D&D 5E 5e Hobgoblin stat block

[Agamon]

I'm afraid hob archers with turtle/rat/goblin allies might actually be a thing that happens in such a setting.

Hobgoblin Archer: Assail them, my minions!

PCs: *gasp* Not the Turtlerat Goblins! Run!

 

[Blackbrrd]

...
Really, Encounters 1, 2 and 4 could have been all one party as only two spell slots were expended. That would have been most of their adventuring day, but they might feel bold enough for another encounter. Especially with the wizard still rocking all their spells.
Hobgoblins are tough, but not overly deadly. The fights are a little swingy, but if the wizard was willing to expend a spell things would go much smoother (but then I'd need to know what more than cantrips do).

Two deaths after four 200xp encounters at level 1, or half a death per encounter? That's too swingy in my opinion.

Now, we don't know what this encounter would be "ranked" as by the encounter building guidelines. If this is "deadly" according to those guidelines, they are right on mark. If it's medium to challenging, I think they missed.

Personally, I think the main issue is how little hp a level 1 character has compared to a level 2 character. I might very well just start my campaigns at level 2 or 3, something I often did in 3e. Not a problem.

 

[Tazawa]

I'll have to run another couple of encounters later with one hobgoblin taking point and another shoot their bow. But I expect simmilar results.
Really, Encounters 1, 2 and 4 could have been all one party as only two spell slots were expended. That would have been most of their adventuring day, but they might feel bold enough for another encounter. Especially with the wizard still rocking all their spells.
Hobgoblins are tough, but not overly deadly. The fights are a little swingy, but if the wizard was willing to expend a spell things would go much smoother (but then I'd need to know what more than cantrips do).

Thanks for posting your simulations. I am interested to see if you get the same results I did when you run your simulation with one standing back and using its bow. I found it was hard to keep the melee hobgoblin alive long enough to reliably give the hobgoblin archers Martial Advantage.

I ran my simulations with a second level party and 4 hobgoblins (or two hobgoblins and four goblins). The fights were much less swingy due to the characters higher hit points. In my games I would probably start to use hobgoblins at second level. First level is for goblins and kobolds.

Happy gaming!

 

[Tazawa]

Double post.

 

[Jester David]

Two deaths after four 200xp encounters at level 1, or half a death per encounter? That's too swingy in my opinion.

Now, we don't know what this encounter would be "ranked" as by the encounter building guidelines. If this is "deadly" according to those guidelines, they are right on mark. If it's medium to challenging, I think they missed.

Personally, I think the main issue is how little hp a level 1 character has compared to a level 2 character. I might very well just start my campaigns at level 2 or 3, something I often did in 3e. Not a problem.

Which *only* happened when I allowed a sneaky ambush that gave the hobgoblins direct access to the wizard and didn't have the wizard cast any defensive spells like mage armour and rolled well on the damage.
The second death really only happened because I opted to have the cleric save the fighter; the rogue *could* have been saved and then had a reasonable chance of killing the hobgoblin.
That was the worst case scenario and the PCs still won and only lost a couple party members.

Plus in an otherwise identical simulation, the party won without breaking a sweat.

If I ran the fights again, I imagine the ambush might only have a single death or a near death. There's only a 1/2 death per encounter ratio because I stopped at four. The small sample means the extraordinary result stands out.

 

[Jester David]

Ran five more playtests. One more with everyone being unaware and the hobgoblins in melee, one more ambush, and three with a hobgoblin acting as an archer.

Summarizing, in most fights the hobgoblins managed to knock at least one PC unconscious. One fight the PCs were just injured. This was the middle archer fighter, where one one hobgoblin can get advantage, which greatly reduces the chances of dropping a PC. Generally, only one hobgoblin would hit each round. An archer might work better with 2 or so goblins, but those will be even easier to dispatch.

There was a death, but it was the result of a crit, which is non-representational. Even if the damage was only 1d6 it would kill most characters in a crit. At level one, crits will always be dangerous. Of course, in that fight three characters went before the hobgoblin; if either the fighter or the rogue had hit they'd probably have killed the hobgoblin and the crit would just be an injury.

So nine fights and only three deaths. The death ration has dropped from 1:2 to 1:3. And if I ran more to reduce the influence of the untimely crit it should easily drop father. And had I played an earlier fight smarter, the rogue would have lived and the ratio would drop even lower.

Excluding the exceptions, I can see an average of one death every eight or nine fights.

Of course, I'm assuming two hobgoblins is a fair fight.

 

[FireLance]

There was a death, but it was the result of a crit, which is non-representational. Even if the damage was only 1d6 it would kill most characters in a crit. At level one, crits will always be dangerous.

Could I check which crit rule you were using? Based on the Basic rules document, all damage dice are doubled on a crit. A hobgoblin with Martial Advantage would thus deal 2d8+4d6+1 damage on a crit (average 24 hp). That's enough to send almost any 1st-level character apart from a dwarf fighter from full hit points to flat out dead (negative maximum hit points) in one hit.

That's way too swingy for my taste. If I were to run 5e, I wouldn't send a hobgoblin with any allies against anything less than a 2nd-level party.

 

[Jester David]

Could I check which crit rule you were using? Based on the Basic rules document, all damage dice are doubled on a crit. A hobgoblin with Martial Advantage would thus deal 2d8+4d6+1 damage on a crit (average 24 hp). That's enough to send almost any 1st-level character apart from a dwarf fighter from full hit points to flat out dead (negative maximum hit points) in one hit.

