D&D 5E DMG's definition of "Deadly" is much less deadly than mine: Data Aggregation?

[Xanthais]

Late to the convo, and haven't read the entire thread, but in my experience with 5E, a "Deadly" encounter usually isn't if it's the first one of the day, or after a long-rest. Put that encounter at the end of the day, when the party resources are taxed and waning, and it's a whole other experience.

 

[Gansk]

Yeah, they weren't too keen on lingering wounds/conditions.

As an example, there was a "save the burning barn" scene which resulted in several PCs enduring exhaustion from smoke inhalation. The dwarf PCs got it really bad with 2 levels of exhaustion. Everyone was horrified at the lingering effect of exhaustion and how hard it was to remove. The idea of adventuring with a PC suffering disadvantage to all ability/skill checks (from 1 level exhaustion) was anathema to them. So you can imagine how the DMG's lingering wounds table (with severed limbs, gouged eyes, etc) went over!

I can always bring it up again.

OK, it sounds to me like the difference between a fumble table and a lingering wounds table is the duration, not necessarily the deadliness of the effect. Having complications occur in the middle of combat is fun, but the complication should not nag at the players for the entire day. So maybe if the severed limb could be cured by higher slot magic or the exhaustion was removed by a short rest, that may hit the sweet spot for both you and the players.

 

[Quickleaf]

Late to the convo, and haven't read the entire thread, but in my experience with 5E, a "Deadly" encounter usually isn't if it's the first one of the day, or after a long-rest. Put that encounter at the end of the day, when the party resources are taxed and waning, and it's a whole other experience.

My hunch is that party "freshness" affects the difficulty of an encounter roughly like so:

Fresh While the party has resources at maximum or near maximum, and recently had a long rest, the DM can often reduce the expected difficulty of encounters by 1 step. (e.g. Deadly to Hard, Hard to Medium, Medium to Easy)

Battle-worn While the party has roughly 33%-75% resources, lacks a couple hard hitting spells, but had a short rest recently, the DM can expect the difficulty of encounters to play close to the DMG guidelines.

Overtaxed While the party has few resources, several members may be injured or suffering conditions, and they haven't had a rest in a while, the DM can often increase the expected difficulty of encounters by 1 step. (e.g. Easy to Medium, Medium to Hard, Hard to Deadly)

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

My hunch is that party "freshness" affects the difficulty of an encounter roughly like so:

Fresh While the party has resources at maximum or near maximum, and recently had a long rest, the DM can often reduce the expected difficulty of encounters by 1 step. (e.g. Deadly to Hard, Hard to Medium, Medium to Easy)

Battle-worn While the party has roughly 33%-75% resources, lacks a couple hard hitting spells, but had a short rest recently, the DM can expect the difficulty of encounters to play close to the DMG guidelines.

Overtaxed While the party has few resources, several members may be injured or suffering conditions, and they haven't had a rest in a while, the DM can often increase the expected difficulty of encounters by 1 step. (e.g. Easy to Medium, Medium to Hard, Hard to Deadly)

I really don't think you can generalize. It depends on party style. For a party that relies on damage novas with high-level spells and paladin smiting--an apparently common tactic in the modern era--the above will work: as they deplete their novas, encounters get tougher and tougher. Ergo there's a steady dropoff in PC power and a steady rampup in encounter difficulty. On the other hand, for a party composed of 1 assassin, 2 champion fighters, and a lore bard for healing, encounter difficulty remains roughly steady until the lore bard runs out of healing, which makes the champions run out of HP and suddenly deadliness spikes.

You could probably come up with some kind of system that rated classes as either "long rest-dependent; short rest-dependent; non-rest-dependent" and phrase your rule of thumb in those terms. Even then, playstyle has more to do with it than class does--the champions can alter the way they play to drain either more or less healing from the lore bard per encounter, thanks to the Dodge action and similar options like Grapple/Prone.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] Yes, it's dangerous to generalize, I get that. It's also useful to notice trends and patterns too. And of course I'm interested in other GM's/player's views on the matter, but my initial motive for this was selfish and not altruistic. I want guidelines that work for me and my group.

Which, for the record, is comprised of a Fighter/Paladin, a Rogue, a Cleric, a Sorcerer, a Ranger, and a Monk-a-lock (Monk/Warlock).

If you think of the classic D&D party: Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, and Mage (with Ranger being the optional 5th wheel), well then my group's party certain qualifies as "classic." With the exception of the creepy monk-a-lock.

