D&D 5E 5e: the demystification of monsters?

Steely_Dan · Oct 2, 2012

Patryn of Elvenshae said:
Here, I'll do the math for you.

Ogre: AC 15, 32 HP, +4 to hit, 2d8+4 Bludgeoning Damage

5th-Level Fighter: AC 18 (Banded + Shield); 44 HP (+2 Con), +7 to hit (+4 Fighter, +3 Strength), 1d8+3 damage (Longsword, +3 Str), 2d8 Expertise Dice

Assuming the Fighter uses no combat maneuvers at all:

Ogre Damage per Round: Chance to Hit * Damage
(6/20) * 2d8+4 + (1/20) * 20
(6/20) * (13) + (1/20) * 20
=
4.9 damage per round

It takes him ~9 rounds to kill a single 5th-level fighter. Meanwhile, the 5th-level fighter is doing:

Fighter Damage per Round: Chance to Hit * Damage
(12/20) * 1d8+3 + (1/20) * 11
(12/20) * (7.5) + (1/20) * 11
=
5.1 damage per round

It takes the Fighter ~6.3 rounds to kill the Ogre. A 5th-level Fighter, on average, easily beats an ogre. Therefore, if a 5th-level Fighter, one-on-one, can easily handle an ogre, how is a single ogre supposed to be a threat to a 10th-level Fighter plus his 3-5 10th-level friends?

The easy answer is: It's not.

BUT WAIT! There's more!

The fighter actuall has 2d8 Expertise dice per round. Assuming he does nothing but Parry (which is probably suboptimal), that drops the ogre's damage:

Ogre Damage per Round: Chance to Hit * Damage
(6/20) * 2d8+4-2d8 + (1/20) * 20-2d8
(6/20) * (4) + (1/20) * 11
=
1.75 damage per round

Or, in other words, by making pretty suboptimal choices, the 5th-level Fighter increases his average survival time to 25 rounds.

Yeah, the standard ogre is not a meaningful threat to even a 5th-level fighter, let alone a 10th-level party.

+6 to hit for the Ogre (let alone the loose math).

Patryn of Elvenshae · Oct 2, 2012

DogBackward said:
The point isn't that one ogre is still a threat to a 5th level Fighter or a 10th level party, it's that ogres in general are still a threat to higher level groups.

The issue is that I'm not sure I'm seeing it, just yet. I mean, I've assumed (in the math above) that the Fighter 5 doesn't have any magic armor, any magic weapons, or any spell support at all.

I think the flattened math will make it slightly more likely that a bog-standard ogre will be able to hit a higher-level character, but I have my doubts about whether it will be able to do so in a particularly meaningful fashion.

Agreed about the monsters needing some more to-hit in the playtest, generally speaking, but then you start running into hit point and healing issues. I've long been of the opinion that D&D combat works best when you're in the range where everyone is still hitting more than 50% of the time but less than 80% of the time, and where you can take 3-6 hits before going down. 5E combat is, at the moment, too swingy looking at this point (monsters can't hit often, but they hit hard when they do hit (unless you're a parrying fighter, obviously (also, nested parentheticals))).

Patryn of Elvenshae · Oct 2, 2012

Steely_Dan said:
+6 to hit for the Ogre (let alone the loose math).

Not according to the playest bestiary I've got in front of me right now.

Loose math? That's cute.

EDIT:

Actually, the only thing I missed was the Armor Piercing 4 ability.

That raises the Ogre-vs.-Dumb-Fighter damage per round to 5.5, with an average kill-time of 8 rounds, so the Fighter still wins handily.

The Ogre-vs.-less-Dumb-Fighter (who uses nothing but parry) is not meaningfully affected.

Steely_Dan · Oct 2, 2012

Patryn of Elvenshae said:
I think the flattened math will make it slightly more likely that a bog-standard ogre will be able to hit a higher-level character, but I have my doubts about whether it will be able to do so in a particularly meaningful fashion.

