D&D 5E 5E Challenge Ratings

[KarinsDad]

I think those multipliers can overstate the encounter difficulty in some cases; perhaps edge cases. The goblins have 4 HP, so in most instances, they'll go down on a single hit. So their numbers drop quickly. There's no way the ambush with four goblins is beyond hard; and really, I'd say it's between medium and hard. They should expect to have to heal up after the fight and in rare instances, things could go very bad.

I have to disagree with this one a bit.

The four goblins are easy to hit and kill.

But, they are not easy to find.

They have a special ability to hide every single round (in the woods, attack, move, hide). If the DM is rolling just a little bit well on their stealth checks, it can turn pretty nasty pretty fast.

For many games, a surprise round will occur. Some PCs surprised (all of them in my run of the encounter), some not. That's a round with four hidden advantage attacks by the goblins. If they focus fire on the nearest PC (which makes sense), then one PC can easily go down in the surprise round and a second PC might be injured before most PCs can even act. All four of those attacks have a good chance of hitting due to advantage. In round one, the PCs have to go find the goblins. Sure, one or maybe even two Goblins might have rolled crappy for their Hide attempt, but that just means that the Goblins that rolled well might not even be attacked in round one. So again, another round of advantage attacks.

I suspect that some of the TPKs reported for that ambush were caused by DMs running the NPCs exactly how they are stated combined with a few bad rolls by the players and a few strong rolls by the DM. The problem with first level PCs is that they have few of the standard recovery actions that higher level PCs have. They do not have the hit points to absorb a lot of abuse combined with few options to turn the tide of battle like at higher levels.

 

[Prism]

II suspect that some of the TPKs reported for that ambush were caused by DMs running the NPCs exactly how they are stated combined with a few bad rolls by the players and a few strong rolls by the DM. The problem with first level PCs is that they have few of the standard recovery actions that higher level PCs have. They do not have the hit points to absorb a lot of abuse combined with few options to turn the tide of battle like at higher levels.

From the reports is also seems that some DMs were a little overly generous with bushes and thickets that the goblins could hide in. I'm not sure the encounter design assumed that either. It says two goblins move into melee and two shoot arrows. I don't think in the first fight of a new game for possibly new players you are supposed to be introducing more complex topics as fully obscured, active searching and attacking without being visible. It should be a simple skirmish

The series of encounters after that still looks too hard though based on the new guidlines

 

[KarinsDad]

From the reports is also seems that some DMs were a little overly generous with bushes and thickets that the goblins could hide in. I'm not sure the encounter design assumed that either. It says two goblins move into melee and two shoot arrows. I don't think in the first fight of a new game for possibly new players you are supposed to be introducing more complex topics as fully obscured, active searching and attacking without being visible. It should be a simple skirmish

To tell you the truth, I was guilty of that. We run 8 hour gaming sessions, so I had to read (and re-read) fairly far into the adventure to make sure that I had a general understanding of it and knew it well enough for how far the players would get within 8 hours. So, I was not as focused on just the first battle and dungeon, but rather a lot more (about half of the module because players can decide to skip some things).

During setup, I usually do not read that much of the encounter because I have already read it. I tend to just put monsters in reasonable locations and move on. It seems a bit idiotic for 2 goblins to come out and melee against 5 PCs (the default) anyway.

So to me, bushes are moderate foliage which is a lightly obscured area (which results in disadvantage on perception checks, even though I did not do that in game).

Even if a DM considers bushes and trees to be light foliage, I still think that goblins can hide behind bushes and trees.


On the other hand, we had 6 PCs and for the first encounter, I did not throw in an extra goblin.


By the way, I do have an issue with Passive Perception in this type of scenario (where they hide at first). More or less, nearly everyone sees them or nobody sees them based on monster type. I do not have a solution for it (rolling perception means that someone in the group will see them nearly every time).