D&D 5E 5e XP Chart Progression Question

[bganon]

I think your calculation is correct, i still dont understand why my party (party of level 4, Rogue, Hunter, Fighter and Barbarian) went through 21 orcs and a orc war chief in one encounter.
We're playing a non magic campagne, something happened 500 years ago and were trying to find magic back in the world.
But shouldn't we NOT been able to kille 21 orcs (CR 0.5) and a orc war chief (CR 4), even if there were first 3 orcs, then 4 orcs, then 5 orcs, then 4 orcs and then 4 orcs with a warchief.
If I look at the whole encounter, we had 5 small encounters, with the CR of 1.5, 2, 2.5, 2 and 6.
Which make total exp according to the book,
3 orcs = 3x 100 xp x2(multiplier for 3-6 mobs) = 600 xp
4 orcs = 4x 100 xp x2(multiplier for 3-6 mobs) = 800 xp
5 orcs = 5x 100 xp x2(multiplier for 3-6 mobs) = 1000 xp
4 orcs = 4x 100 xp x2(multiplier for 3-6 mobs) = 800 xp
4 orcs + warchief = (4x 100 xp + 1100xp) x2(multiplier for 3-6 mobs) = 3200xp
600+800+1000+800+3200xp makes a total of 6400xp.
IF u look at a deadly encounter for 4 level 4 chars, thats 4x500 xp, so how can we survive a 3 times as deadly encounter.
After that we killed a group of 19 orcs and warchief and oroc.
After that we killed a group of 10 Ogres.
before we found the first group orcs, we just dinged level 4, and now were almost level 6. Is my math completely wrong?

If they didn't all rush you at once, you faced five encounters, not one. Maybe you didn't get much (any?) rest in between, which would make it a bit more difficult, but they're still not really a single encounter. In the first four encounters, only one even clears the threshold for "medium" difficulty, the rest are "easy". And the DMG says to not even count monsters well below the average CR in the encounter when modifying xp for big mobs, so I don't think the regular orcs should count for doubling the xp of the final warchief encounter. Which would leave it at just barely clearing the "hard" hurdle.

So if you'd faced 21 orcs & their chief all at once, yes, there might be a good chance of TPK. But breaking it up into chunks makes a BIG difference.

 

[bganon]

Also, that doubling stuff only counts for assessing difficulty, the PCs do NOT earn extra xp. So 21 orcs + chieftain should've been 3300 xp spread between four PCs, for 825 xp per character. At 4th level you should need a lot more to hit 5th.

 

[robus]

we were the ones being ambushed, and some of our party couldnt see well in the dark, so had to go around with a torch.
we kinda were at disadventage. we had 2 ppl going below 0 but we could get them alive again, was the last round orso.
dont really have any other circumstances:S

2 PCs as 0 hit points and making saving throws sounds deadly to me? At least if you didn't have the healing potions to hand.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

We have no magic users and no magic items, and still we kill like 3X deadly encounters.

The thing what im asking is: is my calculation right or am i doing something wrong?
Cuz now our DM just puts an encounter on our way, and we kinda level up each encounter.
As i see the table that was made, it tells me we need 10 encounters to level up, not just 1 or 2.

Yep, that's completely normal and expected*. Advancement in 5E is really, really fast when you push the envelope that way. Hopefully it's enjoyable too.

* The one thing that might be a little bit wrong is that the DM might be giving you too much XP, if he's using hordes of monsters and misunderstands what difficulty multipliers are intended to represent. Then again, he might be doing that on purpose as a house rule, in which case it's not really "too much XP" at all. Either way it's not really your problem.

 

[blondbauke]

If they didn't all rush you at once, you faced five encounters, not one. Maybe you didn't get much (any?) rest in between, which would make it a bit more difficult, but they're still not really a single encounter. In the first four encounters, only one even clears the threshold for "medium" difficulty, the rest are "easy". And the DMG says to not even count monsters well below the average CR in the encounter when modifying xp for big mobs, so I don't think the regular orcs should count for doubling the xp of the final warchief encounter. Which would leave it at just barely clearing the "hard" hurdle.

