Adventuring day - stats>

[slobo777]

Your research is really interesting. Playing the game, our group has found that monsters don't hit enough. If you have time, how do the results change if the monsters gained an extra +2 to hit? In our group, we feel like that provides a more interesting threat level for the PCs.

An easy thing to check, provided we're happy to see dwarves versus hobgoblins again. For those limited things I can check so far, it looks like +2 to monster attacks makes things measurably harder, but not radically . . .

Adventure: Two tough encounters with Hobgoblins
Variation: Hobgoblins attack bonus +4 (normally +2)

Adventure results for 20000 teams of timid dwarves:

  TPK:                   0%

  Defeated:             14%
       two dwarves died      0%   (1% of defeated)
         one dwarf died      3%   (21% of defeated)
          badly injured      0%   (0% of defeated)
      moderate injuries      2%   (13% of defeated)
         light injuries      9%   (65% of defeated)

  Completed adventure:  86%
       two dwarves died      1%   (0% of completed)
         one dwarf died      3%   (4% of completed)
          badly injured      0%   (0% of completed)
      moderate injuries      6%   (7% of completed)
         light injuries     68%   (79% of completed)
          not a scratch      8%   (10% of completed)

Adventure results for 20000 teams of brave dwarves:

  TPK:                   0%

  Defeated:              5%
       two dwarves died      0%   (3% of defeated)
         one dwarf died      3%   (73% of defeated)
          badly injured      0%   (0% of defeated)
      moderate injuries      1%   (13% of defeated)
         light injuries      0%   (11% of defeated)

  Completed adventure:  95%
       two dwarves died      1%   (0% of completed)
         one dwarf died      5%   (5% of completed)
          badly injured      0%   (1% of completed)
      moderate injuries     15%   (16% of completed)
         light injuries     67%   (69% of completed)
          not a scratch      8%   (9% of completed)

Adventure results for 20000 teams of foolhardy dwarves:

  TPK:                   1%

  Defeated:              0%

  Completed adventure:  99%
       two dwarves died      1%   (1% of completed)
         one dwarf died      8%   (8% of completed)
          badly injured      2%   (2% of completed)
      moderate injuries     22%   (22% of completed)
         light injuries     58%   (59% of completed)
          not a scratch      8%   (8% of completed)

For these dwarves versus hobgoblins, with the +4 total attack, we seem to be at an interesting middle point - 8% chance of a "death" (which is most often not a death, just dying then fixed) and a similar 8% chance of "not a scratch". I think as I increase party size the chances of these extremes will fall away.

I also think I will need to add in proper dying and death rules soon, so we can tell the difference between a recoverable defeat and a real character loss.

 

[slobo777]

Now with death and dying, and mopping up at the end of a fight . . .

 The second fight versus hobgoblins.
   Initiative
     Hobgoblin B [ rolls 17 ]
     Hobgoblin C [ rolls 17 ]
     Bill [ rolls 13 ]
     Hobgoblin D [ rolls 11 ]
     Barney [ rolls 6 ]
     Bob [ rolls 5 ]
     Hobgoblin A [ rolls 2 ]

   Round 1
     Turn: Hobgoblin B
       Hobgoblin B attacks Bill
       Hit. [Roll 18 + 2 = 20 vs 16 AC]
       Hobgoblin B does 2 damage to Bill.

     Turn: Hobgoblin C
       Hobgoblin C attacks Barney
       Miss. [Roll 2 + 2 = 4 vs 16 AC]

     Turn: Bill
       Bill attacks Hobgoblin D
       Miss. [Roll 2 + 6 = 8 vs 14 AC]

     Turn: Hobgoblin D
       Hobgoblin D attacks Bill
       Miss. [Roll 2 + 2 = 4 vs 16 AC]

     Turn: Barney
       Barney attacks Hobgoblin D
       Critical! [Roll 20]
       Barney does 21 damage to Hobgoblin D.
       Hobgoblin D is dead.

     Turn: Bob
       Bob attacks Hobgoblin C
       Hit. [Roll 12 + 6 = 18 vs 14 AC]
       Bob does 14 damage to Hobgoblin C.
       Hobgoblin C is dead.

     Turn: Hobgoblin A
       Hobgoblin A attacks Bill
       Critical! [Roll 20]
       Hobgoblin A does 10 damage to Bill.
       Bill is unconscious.

   Round 2
     Turn: Hobgoblin B
       Hobgoblin B attacks Bob
       Miss. [Roll 5 + 2 = 7 vs 16 AC]

     Turn: Bill
       Bill is dying. Death save 3 - fail.
       Bill loses 6 more hit points.

     Turn: Barney
       Barney attacks Hobgoblin A
       Hit. [Roll 17 + 6 = 23 vs 14 AC]
       Barney does 17 damage to Hobgoblin A.
       Hobgoblin A is dead.

