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

[Quickleaf]

So far, no encounters have felt deadly in 5e--except for ones that felt unfair, like a CR+10 monster with breath damage 3x the characters' max HP, or five wraiths coming out of a wall behind you and hitting you with surprise life drain.

Interesting observation. Up to what levels of actual play have you observed consistently that no encounters in 5e feel deadly?

 

[Rhenny]

I just don't get the mentality of "longer combats are more deadly." Say you're fighting a Duergar Xarrorn from OotA. Or actually, let's say you and your buddies are 5th level, and there are four Xarrorns (CR 2). Let's now say each of the Xarrons Enlarges itself so that it can get 2d12+d6+3 damage on its attacks instead of just d12+d6+3. You can either: 1.) engage it while it is Enlarged, suffering 50% more damage for no good reason, or 2.) fall back for the next 60 seconds until they shrink down to normal size, negating their advantage (because their puny 25' movement cannot keep up with even a normal human's ability to Disengage and move 30').

Option #2 makes the fight take e.g. 13 rounds instead of 3 rounds, but it is clearly safer.

What makes a combat deadlier has more to do with the number of decision points and critical events in it than it does with the duration.

Oh...I totally agree with you. In fact, I think I'm trying to say that some of the shorter combats in 5e could go from party not taking any damage to one or more PCs going down depending on strategy and luck. There is more swinginess and uncertainty by design. That's why (SPOILER for Lost Mines of Phandelver coming right up) there are so many different outcomes from actual game sessions when players encounter Klarg, the bugbear, and some of the goblins. This is a 1st or 2nd level example, but I'm sure there are tons of examples from all levels.

I guess my thought is that the circumstances surrounding the encounter is far more important than the actual creatures encountered. Surprise, ranged attacks, use of cover, and luck, all play a bigger role even in a short combat.

 

[GX.Sigma]

Interesting observation. Up to what levels of actual play have you observed consistently that no encounters in 5e feel deadly?

Level 14-ish. We did the entire Tyranny of Dragons campaign with no character death (and no real threat of character death at any point).

We played a bit of Princes of the Apocalypse, and there were a few moments of genuine deadliness, but these were not winnable encounters.

I think I've seen one deadly encounter in all my time running 5e so far (which is mostly-weekly since the beginning of the public playtest). It was in (my hasty conversion of) Firestorm Peak. There was some room with like 20 mutant trolls that have extra arms or heads (extra claw or bite attack per troll), and their leader has some psionic mind-crush power when she bangs her heads together. That was an epic battle, it took forever to play out, and it got really close to a TPK by the end. This was before the DMG came out, but I'm sure it would have been way beyond the "deadly" threshold.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

A deadly encounter usually isn't very deadly and rather challenging. Anything easier than deadly is probably not a challenge for a fully healed group.

But in any case, the difficulty depends strongly on how smart you play the creatures as DM. If I really wanted to get the group killed with a deadly encounter, I could probably pull it off by playing smart.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Anything easier than deadly is probably not a challenge for a fully healed group.
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That's another aspect, so obvious I hadn't thought to mention it: A 5e 'deadly' encounter is meant to be one of 5-7 other encounters that day. It's deadly in the context of the party being at reduced resources when they encounter it, or knowing they must conserve resources in spite of how deadly it may be. If it's the only encounter of the day, they can pull out all the stops. Depending on party composition, that can make a huge difference.

 

[Quickleaf]

That's another aspect, so obvious I hadn't thought to mention it: A 5e 'deadly' encounter is meant to be one of 5-7 other encounters that day. It's deadly in the context of the party being at reduced resources when they encounter it, or knowing they must conserve resources in spite of how deadly it may be. If it's the only encounter of the day, they can pull out all the stops. Depending on party composition, that can make a huge difference.

I've yet to see a group beyond 4th level, but from what I've seen none of them have regularly had adventuring days with 5-7 encounters.

More like 3-4 seems to be standard, at least IME during 1st-4th levels.

 

[SkidAce]

That's another aspect, so obvious I hadn't thought to mention it: A 5e 'deadly' encounter is meant to be one of 5-7 other encounters that day. It's deadly in the context of the party being at reduced resources when they encounter it, or knowing they must conserve resources in spite of how deadly it may be. If it's the only encounter of the day, they can pull out all the stops. Depending on party composition, that can make a huge difference.

See, I might need a deadly encounter as the only encounter in the day...i.e. they challenged the BBEG.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I've yet to see a group beyond 4th level, but from what I've seen none of them have regularly had adventuring days with 5-7 encounters.

More like 3-4 seems to be standard, at least IME during 1st-4th levels.

That could very easily make each individual encounter play easier than advertised, especially if the party has a lot of long-rest-recharge resources.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

That's another aspect, so obvious I hadn't thought to mention it: A 5e 'deadly' encounter is meant to be one of 5-7 other encounters that day. It's deadly in the context of the party being at reduced resources when they encounter it, or knowing they must conserve resources in spite of how deadly it may be. If it's the only encounter of the day, they can pull out all the stops. Depending on party composition, that can make a huge difference.

That's not right. The game is calibrated around a certain XP budget, not a certain number of encounters. If you have a Deadly encounter, the only way to get 5 to 7 other encounters that day will be to make them all Medium/Easy encounters... which isn't all that different from having just the single Deadly encounter in terms of resource usage, IME. Easy threats[1] get killed with cantrips, inflicting little or no damage on the PCs in the process.

The DMG does not want you having 5-7 Deadly encounters in a day. As a DM, I wouldn't mind that if I could find a good reason for that much conflict to all be happening in a single day (e.g. several skirmishes while you're defending a city against an enemy army) but contrary to Tony's claim, the DMG doesn't suggest it as a good idea.

[1] Unless it is an Easy threat deliberately designed to be hard because the DM is having fun. E.g. 14 Magma Mephits.

 

[MinotaurWarrior]

A revenant with a desire to avenge himself on one of my four level 5 PCs brought that PC to 0hp and nearly did the same to another before dying. That was an easy encounter. It had surprise on the party.

One day later, after easily dispatching a group of Jackalwares, two orc chieftains and five other orcs were able to bring half of the party down to 0hp.

I find that focus-fire is usually enough to make the party feel like they're at risk, but not enough to actually kill PCs. I'm actually having a hard time imagining how an encounter could end in PC death, after looking over those rules again.