D&D 5E Combat Encounter Difficulty

[CapnZapp]

I have dismissed the 5E encounter guidelines but must admit I have done so more based on a gut feeling than based on any hard data.

Last session, however, my players fought Mistress Ilvara & Co, and I took the time to retroactively calculate the encounter difficulty.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOR OUT OF THE ABYSS

THE PARTY
There are five players; their PCs are level 5: one eldritch knight fighter and one battlemaster fighter*, one Tempest Cleric, one Fiend Chain Warlock, and one Shadow Monk.

They have travelled with a fairly large number of NPCs, although this number is slowly shrinking. At this moment, three players control one NPC each: one battlemaster fighter, one assassin/thief rogue, and one champion fighter. These NPCs are statted as full PCs, since we quickly realized NPCs with MM NPC stats were so very weak as to not contribute meaningfully. (If I hadn't allowed them to give their NPCs full PC class levels, they would probably have let them go; considering them not worth the effort to track). These "cohorts" are one level lower - level 4 in this case.

*) both these players started out wanting to generate "ranger" characters: one because he wanted to play a two-weapon wielding character, the other because he wanted to play an outdoorsy ranged combatant. Both concluded the ranger class could not compete with fighter class: they are prepared to sacrifice some small amount of damage output for a character concept, but they both concluded fighters make better ranged fighters and that the melee ranger's abilities doesn't work well together.

Their choices have reinforced my belief the Ranger class needs tweaking to work in fairly minmaxing environments. This isn't even starting on the beastmaster; I'm talking about fairly obvious things how the Ranger's main damage enhancer (Hunter's Mark) goes away as soon as you take damage; which is your job as a melee combatant. Regardless of whether you call this broken or merely non-optimal, we can agree there's something wonky there which the fighter class simply does not have to deal with.

THE OPPOSITION
4 x2 Drow CR 1/2
2 Elite Warriors CR 5
1 Priestess of Lolth CR 8
1 Priest CR 2
1 summoned Yochlol CR 10

THE SCENARIO
Leaving Blingdenstone in the search for their best lead sofar in their quest to reach the surface (a forest gnome named Joe Three-Cake), they stumble upon a watchpost consisting of 4 Drow and 2 Giant Spiders.

A Fireball more or less ends that encounter right away, but provides the main camp of Drow advance warning. Mistress Ilvara throws up her Insect Plague as soon as she sees the first surfacer, blocking the entrance.

All PCs eventually run through the Plague (only taking damage once each), managing to wreck her Concentration only after everybody's already through. They focus on Ilvara, who barely manages to summon her Yochlol before she goes down.

The two elite warriors briefly manage to create some consternation, since nobody focus on them; downing the champion lvl 4 NPC. The Yochlol manages to take the Monk out of the fight by a solid hit (he's not down, but so low on hp he withdraws from close combat and so are effectivly out of the fight).

Once Ilvara is down, the fight ends fairly quickly. One elite warrior flees (for story reasons) and when everybody can whale on the demon, she goes down in less than two rounds.

The only thing that remains is to resuscitate the forest gnome that happened to get blasted by the initial Fireball (yes, I know, as a "monster" he should have died at 0 hp, but I was soft and applied the full PC dying save rules on him), dispatch the priest Asha that surrendered, and hunt down the fleeing Drow (a done deal when you have a character whose familiar has a flying speed, can be invisible and sees through magical darkness to guide two strong mainline fighters with 50" Speed).

Now for the encounter calculation... and it aint pretty...

 

[CapnZapp]

The first encounter was vs 4 Drow and 2 Giant Spiders. Before checking the math I would consider such an encounter to be "trivial", although the party "cheated" by expending a level 3 spell slot (Fireball).

But there's 600 XP there, or 120 XP per character. (The NPCs didn't have time to play a part). By the DMG, that's half of "easy", which makes sense. Okay so far.

The second, main, encounter was vs 4 Drow, 2 Elites, 1 Priestess, 1 Priest, 1 Yochlol. I would characterize the fight as very hard, bordering on deadly. I would say "DMG Deadly" only there was no real risk of the party actually losing, so I agree to its description to a degree.

There's 14050 XP in that fight. This time, all eight PCs and NPCs took full part, so that's 1756 XP a pop. Sure enough, the threshold for Deadly is 1100 XP.

