D&D 5E DMG's definition of "Deadly" is much less deadly than mine: Data Aggregation?

[Coredump]

The DMG guidelines seem okay, once you change the names from Easy-Medium-Hard-Deadly to a more realistic Trivial-Easy-Medium-Hard.

If you want a Deadly, increase the current deadly by 50-100%.


Of course, part of the problem might be the 'adventure day'. If you really do have 8 encounters in a day....then maybe by the end of the day the current 'deadly' might actually feel like a threat.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

My initial suspicion -- and again, I don't yet have hard data to back this up, it's just a suspicion that could turn out to be wrong -- is that the DMG's hit point multipliers for resistances and immunities are too generous. Even when a creature is immune to two or three types of damage, PCs have an easy time working around it, so an advantage that supposedly increases a monster's effective HP by 150% or 200% turns out to be no real advantage at all. What's more, I don't understand why there's no corresponding adjustment when a monster has a vulnerability. I've harped on this before; vulnerability to fire is why the mummy lord weighs in nowhere near CR 15, but that crippling vulnerability seems to have carried no weight at all in the CR computation.

I guess it is assumed that the PCs are played as if they didn't know the resistances and vulnerabilities. That would make resistance much more useful and vulnerability less of a weak point.

 

[Quickleaf]

I'm in the process of running my friends' PCs thru an encounter that truly feels deadly in the sense of "threatens the entire party, not just one character, with death/unconsciousness as a potential outcome, and puts pressure on all characters to use resources and implement thoughtful and/or creative strategies/tactics." It's an incredibly tense and poignant encounter on a lot of levels.

Six 2nd level PCs at full resources defending a brewhouse connected to a defensible crenallated tower, also with special powers "unlockable" in the scene reflecting their impending 3rd level advancement (a sort of story-driven advancement, if you will).

However, these perks are countered by the fact that the party was split in half, with half running to catch up to the mounted bad guys, leaving two with 1 or 2 levels of exhaustion. Also, one of the PCs at the brewhouse/tower was poisoned for much of the encounter.

Fighting 17 tribal warriors (CR 1/8) (though 9 of these were tweaked to be horsemen), 2 mastiffs (CR 1/8), and a veteran (CR 3).

Actual XP = 1,175
Adjusted XP = 3,525

The adjusted XP is very close to 3 times the deadly threshold (1,200 XP) calculated from the DMG guidelines.

I feel like I genuinely don't know how the encounter will resolve. There is a sense among the players that they are indeed fighting for their lives, having to adjust tactics, fall back, help each other when they're in a spot. It feels deadly.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

I'm not sure you'd adjust XP in this case. CR 1/8 is significantly below the higher CR enemy, so you would usually not count them. Most of the base XP actually comes from the CR 3 veteran.

Also if that's the only battle for the day, it's worth noting that 600 XP per character (3600 XP total) is the recommended XP per adventuring day for 2nd level character.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I'm not sure you'd adjust XP in this case. CR 1/8 is significantly below the higher CR enemy, so you would usually not count them. Most of the base XP actually comes from the CR 3 veteran.

They synergize nicely, so you should count them. You only don't multiply if the little guys have no impact, e.g. a dragon and two kobolds doesn't multiply the dragon's difficulty. But a dragon and six wolves might, partially, because prone is bad when you're fighting a dragon.

It's not really about CR differentials, more about synergy.

 

[Quickleaf]

Also if that's the only battle for the day, it's worth noting that 600 XP per character (3600 XP total) is the recommended XP per adventuring day for 2nd level character.

Almost like the GM planned that

Yeah, I wanted to test out what an encounter designed using the DMG adventuring day guidelines would be like, and this was a good place in the narrative to do that.

Seems like it's resolving into a stalemate now. Half the party down, two bleeding out but likely to stabilize, morale breaking in some of the enemies, and the bad guys sounding a retreat. Everyone's resources are close to fully depleted.

Good advice from folks saying to use those adventuring day guidelines for an encounter where the PCs are fresh!

 

[jrowland]

My 2cp:

Just a hunch from playing around with this same issue, but at PC levels 1-4 it does sort of break down and not work as you would imagine. My hunch is that there is still a good chance of an errant critical making a PC go to Dead-Dead (negative max hp) in one hit. Higher CR critters do that for sure, and lots of low CR critters increases the probability of a deadly crit.

In short, my hunch is that deadly shouldn't really mean "lots of XP" or visa versa (it does, mechanically) but rather deadly should mean "A fairly good chance of someone going dead-dead".

In that vein, I think of the ranks like this:

Deadly: *Some* chance PC could "permanently" die. Will need long rest if they survive even if encounter is after a long rest (uses ALL resources)
Hard: Unlikely a PC could "permanently" die. Could probably handle 1-3 of these in an adventuring day.
Medium: very low chance of PC death except extreme stupidity (DM or Player!). Could handle 2-5 in an adventuring day
Easy: No chance of PC death, barely a bump, could handle 4-8 in an adventuring day
Trivial: I can do this all day. Why are you throwing 1 kobold at level 5 PCs? Oh yeah, RP opportunities, but silly PCs went all "Kobold! Kill It! Poor Meepo"

TL;DR - Its more about risk of perma-death and resource use than about "epic/cool/edge of your seat fighting cinematics". More at low levels and less at high levels but thats only a hunch.