the PC actually attacking, and optional rules like cleaving through creatures, and the fact that 20 commoners can't attack 1 PC at once without a lot of movement coordination (only 9 can occupy squares in melee range and they have no ranged attack option standard), and its probably taking a lot more commoners, and a lot more time, even without friends or spells. factor in spells and friends, its likely they could last days if not weeks, especially if they use spells to delay combat.
Edit: See Sanvaels note above, even with basic class abilities and magic items, it basically eliminates the threat.
If they're kitted however they like, anyone who's proficient in medium or heavy armor can get Mizzium or Adamantine armor that turns crits into a normal hit.
Any spellcaster with an object that allows a flying speed can spam cantrips indefinitely. So a level 2 warlock with a broom of flying and the eldritch spear invocation can cast infinite eldritch blasts from 300 feet up. Unless you homebrew a commoner with a longbow, there’s nothing the town could do.
Any spellcaster with an object that allows a flying speed can spam cantrips indefinitely. So a level 2 warlock with a broom of flying and the eldritch spear invocation can cast infinite eldritch blasts from 300 feet up. Unless you homebrew a commoner with a longbow, there’s nothing the town could do.
Winner
To go one better, with that mobility, unless there is a reason that the PC cannot fly down, pick up a rock (free action) and fly back up without getting hit, any level 1 Commoner with a broom of flying or any first level aaracockra can defeat an infinite number of commoners in the village by dropping rocks (improvised weapon) on them from 10 feet above their heads.
No idea how long it would take, but if you allow Commoners to use weapons at all, they would be Simple ones. That's the Shortbow, and the Light Crossbow, The Shortbow lacks the Loading tag, which means that they can fire as many arrows as they have actions for. The Light Crossbow does better damage, but no matter how many actions you have, you only get one bolt. They both cost the same, so it's a toss up, I'd probably have them use a Shortbow, since it's more damage over time. Near as I can figure, if the party can find shelter the Commoners can't penetrate, they can create food and water, and they can heal, they won't ever die except of boredom.
It kind of depends, because not all resources are renewable. Casters run out of spells. Melee don't really run out of weapon juice, they can keep right on fighting until they suffer from Exhaustion, and keep right on going through the first two levels of that, and maybe even more. They still could die, but you'd probably be the one who died of boredom.
Any spellcaster with an object that allows a flying speed can spam cantrips indefinitely. So a level 2 warlock with a broom of flying and the eldritch spear invocation can cast infinite eldritch blasts from 300 feet up. Unless you homebrew a commoner with a longbow, there’s nothing the town could do.
Winner
To go one better, with that mobility, unless there is a reason that the PC cannot fly down, pick up a rock (free action) and fly back up without getting hit, any level 1 Commoner with a broom of flying or any first level aaracockra can defeat an infinite number of commoners in the village by dropping rocks (improvised weapon) on them from 10 feet above their heads.
Two problems with that, the commoners on the ground are likely to cover every space and therefore you can not land anywhere. Secondly if there is somewhere to land the commoners surrounding it can ready actions to attack, which immobility would not prevent.
So I think I figured out a better way to get at the “real” question. So I’d argue that a God is to a group of Fully leveled adventurers, as that same group would be to a village full of commoners.
So in a situation where the party is forced to fight villagers till the entire party falls, how long would that take. Assume that the party can never gain the benefits of a full rest (restored spell slots and full healing), and that they can’t cheese the fight to remain forever out of the villager’s range.
Well, they could never actually kill a god, those are far too powerful for anything as insignificant as a level 20 mortal of any class. With an immortal, it's a little questionable, since both now have all the time in the world, but nothing mortal ever really gets there. Even the most powerful Lich eventually turns to dust, if their phylactery isn't destroyed first, so I can't say about the village thing, but I can tell you that I'd die of boredom trying to find out how long it would take to kill a bunch of level 20 characters with an endless supply of Commoners. They'd run out of arrows before they did much of anything, and they'd die in melee in the droves.
Any spellcaster with an object that allows a flying speed can spam cantrips indefinitely. So a level 2 warlock with a broom of flying and the eldritch spear invocation can cast infinite eldritch blasts from 300 feet up. Unless you homebrew a commoner with a longbow, there’s nothing the town could do.