So far, so good - but wait.

We're supposed to increase the "XP multiplier" for the number of monsters - there were five significant monsters in the main encounter. Also we're supposed to decrease the multiplier for a large party - there were eight heroes in the encounter. So we up the multiplier to x2 for monsters, and lower it back again to x1.5 for heroes.

But now comes the real WHAAAA... moment.

These numbers are not per character, but for the whole party!

So, really, that initial encounter I put there as a challenge to take out silently (they failed miserably) is not double-easy at all. It's medium. WTF?

And the main encounter is supposed to be 200 + (13850 x 1.5) = 20975 XP, which is "off the chart deadly".

Actually it's not off the chart - it's just considered deadly for eight level 20 heroes, nearly double-deadly in fact...



This is so far removed from our experience I lack words.

Sure, you can play extreme hardball with your NPCs. But I somehow doubt that WotC is simultaneously assuming completely green players and very weak character builds with evil Dungeon Masters from Hell...!

So from now on when I casually say the CR system is fouled up beyond all recognition I now know what I'm talking about.

That's all. Have a good day.

 

[BoldItalic]

Not sure I agree with your calculations for the first encounter.

The "Easy" threshold for 5 @ 5th-Level + 3 @ 4th-Level is 5x250 + 3x125 = 1625

4 Drow + 2 Giant Spiders = 4x100 + 2x200 = 800 but there are six monsters so x2 making 1600.

1600 is pretty close to 1625 but it's slightly below, so it's slightly easier than "Easy" but not by much.

It doesn't matter if not all the characters actually do anything during the encounter - it's enough that they are there and constitute a potential problem for the monsters.

 

[Bulak]

These numbers are not per character, but for the whole party!

So, really, that initial encounter I put there as a challenge to take out silently (they failed miserably) is not double-easy at all. It's medium. WTF?

And the main encounter is supposed to be 200 + (13850 x 1.5) = 20975 XP, which is "off the chart deadly".

The XP threshold is for all characters added together. So if your XP total is correct: 20975 / 8 = ~2622XP per character. Which is still very high - but not nearly that rediculous.

However, I would say a summoned monster is part of the CR of whatever summoned it if it got summoned during the encounter. Even this CR 8 creature capable of summoning a CR 10 one seems to make sense this way at first glance: there's only a 30% chance of success, and the demon disappears when the priestess dies. Whether or not you use the variant demon summoning rules also makes a difference. Because if you do, the yochlol can't use its ability to summon another yochlol, which it doesn't even have if you don't use that rule.
If my assumption is correct, the total XP per character would then add up to 1528. Which is still pretty high for a level 5 party, and still a 'deadly' encounter for a level 6 party. What happened fits with the 'deadly' description in the DMG, though.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I don't think it's nearly as far off as you think.
Please give a more straightforward example without anything getting summoned.

 

[BoldItalic]

For the second encounter, I wouldn't have included the summon in the calculations. The potential for summoning is included in the CR of the summoner, and I don't think it's right to count it twice.

That gives us the priestess (3900), the priest (450), two elites (2x1800) and four drow (4x100) for a total of 8350. I would discount the drow for the purposes of calculating the multiplier because they are well below the average CR for the encounter so there are effectively 4 monsters. That still gives the x2 reduced to x1.5 that you used, so I agree with you there. I'm looking at an adjusted figure of 8350x1.5 = 12525

The "Deadly" threshold for 5@L5 + 3@L4 is 7000, so I agree that we are well above that, but not by as much as you calculated. It's not even "double-deadly". But it is Deadly and your players played well to defeat it. That's good

It would still have been deadly if the party had all been one level higher (12525 > 10300).

If the party had been two levels higher, level 7/6, the Deadly threshold would have been 5x1700 + 3x1400 = 12700 and the encounter would have just dropped below that to become merely "Hard".

It doesn't seem so outrageous to me.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Sometimes the PCs just get lucky, or play smart, or the DM rolls poorly. In 4e, I had the final battle for the campaign, with an adult dragon, human knight, and eladrin king turn into a cakewalk.

While I agree that the XP budgets are guidelines rather than outright rules, I still find them useful.