     Turn: Bob
       Bob attacks Hobgoblin B
       Hit. [Roll 18 + 6 = 24 vs 14 AC]
       Bob does 16 damage to Hobgoblin B.
       Hobgoblin B is dead.

   Round 3
     Turn: Bill
       Bill is dying. Death save 19 - success 1 of 3.

     Turn: Barney
       Barney cannot see an active enemy
       Barney uses healers kit to stablise Bill

     Turn: Bob
       Bob cannot see an active enemy

   End of encounter
     Bill took 12 damage, and has -8 hit points remaining
     Bob took 0 damage, and has 17 hit points remaining
     Barney took 0 damage, and has 18 hit points remaining

 Short rest.
   Bill spends hit die to heal 4. Bill now has 4 hit points.
   Bill spends hit die to heal 1. Bill now has 5 hit points.

Will re-run with 20,000 to collect stats. I expect to see a lot less dead dwarves now they get to use the official dying rules.

I have assumed timid and brave dwarves will retreat and give up on the adventure once they have a fallen comrade. Foolhardy dwarves will carry the unconscious (or loot the dead) body and move on to the next encounter!

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I wonder if wotc has anyone doing this sort of thing. If we had 1 guy who could make 20 hrs a week for 2 months setting this all up and running these, how much info they would have pre playtest

 

[slobo777]

I wonder if wotc has anyone doing this sort of thing. If we had 1 guy who could make 20 hrs a week for 2 months setting this all up and running these, how much info they would have pre playtest

I doubt they are, it's not WotC's normal M.O., and it looks to me like 5E is a step away from the kinds of rules that can be fully automated (compared to, say 4E). Computers are good at rules, bad at rulings.

Of course, I still think it would be nice to have the dice/hits/bonuses etc side of the game built around a solid understanding of game stats.

But what a computer can never tell you is whether the game is fun to play. Realistically that quality will sell more books than any amount number-crunching for balance. Balance issues not caught in manual playtests will make it into the published game, but will be house-ruled away, errata'd etc, and probably won't do too much to spoil anyone's fun.

Despite that, I do think in any modern game built around chance and/or large numbers of player choices, that some test automation done early in the process would be a good thing. It should be a reasonable player expectation that the basic numbers in a game are already good to go.

 

[Animal]

Interesting experiment.
What i've learnt from these numbers so far is that being brave and pushing your luck significantly increases your chances to win, while only slightly increasing the risk to fail.
Does this mean the game's too easy?

 

[Kinak]

Great work slobo777!

Interesting experiment.
What i've learnt from these numbers so far is that being brave and pushing your luck significantly increases your chances to win, while only slightly increasing the risk to fail.
Does this mean the game's too easy?

It means that there isn't a strong relationship between your condition at the start of the fight and your condition at the end of the fight.

It's possible the enemies are too weak or too few to punish recklessness. That's easy enough to fix, really.

It's also possible, however, that damage is swingy enough that it doesn't really matter if you're at full hit points or half hit points. That's harder to fix, but is in line with OD&D through 3rd Edition starting characters.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[slobo777]

Interesting experiment.
What i've learnt from these numbers so far is that being brave and pushing your luck significantly increases your chances to win, while only slightly increasing the risk to fail.
Does this mean the game's too easy?

Feedback in some other threads does give the impression that the dial is set to "easy" at the moment.

I'm not sure I could say, even if this was close to testing a realistic party. The dwarves all have "Survivor" speciality, which makes them difficult to kill, even at 1st level.

I tried with hobgoblins getting a massive +20 to hit (i.e. always hit, except on a 1). Even "timid" dwarves, who give up once they have spent their first hit die, managed to complete an adventuring day successfully 66% of the time, and the "foolhardy" dwarves managed 94% success / 6% TPK against auto-hitting hobgoblins. I think that just goes to show the game is a complex beast, even just looking at very basic play.

What I'm hoping to achieve in the medium term is a baseline measure of the rules as written, with a simple core party versus all possible "adventure days". That would be something to measure alterations to rules, monsters and class features against.

I think so far what I'm discovering is that D&D core game is far more robust against some individual "balance issues" than I would have thought. I mean, I can just give hobgoblins +18 to hit and the game still functions! Not convinced human players would be happy to face them, though . . .

 

[slobo777]

I've been reading how Fighter's Expertise Dice work again, as I've started to implement them (so I can compare "always use Deadly Strike" versus "always Protect").

I noticed something I missed. It looks like if a Dwarf missed a hobgoblin, then they'd still have their 1d6 available to Parry.