Winner
To go one better, with that mobility, unless there is a reason that the PC cannot fly down, pick up a rock (free action) and fly back up without getting hit, any level 1 Commoner with a broom of flying or any first level aaracockra can defeat an infinite number of commoners in the village by dropping rocks (improvised weapon) on them from 10 feet above their heads.
Two problems with that, the commoners on the ground are likely to cover every space and therefore you can not land anywhere. Secondly if there is somewhere to land the commoners surrounding it can ready actions to attack, which immobility would not prevent.
Third, sleep. Good luck staying on the broom in your sleep.
OP said you didn't get exhaustion from no sleep in post #5...please read the posts before shooting down an idea.
Yeah. I do like the idea of “more then 0% chance” but functionally 0% chance.
I was trying to figure out a number, assuming that the fight couldn’t be cheeses to allow for infinite regeneration of health and/or spell slots. Nor could it be cheesed to allow for the adventurers to run away forever. Maybe I need to up the threat level of the villagers, such that they could punch through Hwavy Armor Mastery with a little regularity (or at least give the villagers access to range weapons, even if that’s just throwing a rock for most of them)
I was trying to figure out a number, assuming that the fight couldn’t be cheeses to allow for […] Nor could it be cheesed to allow for the adventurers to run away forever.
Any spellcaster with an object that allows a flying speed can spam cantrips indefinitely. So a level 2 warlock with a broom of flying and the eldritch spear invocation can cast infinite eldritch blasts from 300 feet up. Unless you homebrew a commoner with a longbow, there’s nothing the town could do.
Winner
To go one better, with that mobility, unless there is a reason that the PC cannot fly down, pick up a rock (free action) and fly back up without getting hit, any level 1 Commoner with a broom of flying or any first level aaracockra can defeat an infinite number of commoners in the village by dropping rocks (improvised weapon) on them from 10 feet above their heads.
Two problems with that, the commoners on the ground are likely to cover every space and therefore you can not land anywhere. Secondly if there is somewhere to land the commoners surrounding it can ready actions to attack, which immobility would not prevent.
I don't believe that there was ever a specification in this that there are so many commoners that they permanently cover every available space on the ground with a 5ft attack range. This is shifting the goalposts to counter a valid strategy.
If this were part of the discussion, then it needed to be specified that movement would automatically cause a number of opportunity attacks, or that it is impossible for the party to move. These were not specified.
So I think I figured out a better way to get at the “real” question. So I’d argue that a God is to a group of Fully leveled adventurers, as that same group would be to a village full of commoners.
So in a situation where the party is forced to fight villagers till the entire party falls, how long would that take. Assume that the party can never gain the benefits of a full rest (restored spell slots and full healing), and that they can’t cheese the fight to remain forever out of the villager’s range.
I think what you're asking is more like this (which is different to your original question - you specified magic items available, and any half decent fighter has adamantine armour by level 20):
A level 20, Con20, AC20 fighter has an average of 224 hit points.
It takes 20 peasants to attack them and score 1 hit, which will be a critical hit, and will deal an average of 5 (2d4) damage on hit.
224 / 5 = 44.8 hits to knock the fighter unconscious, assuming he doesn't get healed.
The commoners need to make 44.8 x 20 attacks in order to down the fighter - 896 attacks in total.
The fighter can be attacked 9 times per turn, if there is a peasant in every grid square, and every commoner is replaced by a fresh one if they die.
This takes them 896 / 9 = 99.56 turns.
This is the equivalent of 99.56 x 6 = 599.76 seconds.
599.76 / 60 = 9.996 minutes, or 9 minutes and 59.76 seconds - or about as close to 10 minutes as makes no difference.
So there you go. Infinite commoners take down a level 20 fighter with no healing, feats or magic items available after 10 minutes of constant attacking.
Any spellcaster with an object that allows a flying speed can spam cantrips indefinitely. So a level 2 warlock with a broom of flying and the eldritch spear invocation can cast infinite eldritch blasts from 300 feet up. Unless you homebrew a commoner with a longbow, there’s nothing the town could do.