That's way too swingy for my taste. If I were to run 5e, I wouldn't send a hobgoblin with any allies against anything less than a 2nd-level party.

It was the playtest crit. So 1d8+2d6+1 maximized plus 1d8. Average damage of 25.5.
So there's a *slightly* better chance the fighter might have lived after a revised crit.

I also missed that Second Wind was a bonus action, so the fighters might have been able to self-heal more reliably, staying up longer and beating more hobgoblins before dropping. (I also never used Action Surge.)

So I maintain that a two hobgoblin encounter really doesn't seem that swingy or deadly, unless the hobgoblins are really sneaky AND lucky, or one gets a crit. And a high initiative is helpful for both.

 

[Blackbrrd]

It was the playtest crit. So 1d8+2d6+1 maximized plus 1d8. Average damage of 25.5.
So there's a *slightly* better chance the fighter might have lived after a revised crit.

I also missed that Second Wind was a bonus action, so the fighters might have been able to self-heal more reliably, staying up longer and beating more hobgoblins before dropping. (I also never used Action Surge.)

So I maintain that a two hobgoblin encounter really doesn't seem that swingy or deadly, unless the hobgoblins are really sneaky AND lucky, or one gets a crit. And a high initiative is helpful for both.

According to http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20140707 200 xp equals a moderate encounter. Could you be bothered trying to run a challenging encounter (400xp)? Feel free to let the PC's blow all their good stuff on the encounter. I do think we would end up with a pretty nasty encounter...

 

[ThirdWizard]

I just ran a test 400 XP encounter. I didn't use pregens, I used some PCs I created. They were not optimized. They consisted of:

Hill Dwarf Fighter (Defense Style) wielding a Battleaxe (14 hp; 19 AC; +4 vs AC; 1d8+2 damage)
Wood Elf Cleric wielding a Longsword and Longbow (8 hp; 18 AC; +4 vs. AC 1d8+2 damage; 2 1st level spell slots)
Human Rogue wielding a Rapier (9 hp; 14 AC; +5 vs. AC; 1d8+3 damage)
Halfling Wizard (5 hp; 15 AC (mage armor); 1 1st level spell slot)

The setup was an ambush on a trail. It consisted of 4 hobgoblins. Two of them stayed back with bows while two others charged in to melee. Their tactics were to always keep two hobgoblins in melee so that they could all make use of their +2d6 damage.

The party's marching order was the fighter in front, the wizard in the middle, and the rogue and cleric taking up the rear.

Initiative
The party won initiative handily. Order ended up being Fighter -> Wizard -> Rogue -> Cleric -> Hobgoblins

Round #1
Hobgoblins rolled 16 Stealth. This was enough to beat all the PCs' Passive Perception. They waited until the PCs passed by and attacked the rear, all focusing on the cleric. Two Hobgoblins moved in and attacked, two stayed back and fired their ranged weapons. Only one hobgoblin hit the cleric's AC of 18, however, and the cleric "only" took 7 damage. This dropped the cleric to 1 hp.

Round #2
The party got to act. The fighter moved to the back and attacked but missed. The rogue hit one, dropping it to 2 hp. The wizard cast magic missile, targeting the 2 hp with one dart, and the other melee hob with the other 2. The first melee hob dropped and the second took 4 damage total, putting it at 7 hp. The cleric cast cure light wounds on himself to bring himself to full hp. The cleric took a risk and moved away, taking an OA and was missed.

The hobs acted. One archer moved forward and attacked the rogue, dropping her to 0 hp. The other two attacked, and missed, the fighter.

Round #3
The fighter attacked the injured hob, dealing 4 damage, putting him at 3 hp. The wizard cast fire bolt on the same hob, but missed. The cleric healed the rogue back up to full with a cure light wounds.

The melee hobs attacked the fighter. The two in melee missed, but the archer dealt a whopping 17 damage and dropped him to 0 hp.

Round #4
The fighter fails his death saving throw. The cleric moves in and hits the injured hob for 5 damage, dropping it. The rogue and wizard both miss their attacks.

The archer hob moves in to join the other. At this point, there are two hobs left, and they're both in melee. Neither is injured. They attack, only one hits the cleric but rolls low, dropping the cleric to 3 hp.

Round #5
The fighter fails his death saving throw a second time. The rogue and cleric both miss. The wizard hits with fire bolt for... 1 damage.

The hobs drop the cleric. One whiff and one hit for 14 damage. The cleric is dead.

Round #6
The fighter succeeds on a death saving throw. The wizard hits with fire bolt for... 1 damage. The wizard decides to be a hero and moves into melee range so that the rogue can sneak attack, but the rogue misses.

The hobgoblins decide to squish the wizard. He takes 14 damage and dies.

Round #7
The rogue fights valiantly, but misses.

The hobgoblins miss and then hit the rogue for 14 damage, putting him down to 0 hp.

Thoughts
There was a lot of missing, with the hobs' 18 AC being the real danger here, at roughly 40% hit rate for the PC party. The hobgoblins didn't fare much better in hitting, but when they did it counted much more. A more optimized party might have done better, for example if the fighter was Great Weapon, he might have dropped one of the hobgoblins earlier, which would have also made things very different. Overall, it seemed very swingy running the fight.

Edit to Add: I didn't expect the PC party to win. They actually did better than I thought they would, and I'd say that had a chance to win, although it was a slim one.