D&D 5E How much punishment can a party take?

TerraDave said:

To do something like this, you need waves of about 1300 XP each (according to the dmg for 4th level charecters, 250 XP per charecter for medium, 375 for hard, I am doing a rough average of 325 times 4)

skeletons are 50 each, scarecrows 200, vultures 10 (giant vultures are 200).

OK, it gets a little harder. When you have multiple opponents, you are supposed to adjust HP. But if your party can hit flying targets and multiple enemies--through area spells or great weapon fighting or two weapon fighting or something--I would not adjust that much. And you won't get much of a wave. Lets say double it.

If you have 5 vultures with skeletons and two scarecrows before adjusting that is 700 which becomes 1400. You can drop some to make this a bit easier, though this actually feels about right, especially if there is a delay before the scarecrows make contact. You will probably want to mix things up (consider a few of the giant vultures at some point), but this should work as a sort of benchmark.

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Actually the 'XP per adventuring day' chart mentions both adjusted XP and earnt XP.

Based off the numbers, I reckon its more likely 'earnt' XP (i.e. XP before adjusting for difficulty).

MoonSong said:

Well, um yes the DMG says. But I'm not finding that helpful at all. I trip over the numbers. I'm asking because I have some problems with the math and the confusing rules. Can anybody help to tell me how many of each enemy should I have (from actual play experience)? I picked the enemies form rule of cool, and I want to have an army of them fight my players -a 4th level party of four-. This is like the first time I so something like this in 5e, and as good as bounded accuracy is, it means that I cannot just drown players in minions without risking a TPK. (I'm not a number-cruncher)

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Check this site out:

http://dhmholley.co.uk/encounter-calculator-5th/

It'll change your life.

5 x 4th level PCs =

Easy: 625 XP
Medium: 1250 XP
Hard: 1875 XP
Deadly: 2500 XP

12 x CR 1/4 Skeletons are 1,800 adjusted XP or just below a Hard encounter (Medium) for this party.

A single CR 6 is a Hard encounter (2,300 XP).

6 x CR 1's are 2,400 xp = a (Hard) encounter; 4 x CR 1's are 1,600 xp or a Medium encounter.

And so forth.

UngeheuerLich said:

Minions that are unrecognizable are a bad idea. It is hiding information from players in a not so fair manner..

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I completely disagree. Player's aren't supposed to know monster stat blocks. That's the DM's realm. They aren't even supposed to know the general attributes of monsters until their PCs have faced them or found another in-game way of finding that information. It's hardly unfair to the players to have them face monsters they don't know everything about from a metagame perspective. In fact, if I know a player is using metagaming knowledge their PC shouldn't have about monsters to gain an advantage, I will often change things up a bit.

wrong thread

Hemlock said:

Well, there is one other way: you can reliably approach TPK in the players' heads by putting them up against something that they think will kill them, if they don't think of a way out.

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Very good point. It's about making the players feel like they escaped death by a hair. Whether they actually did or not is irrelevant.

Fear of the unknown is one of the most effective tools here. It's one reason I homebrew most of my monsters. When the monsters do things that the players have never seen before, it freaks the players out. They may not actually be close to a TPK, but until they figure out how the monster works and what it can do, they feel close, which is what counts.

Front-loaded monster abilities also work very well. When the monster's first action is to blast a PC down to single digits in one hit, it sets the tone for the whole combat. It may be a one-shot ability that the monster can only use once per day, and the rest of its attacks are quite manageable... but the players don't know that. From their point of view, there's no knowing when that killer attack might come out of the deck again.

Finally, never underestimate the potency of the "horde moment." This is where the PCs are expecting a straight-up fight, walk around a corner, and see a horde of enemies far bigger than they can possibly handle. They have to pull back and find a better solution than just charging in, or they're toast. The horde moment is a great way to remind the players that TPK is a consequence of poor decisions; that knowledge will stay with them even in the regular encounters. (However, be aware that some players will pull a Leeroy Jenkins in this situation.)

Dausuul said:

Very good point. It's about making the players feel like they escaped death by a hair. Whether they actually did or not is irrelevant.