Winner
To go one better, with that mobility, unless there is a reason that the PC cannot fly down, pick up a rock (free action) and fly back up without getting hit, any level 1 Commoner with a broom of flying or any first level aaracockra can defeat an infinite number of commoners in the village by dropping rocks (improvised weapon) on them from 10 feet above their heads.
Two problems with that, the commoners on the ground are likely to cover every space and therefore you can not land anywhere. Secondly if there is somewhere to land the commoners surrounding it can ready actions to attack, which immobility would not prevent.
Third, sleep. Good luck staying on the broom in your sleep.
OP said you didn't get exhaustion from no sleep in post #5...please read the posts before shooting down an idea.
Then added " Assume that the party can never gain the benefits of a full rest (restored spell slots and full healing), " just a couple posts ago (Posts #14 and #19)
And my post positing the warlock idea was #9...are you saying I should be able to tell the future? Because i didn't realize that was a requirement for participation in threads.
Snark aside, my scheme does not require limited resources...the broom never has to land, and eldritch blast is a cantrip and can be cast without expending resources. If you gain no benefit from full rests (post 14/19), but also gain no exhaustion from not resting (post 5, these don't necessarily counteract), then you can stay awake indefinitely and still use my strategy...at level 2.
The only thing that would break this, is the introduction of a shortbow or longbow as a homebrew for the commoner, which would create a situation where they villagers could attack the warlock when they dipped down into range to fire the spell off, though at disadvantage due to long range.
The whole lack of renewable resources is basically what I was going for. Like the party would have what ever they brought with them, but couldn’t find extra projectiles, can’t gain the benefits of a full rest (health and spell slots). Eventually their weapons and armor would wear down or be stolen from them. Their spell slots would run dry. Their magical items would run out of charges. And they would drink their last health potion.
The answers so far have been 100% correct thus far (the party could keep fighting this village till they die of boredom). But also wrong, in so much as they don’t answer the question I’m really asking…. Problem is, I have no idea how to word that question.
perhaps it’s a matter of flipping the script? Like how would you have a village of commoners beat a full adventuring party of level 20’s with stacked loot?
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Morbid thought but I figure it could be a little fun. Let's assume you have a party of 5 PC's who are all max level, and kitted out with the best of the best items. You stick them in a magical village located in a demi plane. The village will spawn endless commoners for the party to fight (dead bodies despawn after 1 minute of combat). How long do you think your party would last before dying to the endless swarm of villagers. How would you maximize your time to survive the longest (stuff like funneling via a building's door frame is on the table, but the villagers are likely to eventually just burn the house down if they can't enter the house)? Only special rule is that your party can't leave the village. You are bound by the basic rules of the game (exhaustion from lack of sleep, spell slots, carry capacity, etc..)
Build your party, and tell us how long you think you could last? If you want to make it extra fun, make a guess based off action economy (if you went first EVERYONE gets a turn before you get your second turn) and a guess based off "realism" (how would a normal person react to you causing a 30 foot fireball/explosion to go off right in front of you?)
Sorry i don't really know how many people would typically exist in your standard back water village of D&D. So i don't really have a good idea on how many villagers could realistically exist at any given time (assuming this magical village only spawns up to the population cap)
Endless swarm of villagers? They are level 0. A 5 player party at level 20 would be fine to handle that for a while. Then they'd get bored and leave. Least my character would. My character would wonder why he's fighting commoners. Then see there is no reason to do it outside of protecting himself and just leave.
Fair… fair.
perhaps I need to retool the idea such that you can never sleep (but don’t get exhaustion points from that), or otherwise flee indefinitely from the commoners.
it’s also possible what I’m really asking is if someone can only be hit via a nat 20, how many rounds of combat would it take to bring down a max level’d adventurer. And how does that number change if the adventurer has friends to help keep them alive…
A fighter of any level with Heavy Armour Master, AC20 and Adamantine armour can take only 1 point of damage from any attack that the commoners throw at him. Let's give him 224 hit points, which is average hit points plus 100 from his 20 Constitution.
Assuming that no more than 9 commoners can attack him during any single turn (completely surrounding him), they will score 1 hit every 20 attacks. Of those hits, only 1 in 4 overcomes his Heavy Armour Master feat, so that means they need 80 attacks to inflict 1 point of damage.
