D&D 5E Design Debate: 13th-level PCs vs. 6- to 8-Encounter Adventuring Day

[Lord Twig]

You speak of "using Insight" like "using a hit die." Without sufficient interaction to actually determine something is amiss with the "little girl," attempts to discern her true intention or nature is a fail, no roll, in my view. It takes time to figure this stuff out. "There's a cloud of poisonous mist rolling down the slimy slope and an ominous croaking coming from somewhere behind it. The little girl coughs and cries 'My eyes are burning!' as she tries to cover her face in [wizard's] robes. What do you do?"

I fully expect the players to be suspicious, so I'm going to put that little girl right up in their grills and see what they do about her in the face of other dangers. That's an interesting scene in my view, one that could play on personality traits, ideals, bonds, or flaws.

I grab the little girl and throw her out the portal behind us. Better on the mountainside than in an evil, world destroying demi-plane with a poisonous cloud rolling down on her. This would mean that there would be one slaad in front and one behind when it ran back in, but if it ran back in at least we know it's not a normal little girl at that point.

 

[iserith]

I grab the little girl and throw her out the portal behind us. Better on the mountainside than in an evil, world destroying demi-plane with a poisonous cloud rolling down on her. This would mean that there would be one slaad in front and one behind when it ran back in, but if it ran back in at least we know it's not a normal little girl at that point.

True! But still all up in your ranks. As well, imagine how disturbing it would be when the little girl doesn't budge as "Its statistics, other than its size, are the same in each form..." and a +5 Str means she could resist the shove. Shapechange, eat wizard, brave the cloudkill (advantage on save), get back up the slope behind the cloud, and regenerate while lobbing fireballs.

Mostly I'd include the little girl as a nod to social interaction in the scene. The lever, slope, and stairs is exploration. The slaadi are obviously the combat portion. That's just me though and Flamestrike went in a different direction.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Adjusted XP difficulty = MEDIUM (the winter wolves have a CR of 10 less than the PCs, so do not count in the XP multiplier for encounter difficulty).

This is wrong, IMO. You're only supposed to discount monsters that do not add significantly to the challenge of the encounter, like two kobolds accompanying a red dragon. The Winter Wolves add a whole new threat dimension to this encounter. Not only do they add an AoE threat, but they also can knock PCs prone (granting advantage to the Frost Giants' attacks at close range) and they add another 300 HP that the PCs have to chew their way through to kill the giants.

This is a Deadly encounter. Which is fine, BTW--it makes the encounter hard enough to be worth playing--but if you're telling yourself that this encounter with two Frost Giants and four Winter Wolves is not about as hard as three Frost Giants just because the Winter Wolves are "low CR" you're deluding yourself. It's not at all the same difficulty as facing two Frost Giants by themselves.

 

[iserith]

This is wrong, IMO. You're only supposed to discount monsters that do not add significantly to the challenge of the encounter, like two kobolds accompanying a red dragon. The Winter Wolves add a whole new threat dimension to this encounter. Not only do they add an AoE threat, but they also can knock PCs prone (granting advantage to the Frost Giants' attacks at close range) and they add another 300 HP that the PCs have to chew their way through to kill the giants.

This is a Deadly encounter. Which is fine, BTW--it makes the encounter hard enough to be worth playing--but if you're telling yourself that this encounter with two Frost Giants and four Winter Wolves is not about as hard as three Frost Giants just because the Winter Wolves are "low CR" you're deluding yourself. It's not at all the same difficulty as facing two Frost Giants by themselves.

If you do account for the winter wolves in the adjusted XP, it's still only a Hard encounter, and thus appropriate for a 6-8 encounter adventuring day. It doesn't get Deadly until 25,500 XP.

 

[Celtavian]

This is wrong, IMO. You're only supposed to discount monsters that do not add significantly to the challenge of the encounter, like two kobolds accompanying a red dragon. The Winter Wolves add a whole new threat dimension to this encounter. Not only do they add an AoE threat, but they also can knock PCs prone (granting advantage to the Frost Giants' attacks at close range) and they add another 300 HP that the PCs have to chew their way through to kill the giants.

This is a Deadly encounter. Which is fine, BTW--it makes the encounter hard enough to be worth playing--but if you're telling yourself that this encounter with two Frost Giants and four Winter Wolves is not about as hard as three Frost Giants just because the Winter Wolves are "low CR" you're deluding yourself. It's not at all the same difficulty as facing two Frost Giants by themselves.