 

[zaratan]

one troll is a deadly encounter for 2 lvl 6 PCs. But one lvl 5 BM fighter with GWM, action surge and extra attack (and some fire or acid damage) can kill it in one turn (with lucky). I think the difficult of an encounter depend of the entire day of encounters, the terrain and obviusly smart play and lucky.

 

[DMCF]

The two elite warriors briefly manage to create some consternation, since nobody focus on them; downing the champion lvl 4 NPC. The Yochlol manages to take the Monk out of the fight by a solid hit (he's not down, but so low on hp he withdraws from close combat and so are effectivly out of the fight).

Once Ilvara is down, the fight ends fairly quickly. One elite warrior flees (for story reasons) and when everybody can whale on the demon, she goes down in less than two rounds.

Let me start with Ilvara and the Yochlol. MM129 says the Yochlol sticks around for 10 minutes, until it's summoner dies, or it is dismissed. If the priestess died the players shouldn't have had a Yochlol to whale on for 2 rounds. Based on the sequence of events I'd use the rule for a multipart encounter if I did let the Yochlol live. Bear in mind that the Yochlol's alignment of CE mm65 means I'd make it go nuts and attack both drow and players if I let it stick around.

Seeing as how your encounter is hovering at approximately 11,000 it is still deadly. You wanted a deadly encounter. Why didn't you kill the champion?

phb197 states: "If you take any damage while you have 0 hit points, you suffer a death saving throw failure. If the damage is from a critical hit, you suffer two failures instead. If the damage equals or exceeds your hit point maximum, you suffer instant death."

phb292 states regarding unconscious characters that: Any attack that hits the creature is a critical hit if the attacker is within 5 feet of the creature."

NPCs generally do not get death saves. Monsters practically never get death saves. This means that with the same stats the edge will go to the player. The fact that you need extra moves to kill someone gives whomever is alive a better chance to survive. That is your license to kill people. You chose not to kill the champion. That is not the fault of the system.

My guess is most DM's don't want to pull the trigger this way because the player will see it as an affront.

In the player's mind it is logical that when someone/something is no longer a threat they should move on. That's why they maximize their damage at level 5 by making sure they roll each attack as if they made it in well parsed three-second intervals so that if the threat dies they can move and stab something else. Your NPC's don't have to be as smart as players. An NPC can stab-stab right away because NPC farts don't smell like roses.

The fact an encounter is hard or deadly means that the DM with average or better tactics will very likely be presented an opportunity to kill someone. <---- If this was in the DMG it would clear up a lot of confusion.

What hurts the encounter calculation is the general assumption that the chance of death will be based on a random dice fall that actually manages to take a creature to negative max HP. To achieve that the game would focus on less strategy. Monsters would have to have big dice damage or huge inescapable AoEs that always has a chance to kill players at a certain CR. This would hurt the game strategically. Certain NPCs would be harder to use with others because the chance of random insta-kill is too high.

I can kill my players regularly with medium/hard encounters. I know my NPCs. I know the synergy of the fight because I set it up. They also role play their characters in battle instead of "meta rush cuz dps is same at 1hp lolz". If your players are like that last part. Do it back to them. Start with medium encounters. Focus kobold fire on the closest thing in robes. I can't honestly believe that 100% of the time a party will survive 3 medium encounters back to back with no one going down when the DM is playing their best.

You set the encounter to deadly. Make it deadly. Kill someone. Don't look back.

 

[CapnZapp]

Thank you DMCF for your great illustration of precisely the kind of DM I don't think the encounter guidelines had in mind!

I should probably clarify I included the yochlol in the calculations precisely because it was a full combatant that needed to be defeated directly (rather than indirectly).

I freely admit to breaking the rules if that makes you happy. Since the adventure instructs us that the Drow Priestess waits until she's bloodied before she summons her demon, I have a clear conscience in deciding the Yochlol stuck around after the defeat of her summoner. In fact, to have the Yochlol disappear almost the instant it was summoned (the priestess only had a single action as bloodied, she went down later that same round) would have been an enormous anti-climax and a huge dungeonmastering mistake if you ask me. But yes, I acknowledge I broke the rules. I guess I consider myself a good enough DM to do so.

But I digress - the point is: I definitely include the demon CR as part of the encounter.

Best Regards,
Zapp

 

[DMCF]

You're claiming that you had an opportunity to kill someone but didn't do it and then blaming the encounter guidelines for a deadly encounter not being deadly. How does that work?