Since they have no ranged attack, only 9 commoners can attack him per turn. After 180 attacks, they will have dealt him 9 points of damage, which takes them 20 turns, which is the equivalent of 3 minutes and 12 seconds. A Ring of Regeneration will heal him for 3 (1d6) hit points every 10 minutes, so he'll only take 24 damage every 10 minutes that he fights.
However, if he's an Eldritch Knight, he can cast Blade Ward every turn, whilst still making one melee attack. This gives him resistance to the commoner's bludgeoning damage, meaning that any hit they inflict will be only a maximum of 2 damage, which is then reduced by 3 by Heavy Armour Master. Therefore he is invulnerable and can never be taken down by any number of commoners.
A level 7 Eldritch Knight with 20AC, Heavy Armour Master and Adamantine armour fights forever against any number of commoners. He doesn't need to be anywhere near level 20, and only needs a single magic item.
Well, if you can only hit on a natural 20 you'd have a 5% chance of hitting, but deal double dice damage when you do. For a commoner that would be avg 5 damage (2d4+0). a level 20 adventurer with a d8 hit dice probably has around 200-220 hitpoints (assuming maxed CON and average rolls). So it would take 20 commoners (1 would hit on average) about 40-44 rounds of combat to bring a level 20 character to 0, without any other interventions (healing, special abilities that would prevent a hit like fly would be a simple one). That equals 4 - 4.5 minutes of them whaling on the character with basically the character doing nothing to stop it.
Factor in just the PC actually attacking, and optional rules like cleaving through creatures, and the fact that 20 commoners can't attack 1 PC at once without a lot of movement coordination (only 9 can occupy squares in melee range and they have no ranged attack option standard), and its probably taking a lot more commoners, and a lot more time, even without friends or spells. factor in spells and friends, its likely they could last days if not weeks, especially if they use spells to delay combat.
Edit: See Sanvaels note above, even with basic class abilities and magic items, it basically eliminates the threat.
If they're kitted however they like, anyone who's proficient in medium or heavy armor can get Mizzium or Adamantine armor that turns crits into a normal hit.
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Any spellcaster with an object that allows a flying speed can spam cantrips indefinitely. So a level 2 warlock with a broom of flying and the eldritch spear invocation can cast infinite eldritch blasts from 300 feet up. Unless you homebrew a commoner with a longbow, there’s nothing the town could do.
Winner
To go one better, with that mobility, unless there is a reason that the PC cannot fly down, pick up a rock (free action) and fly back up without getting hit, any level 1 Commoner with a broom of flying or any first level aaracockra can defeat an infinite number of commoners in the village by dropping rocks (improvised weapon) on them from 10 feet above their heads.
No idea how long it would take, but if you allow Commoners to use weapons at all, they would be Simple ones. That's the Shortbow, and the Light Crossbow, The Shortbow lacks the Loading tag, which means that they can fire as many arrows as they have actions for. The Light Crossbow does better damage, but no matter how many actions you have, you only get one bolt. They both cost the same, so it's a toss up, I'd probably have them use a Shortbow, since it's more damage over time. Near as I can figure, if the party can find shelter the Commoners can't penetrate, they can create food and water, and they can heal, they won't ever die except of boredom.
It kind of depends, because not all resources are renewable. Casters run out of spells. Melee don't really run out of weapon juice, they can keep right on fighting until they suffer from Exhaustion, and keep right on going through the first two levels of that, and maybe even more. They still could die, but you'd probably be the one who died of boredom.
<Insert clever signature here>
Two problems with that, the commoners on the ground are likely to cover every space and therefore you can not land anywhere. Secondly if there is somewhere to land the commoners surrounding it can ready actions to attack, which immobility would not prevent.
So I think I figured out a better way to get at the “real” question. So I’d argue that a God is to a group of Fully leveled adventurers, as that same group would be to a village full of commoners.
So in a situation where the party is forced to fight villagers till the entire party falls, how long would that take. Assume that the party can never gain the benefits of a full rest (restored spell slots and full healing), and that they can’t cheese the fight to remain forever out of the villager’s range.
plane shift
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My homebrew stuff:
Spells, Monsters, Magic Items, Feats, Subclasses.