No one was more shocked than I that Iserith and Flamestrike consider Winter Wolves with pack tactics, an AoE attack, a trip attack, and 75 hit points not a powerful addition to this group. In 3E they would have been trivial. In 5E they are a major boost to nearly any encounter at nearly any level and should have been counted at least half for the creature multiple beyond the base xp added. Wolves in general have high value special abilities. Winter Wolves are particularly vicious. If you were to throw 10 or 12 winter wolves at a lvl 20 fighter in 5E, they might kill him. The only class that could survive fairly easily is one that could fly and AoE. Any class stuck on the ground that was in combat with the Winter Wolves would may die even at lvl 20.

 

[iserith]

No one was more shocked than I that Iserith and Flamestrike consider Winter Wolves with pack tactics, an AoE attack, a trip attack, and 75 hit points not a powerful addition to this group. In 3E they would have been trivial. In 5E they are a major boost to nearly any encounter at nearly any level and should have been counted at least half for the creature multiple beyond the base xp added. Wolves in general have high value special abilities. Winter Wolves are particularly vicious. If you were to throw 10 or 12 winter wolves at a lvl 20 fighter in 5E, they might kill him. The only class that could survive fairly easily is one that could fly and AoE. Any class stuck on the ground that was in combat with the Winter Wolves would may die even at lvl 20.

Still irrelevant in the context of this debate since we're within guidelines.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

If you do account for the winter wolves in the adjusted XP, it's still only a Hard encounter, and thus appropriate for a 6-8 encounter adventuring day. It doesn't get Deadly until 25,500 XP.

Oh, is this for five PCs? OP made me think it was for 4 13th level PCs.

Anyway, it's a fun scenario. IMO most 5E scenarios need to be approximately Deadly in order to be challenging, so this level of difficulty is fine IMO.

Still irrelevant in the context of this debate since we're within guidelines.

It's only irrelevant if you're building a single encounter instead of an adventuring day. If your daily adventuring budget is 54,000 XP for four characters, or 67,500 for five characters, you're blowing between half and a third of your total XP budget on this one encounter. Is that what this thread is supposed to be about?

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think you would be insanely lucky for this to be the only resource drain on the party. Even just 2 hits from the giants, and a few breath weapons that land (and this is do-able in just a single round of combat) and youre looking at 100+ HP loss also (requiring further resource drain in healing magic, potions and HD - the latter of which requires a short rest).

100+ HP loss plus one Hypnotic Pattern seems fairly plausible as an outcome. 100+ HP loss = one expended 3rd level spell slot from the Paladorc (plus one sorcery point) for Extended Aura of Vitality.

Total cost of encounter: 10 spell points and one sorcery point, so about 4-5% of party resources. Not much resource drain for something that just ate 39% of the DM's adventuring day XP budget.

 

[iserith]

It's only irrelevant if you're building a single encounter instead of an adventuring day. If your daily adventuring budget is 54,000 XP for four characters, or 67,500 for five characters, you're blowing between half and a third of your total XP budget on this one encounter. Is that what this thread is supposed to be about?

I leave it to [MENTION=6788736]Flamestrike[/MENTION] to answer that. I verified XP on individual encounters, not the overall budget.

It's the DM's call to say whether the wolves count toward adjusted XP. Flamestrike's call is that they do not. If you want to make a different case for your own table, you can mention that in Part 1 of the debate format and let the readers decide who made the better call. Given the scant resources that [MENTION=5834]Celtavian[/MENTION] reports as being expended by the party, I think this bolsters the claim that the wolves don't count. Someone else mentioned the tongues spell as well which might have also reduced the difficulty of this encounter a great deal.

 

[meshon]

100+ HP loss plus one Hypnotic Pattern seems fairly plausible as an outcome. 100+ HP loss = one expended 3rd level spell slot from the Paladorc (plus one sorcery point) for Extended Aura of Vitality.

Total cost of encounter: 10 spell points and one sorcery point, so about 4-5% of party resources. Not much resource drain for something that just ate 39% of the DM's adventuring day XP budget.

I think there are five PCs? Which would mean it's more like 25%. But combined with the Slaads that's over half the daily budget. Of course it also depends on how you're calculating adjusted XP. When combining low and high CR groups I calculate each group separately and then add them together. What counts as "low" and "high" is, of course, completely subjective...

Edit: Oops, missed all the responses. Note to self, when using Tapatalk, refresh the page! Doh.

Please ignore this.