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

[Quickleaf]

Yeah, you'll want to go well beyond the Deadly threshold in the DMG for one encounter if that encounter is meant to be your only encounter. 4x-5x would fit with the idea of doing 4 to 5 deadly encounters in a row, which would be more in line with upping the value to be worth 4 or 5 encounters for a whole day.

Well, according to Kobold Fight Club, my 3 carrion crawler anecdote was worth 2,025 adjusted XP, versus a DMG-calculated Deadly lower end threshold of 1,200 XP.

By the way, looking at the amount of monsters (in terms of sheer XP) that you need to throw at the PCs to get a Deadly fight and (at least at level 2) it's like practically leveling up the party. Does this persist throughout higher levels too? Or is it exclusive to low levels (e.g. 1-3 or 4)?

 

[I'm A Banana]

Well, according to Kobold Fight Club, my 3 carrion crawler anecdote was worth 2,025 adjusted XP, versus a DMG-calculated Deadly lower end threshold of 1,200 XP.

By the way, looking at the amount of monsters (in terms of sheer XP) that you need to throw at the PCs to get a Deadly fight and (at least at level 2) it's like practically leveling up the party. Does this persist throughout higher levels too? Or is it exclusive to low levels (e.g. 1-3 or 4)?

D&D for levels 1-4 is basically "a day or two per level." Starting at 5, it starts opening up and slowing down significantly.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Well, according to Kobold Fight Club, my 3 carrion crawler anecdote was worth 2,025 adjusted XP, versus a DMG-calculated Deadly lower end threshold of 1,200 XP.

By the way, looking at the amount of monsters (in terms of sheer XP) that you need to throw at the PCs to get a Deadly fight and (at least at level 2) it's like practically leveling up the party. Does this persist throughout higher levels too? Or is it exclusive to low levels (e.g. 1-3 or 4)?

There's a player at my table with two 14th level PCs right now (other players have rotated more PCs in and out so are lower level but he sticks mainly with two) and I've seen the pattern hold true at all levels up to this point. I've seen it hold in a party of four 11th-level PCs. I have not seen whether it continues to hold at 17th level when you're dealing with multiple adult red dragons (but then, I don't have vanilla red dragons in my game).

The combination of my willingness to expose my players to uber-Deadly encounters, and my policy of using kill XP instead of milestones, is a major factor in the accelerated levelling which makes it both possible and fun to have heterogenous party levels (e.g. a level 2 PC in a level 10 fight won't stay level 2 for long; he'll soon have enough XP to be level 6 although house rule says you don't gain more than one level per play session so it takes a while for his level to catch up with his XP total).

But there are some sessions where all the combat XP my players get to split is 1750 XP from one hobgoblin and a hobgoblin captain, or even less. Combat isn't a core element of my game.

 

[Tony Vargas]

So... from your experience with 5e what does it take to have an ACTUALLY DEADLY fight?

Running a 1st level game did the trick for me on a number of occasions.

Repeated TPKs does count as 'deadly,' yes?

I've told this story about HotDQ a few times, but what the heck: So I had run the playtest at Encounters as much as I could, and was very much still in the playtest mind-set when 5e Encounters started. So I ran the first few sessions of HotDQ 'straight.' Not pretty. I tried it again at a convention - not so much because I wanted to, but because the organizers settled on that scenario for the time slot - 3 sessions, 2 TPKs.

Anyway, I snapped out of it and started running the game the way I'd done back in the day, very behind-the-screen, adjusted-on-the-fly, DM-directed ("DM force" they call it sometimes) and it was awesome.
(I'll admit, running in that mode is starting to get a little old, but I'm taking a break until a project at work is done, so hopefully I'll be back to it with enthusiasm when that's over.)

That was first level, though. Sometime after that - 2nd, it appears, in your case - it reverses and the game becomes 'too easy.' If you play it 'straight,' that is. Run it to be fun, rules & dice notwithstanding, and it will be.

 

[Chaosmancer]

One thing I know the CR system is supposed to account for, that I can't tell if it does is the various abilities of the monsters. A CR X "beatstick" (no specials, just damage and hp) is less challenging than a CR X caster. Heck, even a CR X-2 caster I'd think.

I haven't been keeping close track but a few things I noticed from my last campaign and a convention game.

-Vampires with their ability to regen and deal damage at the same time are much harder to beat than their CR suggests
-Groups of Flameskulls are a massive force multiplier, because each one gets 3 fireballs per day, and even high level groups get dusted by 3-5 of them .
-A monster without the ability to disengage quickly is essentially dead if it can't drop a pc. Alternatively, Goblins with their stealth and bonus actions are very annoying even at higher levels if the terrain favors their guerilla warfare style. It is all about who pins who into getting hit.
-Intelligent enemies who prepare for the PC's tactics and abilities are harder than stupid enemies who don't, but weaker if they don't actually prepare anything
-Hordes are great if they don't use fireballs for whatever reason, because it spreads out the damage from classes like the fighter or paladin.
-Frakking assassins


The last one comes from a player in that campaign, he'd solo encounters. I think by the end he was a lv 6 assassin rogue lv 2 ranger (he wanted longbows). That first critical sneak attack wrecked encounters, to the point where I remember once or twice putting a big massive enemy into the fight, simply to absorb that initial attack. Solo enemies never worked.

Not sure how much it helps, but I built a deadly encounter with a vampire lord and flameskulls for a con. I wrecked the pcs so hard I still feel bad about it to this day. It was 6 lv 10 pcs in the game, though at least one left the dungeon before the fight began.

 

[Quickleaf]

Running a 1st level game did the trick for me on a number of occasions.

