D&D 5E barbarian damage reduction and combat healing economy

[KarinsDad]

And Karinsdad called the xp budget of my fight against gnolls insane.

I did not say that. I said that I questioned how it was managed without some form of "trick".

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I did not say that. I said that I questioned how it was managed without some form of "trick".

To be clear, in this case there was definitely one or more tricks involved:

1.) PCs had allies and a spelljamming ship with three usable heavy weapons on it (two ballistas, one catapult).
2.) Only 1d4 umber hulks entered the battlespace per turn (emerging from below decks). So there was definite potential for the PCs to win by offensive measures (like fighting an avalanche with a fire hose).
3.) They were in a wild magic zone which doubled the radius of arcane magic spells.
4.) The slaves manning the neogi ballistas were reluctant combatants and needed constant oversight from the neogis to keep firing. Once the neogis ran, slaves defected to the PCs' side.
5.) PCs don't have to check morale, but monsters do. Generally, once 30% or so casualties have been inflicted on the monsters, they may break and retreat, especially if they haven't brought down any PCs yet. Can regroup afterwards but that gives PCs a fresh chance to shower them with arrows. Also, by the time they regrouped the PCs had stolen all the neogi ballistas.

Obviously if I'd just thrown all the PCs in a room with the umber hulks, they would have just died instantly. But I wanted to play it out realistically, where the neogis think they're the big bad boys in the room and they gradually find out that they're getting schooled. Now the PCs have a rep, and the next time these neogis tangle with them they'll be much more methodical about it.

 

[KarinsDad]

To be clear, in this case there was definitely one or more tricks involved:

1.) PCs had allies and a spelljamming ship with three usable heavy weapons on it (two ballistas, one catapult).
2.) Only 1d4 umber hulks entered the battlespace per turn (emerging from below decks). So there was definite potential for the PCs to win by offensive measures (like fighting an avalanche with a fire hose).
3.) They were in a wild magic zone which doubled the radius of arcane magic spells.
4.) The slaves manning the neogi ballistas were reluctant combatants and needed constant oversight from the neogis to keep firing. Once the neogis ran, slaves defected to the PCs' side.
5.) PCs don't have to check morale, but monsters do. Generally, once 30% or so casualties have been inflicted on the monsters, they may break and retreat, especially if they haven't brought down any PCs yet. Can regroup afterwards but that gives PCs a fresh chance to shower them with arrows. Also, by the time they regrouped the PCs had stolen all the neogi ballistas.

Obviously if I'd just thrown all the PCs in a room with the umber hulks, they would have just died instantly. But I wanted to play it out realistically, where the neogis think they're the big bad boys in the room and they gradually find out that they're getting schooled. Now the PCs have a rep, and the next time these neogis tangle with them they'll be much more methodical about it.

The thing about these "tougher than normal encounters" type of encounters are that hey are nothing of the sort.

If the 20 bad guys can only get 4 attacks per round against the PCs, then it's not really a 100,000 XP encounter. It's only a 100,000 XP encounter if the 20 bad guys can get 20 attacks per round against the PCs starting in round one.

The concept that "my DM throws super tough encounter at me" when in fact, that's not the case is a bit misleading.

Most DMs have the occasional "wave of monsters" come at the PCs, but XP should not necessarily equal the total number of monsters. It should be a fraction of that because by definition, only a fraction of the monsters were in on the fight at the very start. That's not to say that there isn't an action economy tipping point where XP should increase (WotC tried to do that, but failed in their implementation IMO), but a wave scenario shouldn't necessarily be full XP.


Now, a given player might say "the reason we were able to win is because we created a chokepoint". My response is, "no, the DM arranged the terrain so that you could have a chokepoint and that terrain feature modifies the XP of the encounter, just like other terrain features can". For example, a flying monster encounter where there is a lot of difficult terrain for the PCs but not for the monsters ups the XP of the encounter in my game. If the players actually create their own chokepoint (e.g. wall spells), then it's a legitimately full XP encounter. The PC's resources are the reason for the win (and the chokepoint), not the DM's terrain.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The thing about these "tougher than normal encounters" type of encounters are that hey are nothing of the sort.

If the 20 bad guys can only get 4 attacks per round against the PCs, then it's not really a 100,000 XP encounter. It's only a 100,000 XP encounter if the 20 bad guys can get 20 attacks per round against the PCs starting in round one.

The concept that "my DM throws super tough encounter at me" when in fact, that's not the case is a bit misleading.

