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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 9704592" data-attributes="member: 907">I have a feeling your PCs just got lucky, or somehow managed to make the monster use its action economy poorly.Just looking at a simplified white-room analysis, and using the creature creation guidelines for numbers:A typical level 2 PC will have an attack bonus of +9 (proficiency 4 (trained) + item 1 + stat 4). Using a one-handed weapon they will likely be hitting for 1d8+4 or 1d6+4 if they're using a weapon with fancy stuff going on. Split the difference and call it an average damage of 9 on a regular hit.A level 4 creature (high AC, moderate hp) will have AC 21 and 60 hp. So on their first attack, a PC needs a 12 to hit. That translates to 0.5 hits per attack (counting a crit as 2). 0.5 hits per attack * 9 damage per hit = 4.5 damage per attack. 60 hp/4.5 hp per attack = 13.3 attacks to kill.A level 2 creature will have AC 18 and 30 hp. On their first attack the PC needs a 9 to hit. That translates to 0.7 hits per attack. 0.7 hits per attack * 9 damage per hit = 6.3 damage per attack. 30 hp/6.3 hp per attack = 4.8 attacks to kill.That means that the level 4 creature has about 3 times the staying power of the level 2 creature (2.8 if rounding to one decimal). So let's look at the expected damage output.Level 2 PCs will ideally have an AC of 19 (10 + trained prof 4 + a combined Dex and armor bonus of 5). With heavy armor they can get to 20, but that's not expected. We're also ignoring shields for the moment.A level 4 creature with High attack bonus and High damage (the expected values for a melee-oriented creature) attacks at +14 to hit and deals about 14 per hit. +14 vs AC 19 translates to 1.1 hits per attack (again counting crits as double), so 15.4 damage per attack.A level 2 creature attacks at +11 for 9 per hit, which translates to 0.8 hits per attack which gets you 7.2 damage per attack.Combining these, we see that the level 4 creature will do about 6 times as much damage before going down as a level 2 creature – and that's for twice the XP. Now, the level 4 creature will suffer more from action denial, but on the other hand it's going to be a lot harder to make that action denial stick because their saves and defenses will be about 3 points higher. I also ignored PC abilities above the martial baseline because I figured they'd balance each other out, and I was more interested in seeing how much stronger +2 levels of creature gets. In addition, it will be easier to attack the single level 4 creature off-guard because you'll be outnumbering it 4-to-1 instead of 2-to-1, so the white-room comparison definitely lacks some nuance. But it does show that a level 4 creature is much stronger than a level 2 creature, because there are multiple factors that, well, multiply rather than add. Double hp AND higher AC combine to about 3 times as much staying power, not twice. Higher damage AND higher attack bonus combine to more than double damage, not 1.5x.Of course, this is all extremely situation-dependent. If the creature has a resistance, they probably have fewer hp overall, so if you can bypass that resistance things become easier than the baseline. Same thing if the creature has a vulnerability the party can exploit.</blockquote>

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