Repeated TPKs does count as 'deadly,' yes?

I've told this story about HotDQ a few times, but what the heck: So I had run the playtest at Encounters as much as I could, and was very much still in the playtest mind-set when 5e Encounters started. So I ran the first few sessions of HotDQ 'straight.' Not pretty. I tried it again at a convention - not so much because I wanted to, but because the organizers settled on that scenario for the time slot - 3 sessions, 2 TPKs.

Anyway, I snapped out of it and started running the game the way I'd done back in the day, very behind-the-screen, adjusted-on-the-fly, DM-directed ("DM force" they call it sometimes) and it was awesome.
(I'll admit, running in that mode is starting to get a little old, but I'm taking a break until a project at work is done, so hopefully I'll be back to it with enthusiasm when that's over.)

That was first level, though. Sometime after that - 2nd, it appears, in your case - it reverses and the game becomes 'too easy.' If you play it 'straight,' that is. Run it to be fun, rules & dice notwithstanding, and it will be.

I think I'd seen you share this particular experience before, but thanks for sharing it again!

I have no trouble making the game fun for my players. And I get a lot of enjoyment from seeing what they come up with. However, like I said, sometimes their actions and/or narrative/foreshadowing call for a DEADLY fight.

Was it fun? Yes, always, that's why we play.

But could it have been more fun and lived up to what they (and I) perceived was a life-threatening encounter? Definitely, yes.

This is not an exercise in pedantry or numbers crunching for some theoretical "mental masturbation". Nor is it an obsession with needing to have every encounter conform to some GM-imposed difficulty level. It's about the players being able to say "F it, we're going into that umber hulk (or whatever) lair" knowing full well that it's going to be deadly...and it actually BEING DEADLY. Or maybe they trick their enemies into that umber hulk lair! It's about a player choosing to mouth off to, and picking a fight with, a drow priestess who has them surrounded and delivering on the implied DEADLY threat. It's about foreshadowing a dangerous villain and having that encounter actually be DANGEROUS.

I really want to know what metric I can use to predict and deliver challenges of a certain difficulty to my group going forward. So far my experience with the DMG metric is that it produces less challenging fights than advertised, though I'm not sure yet how much less difficult.

I don't know what's unreasonable or hard to grasp about that.

 

[Quickleaf]

Anyhow, for anyone who's interested in such things, I'm tracking predicted vs. actual encounter difficulty here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AAIBDemfxoX8DTxAg2q7AzkZVZxwwONvhsxQ2eHTxXY/edit?usp=sharing

If you want to, you can use this spread sheet to track your group as well.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Anyhow, for anyone who's interested in such things, I'm tracking predicted vs. actual encounter difficulty here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AAIBDemfxoX8DTxAg2q7AzkZVZxwwONvhsxQ2eHTxXY/edit?usp=sharing

If you want to, you can use this spread sheet to track your group as well.

How do you expect this to be used? Is "actual difficulty in play" the DM's retroactive expectation of the probabilities, or is it outcome? E.g. if I think that 24 Umber Hulks (staged in groups of 1d4 per round) and a neogi wizard is a probable TPK (75% confidence), but all the PCs end up surviving[1] due to tactics, consumable items, use of terrain, and a minor rules error, does that mean it wasn't really Deadly because no one died? Or is it still Deadly because even in retrospect I think there was a high chance of PC death and they got lucky with dice and the rules error[2]?

[1] Surviving = the neogi were the ones whose morale broke, and they disengaged and ran away rather than fight to the death. About 50% of the umber hulks went down over the course of the engagement, and many others were low on health, so probably around 10-20% of them died.

[2] Rule error: a player told me that Evard's Black Tentacles had the same area as a Fireball and I believe him instead of checking. It's actually 20' on a side, about the same size as Confusion, Web, or Shatter. This had a largish impact on the battle. Honest mistake on his part and mine, retconned subsequently with karma points and a wild magic handwave.

Also, I don't seem to have edit permissions to the doc.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] I changed the access setting to "Public on the web - Anyone on the Internet can find and view", which I thought would give everyone access to edit. But perhaps Google Docs requires email added privileges (which seems backward to me).

This link should go to an editable version (provided you're logged into GoogleDocs): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AAIBDemfxoX8DTxAg2q7AzkZVZxwwONvhsxQ2eHTxXY/edit?usp=sharing

 

[Quickleaf]

How do you expect this to be used?

Simple answer: I expect this to be used as a tool to help inform my encounter creation (whether prepped or impromptu) as a 5e DM moreso than the DMG encounter difficulty guidelines. Potentially it could be helpful for others too, hence why I'm sharing.

Is "actual difficulty in play" the DM's retroactive expectation of the probabilities, or is it outcome? E.g. if I think that 24 Umber Hulks (staged in groups of 1d4 per round) and a neogi wizard is a probable TPK (75% confidence), but all the PCs end up surviving[1] due to tactics, consumable items, use of terrain, and a minor rules error, does that mean it wasn't really Deadly because no one died? Or is it still Deadly because even in retrospect I think there was a high chance of PC death and they got lucky with dice and the rules error[2]?

I'd say it's more a retrospective of how everything panned out. Often this is from the DM's perspective, but just as often it can come from talking with your players about it after the game.

"ACTUAL" encounter difficulty is purely based on perception. It trusts DMs and players to use their good judgment, camaraderie, and communication skills to arrive at an accurate assessment of how a given fight went.

And, for the record, there are going to be some fights which so entirely break the mold that they're not useful for data collection purposes. And that's totally cool. Run those weird wild organic fights. For my part, I'll be restricting recording more "standard fights" that I feel confident in my/our difficulty assessment of.