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Extended Signature
Well, they could never actually kill a god, those are far too powerful for anything as insignificant as a level 20 mortal of any class. With an immortal, it's a little questionable, since both now have all the time in the world, but nothing mortal ever really gets there. Even the most powerful Lich eventually turns to dust, if their phylactery isn't destroyed first, so I can't say about the village thing, but I can tell you that I'd die of boredom trying to find out how long it would take to kill a bunch of level 20 characters with an endless supply of Commoners. They'd run out of arrows before they did much of anything, and they'd die in melee in the droves.
<Insert clever signature here>
OP said you didn't get exhaustion from no sleep in post #5...please read the posts before shooting down an idea.
Yeah. I do like the idea of “more then 0% chance” but functionally 0% chance.
I was trying to figure out a number, assuming that the fight couldn’t be cheeses to allow for infinite regeneration of health and/or spell slots. Nor could it be cheesed to allow for the adventurers to run away forever. Maybe I need to up the threat level of the villagers, such that they could punch through Hwavy Armor Mastery with a little regularity (or at least give the villagers access to range weapons, even if that’s just throwing a rock for most of them)
plane shift
Come participate in the Competition of the Finest Brews, Edition XXVIII?
My homebrew stuff:
Spells, Monsters, Magic Items, Feats, Subclasses.
I am an Archfey, but nobody seems to notice.
Extended Signature
I don't believe that there was ever a specification in this that there are so many commoners that they permanently cover every available space on the ground with a 5ft attack range. This is shifting the goalposts to counter a valid strategy.
If this were part of the discussion, then it needed to be specified that movement would automatically cause a number of opportunity attacks, or that it is impossible for the party to move. These were not specified.
I think what you're asking is more like this (which is different to your original question - you specified magic items available, and any half decent fighter has adamantine armour by level 20):
A level 20, Con20, AC20 fighter has an average of 224 hit points.
It takes 20 peasants to attack them and score 1 hit, which will be a critical hit, and will deal an average of 5 (2d4) damage on hit.
224 / 5 = 44.8 hits to knock the fighter unconscious, assuming he doesn't get healed.
The commoners need to make 44.8 x 20 attacks in order to down the fighter - 896 attacks in total.
The fighter can be attacked 9 times per turn, if there is a peasant in every grid square, and every commoner is replaced by a fresh one if they die.
This takes them 896 / 9 = 99.56 turns.
This is the equivalent of 99.56 x 6 = 599.76 seconds.
599.76 / 60 = 9.996 minutes, or 9 minutes and 59.76 seconds - or about as close to 10 minutes as makes no difference.
So there you go. Infinite commoners take down a level 20 fighter with no healing, feats or magic items available after 10 minutes of constant attacking.
And my post positing the warlock idea was #9...are you saying I should be able to tell the future? Because i didn't realize that was a requirement for participation in threads.
Snark aside, my scheme does not require limited resources...the broom never has to land, and eldritch blast is a cantrip and can be cast without expending resources. If you gain no benefit from full rests (post 14/19), but also gain no exhaustion from not resting (post 5, these don't necessarily counteract), then you can stay awake indefinitely and still use my strategy...at level 2.
The only thing that would break this, is the introduction of a shortbow or longbow as a homebrew for the commoner, which would create a situation where they villagers could attack the warlock when they dipped down into range to fire the spell off, though at disadvantage due to long range.
The whole lack of renewable resources is basically what I was going for. Like the party would have what ever they brought with them, but couldn’t find extra projectiles, can’t gain the benefits of a full rest (health and spell slots). Eventually their weapons and armor would wear down or be stolen from them. Their spell slots would run dry. Their magical items would run out of charges. And they would drink their last health potion.
The answers so far have been 100% correct thus far (the party could keep fighting this village till they die of boredom). But also wrong, in so much as they don’t answer the question I’m really asking…. Problem is, I have no idea how to word that question.
perhaps it’s a matter of flipping the script? Like how would you have a village of commoners beat a full adventuring party of level 20’s with stacked loot?