And if we're going to generalize encounter difficulty estimations, then we can't go too wrong with the classic D&D party as our assumed party typology. Sure there are going to be some groups that deviate from this norm, but it's classic for a reason! Personally, of the 4 gaming groups I've been a part of, they've all covered the four basic roles of the classic D&D party in every game/campaign we've played.

You could probably come up with some kind of system that rated classes as either "long rest-dependent; short rest-dependent; non-rest-dependent" and phrase your rule of thumb in those terms. Even then, playstyle has more to do with it than class does--the champions can alter the way they play to drain either more or less healing from the lore bard per encounter, thanks to the Dodge action and similar options like Grapple/Prone.

I'm avoiding getting that deep into analysis for now because of the great variance in d20 probabilities, player tactics, how GMs run monsters, and so forth. It's a good point though that play style can have a big impact on encounter difficulty. Whether or not that can be quantified in any meaningful way, I don't know.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

@Hemlock Yes, it's dangerous to generalize, I get that. It's also useful to notice trends and patterns too. And of course I'm interested in other GM's/player's views on the matter, but my initial motive for this was selfish and not altruistic. I want guidelines that work for me and my group.

Which, for the record, is comprised of a Fighter/Paladin, a Rogue, a Cleric, a Sorcerer, a Ranger, and a Monk-a-lock (Monk/Warlock).

If you think of the classic D&D party: Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, and Mage (with Ranger being the optional 5th wheel), well then my group's party certain qualifies as "classic." With the exception of the creepy monk-a-lock.

And if we're going to generalize encounter difficulty estimations, then we can't go too wrong with the classic D&D party as our assumed party typology. Sure there are going to be some groups that deviate from this norm, but it's classic for a reason! Personally, of the 4 gaming groups I've been a part of, they've all covered the four basic roles of the classic D&D party in every game/campaign we've played.


I'm avoiding getting that deep into analysis for now because of the great variance in d20 probabilities, player tactics, how GMs run monsters, and so forth. It's a good point though that play style can have a big impact on encounter difficulty. Whether or not that can be quantified in any meaningful way, I don't know.

Hmmm. You'd know better than I would about your playing style, but you have two very consistent classes up there (rogue and ranger) and three bursty-ish classes, two of which are bursty on a long rest and one on a short rest (Monkalock). And I'm not sure how to classify your Fighter/Paladin without seeing him in action. I think if I were trying to come up with mechanical guidelines, the way I'd do it is to reduce the effective level of the bursty characters as the day goes on. If the Sorcerer is level 11, and he is known to nova early and often, then maybe I'd count him as level 15 in computations for early in the day, petering down to level 8 or 9 at the end of the day when he is mostly depleted. The rogue will be exactly level 11 all day long, and the ranger probably will be too unless he relies a lot on his spells.

Unfortunately, my favorite encounter-building tool (Kobold.com) does not support heterogenous party levels so it's not easy to play with changing levels this way.

I honestly think the best way for you to proceed is to just make sure you use up the whole daily encounter budget, and assume that the short/long rest-focused characters will even things out in the end between themselves, since the design intent is for them to be fairly balanced. Don't worry so much about the label on any individual fight and focus more on the deadliness of the whole sequence of encounters.

BTW, one observation: if you want to panic players, make monsters that fail morale checks go berserk instead of fleeing or fighting to the death. That is, make them change their behavior patterns, flee the guy who's been beating on them with a stick, and charge someone completely different on the back lines like the wizard (ignoring all the opportunity attacks it takes in the process). It may not make the encounter any harder ultimately but it certainly changes things up and forces the wizard to respond (e.g. Disengage or Blade Ward instead of continuing to hurl fireballs)--and the key to a non-boring combat is to have more decision points within it.

 

[Quickleaf]

I honestly think the best way for you to proceed is to just make sure you use up the whole daily encounter budget, and assume that the short/long rest-focused characters will even things out in the end between themselves, since the design intent is for them to be fairly balanced. Don't worry so much about the label on any individual fight and focus more on the deadliness of the whole sequence of encounters.

I wanted to address this one point you brought up about "Daily Encounter Budget."

I really do not like that idea (as presented in the DMG) because it works against the organic sandbox-ish play that me and my group are aiming for. Also, it implies a rather ridiculous pace of level advancement, which also works against sandbox-ish play.

So I definitely don't plan on using that "Daily Encounter Budget" table as a guideline for what the party should face.

OTOH, I can see it useful as a design benchmark to help me get a sense for when the DMG encounter numbers tell me one thing, I can cross-reference that with the "Daily Encounter Budget" and how "fresh" the PCs are to get a better read on what the encounter's ACTUAL difficulty would be.