Most DMs have the occasional "wave of monsters" come at the PCs, but XP should not necessarily equal the total number of monsters. It should be a fraction of that because by definition, only a fraction of the monsters were in on the fight at the very start. That's not to say that there isn't an action economy tipping point where XP should increase (WotC tried to do that, but failed in their implementation IMO), but a wave scenario shouldn't necessarily be full XP.

Now, a given player might say "the reason we were able to win is because we created a chokepoint". My response is, "no, the DM arranged the terrain so that you could have a chokepoint and that terrain feature modifies the XP of the encounter, just like other terrain features can". For example, a flying monster encounter where there is a lot of difficult terrain for the PCs but not for the monsters ups the XP of the encounter in my game. If the players actually create their own chokepoint (e.g. wall spells), then it's a legitimately full XP encounter. The PC's resources are the reason for the win (and the chokepoint), not the DM's terrain.

Nitpick: terrain features do not modify the XP of an encounter. They merely modify the difficulty per Basic rules, last I checked.

If I took your suggestion, then I'd have to recalculate the encounter difficulty on a round-by-round basis as more umber hulks appear, as some of them are driven off and retreat, as players cast spells to create chokepoints... "Oh, you just cast Evard's Black Tentacles. This encounter is now a Medium encounter, unless this next umber hulk makes his saving throw thanks to Dodge and makes it all the way across the tentacle zone... oh, he did. Now the encounter is Hard because you've got an umber hulk in your back zone--but wait, Jack just blew him off the ship with a Repelling Blast and it's now back to Medium." Feh. The only time I compute encounter-adjusted XP is when I write forum posts on Enworld. At the table there's only one kind of XP: kill XP, and each umber hulk is worth 1800 no matter whether he's alone in a pit or marching in lockstep with 25 of his buddies under the command of a tactical genius wizard who keeps hitting your skeleton archers with Fireballs and then darting back behind full cover.

I don't think this thread is for bragging about the "super tough encounters my DM throws at me." I merely refuted ChocolateGravy's contention that you cannot have deadly fights if you use random initiative. Since even just 3 umber hulks would exceed the Deadly threshold, and we had something like 8 of them out at once by the fourth round of combat in addition to the neogi wizard, I think it's pretty safe to say that the "deadly" criterion was satisfied. Not to mention the fact that we did have an (NPC) death, the risk of which is the other definition of Deadly in the DMG rules.

 

[KarinsDad]

Nitpick: terrain features do not modify the XP of an encounter. They merely modify the difficulty per Basic rules, last I checked.

Correct. That is why I stated that WotC got this wrong.

I played a game of Grand Theft Auto where I had the tank in an aircraft hanger and shot everything that came into view. The tank can kill a hundred or so cop cars in that game, but I could kill thousands just based on terrain.

If the PCs can shoot the monsters like fish in a barrel, the XP should be modified.

If I took your suggestion, then I'd have to recalculate the encounter difficulty on a round-by-round basis as more umber hulks appear, as some of them are driven off and retreat, as players cast spells to create chokepoints... "Oh, you just cast Evard's Black Tentacles. This encounter is now a Medium encounter, unless this next umber hulk makes his saving throw thanks to Dodge and makes it all the way across the tentacle zone... oh, he did. Now the encounter is Hard because you've got an umber hulk in your back zone--but wait, Jack just blew him off the ship with a Repelling Blast and it's now back to Medium." Feh. The only time I compute encounter-adjusted XP is when I write forum posts on Enworld. At the table there's only one kind of XP: kill XP, and each umber hulk is worth 1800 no matter whether he's alone in a pit or marching in lockstep with 25 of his buddies under the command of a tactical genius wizard who keeps hitting your skeleton archers with Fireballs and then darting back behind full cover.

Naw. You just have to have a rough rule of thumb and modify the XP accordingly. You do need detailed rules, just simple ones.

Allowing the PCs to shoot down on 50 umber hulks in a deep pit where they cannot get away and cannot attack back is not worth 90,000 XP. It's worth about 5 XP.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

So you're claiming that kill XP should equal modified XP for encounters? No, thanks. I tried that once, early on. Then I decided it was way too much XP, and it also didn't match with the physical basis for XP that I've described to my players (PCs are like life-force vampires, sucking energy out of things they kill), and it was also too hard to adjudicate, and it punished the players for being clever... after that initial foray I've just handed out regular XP. It's usually about 1/3 to 1/4 what modified XP would be but the players are still happy.

Umber hulks in a deep pit will just dig their way out and eat you.