What does "meaningful" mean to you?

Steely_Dan · Oct 2, 2012

Patryn of Elvenshae said:
Not according to the playest bestiary I've got in front of me right now.

The 1st one (and that wasn't the loose math I was talking about)?

Patryn of Elvenshae · Oct 2, 2012

Steely_Dan said:
The 1st one (and that wasn't the loose math I was talking about)?

The most recent one. Or are you going to compare the first playtest ogre against the first playtest fighter, too?

In the end, it doesn't matter. Adding 2 additional points to the ogre's attack makes him slightly likely to beat the pure-idiot fighter - they're within 1 round of average-time-to-kill (the ogre still losing, on average). It still leaves the ogre with ~20 rounds to kill the ALL-PARRY-ALL-THE-TIME! fighter, so there's no actual change in the results: an ogre is not a threat to a 5th-level Fighter by himself, let alone a 5th-level party and not even approaching speedbump status for a 10th-level party.

And do you care to post some math of your own? Quoting a die code doesn't actually demonstrate that you understand anything.

Steely_Dan · Oct 2, 2012

Patryn of Elvenshae said:
1) The most recent one. Or are you going to compare the first playtest ogre against the first playtest fighter, too?

2) In the end, it doesn't matter.

3) And do you care to post some math of your own?

1) Oh, all sorts, that's what "play-test" is all about.

2) Much like life.

3) "Math"...it speaks for itself.

slobo777 · Oct 2, 2012

Patryn of Elvenshae said:
The fighter actuall has 2d8 Expertise dice per round. Assuming he does nothing but Parry (which is probably suboptimal), that drops the ogre's damage:

IMO default to always Parry is optimal in a lot of cases. Exception is only when you can near-guarantee a kill by adding Deadly Strike.

This will need fixing, either by increasing monster damage (unlikely) or reducing power of Parry (more likely - I expect it will drop a die type, or similar).

A quick Monte-Carlo, three Level 1 Guardian Fighter Dwarves (Survivor Specialty) versus 3 Ogres, with preference to Protect and Parry when Ogres hit:

Code:

  TPK:                  49%           {49384/100000}

  Completed adventure:  51%
       two dwarves died      0%   {160 events}
         one dwarf died      4%   
          badly injured      0%   {353 events}
      moderate injuries     22%   
         light injuries     24%   
          not a scratch      1%   {270 events}

Same again, with preference to Deadly Strike:

Code:

  TPK:                  60%       {60412/100000}

  Completed adventure:  40%
       two dwarves died      1%   {534 events}
         one dwarf died      6%   
          badly injured      0%   {371 events}
      moderate injuries     17%   
         light injuries     15%   
          not a scratch      1%   {371 events}

. . . so damage reduction by Parry and Protect seems to be pretty good versus Ogres.

Also, level 1 fighters can handle an equal number of ogres, but it's well beyond usual challenge level.

Edit: Ran 100,000 just to be sure. Although in practice 1000 gets within +-1% most of the time.

Patryn of Elvenshae · Oct 2, 2012

Steely_Dan said:
1) Oh, all sorts, that's what "play-test" is all about.

2) Much like life.

As in, "it doesn't matter, because my point still stands even with the +2 to attack rolls you were requesting, and therefore you're still wrong.

3) "Math"...it speaks for itself.

You know what? I'm done.

Patryn of Elvenshae · Oct 2, 2012

slobo777 said:
IMO default to always Parry is optimal in a lot of cases. Exception is only when you can near-guarantee a kill by adding Deadly Strike.

Thanks for some actual math examples, slobo.

Or would that be ... "math"?

I'd think that, maybe, a couple dwarves piling on with Deadly Strike might take a single ogre out fast enough such that it doesn't get to attack in the later rounds (and reduce total damage that way), but the DPA is low enough that I can understand why just parrying it away repeatedly works out better.