So if you'd faced 21 orcs & their chief all at once, yes, there might be a good chance of TPK. But breaking it up into chunks makes a BIG difference.

They all came one round later then the ones before:S
So i call that one encounter, its just that our DM seems to find the ruling a bit funny in the DMG
Thats why im asking here.

 

[blondbauke]

Yep, that's completely normal and expected*. Advancement in 5E is really, really fast when you push the envelope that way. Hopefully it's enjoyable too.

* The one thing that might be a little bit wrong is that the DM might be giving you too much XP, if he's using hordes of monsters and misunderstands what difficulty multipliers are intended to represent. Then again, he might be doing that on purpose as a house rule, in which case it's not really "too much XP" at all. Either way it's not really your problem.

Its kinda my problem, when the DM and we just trying to figuring this out together. Before he just let us level up for like 3 sessions and stuff, he just wanted to look if the xp works the same way

 

[blondbauke]

Also, that doubling stuff only counts for assessing difficulty, the PCs do NOT earn extra xp. So 21 orcs + chieftain should've been 3300 xp spread between four PCs, for 825 xp per character. At 4th level you should need a lot more to hit 5th.

Ah then my math is just wrong
Good to know, ill tell my DM that, cuz then we just gained like double xp for all 3 fights

 

[cooperjer]

... my party (party of level 4, Rogue, Hunter, Fighter and Barbarian) ...
... orcs (CR 0.5) and a orc war chief (CR 4), ...

Which make total exp according to the book,
3 orcs = 3x 100 xp x2(multiplier for 3-6 mobs) = 600 xp
4 orcs = 4x 100 xp x2(multiplier for 3-6 mobs) = 800 xp
5 orcs = 5x 100 xp x2(multiplier for 3-6 mobs) = 1000 xp
4 orcs = 4x 100 xp x2(multiplier for 3-6 mobs) = 800 xp
4 orcs + warchief = (4x 100 xp + 1100xp) x2(multiplier for 3-6 mobs) = 3200xp
600+800+1000+800+3200xp makes a total of 6400xp.
IF u look at a deadly encounter for 4 level 4 chars, thats 4x500 xp, so how can we survive a 3 times as deadly encounter.
After that we killed a group of 19 orcs and warchief and oroc.
After that we killed a group of 10 Ogres.
before we found the first group orcs, we just dinged level 4, and now were almost level 6. Is my math completely wrong?

I deleted some of the intro, but kept the stuff I felt was relevant. In my experience the Barbarian class increases the capability of the team by about 1 character.

The standard calcs for this teams capabilities are: Easy = 500 XP, Medium = 1000 XP, Hard = 1500 XP, Deadly = 2000 XP, Daily total = 6800 XP. Assuming the barbarian counts as two characters then the capability increases and the new calcs are: Easy = 625 XP, Medium = 1250 XP, Hard = 1875 XP, Deadly = 2500 XP, Daily total = 8500 XP. If your characters are point buy then these numbers are good; however, if your characters are rolled then I would suggest your DM increases the effective level of the PCs in these calcs by 1, depending on how much higher the rolled stats are than the point buy.

As was suggested, the warchief is a couple steps above the mob so his effective CR multiplier should not be the same. I would suggest a multiplier of 1. If the DM felt the warboss would be target priority number one (usually it is), then I would suggest a multiplier of 0.5. The effective encounter XP for the warboss fight would be closer to: 4x100x2 + 1100x0.5 = 1350 = light Hard.

With that said the “rolling” encounter XP would be 600 + 800 + 1000 + 800 + 1350 = 4550 or about 4550/8500 = 54% of your teams resources for the day. This would leave you plenty of health and tricks available to continue combat after defeating the warboss.

The XP granted to the characters would be (3x100 + 4x100 + 5x100 + 4x100 + 4x100 + 1100)/4 = 3100 / 4 = 775 each character.

Your DMs experience may vary on how effective his NPCs are against the PCs. The above is based on how my players optimize their characters and their encounter tactics.

 

[blondbauke]

Ok thanks all for your input, the modifiers and stuff were kinda weird to us, so i wanted to ask if we did something wrong, as we kinda did