CapnZapp
Legend
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...
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...