Satyrn
First Post
[MENTION=6785802]guachi[/MENTION] answered that earlier, in an edit. He said it starts being beneficial when the stronger monster does 10% more damage than the weaker monster.
High AC and encounters
[MENTION=6785802]guachi[/MENTION] answered that earlier, in an edit. He said it starts being beneficial when the stronger monster does 10% more damage than the weaker monster.
jgsugden
Legend
Nice issue spotting.
Oofta
Legend
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.
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.
For attackers of different levels you have something similar, just two sets of calculations if everyone attacks or one calculation with advantage if one attacks and the other helps.
iserith
Magic Wordsmith
There's no issue though, hence the "LOL." It's reasonable that a zombie might trip and nearly knock someone over. Strategy and believable fiction going hand-in-hand here, as I think it should.
iserith
Magic Wordsmith
Ah, thanks. I must have missed that.
jgsugden
Legend
Good luck on your future endeavors.
The Crimson Binome
Hero
Setting aside the concept of DM meta-gaming and whether or not the DM should contrive coincidences in the name of keeping things exciting (because that's been discussed to death recently), there's still the question of whether tailoring encounters to the party would produce encounter difficulties that are more satisfying to the players.
From my perspective, tailoring encounters to the party - even with the best of intentions - completely negates any sense of achievement involved. As an extremely simple example, if the DM judged that the most exciting/challenging number of orcs for us to fight was seventeen, then how well we deal with that encounter (whether we succeed or fail, or succeed by enough of a margin to continue with a particular course of action rather than altering the plan to allow for rest) is primarily determined by the DM's skill in judging the capabilities of the players. If the fight goes easier than expected, then it's not because the players were exceptionally skilled or lucky, so much as that the DM under-estimated them. If the party loses, or is forced to expend more resources than their budget allowed, then it's because the DM over-estimated their capabilities.
It's the same sense of futility that I get when playing Overwatch, when one team completely stomps the other team. I don't feel good for winning, or bad for losing. I just feel like my time was wasted, since the outcome was decided by the match-making algorithm.
(I do agree that published adventures err on the easy side, and that a few difficult encounters are often preferable to numerous small ones. You don't need to look at the PCs in order to make the world a harder place, though; you can just replace goblins with hobgoblins, or make orcs hang out in larger groups, and have that be the way that the world is. It's like the difference between a video game that lets you choose between Easy/Medium/Hard difficulties so that you can challenge yourself, and one with dynamic difficulty where your skill is ultimately irrelevant.)
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TheSword
Legend
It’s a good philosophy to have. By being consistent with the way you approach the campaign, players will be able to make logical choices. I think that’s the great advantage of your style of design, the internal consistency.
I’ve always thought it would be cool to have a ‘hard setting’ for 5e where you get the benefit of a short rest in place of a long rest and you can only long rest in a safe comfortable space. Goblins swarm packs of hundreds, normal humanoid monsters have class levels and abilities, advanced tactics and weaponry. Etc. i find killer dungeons like Rappan athuk and Tomb of Horros a bit overblown to be honest. I prefer my difficulty to be more consistent rather than either save or suck (Tomb of Horrors) or wildly variable CRs (Rappan Athuk). A world where everything is dangerous... kind of how Dark Sun is intended to be, but never really plays out because of the CR system in previous editions.
Jay Verkuilen
Grand Master of Artificial Flowers
Just ignore him and let him "win". Let's break it down:
Brother Turtell of Shellneck has a very high AC and some damage reduction off the top from Heavy Armor Master. Then he takes the Dodge action and casts one of his three precious spells as Shield of Faith to make his AC even higher. He's contributing essentially no threat and thus draws no aggro. Ignore him and beat on characters that are actually being effective. Monsters can figure out who's hurting them, unless they're mindless.
Circumstances might make this strategy useful, for instance if he's positioning himself in a choke point and serving as a walking wall, and at higher levels it can be effective when buff spells or Spirit Guardians shows up. But if this is a general pattern, I wouldn't feel obligated to indulge the player in poor choices.
Brother Turtell of Shellneck has a very high AC and some damage reduction off the top from Heavy Armor Master. Then he takes the Dodge action and casts one of his three precious spells as Shield of Faith to make his AC even higher. He's contributing essentially no threat and thus draws no aggro. Ignore him and beat on characters that are actually being effective. Monsters can figure out who's hurting them, unless they're mindless.
Circumstances might make this strategy useful, for instance if he's positioning himself in a choke point and serving as a walking wall, and at higher levels it can be effective when buff spells or Spirit Guardians shows up. But if this is a general pattern, I wouldn't feel obligated to indulge the player in poor choices.
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Jay Verkuilen
Grand Master of Artificial Flowers
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.
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