Essentially, using it as an aid to triangulate potential difficulty of an encounter. But NOT using it as a proscriptive formula.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I wanted to address this one point you brought up about "Daily Encounter Budget."

I really do not like that idea (as presented in the DMG) because it works against the organic sandbox-ish play that me and my group are aiming for. Also, it implies a rather ridiculous pace of level advancement, which also works against sandbox-ish play.

So I definitely don't plan on using that "Daily Encounter Budget" table as a guideline for what the party should face.

OTOH, I can see it useful as a design benchmark to help me get a sense for when the DMG encounter numbers tell me one thing, I can cross-reference that with the "Daily Encounter Budget" and how "fresh" the PCs are to get a better read on what the encounter's ACTUAL difficulty would be.

Essentially, using it as an aid to triangulate potential difficulty of an encounter. But NOT using it as a proscriptive formula.

1.) I get what you mean about sandbox play. My inclinations are similar. Nevertheless, in the spirit of "planning is indispensable but planning is useless" I would suggest, as an exercise, that you design some encounters of your choice (as hard/medium/etc. as you like, though I've disparaged those labels on this thread) and then add up the XP totals, and design some completely by-the-book encounters to fill up the rest of the daily XP budget, if any. If nothing else it is an aid to creativity, but more importantly I've found that the daily XP budgets are "better" in a sense than the individual encounter budgets--I get more out of designing a days' worth of encounters to the budget than I do from designing an individual encounter.

You can then break up that daily budget into multiple areas and let the players tackle as many or as few of them as they want, but I believe the exercise of calculating the budget will be useful to you.

2.) It doesn't really imply a ridiculous rate of advancement. Not only is it a ceiling on activity, not a floor, so there is no guarantee that players will even reach their daily XP budget in a gameworld day (maybe emergencies only happen once a month and so 33 "adventuring days" really takes three years), but remember that the players usually don't earn the whole budget even if you use up the whole budget, because only raw XP gets awarded but the budget goes against adjusted XP (which I wish they'd just called "difficulty" to avoid confusion with XP). A mind flayer, two intellect devourers, and eight goblins may cost 12,600 difficulty in your daily difficulty budget, but they're only worth 4200 XP to the lucky adventurers who defeat them. To get from daily budget tables to actual advancement rates, you should divide difficulty by a factor of 2 or 2.5. Call it 80 maxed-out adventuring days to hit 20th level. That could a solid four or five years of real time.

Of course, you regularly exceed the difficulty ratings by an order or magnitude, as I do at my table, you wind up with faster advancement and appropriately-epic stories to go with it. I.e. I'm not promising that it will take four or five real-time years to get there. My table has only been playing for most of a year and we've already got a fourteenth-level PC.

 

[Steven Winter]

From what I've seen, the "XP Thresholds by Character Level" table is pretty well constructed from a mathematical standpoint. The problem arises because so many monsters in the MM were given CRs that are too high. If every monster truly was as tough as its CR says it is, then the XP Thresholds table would give more reliable results. But because so many monsters punch below their weight, the encounters wind up being too easy.

And as so many others have said, situations are everything. The same exact PC/monster match-up on two different battlefields, or even with two different initiative arrangements, can play out with wildly different conclusions.

Steve

 

[Quickleaf]

1.) I get what you mean about sandbox play. My inclinations are similar. Nevertheless, in the spirit of "planning is indispensable but planning is useless" I would suggest, as an exercise, that you design some encounters of your choice (as hard/medium/etc. as you like, though I've disparaged those labels on this thread) and then add up the XP totals, and design some completely by-the-book encounters to fill up the rest of the daily XP budget, if any. If nothing else it is an aid to creativity, but more importantly I've found that the daily XP budgets are "better" in a sense than the individual encounter budgets--I get more out of designing a days' worth of encounters to the budget than I do from designing an individual encounter.

You can then break up that daily budget into multiple areas and let the players tackle as many or as few of them as they want, but I believe the exercise of calculating the budget will be useful to you.

I'll give it a shot!

What I was trying to express was that "day's worth of encounters" is totally in the eye of a beholder in a sandbox game, often being subject to when the party decides to rest.

Obviously I can lean on that, put pressure on their ability to rest, particularly in the Underdark, but a significant portion of the time it seems like they'll have a choice in when to rest.

And yes, I could design a monster lair using a "day's worth of encounters", totally. However, not all monster lairs are going to conform to that. And many random encounters will be much less than that.