High AC and encounters

[Jay Verkuilen]

I have no problem putting the fear of the unintelligent undead into my characters with zombie mobs that swarm over people, engulfing them and knocking them prone. That's just par for the course in my Halloween episode.

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That's actually a really good encounter. It feels relentless and scary, which all too many combats do not.

It's a question how much does it increase damage potential versus foregoing an attack or two in addition to chance of successfully knocking prone for those monsters that have something more than mush for brains. If I was a better mathematician I'm sure there's a formula there somewhere.

If you don't care about distributions, average damage per round is approximately: (ChanceToHit X Damage) X NumberOfAttackers

So the difficulty is calculating ChanceToHit. Having advantage is roughly +5, I guess you just multiply that times the percentage chance to knock prone and then subtract pushers from the NumberOfAttackers? Hmm...time to break out the spreadsheet. Unless of course you want to get fancy and start talking factorials or Monte Carlo simulations into account.

That's a decent enough approximation for the gaming table. (Note: I have advanced degrees in statistics and a decent enough approximation to answer the question is very much what most of the field is about. You could refine it but it probably won't get much bang for the buck.)

That said, IMO what's really useful is to make things feel threatening and there's nothing like fear of the unknown to do that. Having some of the foes make push attacks to knock prone really scares the players! Having the pushers break through or bypass the line of fighters and get among the casters or archers in back will induce fear and force them to change plans, even if the overall damage isn't necessarily totally optimal.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Speaking as another DM on the same page as [MENTION=2629]jgsugden[/MENTION], I think that's fine. However, if every monster always automatically skipped past him to attack softer targets, that would be different.

He's giving them essentially no reason to try for him, so unless he draws some aggro, I'm not sure what he's adding.

Again, speaking only for myself, I try to choose targets for my monsters that they would choose. I use, or try to use, the targeting methodology that they would use. So, for instance, a kobold is probably going to target the easiest looking enemy. An orc warlord will probably engage the toughest looking warrior, but might lose interest after a couple of rounds of trading zero damage. An ooze will probably attack the closest creature; a wolf is likely to strike at an enemy with its pack mates surrounding it, and a zombie will probably try to hit whatever hit it last.

Absolutely, I totally agree, you want to play monsters differently. Orcs and chaotic evil giant types go for the biggest, baddest threat they can find. Hobgoblins do the coordinated assault, reflecting their militaristic nature (and watch out if they have any spellcasters!). An ooze just attacks the closest thing or strikes back if it's hit. Hill giants may come up with a plan that seems clever... to them. But they're dopes so the plan will often have major flaws. etc.

Sometimes there's more to drawing fire than just standing there dodging. The cleric in the OP is more likely to draw fire if he moves into the enemies' formation, if he shows that he's a threat instead of just dodging, if he uses an action to insult his foes. There are lots of ways, at least in my game and my experience, to increase the odds that you'll be the target of choice of the baddies.

Absolutely. If all the character is doing is turtling he's drawing no aggro. There are lots of ways, as you say. Even just maneuvering properly can be effective---the OP didn't indicate much one way or the other on that score that I recall. If he's blocking in a useful fashion, say standing in a choke point and allowing the rogue and warlock to work their woe, that's totally fine and quite likely one of the most useful things he could do, though I'd still think he could drop the Dodge and hit with a weapon. So a lot depends on the circumstances. In higher levels, when he gets spells like Spirit Guardians and Spiritual Weapon, things are different but at level 2 this seems kind of premature.

 

[Oofta]

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That's actually a really good encounter. It feels relentless and scary, which all too many combats do not.

Yeah, the first time I pulled that trick on a player I really wish I had had a camera. The look on his face was pretty priceless. Then the "oh #$%#" reaction of the other players as he simply disappeared under a sea of rotting corpses and they couldn't even see him any more. I think they ended up fireballing the mob, PC included.

Not something to to all the time, but it's always good to mix things up and threaten characters in ways they aren't expecting.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Yeah, the first time I pulled that trick on a player I really wish I had had a camera. The look on his face was pretty priceless. Then the "oh #$%#" reaction of the other players as he simply disappeared under a sea of rotting corpses and they couldn't even see him any more. I think they ended up fireballing the mob, PC included.

Not something to to all the time, but it's always good to mix things up and threaten characters in ways they aren't expecting.

I agree. You can't and shouldn't always optimize every combat to the max, but if you just run everything totally by the numbers and attack in the most obvious way your combats will be boring. It also helps keep the more punk monsters threatening without slowing down the game if they're doing useful things like push.

As to fireballing your friends... hey sometimes that has to happen, and it's often worth it. Many people get really irate but really it's a matter of the exchange. A lot of characters can soak up friendly fire just fine, too, with the right builds. I have an Oath of the Ancients paladin who a high Dex save. The other melee character in that party is a Bear Totem Barbarian. Both of us have a decent chance of saving and start from taking half damage most of the time anyway. If we were fighting a bunch of hobgoblins or a pack of wolves it would be totally worth it.

 

[TheSword]

Check out Cubicle 7's Adventures in Middle Earth. The rest system works exactly that way and it makes a BIG difference. Things like the bard's Song of Rest (retitled for AIME but never mind that) are actually valuable as opposed to being relatively minor afterthoughts.

Yeah, I’m currently a player in the Mirkwood campaign and loving it. The lack of spellcasters removes the biggest issue, which stops it making the game too much harder. The solution would certainly stop the 15 minute adventuring day. Albeit if spells like secure shelter and rope trick were amended.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Yeah, I’m currently a player in the Mirkwood campaign and loving it.