 

[Blue]

I believe you may have overlooked something in assumption. Average damage taken per attack is (Chance to hit) * (Average damage inflicted)*. Barbarians take half damage when raging, but also often have about twice the chance to be hit thanks to lower AC plus reckless attack. So the average damage stays the same. It varies some with very easy or very hard to hit due to the math behind advantage but it's close enough.

I'll give the simplest possible example. Say we have a barbarian that a foe needs an 11 or better (50% chance) to hit. The fighter with heavy armor and shield (or perhaps heavy armor and Defense style) and has an AC 3 better so the foe has a 35% chance to hit. Foe has an average damage of 10 HPs.

Attacking the fighter, it's 35% * 10 = 3.5 HP of expected damage.
Attacking the barbarian, it's a 75% chance to hit due to advantage, so it's 75% * 10 / 2 = 3.25 HP of expected damage.

That's pretty close. Now, this example picked the 50% chance to hit because it made advantage easy. Easier to hit and the barbarian gets a bit of a bonus, harder to hit and the fighter gets the bonus, because of the math behind advantage.

If the chance to be hit increases the expected damage to offset the damage reduction from raging, it's a wash and doesn't need a change.


* This is a simplification that ignores crits. It's really (chance to hit - chance to crit) * (average damage) + (chance to crit) * (average crit damage).

 

[Fanaelialae]

I believe you may have overlooked something in assumption. Average damage taken per attack is (Chance to hit) * (Average damage inflicted)*. Barbarians take half damage when raging, but also often have about twice the chance to be hit thanks to lower AC plus reckless attack. So the average damage stays the same. It varies some with very easy or very hard to hit due to the math behind advantage but it's close enough.

I'll give the simplest possible example. Say we have a barbarian that a foe needs an 11 or better (50% chance) to hit. The fighter with heavy armor and shield (or perhaps heavy armor and Defense style) and has an AC 3 better so the foe has a 35% chance to hit. Foe has an average damage of 10 HPs.

Attacking the fighter, it's 35% * 10 = 3.5 HP of expected damage.
Attacking the barbarian, it's a 75% chance to hit due to advantage, so it's 75% * 10 / 2 = 3.25 HP of expected damage.

That's pretty close. Now, this example picked the 50% chance to hit because it made advantage easy. Easier to hit and the barbarian gets a bit of a bonus, harder to hit and the fighter gets the bonus, because of the math behind advantage.

If the chance to be hit increases the expected damage to offset the damage reduction from raging, it's a wash and doesn't need a change.


* This is a simplification that ignores crits. It's really (chance to hit - chance to crit) * (average damage) + (chance to crit) * (average crit damage).

Of course, that analysis assumes that the barbarian will always use reckless. IME, a smart barbarian player is selective about when to use it. When not using reckless, the barbarian is quite significantly tougher than any other class.

Even when using reckless, the way that barbarians soak attacks is quite different from other warriors. Most warriors with great ACs are susceptible to spike damage. In other words, although they will be missed by the majority of attacks, a lucky round on the part of the DM can easily put them down. Barbarians on the other hand, take damage more frequently, but are less susceptible to a lucky round because they take less damage per hit. In other words, three crits in a row is less of a threat to a barbarian than other warrior types. Which is a good thing, because if they use reckless they'll eat double the crits that other warriors do, on average.

It's also important not to overlook the disadvantages of the barbarian's defense. Because they rely on DR for much of their toughness, damage types that ignore their DR can take down a barbarian faster than other warriors. Additionally, non-damaging hit effects will affect them more often than a high AC defense.

I haven't seen any issues with the barbarian so far. He can be notably tougher than the other warrior types, but in order to do so he has to give up significant offense (unless he happens to be getting advantage from another source than reckless). If he's maximizing his offense, then he's not much tougher than another warrior, just differently tough.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

In other words, although they will be missed by the majority of attacks, a lucky round on the part of the DM can easily put them down. Barbarians on the other hand, take damage more frequently, but are less susceptible to a lucky round because they take less damage per hit.

The major problem with the (optional) AD&D presentation of critical hits was that, for a character who can only be hit on a 20, every single hit that got through was a critical hit. They fixed this in 3E, with the confirmation roll, but somehow forgot about the original problem when they got around to designing 5E.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The major problem with the (optional) AD&D presentation of critical hits was that, for a character who can only be hit on a 20, every single hit that got through was a critical hit. They fixed this in 3E, with the confirmation roll, but somehow forgot about the original problem when they got around to designing 5E.

Bounded Accuracy presumably renders it unlikely you'd have only-hit-on-20 attacks. IIRC, 5e crits don't happen on a 20 when you only hit on a natural 20, but I could be thinking of one of the playtest packets...