Fear of the unknown is one of the most effective tools here. It's one reason I homebrew most of my monsters. When the monsters do things that the players have never seen before, it freaks the players out. They may not actually be close to a TPK, but until they figure out how the monster works and what it can do, they feel close, which is what counts..

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IME, it turns the encounter from just another math exercise, into one where the players get involved and start thinking more creatively. It's one of the reasons I love DMing new players who have no idea what a troll is or what it does. As soon as you describe the regeneration, the expressions and behavior of the new players makes the entire session.

Flamestrike said:

Based off the numbers, I reckon its more likely 'earnt' XP (i.e. XP before adjusting for difficulty).

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Let's let the chart speak for itself:

http://media.wizards.com/2016/downloads/DND/DMBasicRulesV05.pdf


Is there anyone who can look at that chart with its "adjusted XP per Day per Character" column heading and experience uncertainty over whether or not to use adjusted XP for computing an adventuring day? Moreover, if you just use your head, it's pretty obvious that adjusted XP represents difficulty; the adventuring day is a measure of how much difficulty the PCs can handle at once; it would be ridiculous to use raw XP in your calculations. Thirty orcs at once use up more PC resources than ten groups of three orcs, and "adjusted XP" is WotC's way of helping you calculate how much harder it is.

There are some DMs who like to hand out adjusted XP as what the PCs actually earn (i.e. use multipliers on XP-per-kill as well as for computing difficulty). I tried that for a while but decided I didn't like it, because it (1) made advancement too fast, and (2) made it matter too much whether I counted certain challenges as one encounter or several, and (3) depending on #2, potentially penalizes the players for smart play. I recommend sticking with the rules as written and restricting earned XP to raw XP, and using adjusted XP as intended: only for computing difficulty.

Rhenny said:

You could use the mob attacks section in the DMG to help you speed up the battle (p. 250). For each PC, figure out what the skeletons or other enemies needs to hit. Then, if you deem that the pc is within range of a group, just use the odds to deal out damage. For example, if the skeletons need a 17-18 to hit the fighter, you can have him swarmed by 5 skeletons, which yields 1 hit.

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I used that sort of method back in my 1e AD&D campaign. It's OK as far as it goes, but sucks some of the fun/drama out of it. Later I adapted some battlesystem rules, with the party acting as a unit. Neither was ever that satisfying...

jarandus said:

You could also use the minion concept from 4e, having half of each wave or maybe a whole wave thrown in, of enemies just having 1 hp

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Minions also didn't take damage from a 'miss' (and all attacks had attack rolls rather than saves), so to really get the full effect, rather than assigning them different hps (or hps at all), just rule that any hit or failed save kills them (or takes them out of the fight, or routes them - whatever).

the pcs wont necessarily know which ones are minions initially, and it will make the fight last longer, having them use more resources, since they will know that some of the enemies are more vulnerable than others.

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Not a great thing, actually. If you keep minionization a secret, you don't get any time savings by skipping damage rolls, for instance. And, it can be quite frustrating for players to 'waste' resources on minions. At the same time, 5e doesn't work well with too much information leaking to the player side of the screen. At minimum, they should be able to figure out which are which, somehow, even if it's just subtle differences in how you describe them that's it's up to the players to clue into...
...Of course, it could also be a time for PCs better able to assess enemies to shine.

Sacrosanct said:

I completely disagree. Player's aren't supposed to know monster stat blocks. That's the DM's realm. They aren't even supposed to know the general attributes of monsters until their PCs have faced them or found another in-game way of finding that information. It's hardly unfair to the players to have them face monsters they don't know everything about from a metagame perspective. In fact, if I know a player is using metagaming knowledge their PC shouldn't have about monsters to gain an advantage, I will often change things up a bit.

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I agree. PCs should not know game statistics. Never said that... so how can you disagree...
PCs need to be able to do educated guesses. An army of goblins or kobolds armed with nothing but crude clubs should be easy to deal with usually. Ogres or giants should not fall by an errant sling stone... except when named goliath.