The lack of spellcasters removes the biggest issue, which stops it making the game too much harder. The solution would certainly stop the 15 minute adventuring day. Albeit if spells like secure shelter and rope trick were amended.

Spellcasters can work in the kind of system found in AIME if there are ways for them to get some power back on short rests. Most of the rest of the time they'd be relying on things like cantrips or good old fashioned weapons. Many might multiclass, too. If I were doing a low fantasy adaptation of 5E that was allowing for magic, I'd shift things around, though. For instance, I'd probably give more casters the equivalent of Shillelagh so they could make regular attacks.

I really don't know why WotC is so addicted to the rest mechanic, though. IMO having a lot of long rest abilities creates a lot of potential for pointless rules-oriented party conflict when the more short rest oriented characters are out of juice while the long resters are topped off, and vice versa. Interparty conflict in and of itself isn't bad, but when it's just induced by the rules... ugh.

 

[jgsugden]

The game works really well with a mix of encounters. In each, the monsters should act per *their* character if you want to maximize the uniqueness of each combat.

What is the difference between a gnoll war party and an orc war party? A few hp, agression vs rampage ... so a few minor mechanical differences that really won't have much impact.... leaving you with 2 groups that are a sack of hps. But if you give them different racial tactics, they suddenly 'feel' very different. A group of gnolls that hunt like hyenas - circling an enemy and then attacking all at once... trying to pick off the weakest and pull them off to kill them ... versus orcs that flood in like a wave crashing down on the party, attacking fiercly without rhyme or reason... living rage! The optimal strategy for each of these groups is likely very similar, but having them come at the battle with their own story based strategy gives you different experiences.

And you don't need to make a battle deadly to make it interesting or difficult. If you have 30 goblins sprinting away in different directions and one of them has the secret scroll, your PCs are going to have to figure out how to stop as many of them as possible to get that scroll back. That takes strategy and quick thinking. Even though the PCs are unlikely to be attacked, much less threatened, this can be a great combat.

 

[iserith]

The aggressive orc rushes past the high-AC cleric to get at the low-AC wizard faster than a gnoll.

The rampaging gnoll, after ignoring the high-AC cleric and killing the low-AC wizard, has some extra movement and a bite attack for the next lowest AC character in range.

The orc gets to smack talk the characters in Common though. Nobody understands what the gnoll is on about.

 

[guachi]

@guachi answered that earlier, in an edit. He said it starts being beneficial when the stronger monster does 10% more damage than the weaker monster.

I just realized my math was wrong. The calculation is a little more complex because I wasn't comparing damage equally between the two scenarios. The "all attack" scenario was assuming all monsters did the same damage and the "Help" scenario assumed one set of monsters did more damage. Clearly, that's not an equal comparison. One half of the monsters in both scenarios does more damage it's just that in one scenario the higher damage monsters have advantage because of Help.

The formula:

Where 'X' is the damage the more damaging monster must do for his attack with advantage while being Helped to equal the damage done by having no Help action taken at all.

Where 'H' is the Hit Chance

X = H/(H-H^2)

In our example of hitting 20% of the time the equation is:
X = .2/(.2-.2^2)
X = .2/.16
X = 1.25

Here it is in table form. I think you'll notice a pattern.
"To hit" is the die roll you need to hit
"Hits" are the fraction of hits you'd have using Help vice not using Help (assuming all monsters have the same hit chance)
"Damage" is the fraction of damage the Helped creature would have to do compared to the Helping creature to make Help worthwhile
"%" is the "damage" column as a percentage.

To hit	Hits	Damage	%
20	39/40	20/19	5.3%
19	38/40	40/36	11.1%
18	37/40	60/51	17.6%
17	36/40	80/64	25.0%
16	35/40	100/75	33.3%
15	34/40	120/84	42.9%
14	33/40	140/91	53.8%
13	32/40	160/96	66.7%
12	31/40	180/99	81.8%
11	30/40	200/100	100.0%
10	29/40	220/99	122.2%
9	28/40	240/96	150.0%
8	27/40	260/91	185.7%

For some monsters, Helping is a good idea basically no matter what. Goblins Helping hobgoblins, for example. Even though a hobgoblin has a lower hit chance by 1 (which I haven't taken into account) it does so much more damage than a goblin, 12.5 vs. 5.5, that you'd have to have a REALLY high hit chance to not have the goblin do something like move, Help, Disengage. And, if necessary, have the hobgoblin Ready his action to Attack after the goblin Helped (if he needed an ally for the bonus damage).

I hope this is of value when you want to scare the pants off of your low level PCs by having goblins Help hobgoblins and massacre your players.

 

[jgsugden]

The aggressive orc rushes past the high-AC cleric to get at the low-AC wizard faster than a gnoll.

The rampaging gnoll, after ignoring the high-AC cleric and killing the low-AC wizard, has some extra movement and a bite attack for the next lowest AC character in range.

The orc gets to smack talk the characters in Common though. Nobody understands what the gnoll is on about.

A few minor mechanical differences that will have little impact overall. Some, like rampage versus aggression, are meant to reinforce/establish the racial tendencies in combat, but there are a lot of combats out there in a lot of games where the goblins, orcs, gnolls, hobgoblins and human bandits all feel pretty similar ... and other games where they feel worlds apart.