D&D 5E Conflating Per Day and Per Encounter Budgets, and Tuning Game Difficulty

[clearstream]

This came from a couple of other threads. My goals were to 1) bring encounter thresholds and encounters per adventuring "day" together, 2) dial up the game difficulty because the book values yield encounters far below what my PCs find challenging, and 3) ensure that the effort to use this respected its accuracy (i.e. it had to be quick to use!)

XP Budgets Per Encounter and Adventuring Day
The table below is intended to help size encounters that your PCs can handle. It is derived from the DMG, but multiplies the thresholds there by about 1.6 to produce a harder game. Encounters are categorised as attritional and lethal. Both types can result in PC death, but attritional encounters are not likely to do so unless preceded by other encounters: characters should be able to handle around 2 attritional encounters between short rests, and 6 between long rests. Lethal encounters consume more resources and may deplete the party: count one as equal to three attritional encounters. For example, a party might overcome 3 attritional encounters before a short rest, and then face 1 lethal encounter.

The table provides an XP Budget (per PC) for attritional difficulty. To build an attritional encounter, add together the budgets for each PC in your party and then choose creatures for your encounter (applying adjustments per the DMG) until at or just over that total. To build a lethal encounter, use double the attritional total. For example, for a party of 3 level 4 and 1 level 5 PC, the budget for an attritional encounter is 2200, doubled to 4400 for a lethal encounter. Six orcs plus an ogre should be attritional, adding a war chief pushes that up to lethal.


Level....XP Budget (per PC)
1..........80
2..........160
3..........300
4..........440
5..........880
6..........1000
7..........1260
8..........1500
9..........1880
10........2260
11........2640
12........2880
13........3380
14........3760
15........4500
16........5000
17........6260
18........6760
19........7500
20........10000

 

[dropbear8mybaby]

I think you meant "...are not very likely..."

 

[clearstream]

I think you meant "...are not very likely..."

Thanks! I've been working on my lethality construct and relatedly suggest that -

Lethality
A character might face a dozen lethal encounters over their career (from level 1 to level 20). Each such encounter is expected to offer a 1:8 risk of death. Lethality is affected by performance, so that skilled players may experience half that chance of dying while unskilled players experience double. Attritional encounters are less lethal, perhaps 1:24, but a character might eventually face more than a hundred of them. On average such encounters could kill a character half-a-dozen times. Very often, powerful revivification magic puts them back on their feet: the rest is up to skill, prudence and outright luck.

There's obviously a gap between the aspiration and the practice. This definition defines a goal for difficulty tuning: to achieve these sorts of values. For example, we'd want to see some lethal encounters end with no character death, but over two or three we'd want to see a few characters die (and need revival magic).

 

[Harzel]

Thanks! I've been working on my lethality construct and relatedly suggest that -

Lethality
A character might face a dozen lethal encounters over their career (from level 1 to level 20). Each such encounter is expected to offer a 1:8 risk of death. Lethality is affected by performance, so that skilled players may experience half that chance of dying while unskilled players experience double. Attritional encounters are less lethal, perhaps 1:24, but a character might eventually face more than a hundred of them. On average such encounters could kill a character half-a-dozen times. Very often, powerful revivification magic puts them back on their feet: the rest is up to skill, prudence and outright luck.

There's obviously a gap between the aspiration and the practice. This definition defines a goal for difficulty tuning: to achieve these sorts of values. For example, we'd want to see some lethal encounters end with no character death, but over two or three we'd want to see a few characters die (and need revival magic).

From your references to 'revivification' and 'revival', I assume you are talking here about 'real' death, not going to 0 hp. (?) If so, I guess I'd have to say I'm skeptical of anyone being able to give reliable odds on character death. Odds of going to 0 hp might be somewhat predictable, but death seems like it has large dependencies on things other than encounter difficulty by the numbers, at least two of which would be environmental factors and the skill of the other players in the group. (Of course, this is just my gut feel - I certainly can't prove that death is less predictable than going to 0 hp.)

 

[clearstream]

From your references to 'revivification' and 'revival', I assume you are talking here about 'real' death, not going to 0 hp. (?) If so, I guess I'd have to say I'm skeptical of anyone being able to give reliable odds on character death. Odds of going to 0 hp might be somewhat predictable, but death seems like it has large dependencies on things other than encounter difficulty by the numbers, at least two of which would be environmental factors and the skill of the other players in the group. (Of course, this is just my gut feel - I certainly can't prove that death is less predictable than going to 0 hp.)

The goal isn't to give reliable odds, but to call out the design objectives. Being open about the objectives exposes them to fair debate - in this case, about how lethal, "lethal" encounters should be? And they help a designer measure their experiences (encounters run) against what they intended to see. That promotes earlier course correction. If I observe a much higher or much lower death rate than targeted, I will respond to that by tuning the XP budgets.

That's a good question about revival. A character isn't dead until they fail three death saving throws, so I am talking about failing three death saving throws. I currently treat revival as an independent factor on the following basis: tier 1 characters have no chance of revival, tier 2 characters are revived half the time, tier three characters are revived two-thirds of the time, and tier four characters are revived three-quarters of the time. Those guesses will improve as I gather evidence. Anyway, what it means is that the chance of permanent death is taken to be a fraction of the chance of death.