So I've re-run the base code (with all assumptions as per the playtest - hobgoblins get +2 to hit, and 3 hobgoblins is a "tough" encounter for 3 1st-level PCs, so ther eshould be two of them to complete an adventuring day).

Even if the Dwarves prefer Deadly Strike whenever possible (which isn't optimal), this makes a huge difference. The dwarves are totally ripping up an adventuring day now, irrespective of how cautious they are . . .

Adventure results for 50000 teams of timid dwarves:
  TPK:                   0%           {1/50000}

  Defeated:              1%
       two dwarves died      0%   0% of defeated {1/473}
         one dwarf died      0%   2% of defeated {9/473}
          badly injured      0%   2% of defeated {9/473}
      moderate injuries      1%   50% of defeated
         light injuries      0%   46% of defeated

  Completed adventure:  99%
         one dwarf died      0%   0% of completed {21/49526}
          badly injured      0%   0% of completed {59/49526}
      moderate injuries      9%   9% of completed
         light injuries     73%   73% of completed
          not a scratch     17%   18% of completed

Adventure results for 50000 teams of brave dwarves:
  TPK:                   0%           {2/50000}

  Defeated:              1%
       two dwarves died      0%   0% of defeated {1/545}
         one dwarf died      0%   1% of defeated {6/545}
          badly injured      0%   2% of defeated {8/545}
      moderate injuries      1%   46% of defeated
         light injuries      0%   51% of defeated

  Completed adventure:  99%
         one dwarf died      0%   0% of completed {19/49453}
          badly injured      0%   0% of completed {58/49453}
      moderate injuries      9%   9% of completed
         light injuries     73%   74% of completed
          not a scratch     17%   17% of completed

Adventure results for 50000 teams of foolhardy dwarves:
  TPK:                   0%           {4/50000}

  Defeated:              1%
         one dwarf died      0%   3% of defeated {14/536}
          badly injured      0%   2% of defeated {15/536}
      moderate injuries      1%   49% of defeated
         light injuries      0%   46% of defeated

  Completed adventure:  99%
         one dwarf died      0%   0% of completed {26/49460}
          badly injured      0%   0% of completed {56/49460}
      moderate injuries      9%   9% of completed
         light injuries     73%   74% of completed
          not a scratch     17%   17% of completed

I think here I can safely say this is too easy.

The different player choices on how much risk to take make no difference at all!

That may be an effect of the character build and party composition. It may also melt away at 2nd or 3rd level when the threat level increases. But this definitely supports the "it's too easy" vibe reported in other play tests.

 

[Dragoslav]

Could you run a "control" group composed of a party of non-optimized fighters? Maybe humans (since they're kind of the "default" race) without the Survivor specialty. As I said in the other thread, the fighter is supposed to be the best at one-on-one melee combat, so it makes sense that they would at least have a much easier time getting through combat where they are matched 1:1 with the opponent.

Going from that, too, I wonder how they would fare if they were outnumbered by weaker opponents.

 

[slobo777]

Could you run a "control" group composed of a party of non-optimized fighters? Maybe humans (since they're kind of the "default" race) without the Survivor specialty. As I said in the other thread, the fighter is supposed to be the best at one-on-one melee combat, so it makes sense that they would at least have a much easier time getting through combat where they are matched 1:1 with the opponent.

Going from that, too, I wonder how they would fare if they were outnumbered by weaker opponents.

Yes, I can and will do these checks. I am reaching for easy tests right now, as coding up all the class features, feats and monster traits, even for first level, is going to take a while.

I think my ultimate "baseline" will look something like this:

1) Adventuring party: Fighter, Cleric, Wizard, Rogue. Not sure if I should go for 5 players, and if so what the fifth member should be?

2) Encounters: Randomly built by the computer according to the xp guidelines.

3) Personalities: "timid", "brave" and "foolhardy" as I have now, adjusted to take account of daily resources in some classes.

4) Location: A basic "Theatre of the Mind" that allows combatants to fight at range and use a little terrain/movement. This will take some planning/coding, and I'm not even started yet!

5) Levels: 1 to 5.

Once this is coded, I can run a baseline that shows what has been designed into the playtest material (deliberately or not) as the default assumption of challenge in an adventuring day. That then allows for comparison with new material or changes (e.g. what happens if you swap one of the PCs for a Warlock, or change the xp value of zombies etc). It also allows searches for outliers which don't match these assumptions (probably xp value of zombies as a start).

Separately to the measured baseline, there are going to be opinions of what the baseline should be, and whether classes are balanced across the three pillars of play or within each of them separately. Obviously combat stats like these take a very different role depending on which is the aim.

There's still a long way to go. There are a lot of variables, and a lot of features which will be a challenge to write code for.

My next steps are probably to extend support to more first-level melee fighter builds, as this is still the simplest class to work with.